Chapter 27
“He has gone! It is over!” Anna said to herself, standing at the window;
and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness when the
candle had flickered out, and of her fearful dream mingling into one, filled
her heart with cold terror.
“No, that cannot be!” she cried, and crossing the room she rang the bell.
She was so afraid now of being alone, that without waiting for the servant
to come in, she went out to meet him.
“Inquire where the count has gone,” she said. The servant answered that
the count had gone to the stable.
“His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would be
back immediately.”
“Very good. Wait a minute. I’ll write a note at once. Send Mihail with the
note to the stables. Make haste.”
She sat down and wrote:
“I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God’s sake come!
I’m afraid.”
She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.
She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant out of
the room, and went to the nursery.
“Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy
smile?” was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with
her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas
she had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl sitting at the table was
obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at
her mother with her pitch-black eyes. Answering the English nurse that she
was quite well, and that she was going to the country tomorrow, Anna sat
down by the little girl and began spinning the cork to show her. But the
child’s loud, ringing laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled
Vronsky so vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went
away. “Can it be all over? No, it cannot be!” she thought. “He will come
back. But how can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been
talking to her? But even if he doesn’t explain, I will believe. If I don’t
believe, there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.”
She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. “By now he has
received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more…. But
what if he doesn’t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with tear-
stained eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?” she asked
herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with her hand. “Yes,
my hair has been done, but when I did it I can’t in the least remember.” She
could not believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to the pier-glass to
see whether she really had done her hair. She certainly had, but she could
not think when she had done it. “Who’s that?” she thought, looking in the
looking-glass at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked
in a scared way at her. “Why, it’s I!” she suddenly understood, and looking
round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her
shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it.
“What is it? Why, I’m going out of my mind!” and she went into her
bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room.
“Annushka,” she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared at
the maid, not knowing what to say to her.
“You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna,” said the girl, as though
she understood.
“Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I’ll go.”
“Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He’s coming, he’ll be here
soon.” She took out her watch and looked at it. “But how could he go away,
leaving me in such a state? How can he live, without making it up with
me?” She went to the window and began looking into the street. Judging by
the time, he might be back now. But her calculations might be wrong, and
she began once more to recall when he had started and to count the minutes.
At the moment when she had moved away to the big clock to compare it
with her watch, someone drove up. Glancing out of the window, she saw his
carriage. But no one came upstairs, and voices could be heard below. It was
the messenger who had come back in the carriage. She went down to him.
“We didn’t catch the count. The count had driven off on the lower city
road.”
“What do you say? What!…” she said to the rosy, good-humored Mihail,
as he handed her back her note.
“Why, then, he has never received it!” she thought.
