look in her sister’s eyes. “Father began saying something to me just now….
It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a
ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may
be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I can’t drive away such
thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them—I can’t bear to see them. It
seems to me they’re taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to
go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I
feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The doctor…. Then….” Kitty
hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change had taken
place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her,
and that she could not see him without the grossest and most hideous
conceptions rising before her imagination.
“Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most
loathsome light,” she went on. “That’s my illness. Perhaps it will pass off.”
“But you mustn’t think about it.”
“I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the children at your house.”
“What a pity you can’t be with me!”
“Oh, yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll persuade mamma to
let me.”
Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister’s and
nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to
be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but
Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.
Chapter 4
The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows
everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set has its
subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three
different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband’s
government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates,
brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging
to different social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of
almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these
persons. Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country
town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched
each one of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the
head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one maintained
his position, and where they agreed and disagreed. But the circle of
political, masculine interests had never interested her, in spite of countess
Lidia Ivanovna’s influence, and she avoided it.
Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the one by
means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of
this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made up of elderly,
ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and clever, learned, and ambitious
men. One of the clever people belonging to the set had called it “the
conscience of Petersburg society.” Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest
esteem for this circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with
everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this
circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this
set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were
insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to
see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible.
The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the
fashionable world—the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the
world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the
level of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of that
fashionable world believed that they despised, though their tastes were not
merely similar, but in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was
kept up through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin’s wife, who had an
income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had taken a
great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed her much
attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of Countess Lidia
Ivanovna’s coterie.
“When I’m old and ugly I’ll be the same,” Betsy used to say; “but for a
pretty young woman like you it’s early days for that house of charity.”
Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskaya’s world,
because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her
heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had
done quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went
out into the fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and experienced an
agitating joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky specially often at Betsy’s
for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere
where he had any chance of meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he
could, of his love. She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met
him there surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that had
come upon her that day in the railway carriage when she saw him for the
first time. She was conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes
and curved her lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of
this delight.
At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for
daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on arriving at a
soirée where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him there, she
realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she had been
deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her,
but that it made the whole interest of her life.
The celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the
fashionable world was in the theater. Vronsky, seeing his cousin from his
stall in the front row, did not wait till the entr’acte, but went to her box.
“Why didn’t you come to dinner?” she said to him. “I marvel at the
second sight of lovers,” she added with a smile, so that no one but he could
hear; “she wasn’t there. But come after the opera.”
Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a
smile, and sat down beside her.
“But how I remember your jeers!” continued Princess Betsy, who took a
peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a successful issue. “What’s
become of all that? You’re caught, my dear boy.”
“That’s my one desire, to be caught,” answered Vronsky, with his serene,
good-humored smile. “If I complain of anything it’s only that I’m not
caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.”
“Why, whatever hope can you have?” said Betsy, offended on behalf of
her friend. “Entendons nous….” But in her eyes there were gleams of light
that betrayed that she understood perfectly and precisely as he did what
hope he might have.
