bright, clever, open to every impression,” thought Darya Alexandrovna,—
and a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she pondered on Anna’s love affair,
Darya Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love
affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who
was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed the whole affair to her
husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this
avowal made her smile.
In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led to
Vozdvizhenskoe.
Chapter 17
The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the right, to
a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a cart. The counting-
house clerk was just going to jump down, but on second thoughts he
shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come
up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage
stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them
off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them
from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and came towards the
carriage.
“Well, you are slow!” the counting-house clerk shouted angrily to the
peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of the
rough dry road. “Come along, do!”
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and his bent
back dark with perspiration, came towards the carriage, quickening his
steps, and took hold of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.
“Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count’s?” he repeated; “go on to
the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight along the avenue and
you’ll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The count himself?”
“Well, are they at home, my good man?” Darya Alexandrovna said
vaguely, not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.
“At home for sure,” said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to the
other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the dust. “Sure to
be at home,” he repeated, evidently eager to talk. “Only yesterday visitors
arrived. There’s a sight of visitors come. What do you want?” He turned
round and called to a lad, who was shouting something to him from the cart.
“Oh! They all rode by here not long since, to look at a reaping machine.
They’ll be home by now. And who will you be belonging to?…”
“We’ve come a long way,” said the coachman, climbing onto the box.
“So it’s not far?”
“I tell you, it’s just here. As soon as you get out….” he said, keeping hold
all the while of the carriage.
A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.
“What, is it laborers they want for the harvest?” he asked.
“I don’t know, my boy.”
“So you keep to the left, and you’ll come right on it,” said the peasant,
unmistakably loth to let the travelers go, and eager to converse.
The coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off
when the peasant shouted: “Stop! Hi, friend! Stop!” called the two voices.
The coachman stopped.
“They’re coming! They’re yonder!” shouted the peasant. “See what a
turn-out!” he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a char-
à-banc, coming along the road.
They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky and Anna on horseback,
and Princess Varvara and Sviazhsky in the char-à-banc. They had gone out
to look at the working of a new reaping machine.
When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a
walking pace. Anna was in front beside Veslovsky. Anna, quietly walking
her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her
beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her high hat, her full
shoulders, her slender waist in her black riding habit, and all the ease and
grace of her deportment, impressed Dolly.
For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Anna to be on
horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in Darya
Alexandrovna’s mind, associated with ideas of youthful flirtation and
frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Anna’s position. But
when she had scrutinized her, seeing her closer, she was at once reconciled
to her riding. In spite of her elegance, everything was so simple, quiet, and
dignified in the attitude, the dress and the movements of Anna, that nothing
could have been more natural.
Beside Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was Vassenka
Veslovsky in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his stout legs stretched
out in front, obviously pleased with his own appearance. Darya
Alexandrovna could not suppress a good-humored smile as she recognized
him. Behind rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare, obviously heated from
galloping. He was holding her in, pulling at the reins.
After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviazhsky and
Princess Varvara in a new char-à-banc with a big, raven-black trotting
horse, overtook the party on horseback.
Anna’s face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when, in
the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she recognized
Dolly. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set her horse into a
gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off without assistance, and
holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Dolly.
“I thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You can’t
fancy how glad I am!” she said, at one moment pressing her face against
Dolly and kissing her, and at the next holding her off and examining her
with a smile.
“Here’s a delightful surprise, Alexey!” she said, looking round at
Vronsky, who had dismounted, and was walking towards them.
Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.
“You wouldn’t believe how glad we are to see you,” he said, giving
peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth in a
smile.
Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took off his cap and
greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his head.
“That’s Princess Varvara,” Anna said in reply to a glance of inquiry from
Dolly as the char-à-banc drove up.
“Ah!” said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her face betrayed her
dissatisfaction.
Princess Varvara was her husband’s aunt, and she had long known her,
and did not respect her. She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her
whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be
sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on
account of her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed Dolly’s expression,
and was disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her riding habit, and
stumbled over it.
Darya Alexandrovna went up to the char-à-banc and coldly greeted
Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky too she knew. He inquired how his queer friend
with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the ill-matched horses
and the carriage with its patched mud-guards, proposed to the ladies that
they should get into the char-à-banc.
“And I’ll get into this vehicle,” he said. “The horse is quiet, and the
princess drives capitally.”
“No, stay as you were,” said Anna, coming up, “and we’ll go in the
carriage,” and taking Dolly’s arm, she drew her away.
Darya Alexandrovna’s eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant carriage of
a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid horses, and the elegant and
gorgeous people surrounding her. But what struck her most of all was the
change that had taken place in Anna, whom she knew so well and loved.
Any other woman, a less close observer, not knowing Anna before, or not
having thought as Darya Alexandrovna had been thinking on the road,
would not have noticed anything special in Anna. But now Dolly was struck
by that temporary beauty, which is only found in women during the
moments of love, and which she saw now in Anna’s face. Everything in her
face, the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of her lips,
the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face, the brilliance of her
eyes, the grace and rapidity of her movements, the fulness of the notes of
her voice, even the manner in which, with a sort of angry friendliness, she
answered Veslovsky when he asked permission to get on her cob, so as to
teach it to gallop with the right leg foremost—it was all peculiarly
fascinating, and it seemed as if she were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in
it.
When both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden
embarrassment came over both of them. Anna was disconcerted by the
intent look of inquiry Dolly fixed upon her. Dolly was embarrassed because
after Sviazhsky’s phrase about “this vehicle,” she could not help feeling
ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was sitting with her. The
coachman Philip and the counting-house clerk were experiencing the same
