thinking it all over, made up his mind not to pursue the matter further, but
then for his own satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Vronsky about his
interview; and it was a long while before he could restrain his laughter, as
Vronsky described how the government clerk, after subsiding for a while,
would suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the details, and how Vronsky,
at the last half word of conciliation, skillfully manœuvered a retreat,
shoving Petritsky out before him.
“It’s a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can’t fight the
gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?” he commented, laughing. “But what do
you say to Claire today? She’s marvelous,” he went on, speaking of a new
French actress. “However often you see her, every day she’s different. It’s
only the French who can do that.”
Chapter 6
Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for the end
of the last act. She had only just time to go into her dressing-room, sprinkle
her long, pale face with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea
in the big drawing-room, when one after another carriages drove up to her
huge house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide
entrance, and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the
mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the passers-by,
noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the visitors pass by him into
the house.
Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure and
freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other door of the
drawing-room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a brightly
lighted table, gleaming with the light of candles, white cloth, silver
samovar, and transparent china tea-things.
The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves. Chairs were set
with the aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly about the room; the
party settled itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar near the
hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing-room, round the
handsome wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined
black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it always does, for
the first few minutes, broken up by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and as
it were, feeling about for something to rest upon.
“She’s exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she’s studied
Kaulbach,” said a diplomatic attaché in the group round the ambassador’s
wife. “Did you notice how she fell down?…”
“Oh, please, don’t let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly say
anything new about her,” said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady, without
eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess
Myakaya, noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and
nicknamed enfant terrible. Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between
the two groups, and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of
one and then of the other. “Three people have used that very phrase about
Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made a compact
about it. And I can’t see why they liked that remark so.”
The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new subject
had to be thought of again.
“Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful,” said the ambassador’s
wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant conversation called by the
English small talk. She addressed the attaché, who was at a loss now what
to begin upon.
“They say that that’s a difficult task, that nothing’s amusing that isn’t
spiteful,” he began with a smile. “But I’ll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in
the subject. If a subject’s given me, it’s easy to spin something round it. I
often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found
it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale….”
“That has been said long ago,” the ambassador’s wife interrupted him,
laughing.
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it
came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing
topic—gossip.
“Don’t you think there’s something Louis Quinze about Tushkevitch?” he
said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the
table.
“Oh, yes! He’s in the same style as the drawing-room and that’s why it is
he’s so often here.”
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what
could not be talked of in that room—that is to say, of the relations of
Tushkevitch with their hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile
vacillating in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest
piece of public news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on
the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.
“Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman—the mother, not the
daughter—has ordered a costume in diable rose color?”
“Nonsense! No, that’s too lovely!”
“I wonder that with her sense—for she’s not a fool, you know—that she
doesn’t see how funny she is.”
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless
Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a
burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent
collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the
drawing-room before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick
rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya.
“How did you like Nilsson?” he asked.
“Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!”
she responded. “Please don’t talk to me about the opera; you know nothing
about music. I’d better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your
majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have you been buying
lately at the old curiosity shops?”
“Would you like me to show you? But you don’t understand such
things.”
“Oh, do show me! I’ve been learning about them at those—what’s their
names?… the bankers … they’ve some splendid engravings. They showed
them to us.”
“Why, have you been at the Schützburgs?” asked the hostess from the
samovar.
“Yes, ma chère. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us
the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds,” Princess Myakaya said,
speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was listening; “and very nasty
sauce it was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce
for eighteen pence, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can’t
run to hundred-pound sauces.”
“She’s unique!” said the lady of the house.
“Marvelous!” said someone.
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches was always
unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that
though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said simple things
with some sense in them. In the society in which she lived such plain
statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya
could never see why it had that effect, but she knew it had, and took
advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so
the conversation around the ambassador’s wife had dropped, Princess Betsy
tried to bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador’s wife.
“Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us.”
“No, we’re very happy here,” the ambassador’s wife responded with a
smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been begun.
It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Karenins,
husband and wife.
“Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s something
strange about her,” said her friend.
“The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of
Alexey Vronsky,” said the ambassador’s wife.
“Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man without a
shadow, a man who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his punishment for
something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a
woman must dislike being without a shadow.”
“Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said Anna’s
friend.
“Bad luck to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly. “Madame
Karenina’s a splendid woman. I don’t like her husband, but I like her very
much.”
“Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable man,” said the
ambassador’s wife. “My husband says there are few statesmen like him in
Europe.”
“And my husband tells me just the same, but I don’t believe it,” said
Princess Myakaya. “If our husbands didn’t talk to us, we should see the
facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I
say it in a whisper … but doesn’t it really make everything clear? Before,
when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and
thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he’s a fool,
though only in a whisper, everything’s explained, isn’t it?”
“How spiteful you are today!”
“Not a bit. I’d no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool.
And, well, you know one can’t say that of oneself.”
“‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his
wit.’” The attaché repeated the French saying.
“That’s just it, just it,” Princess Myakaya turned to him. “But the point is
that I won’t abandon Anna to your mercies. She’s so nice, so charming.
How can she help it if they’re all in love with her, and follow her about like
shadows?”
“Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,” Anna’s friend said in self-
defense.
“If no one follows us about like a shadow, that’s no proof that we’ve any
right to blame her.”
And having duly disposed of Anna’s friend, the Princess Myakaya got up,
and together with the ambassador’s wife, joined the group at the table,
where the conversation was dealing with the king of Prussia.
“What wicked gossip were you talking over there?” asked Betsy.
“About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey
Alexandrovitch,” said the ambassador’s wife with a smile, as she sat down
at the table.
