Chapter 27
Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking-glass, and, with
Annushka’s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard
carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.
“It’s too early for Betsy,” she thought, and glancing out of the window
she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it. “How
unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?” she wondered, and the thought
of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible
that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him with
a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of
falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she
abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she
was saying.
“Ah, how nice of you!” she said, giving her husband her hand, and
greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. “You’re
staying the night, I hope?” was the first word the spirit of falsehood
prompted her to utter; “and now we’ll go together. Only it’s a pity I’ve
promised Betsy. She’s coming for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy’s name.
“Oh, I’m not going to separate the inseparables,” he said in his usual
bantering tone. “I’m going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I’m ordered exercise
by the doctors too. I’ll walk, and fancy myself at the springs again.”
“There’s no hurry,” said Anna. “Would you like tea?”
She rang.
“Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here. Well,
tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you’ve not been to see
me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,” she said, turning first
to one and then to the other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was
the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail
Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her.
Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.
She sat down beside her husband.
“You don’t look quite well,” she said.
“Yes,” he said; “the doctor’s been with me today and wasted an hour of
my time. I feel that someone of our friends must have sent him: my health’s
so precious, it seems.”
“No; what did he say?”
She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and
tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.
All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in her
eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special
significance to this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them
only the direct sense they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly.
There was nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could
Anna recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.
Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch
had allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and
bewildered eyes with which Seryozha glanced first at his father and then at
his mother. But he would not see anything, and he did not see it.
“Ah, the young man! He’s grown. Really, he’s getting quite a man. How
are you, young man?”
And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy of his
father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to
calling him young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to
him whether Vronsky were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He
looked round towards his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only with
his mother that he was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was
holding his son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the governess, and
Seryozha was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he was on the
point of tears.
Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing that
Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s hand from her son’s shoulder, and kissing the boy, led him
out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.
“It’s time to start, though,” said she, glancing at her watch. “How is it
Betsy doesn’t come?…”
