of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But you’ll make it
right, Dolly? Eh?”
Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed
seeing that she too had her weaknesses.
“An enemy? That can’t be.”
“I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care for
you more than ever,” said Anna, with tears in her eyes. “Ah, how silly I am
today!”
She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.
At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch arrived, late, rosy
and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.
Anna’s emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her sister-
in-law for the last time, she whispered: “Remember, Anna, what you’ve
done for me—I shall never forget. And remember that I love you, and shall
always love you as my dearest friend!”
“I don’t know why,” said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.
“You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!”
Chapter 29
“Come, it’s all over, and thank God!” was the first thought that came to
Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her
brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third
bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about
her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. “Thank God! tomorrow I shall
see Seryozha and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old
way, all nice and as usual.”
Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day,
Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care.
With her little deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a
cushion, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled
herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two
other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her
feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered a
few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she
asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took
from her bag a paper-knife and an English novel. At first her reading made
no progress. The fuss and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had
started, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on
the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard
passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the
terrible snowstorm raging outside, distracted her attention. Farther on, it
was continually the same again and again: the same shaking and rattling,
the same snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming
heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same
figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and to
understand what she read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her
lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna
Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that
is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire
to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick
man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man;
if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be
delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by
her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance
of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little hands,
she forced herself to read.
The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness,
a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to
the estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed, and that
she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of?
“What have I to be ashamed of?” she asked herself in injured surprise. She
laid down the book and sank against the back of the chair, tightly gripping
the paper-cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went over all her
Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball,
remembered Vronsky and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her
conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same
point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some
inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to
her, “Warm, very warm, hot.” “Well, what is it?” she said to herself
resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. “What does it mean? Am I afraid
to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me
and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations than such as
are common with every acquaintance?” She laughed contemptuously and
took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to follow what
she read. She passed the paper-knife over the window pane, then laid its
smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the feeling
of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as though
her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of
screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and
toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while
all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with
unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon
her, when she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or
backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at
her side or a stranger. “What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or
some beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?” She
was afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards
it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself,
and slipped off her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she
regained her self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had
come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the
stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer, that it was the wind
and snow bursting in after him at the door; but then everything grew blurred
again…. That peasant with the long waist seemed to be gnawing something
on the wall, the old lady began stretching her legs the whole length of the
carriage, and filling it with a black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking
and banging, as though someone were being torn to pieces; then there was a
blinding dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and
hide everything. Anna felt as though she were sinking down. But it was not
terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man muffled up and covered with
snow shouted something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself together;
she realized that they had reached a station and that this was the guard. She
asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken off and her shawl, put
them on and moved towards the door.
“Do you wish to get out?” asked Annushka.
