ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 27

      ANNA was upstairs standing in front of a mirror pinning, with Annushka’s help, a last bow to her dress, when she heard the wheels of a carriage grating on the gravel at the entrance.

      ‘It is too early for Betsy,’ she thought, and glancing out of the window she saw the carriage, and sticking out of it a black hat and Karenin’s familiar ears. ‘How unfortunate! Can he mean to stay the night?’ thought she, and so awful and horrible appeared to her the consequences that might result therefrom that, without a moment’s hesitation, she went out to meet him with a bright beaming face; and feeling within herself the presence of the already familiar spirit of lies and deceit, she gave herself up to it at once and began speaking without knowing what she was going to say.

      ‘Ah, how nice this is!’ she said, giving her husband her hand and smilingly greeting Slyudin as a member of the household. ‘You are staying the night, I hope?’ were the first words prompted by the spirit of lies. ‘And now we shall go together. Only it is a pity that I promised to go with Betsy. She will be coming for me.’

      Karenin made a grimace at the mention of Betsy’s name.

      ‘Oh, I will not separate the inseparables,’ he said in his usual facetious tone. ‘I will go with Slyudin. The doctors have ordered me to walk. I will walk part way and imagine that I am still taking the waters.’

      ‘There is no hurry,’ said Anna. ‘Would you like some tea?’

      She rang.

      ‘Tea, please, and tell Serezha that his father is here. Well, how is your health? You have not been here before; look how pretty my verandah is,’ she went on, turning now to her husband, now to Slyudin.

      She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She felt this herself, especially as by the inquisitive way Slyudin looked at her she noticed that he seemed to be watching her.

      Slyudin immediately went out on to the verandah, and she sat down by her husband.

      ‘You are not looking quite well,’ she said.

      ‘No,’ he replied, ‘the doctor came to see me this morning and robbed me of an hour. I feel that some friend of mine must have sent him: my health is so precious …’

      ‘Yes, but what did he say?’

      She questioned him about his health and his work, persuading him to take a rest and to move out to her in the country.

      She said all this lightly, rapidly, and with peculiarly sparkling eyes; but Karenin did not now attach any importance to this tone of hers. He only heard her words, and gave them only their direct meaning. And he answered simply, though jokingly. In all this conversation nothing particular passed, but never afterwards could Anna recall this short scene without being tormented by shame.

      Serezha came in, preceded by his governess. Had Karenin allowed himself to observe, he would have noticed the timid, confused look which the child cast first at his father and then at his mother. But he did not want to see, and did not see, anything.

      ‘Ah, young man! He has grown. He is really getting quite a man. How do you do, young man?’

      And he held out his hand to the frightened boy.

      Serezha, who had always been timid with his father, now that the latter addressed him as ‘young man’, and that the question whether Vronsky was a friend or a foe had entered his head, shrank from him. He looked round at his mother, as if asking for protection. Only with his mother he felt at ease. Karenin meanwhile talked to the governess with his hand on his son’s shoulder, and Serezha felt so extremely uncomfortable that Anna saw he was about to cry.

      Anna, who had blushed when the boy came in, saw how distressed he was, and, rising, lifted Karenin’s hand off her son’s shoulder, kissed the boy, led him out on to the verandah, and returned at once.

      ‘Well, it’s time we were going,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘I wonder Betsy has not come …’

      ‘Yes,’ said Karenin, and interlacing his hands he cracked his fingers. ‘I also came to bring you some money, since “nightingales are not fed on fables,” ’ he added. ‘I expect you want it?’

      ‘No, I don’t… . Yes, I do,’ she replied without looking at him, and blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘But I suppose you will call here after the races.’

      ‘Oh, yes!’ answered Karenin. ‘And СКАЧАТЬ