ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he had told her the truth: that he would go where she went, that all the happiness of life and the only meaning of life for him now was in seeing and hearing her. When he had got out of the train at Bologoe station to drink a glass of seltzer water and had seen Anna, he had involuntarily at once told her just what he was thinking about it. He was glad he had said it to her, and that she now knew it and was thinking about it. He did not sleep at all that night. When he returned to the train, he kept recalling all the positions in which he had seen her, and all her words; and in his imagination, causing his heart to stand still, floated pictures of a possible future.

      When he got out of the train at Petersburg he felt, despite his sleepless night, as fresh and animated as after a cold bath. He stopped outside the carriage, waiting till she appeared. ‘I shall see her again,’ he thought and smiled involuntarily. ‘I shall see her walk, her face … she will say something, turn her head, look at me, perhaps even smile.’ But before seeing her he saw her husband, whom the station-master was respectfully conducting through the crowd. ‘Dear me! the husband!’ Only now did Vronsky for the first time clearly realize that the husband was connected with her. He knew she had a husband, but had not believed in his existence, and only fully believed in him when he saw him there: his head and shoulders, and the black trousers containing his legs, and especially when he saw that husband with an air of ownership quietly take her hand.

      When he saw Karenin, with his fresh Petersburg face, his sternly self-confident figure, his round hat and his slightly rounded back, Vronsky believed in his existence, and had such a disagreeable sensation as a man tortured by thirst might feel on reaching a spring and finding a dog, sheep, or pig in it, drinking the water and making it muddy. Karenin’s gait, the swinging of his thighs, and his wide short feet, particularly offended Vronsky, who acknowledged only his own unquestionable right to love Anna. But she was still the same, and the sight of her still affected him physically, exhilarating and stimulating him and filling him with joy. He ordered his German valet, who had run up from a second-class carriage, to get his luggage and take it home, and he himself went up to her. He saw the husband and wife meet, and with the penetration of a lover he noticed the signs of slight embarrassment when she spoke to her husband.

      ‘No, she doesn’t and can’t love him,’ he decided mentally.

      While he was approaching her from behind he observed with joy that she became aware of his approach and was about to turn but, on recognizing him, again addressed her husband.

      ‘Did you have a good night?’ he inquired, bowing toward them both, and leaving it to Karenin to take the greeting as meant for herself and to recognize him, or not, as he pleased.

      ‘Yes, quite comfortable, thank you,’ she replied.

      Her face seemed tired and had none of that play which showed now in a smile and now in the animation of her eyes; but just for an instant as she looked at him he saw a gleam in her eyes and, though the spark was at once extinguished, that one instant made him happy. She glanced at her husband to see whether he knew Vronsky. Karenin looked at him with displeasure, absently trying to recall who he might be. Vronsky’s calm self-confidence struck like a scythe on a stone against the cold self-confidence of Karenin.

      ‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.

      ‘Ah! I believe we have met before,’ said Karenin, extending his hand with indifference. ‘You travelled there with the mother and came back with the son,’ he said, uttering every word distinctly as though it were something valuable he was giving away. ‘I suppose you are returning from furlough?’ he remarked; and without waiting for an answer said to his wife in his playful manner: ‘Well, were many tears shed in Moscow over the parting?’

      By addressing himself thus to his wife he conveyed to Vronsky his wish to be alone with her, and turning to Vronsky he touched his hat. But Vronsky, addressing Anna, said: ‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you.’ Karenin glanced at him with his weary eyes. ‘I shall be very pleased,’ he said coldly. ‘We are at home on Mondays.’ Then having finally dismissed Vronsky he said to his wife in his usual bantering tone: ‘What a good thing it was that I had just half an hour to spare to meet you and was able to show my devotion!’

      ‘You insist too much on your devotion, for me to value it greatly,’ she replied in the same playful tone, while she involuntarily listened to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps following them. ‘But what does he matter to me?’ she asked herself, and began inquiring of her husband how Serezha had got on during her absence.

      ‘Oh, splendidly! Mariette says he was very sweet. But — I’m sorry to grieve you! — he did not fret after you … like your husband! … But I must thank you once again, my dear, for having made me the present of a day. Our dear Samovar will be in ecstasies.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna samovar because she was always getting heated and boiling over about something.) ‘She was asking after you. And, do you know, if I may advise, you should go and see her to-day. Her heart is always aching about somebody. At present, in addition to all her other worries, she is concerned about the Oblonskys’ reconciliation.’

      Countess Lydia Ivanovna was Anna’s husband’s friend, and the centre of that set in Petersburg Society with which Anna, through her husband, was most closely connected.

      ‘But I wrote to her.’

      ‘Yes, but she wants the particulars. Go and see her, my dear, if you are not too tired… . Kondraty is here with the carriage for you, and I must be off to the Committee. Now I shan’t have to dine alone,’ he went on, no longer in a bantering manner. ‘You can’t think how I used …’ and with a long pressure of her hand and a special kind of smile he helped her into the carriage.

      Chapter 32

      THE first person to meet Anna when she reached home was her son. He ran down the stairs to her regardless of his governess’s cries, and with desperate delight called out: ‘Mama! Mama!’ When he reached her he clung round her neck.

      ‘I told you it was Mama!’ he shouted to the governess. ‘I knew!’ Her son, like his father, produced on Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. Her fancy had pictured him nicer than he was in reality. She had to come down to reality in order to enjoy him as he was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, blue eyes, and plump shapely legs in tight-fitting stockings. Anna experienced an almost physical pleasure in feeling his proximity and his caresses, and a moral solace when she met his simple, trustful, and loving gaze and heard his naïve questions. She unpacked the presents which Dolly’s children had sent him, and told him that there was a girl in Moscow whose name was Tanya, who could read and even teach other children.

      ‘And am I worse than she?’ asked Serezha.

      ‘To me, you are the best in the world.’

      ‘I know,’ he said, smiling.

      Before Anna had time to finish her coffee the Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. The Countess was a tall, stout woman with a sickly sallow complexion and beautiful, dreamy, black eyes. Anna was fond of her, but to-day she seemed to see her for the first time with all her defects.

      ‘Well, my dear! did you take the olive branch?’ asked the Countess Lydia Ivanovna as soon as she entered the room.

      ‘Yes, it’s all over; but the whole affair was not as serious as we thought,’ Anna replied. ‘My sister-in-law is, in general, too impulsive.’

      But СКАЧАТЬ