Vronsky’s surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him
with Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian
women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson
with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly
disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in him.
And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a
very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed
man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true, and Vronsky
could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was
free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals, and was
contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was himself the same,
and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for this prince he was an
inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.
“Brainless beef! can I be like that?” he thought.
Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the prince,
who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be
rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant reflection of himself.
He said good-bye to him at the station on their return from a bear hunt, at
which they had had a display of Russian prowess kept up all night.
Chapter 2
When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, “I
am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without
seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the
council at seven and will be there till ten.” Thinking for an instant of the
strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her
husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left
the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch, he
lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the
hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused
together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant who
had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He
waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a
candle. “What was it? What? What was the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes,
yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled beard was stooping down
doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying some strange words
in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the dream,” he said to himself.
“But why was it so awful?” He vividly recalled the peasant again and those
incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of
horror ran down his spine.
“What nonsense!” thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.
It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste,
and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and only
worried at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins’ entrance he looked at
his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a
pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna’s carriage.
“She is coming to me,” thought Vronsky, “and better she should. I don’t like
going into that house. But no matter; I can’t hide myself,” he thought, and
with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has
nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the
door. The door opened, and the hall-porter with a rug on his arm called the
carriage. Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this
moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the
very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The
gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat
and on the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin’s
fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky’s face. Vronsky bowed, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went
on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up
the rug and the opera-glass at the window and disappear. Vronsky went into
the hall. His brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and
angry light in them.
“What a position!” he thought. “If he would fight, would stand up for his
honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or
baseness…. He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never meant
and never mean to do.”
Vronsky’s ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Anna
in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna—
