IV
There is essentially one highest circle in Petersburg; they all know each other, and even call on each other. But this big circle has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close connections in three different circles. One was her husband's official service circle, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, who, in social condition, were connected or divided in the most varied and whimsical way. It was hard now for Anna to remember the sense of almost pious respect she had first felt for all these people. Now she knew them all as people know each other in a provincial town; knew who had which habits and weaknesses, whose shoe pinched on which foot; knew their relations to one another and to the main centre; knew who sided with whom, and how, and in what; and who agreed or disagreed with whom, and about what; but this circle of governmental, male interests never could interest her, despite Countess Lydia Ivanovna's promptings, and she avoided it.
Another circle close to Anna was the one through which Alexei Alexandrovich had made his career. The centre of this circle was Countess Lydia Ivanovna. It was a circle of elderly, unattractive, virtuous and pious women and of intelligent, educated and ambitious men. One of the intelligent men who belonged to this circle called it 'the conscience of Petersburg society'. Alexei Alexandrovich valued this circle highly, and at the beginning of her Petersburg life, Anna, who was so good at getting along with everyone, also found friends for herself in it. But now, on her return from Moscow, this circle became unbearable to her. It seemed to her that both she and all the others were pretending, and she felt so bored and awkward in this company that she called on Countess Lydia Ivanovna as seldom as possible.
The third circle, finally, in which she had connections, was society proper - the society of balls, dinners, splendid gowns, a monde that held on with one hand to the court, so as not to descend to the demi-monde, which the members of this circle thought they despised, but with which they shared not only similar but the same tastes. Her connection with this circle was maintained through Princess Betsy Tverskoy, her cousin's wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand and who, since Anna's appearance in society, had especially liked her, courted her, and drawn her into her circle, laughing at the circle to which Countess Lydia Ivanovna belonged.
'When I'm old and ugly, I'll become like that,' said Betsy, 'but for you, for a young, pretty woman, it's too early for that almshouse.'
At first Anna had avoided this society of Princess Tverskoy's as much as she could, because it called for expenses beyond her means, and also because at heart she preferred the other; but after her visit to Moscow it turned the other way round. She avoided her virtuous friends and went into the great world. There she met Vronsky and experienced an exciting joy at these meetings. She met Vronsky especially often at Betsy's, whose maiden name was Vronsky and who was his cousin. Vronsky went wherever he might meet Anna, and spoke to her whenever he could about his love. She never gave him any cause, but each time she met him, her soul lit up with the same feeling of animation that had come over her that day on the train when she had seen him for the first time.
She felt joy shining in her eyes when she saw him and puckered her lips into a smile, and she was unable to extinguish the expression of that joy. At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for allowing himself to pursue her; but soon after her return from Moscow, having gone to a soiree where she thought she would meet him, and finding that he was not there, she clearly understood from the sadness which came over her that she was deceiving herself, that his pursuit not only was not unpleasant for her but constituted the entire interest of her life.
The famous singer was singing for the second time, and all the great world was in the theatre.[2] Seeing his cousin from his seat in the front row, Vronsky went to her box without waiting for the interval.
'Why didn't you come for dinner?' she said to him. 'I'm amazed at the clairvoyance of people in love,' she added with a smile and so that he alone could hear: 'She wasn't there. But drop in after the opera.'
Vronsky gave her a questioning glance. She lowered her head. He smiled in thanks and sat down next to her.
'And how I remember your mockery!' continued Princess Betsy, who found special pleasure in following the success of this passion. 'Where has it all gone! You're caught, my dear.'
'My only wish is to be caught,' Vronsky replied with his calm, good-natured smile. 'If I have any complaint, it is at not being caught enough, if the truth be told. I'm beginning to lose hope.'
'What hope can you have?' said Betsy, getting offended for her friend. 'Entendons nous . . .'* But there was a twinkle in her eye which said that she understood very well, and exactly as he did, what hope he might have.
'None,' said Vronsky, laughing and showing a solid row of teeth. 'Excuse me,' he added, taking the opera-glasses from her hand and beginning to scan the facing row of boxes over her bared shoulder. 'I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous.'
He knew very well that in the eyes of Betsy and all society people he ran no risk of being ridiculous. He knew very well that for those people the role of the unhappy lover of a young girl, or of a free woman generally, might be ridiculous; but the role of a man who attached himself to a married woman and devoted his life to involving her in adultery at all costs, had something beautiful and grand about it and
* Let's understand each other ... could never be ridiculous, and therefore, with a proud and gay smile playing under his moustache, he lowered the opera-glasses and looked at his cousin.
'And why didn't you come to dinner?' she added, looking at him with admiration.
'That I must tell you about. I was busy, and with what? I'll lay you a hundred, a thousand to one ... you'll never guess. I was trying to make peace between a husband and his wife's offender. Yes, really!'
'And what, did you succeed?'
'Nearly.'
'You must tell me about it,' she said, getting up. 'Come during the next interval.'
'Impossible. I'm going to the French Theatre.'
'From Nilsson?' said Betsy in horror, though she would never have been able to tell Nilsson from any chorus girl.
'No help for it. I have an appointment there, all to do with this peacemaking business.'
'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be saved,'[3] said Betsy, remembering hearing something of the sort from someone. 'Sit down, then, and tell me about it.'
And she sat down again.
V
'This is a bit indiscreet, but so charming that I want terribly to tell it,' said Vronsky, looking at her with laughing eyes. 'I won't mention names.'
'But I'll guess them - so much the better.'
'Listen, then. Two gay young men are out driving .. .'[4]
'Officers from your regiment, naturally.'
'I'm not saying officers, simply two young men after lunch ...'
'Translate: slightly drunk.'
'Maybe so. They're going to their friend's for dinner, in the gayest spirits. They see a pretty young woman overtake them in a cab, look back and, so at least it seems to them, nod to them and laugh. Naturally, they go after her. They drive at full speed. To their surprise, the beauty stops at the entrance to the same house they're going to. The beauty runs upstairs. They see only red lips under a short veil and beautiful little feet.'
'You're telling it with such feeling that I suppose you were one of the two yourself.'
'And what did you say to me just now? Well, the young men go to their friend, he's having a farewell dinner. Here they do indeed drink, maybe too much, as is usual at farewell dinners. And over dinner they ask who lives upstairs in that house. Nobody knows, and only the host's footman, to their question whether any mamzelles live upstairs, answers that there are lots of them there. After dinner the young men go to the host's study and write a letter to the unknown woman. They write a passionate letter, a declaration, and take the letter upstairs themselves, to explain in case the letter isn't quite clear.'
'Why do you
tell me such vile things? Well?'
'They ring. A maid comes out. They hand her the letter and assure the maid that they're both so much in love that they're going to die right there on the doorstep. The maid, quite perplexed, conveys the message. Suddenly there appears a gentleman with sausage-shaped side-whiskers, red as a lobster, who announces to them that no one lives in the house except his wife, and throws them both out.'
'And how do you know his side-whiskers are sausage-shaped, as you say?'
'Just listen. Today I went to try and make peace between them.'
'Well, and what then?'
'Here's the most interesting part. It turned out that they're a happy titular councillor and councilloress.[5] The titular councillor lodges a complaint, and I act as the make-peace - and what a one! I assure you, Talleyrand[6] has nothing on me.'
'So what's the difficulty?'
'Listen now ... We apologized properly: "We are in despair, we beg you to forgive us this unfortunate misunderstanding." The titular councillor with the little sausages begins to soften, but he also wants to express his feelings, and as soon as he starts expressing them, he starts getting excited and saying rude things, and I again have to employ all my diplomatic talents. "I agree that they did not behave nicely, but I beg you to consider the misunderstanding and their youth; then, too, the young men had just had lunch. You understand. They repent with all their soul, they beg to be forgiven their fault." The titular councillor softens again: "I agree, Count, and I'm ready to forgive them, but you understand that my wife, my wife, an honourable woman, has been subjected to the pursuit, rudeness and brazenness of some boys, scound ..." And, remember, one of the boys is right there, and I'm supposed to make peace between them. Again I use diplomacy, and again, as soon as the whole affair is about to be concluded, my titular councillor gets excited, turns red, the little sausages bristle, and again I dissolve into diplomatic subtleties.'
'Ah, this I must tell you!' Betsy, laughing, addressed a lady who was entering her box. 'He's made me laugh so!'
'Well, bonne chance,'* she added, giving Vronsky a free finger of the hand holding her fan, and lowering the slightly ridden-up bodice of her dress with a movement of her shoulders, so as to be well and properly naked when she stepped out to the foot of the stage under the gaslights and under everyone's eyes.
Vronsky went to the French Theatre, where he indeed had to see the regimental commander, who never missed a single performance at the French Theatre, in order to talk over his peacemaking, which had already occupied and amused him for three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was involved in this affair, as was another nice fellow, recently joined up, an excellent comrade, the young prince Kedrov. And, above all, the interests of the regiment were involved.
Both were in Vronsky's squadron. An official, the titular councillor Wenden, had come to the regimental commander with a complaint about his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so Wenden recounted (he had been married half a year), had gone to church with her mother and, suddenly feeling unwell owing to a certain condition, had been unable to continue standing[7] and had gone home in the first cab that came along. Here the officers had chased after her, she had become frightened and, feeling still more sick, had run up the stairs to her home. Wenden himself, having returned from work, had heard the bell and some voices, had gone to the door and, seeing drunken officers with a letter, had shoved them out. He had demanded severe Punishment.
'No, say what you like,' the regimental commander had said to Vronsky, whom he had invited to his place, 'Petritsky is becoming impossible. Not a week passes without some story. This official won't let the affair drop, he'll go further.'
* Good luck.
Vronsky had seen all the unseemliness of the affair, and that a duel was not possible here, that everything must be done to mollify this titular councillor and hush the affair up. The regimental commander had summoned Vronsky precisely because he knew him to be a noble and intelligent man and, above all, a man who cherished the honour of the regiment. They had talked it over and decided that Petritsky and Kedrov would have to go to this titular councillor with Vronsky and apologize. The regimental commander and Vronsky had both realized that Vronsky's name and his imperial aide-de-camp's monogram ought to contribute greatly to the mollifying of the titular councillor. And, indeed, these two means had proved partly effective; but the result of the reconciliation remained doubtful, as Vronsky had told Betsy.
Arriving at the French Theatre, Vronsky withdrew to the foyer with the regimental commander and told him of his success, or unsuccess. Having thought everything over, the regimental commander decided to let the affair go without consequences, but then, just for the pleasure of it, began asking Vronsky about the details of his meeting, and for a long time could not stop laughing as he listened to Vronsky telling how the subsiding titular councillor would suddenly flare up again, as he remembered the details of the affair, and how Vronsky, manoeuvring at the last half word of the reconciliation, had retreated, pushing Petritsky in front of him.
'A nasty story, but killingly funny. Kedrov really cannot fight with this gentleman! So he got terribly worked up?' he asked again, laughing. 'And isn't Claire something tonight? A wonder!' he said about the new French actress. 'Watch all you like, she's new each day. Only the French can do that.'
VI
Princess Betsy left the theatre without waiting for the end of the last act. She had just time to go to her dressing room, sprinkle powder on her long, pale face and wipe it off, put her hair to rights and order tea served in the big drawing room, when carriages began driving up one after the other to her huge house on Bolshaya Morskaya. The guests stepped out on to the wide porch, and the corpulent doorkeeper, who used to read newspapers in the morning behind the glass door for the edification of passers-by, noiselessly opened this huge door, allowing people to
pass.
Almost at one and the same time the hostess, with freshened hair and freshened face, came through one door and the guests came through another into the big drawing room with its dark walls, plush carpets and brightly lit table shining under the candlelight with the whiteness of the tablecloth, the silver of the samovar, and the translucent porcelain of the tea service.
The hostess sat by the samovar and took off her gloves. Moving chairs with the help of unobtrusive servants, the company settled down, dividing itself into two parts - one by the samovar with the hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing room, round the ambassador's wife, a beautiful woman in black velvet and with sharp black eyebrows. The conversation in both centres, as always in the first minutes, vacillated, interrupted by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, as if seeking what to settle on.
'She's remarkably good as an actress; one can see that she's studied Kaulbach,'[8] said a diplomat in the ambassador's wife's circle, 'did you notice how she fell...'
'Ah, please, let's not talk about Nilsson! It's impossible to say anything new about her,' said a fat, red-faced, fair-haired woman with no eyebrows and no chignon, in an old silk dress. This was Princess Miagky, well known for her simplicity and rudeness of manner, and nicknamed the enfant terrible. Princess Miagky was sitting between the two circles, listening, and participating now in one, now in the other. 'Today three people have said this same phrase to me about Kaulbach, as if they'd agreed on it. And the phrase -I don't know why they like it so much.'
The conversation was interrupted by this remark, and they had to invent a new topic.
'Tell us something amusing but not wicked,' said the ambassador's wife, a great expert at graceful conversation, called 'small talk' in English, turning to the diplomat, who also had no idea how to begin now.
'They say that's very difficult, that only wicked things are funny,' he began with a smile. 'But I'll try. Give me a topic. The whole point lies in the topic. Once the topic is given, it's easy to embroider on it. I often think that the famous talkers of the last century would now find it difficult to talk intelligently. Everythi
ng intelligent is so boring ...'
'That was said long ago,' the ambassador's wife interrupted him, coughing.
The conversation had begun nicely, but precisely because it was much too nice, it stopped again. They had to resort to that sure, never failing remedy - malicious gossip.
'Don't you find something Louis Quinze in Tushkevich?' he said, indicating with his eyes a handsome, fair-haired young man standing by the table.
'Oh, yes! He's in the same style as this drawing room, which is why he frequents it so much.'
This conversation sustained itself because they spoke in allusions precisely about something that could not be talked about in that drawing room - that is, the relations between Tushkevich and the hostess.
Meanwhile, by the samovar and the hostess, the conversation, after vacillating for some time among three inevitable topics: the latest social news, the theatre, and the judging of one's neighbour, also settled as it struck on this last topic - that is, malicious gossip.
'Have you heard, that Maltishchev woman, too - not the daughter, but the mother - is making herself a diable rose[9] costume.'
'It can't be! No, that's lovely!'