that this position was precious to her, that she would not have the strength
to exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned
husband and child to join her lover; that however much she might struggle,
she could not be stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in
love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of detection
hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a
shameful connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life
she could never share. She knew that this was how it would be, and at the
same time it was so awful that she could not even conceive what it would
end in. And she cried without restraint, as children cry when they are
punished.
The sound of the footman’s steps forced her to rouse herself, and, hiding
her face from him, she pretended to be writing.
“The courier asks if there’s an answer,” the footman announced.
“An answer? Yes,” said Anna. “Let him wait. I’ll ring.”
“What can I write?” she thought. “What can I decide upon alone? What
do I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?” Again she felt that
her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was terrified again at this
feeling, and clutched at the first pretext for doing something which might
divert her thoughts from herself. “I ought to see Alexey” (so she called
Vronsky in her thoughts); “no one but he can tell me what I ought to do. I’ll
go to Betsy’s, perhaps I shall see him there,” she said to herself, completely
forgetting that when she had told him the day before that she was not going
to Princess Tverskaya’s, he had said that in that case he should not go either.
She went up to the table, wrote to her husband, “I have received your letter.
—A.”; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.
“We are not going,” she said to Annushka, as she came in.
“Not going at all?”
“No; don’t unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I’m going to
the princess’s.”
“Which dress am I to get ready?”
Chapter 17
The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited Anna was
to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two ladies were the chief
representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in imitation of
some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde. These ladies belonged to a
circle which, though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in
which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential people
in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalova, was Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the political world. From all these
considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the hints in Princess
Tverskaya’s note referred to her refusal. But now Anna was eager to go, in
the hope of seeing Vronsky.
Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya’s earlier than the other guests.
At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky’s footman, with side-
whiskers combed out like a Kammerjunker, went in too. He stopped at the
door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna recognized him, and only
then recalled that Vronsky had told her the day before that he would not
come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so.
As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman,
pronouncing his “r’s” even like a Kammerjunker, say, “From the count for
the princess,” and hand the note.
She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to
turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself to see
him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course was possible.
Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival ahead of her, and
Princess Tverskaya’s footman was standing at the open door waiting for her
to go forward into the inner rooms.
“The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would
you be pleased to walk into the garden?” announced another footman in
another room.
The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at home
—worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step, impossible to see
Vronsky, and she had to remain here among outsiders, in company so
uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a dress that she
knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that luxurious setting of
idleness that she was used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She
was not forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done of
itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown that struck
her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her just as she always did. Princess
Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch and a young lady, a relation, who,
to the great joy of her parents in the provinces, was spending the summer
with the fashionable princess.
There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy noticed it
at once.
“I slept badly,” answered Anna, looking intently at the footman who
came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky’s note.
“How glad I am you’ve come!” said Betsy. “I’m tired, and was just
longing to have some tea before they come. You might go”—she turned to
Tushkevitch—“with Masha, and try the croquet ground over there where
they’ve been cutting it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea; we’ll
have a cozy chat, eh?” she said in English to Anna, with a smile, pressing
the hand with which she held a parasol.
“Yes, especially as I can’t stay very long with you. I’m forced to go on to
old Madame Vrede. I’ve been promising to go for a century,” said Anna, to
whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple
and natural in society, but a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said
this, which she had not thought of a second before, she could not have
explained. She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would
not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to see him
somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede, whom she had to
go and see, as she had to see many other people, she could not have
explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned out, had she contrived the most
cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she could have thought of nothing better.
“No. I’m not going to let you go for anything,” answered Betsy, looking
intently into Anna’s face. “Really, if I were not fond of you, I should feel
offended. One would think you were afraid my society would compromise
you. Tea in the little dining-room, please,” she said, half closing her eyes, as
she always did when addressing the footman.
Taking the note from him, she read it.
“Alexey’s playing us false,” she said in French; “he writes that he can’t
come,” she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it could never
enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to Anna than a game
of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she
spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she
knew nothing.
“Ah!” said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the
matter, and she went on smiling: “How can you or your friends compromise
anyone?”
This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascination
for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the necessity of
concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but
the process of concealment itself which attracted her.
“I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and Liza
Merkalova, why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Besides, they’re
received everywhere, and I”—she laid special stress on the I—“have never
been strict and intolerant. It’s simply that I haven’t the time.”
“No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey
Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee—that’s no affair of ours.
But in the world, he’s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet
player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza’s lovesick
swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position.
He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t know? Oh, that’s a new type,
quite new.”
Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored,
shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was
hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.
“I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.
“I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner with me,
and no man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that persuade him?
Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and
send it off?” she said from the door; “I have to give some directions.”
Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy’s
letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for me to see you.
Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o’clock.” She sealed it up,
and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the note to be taken.
At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little
drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the
arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They
criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell upon
Liza Merkalova.
“She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna.
“You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me
after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you’re a real
heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of
mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.”
“But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after being
silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an
idle question, but that what she was asking was of more importance to her
than it should have been; “do tell me, please, what are her relations with
Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s called? I’ve met them so little. What
does it mean?”
Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.
“It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner. They’ve
flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of flinging
them.”
“Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?”
Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a thing
which rarely happened with her.
“You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now. That’s
the question of an enfant terrible,” and Betsy obviously tried to restrain
herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious laughter that
people laugh who do not laugh often. “You’d better ask them,” she brought
out, between tears of laughter.
“No; you laugh,” said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself, “but I never
could understand it. I can’t understand the husband’s rôle in it.”
“The husband? Liza Merkalova’s husband carries her shawl, and is
always ready to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one
cares to inquire. You know in decent society one doesn’t talk or think even
of certain details of the toilet. That’s how it is with this.”
“Will you be at Madame Rolandak’s fête?” asked Anna, to change the
conversation.
