Chapter 21
Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan
Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife’s room by the
other door.
“I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” observed Dolly, addressing Anna; “I
want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.”
“Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,” answered Anna, looking intently
into Dolly’s face, trying to make out whether there had been a reconciliation
or not.
“It will be lighter for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.
“I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.”
“What’s the question?” inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his
room and addressing his wife.
From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken
place.
“I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one
knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,” answered Dolly addressing
him.
“God knows whether they are fully reconciled,” thought Anna, hearing
her tone, cold and composed.
“Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,” answered her
husband. “Come, I’ll do it all, if you like….”
“Yes, they must be reconciled,” thought Anna.
“I know how you do everything,” answered Dolly. “You tell Matvey to
do what can’t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle
of everything,” and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of
Dolly’s lips as she spoke.
“Full, full reconciliation, full,” thought Anna; “thank God!” and rejoicing
that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed her.
“Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.
The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to
her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not so
as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his offense.
At half-past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family
conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys’ was broken up by an
apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason struck
everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in Petersburg,
Anna got up quickly.
“She is in my album,” she said; “and, by the way, I’ll show you my
Seryozha,” she added, with a mother’s smile of pride.
Towards ten o’clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and
often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed at
being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept
coming back in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look at
his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got up, and
with her light, resolute step went for her album. The stairs up to her room
came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing-room, a ring was heard in the hall.
“Who can that be?” said Dolly.
“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,” observed
Kitty.
“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan Arkadyevitch.
When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running up
to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing under a lamp.
Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of
pleasure and at the same time of dread of something stirred in her heart. He
was standing still, not taking off his coat, pulling something out of his
pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his eyes,
caught sight of her, and into the expression of his face there passed a shade
of embarrassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she
passed, hearing behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him to
come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire about the dinner
they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived. “And nothing
would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!” added Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
