'I'm amazed, with her intelligence - for she's not stupid - how can she not see how ridiculous she is?'
Each had something demeaning and derisive to say about the unfortunate Mme Maltishchev, and the conversation began to crackle merrily, like a blazing bonfire.
The princess Betsy's husband, a fat good-natured man, a passionate collector of etchings, learning that his wife had guests, stopped in the drawing room before going to his club. He approached Princess Miagky inaudibly over the soft carpet.
'How did you like Nilsson?' he said.
'Ah, how can you sneak up like that! You frightened me so,' she replied. 'Please don't talk to me about opera, you understand nothing about music. Better if I descend to your level and talk about your majolica and etchings. Well, what treasure have you bought recently at the flea market?'
'Want me to show you? But you know nothing about it.'
'Show me. I've learned from those -what's their name... the bankers ... they have excellent etchings. They showed them to us.'
'So you visited the Schutzburgs?' the hostess asked from her samovar.
'We did, ma chere. They invited my husband and me for dinner, and I was told that the sauce at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,' Princess Miagky said loudly, sensing that everyone was listening to her, 'and it was a most vile sauce - something green. I had to invite them back, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopecks, and everybody liked it. I can't make thousand-rouble sauces.'
'She's one of a kind!' said the ambassador's wife.
'Amazing!' someone said.
The effect produced by Princess Miagky's talk was always the same, and the secret of it consisted in her saying simple things that made sense, even if, as now, they were not quite appropriate. In the society in which she lived, such words produced the impression of a most witty joke. Princess Miagky could not understand why it worked that way, but she knew that it did work, and she took advantage of it.
Since everyone listened to Princess Miagky while she talked and the conversation around the ambassador's wife ceased, the hostess wanted to unite the company into one, and she addressed the ambassador's wife:
'You definitely don't want tea? You should move over here with us.'
'No, we are quite all right here,' the ambassador's wife replied with a smile and continued the conversation they had begun.
It was a very pleasant conversation. They were denouncing the Karenins, wife and husband.
'Anna's changed very much since her trip to Moscow. There's something strange about her,' said a friend of hers.
'The main change is that she's brought a shadow with her - Alexei Vronsky,' said the ambassador's wife.
'What of it? Grimm has a fable - a man without a shadow, a man deprived of a shadow.[10] And it's his punishment for something. I could never understand where the punishment lay. But it must be unpleasant for a woman to be without a shadow.'
'Yes, but women with a shadow generally end badly,' said Anna's friend.
'Button your lip,' Princess Miagky suddenly said, hearing these words. Karenina is a wonderful woman. Her husband I don't like, but I like her very much.'
'Why don't you like the husband? He's such a remarkable man,' said the ambassador's wife. 'My husband says there are few such statesmen in Europe.'
'And my husband says the same thing to me, but I don't believe it,' said Princess Miagky. 'If our husbands didn't say it, we'd see what's there, and Alexei Alexandrovich, in my opinion, is simply stupid. I say it in a whisper ... Doesn't that make everything clear? Before, when I was told to find him intelligent, I kept searching and found myself stupid for not seeing his intelligence; but as soon as I say "He's stupid" in a whisper - everything becomes so clear, doesn't it?'
'How wicked you are today!'
'Not in the least. I have no other way out. One of us is stupid. Well, and you know one can never say that about oneself.'
'No one is pleased with his fortune, but everyone is pleased with his wit,' said the diplomat, quoting some French verse.[11]
'That's it exactly.' Princess Miagky turned to him hastily. 'But the thing is that I won't let you have Anna. She's so dear, so sweet. What can she do if they're all in love with her and follow her like shadows?'
'But I never thought of judging her.'Anna's friend tried to excuse herself.
'If no one follows us like a shadow, it doesn't prove that we have the right to judge.'
And having dealt properly with Anna's friend, Princess Miagky stood up and, together with the ambassador's wife, joined the table where a conversation was going on about the king of Prussia.
'Who were you maligning there?' asked Betsy.
'The Karenins. The princess gave a characterization of Alexei Alexandrovich,' the ambassador's wife replied with a smile, sitting down at the table.
'A pity we didn't hear it,' said the hostess, glancing at the door. 'Ah, here you are at last!' She addressed Vronsky with a smile as he came in.
Vronsky was not only acquainted with all those he met there but saw them every day, and therefore he entered with that calm manner with which one enters a room full of people one has only just left.
'Where am I coming from?' he replied to the ambassador's wife's question. 'No help for it, I must confess. From the Bouffe.[12] It seems the hundredth time and always a new pleasure. Lovely! I know it's shameful, but at the opera I fall asleep, and at the Bouffe I stay till the last moment and enjoy it. Tonight...'
He named a French actress and wanted to tell some story about her; but the ambassador's wife interrupted him in mock alarm:
'Please, don't talk about that horror.'
'Well, I won't then, the more so as everybody knows about these horrors.' 'And everybody would have gone there, if it was as accepted as the opera,' put in Princess Miagky.
VII
Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing that it was Anna, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking at the door, and his face had a strange new expression. He was looking joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly at the entering woman and slowly getting up from his seat. Anna was entering the drawing room. Holding herself extremely straight as always, with her quick, firm and light step, which distinguished her from other society women, and not changing the direction of her gaze, she took the few steps that separated her from the hostess, pressed her hand, smiled, and with that smile turned round to Vronsky. Vronsky made a low bow and moved a chair for her.
She responded only with an inclination of the head, then blushed and frowned. But at once, while quickly nodding to acquaintances and pressing the proffered hands, she addressed the hostess:
'I was at Countess Lydia's and intended to come earlier, but had to stay. Sir John was there. He's very interesting.'
'Ah, it's that missionary?'
'Yes, he was telling very interesting things about Indian life.'
The conversation, disrupted by her arrival, began to waver again like a lamp flame being blown out.
'Sir John! Yes, Sir John. I've seen him. He speaks well. The Vlasyev girl is completely in love with him.'
'And is it true that her younger sister is marrying Topov?'
'Yes, they say it's quite decided.'
'I'm surprised at the parents. They say it's a marriage of passion.'
'Of passion? What antediluvian thoughts you have! Who talks about passions these days?' said the ambassador's wife.
'What's to be done? This stupid old fashion hasn't gone out of use,' said Vronsky.
'So much the worse for those who cling to it. The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones.'
'Yes, but how often the happiness of an arranged marriage scatters like dust, precisely because of the appearance of that very passion which was not acknowledged,' said Vronsky.
'But by arranged marriages we mean those in which both have already had their wild times. It's like scarlet fever, one has to go through it.'
'Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallp
ox.'
'When I was young, I was in love with a beadle,' said Princess Miagky. 'I don't know whether that helped me or not.'
'No, joking aside, I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it,' said Princess Betsy.
'Even after marriage,' the ambassador's wife said jokingly.
'It's never too late to repent.' The diplomat uttered an English proverb.
'Precisely,' Betsy picked up, 'one must make a mistake and then correct oneself. What do you think?' She turned to Anna, who with a firm, barely noticeable smile on her lips was silently listening to this conversation.
'I think,' said Anna, toying with the glove she had taken off, 'I think ... if there are as many minds as there are men, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.'
Vronsky was looking at Anna and waiting with a sinking heart for what she would say. He exhaled as if after danger when she spoke these words.
Anna suddenly turned to him:
'And I have received a letter from Moscow. They write that Kitty Shcherbatsky is very ill.'
'Really?' said Vronsky, frowning.
Anna looked at him sternly.
'That doesn't interest you?'
'On the contrary, very much. What exactly do they write, if I may ask?' he said.
Anna rose and went over to Betsy.
'Give me a cup of tea,' she said, stopping behind her chair.
While Princess Betsy poured her tea, Vronsky came over to Anna.
'What do they write to you?' he repeated.
'I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignoble, though they always talk about it,' Anna said without answering him. 'I've long wanted to tell you,' she added and, moving a few steps away, sat down by a corner table with albums on it.
'I don't quite understand the meaning of your words,' he said, handing her the cup.
She glanced at the sofa beside her, and he sat down at once.
'Yes, I've wanted to tell you,' she said without looking at him. 'You acted badly - very, very badly.'
'Don't I know that I acted badly? But who was the cause of my acting so?'
'Why do you say that to me?' she said, glancing sternly at him.
'You know why,' he replied boldly and joyfully, meeting her eyes and continuing to look.
It was not he but she who became embarrassed.
'That proves only that you have no heart,' she said. But her eyes said that she knew he did have a heart, and because of it she was afraid of him.
'What you were just talking about was a mistake, and not love.'
'Remember, I forbade you to utter that word, that vile word,' Anna said with a shudder; but she felt at once that by this one word 'forbade' she showed that she acknowledged having certain rights over him and was thereby encouraging him to speak of love. 'I've long wanted to tell you that,' she went on, looking resolutely into his eyes, and all aflame with the blush that burned her face, 'and tonight I came on purpose, knowing that I would meet you. I came to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, but you make me feel guilty of something.'
He looked at her, struck by the new, spiritual beauty of her face.
'What do you want of me?' he said simply and seriously.
'I want you to go to Moscow and ask Kitty's forgiveness,' she said, and a little light flickered in her eyes.
'You don't want that,' he said.
He saw that she was saying what she forced herself to say, and not what she wanted.
'If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.'
His face lit up.
'Don't you know that you are my whole life? But I know no peace and cannot give you any. All of myself, my love ... yes. I cannot think of you and myself separately. You and I are one for me. And I do not see any possibility of peace ahead either for me or for you. I see the possibility of despair, of unhappiness ... or I see the possibility of happiness, such happiness! ... Isn't it possible?' he added with his lips only; but she heard him.
She strained all the forces of her mind to say what she ought to say; but instead she rested her eyes on him, filled with love, and made no answer.
'There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end - there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.'
'Then do this for me, never say these words to me, and let us be good friends,' she said in words; but her eyes were saying something quite different.
'We won't be friends, you know that yourself. And whether we will be the happiest or the unhappiest of people - is in your power.'
She wanted to say something, but he interrupted her.
'I beg for only one thing, I beg for the right to hope, to be tormented, as I am now; but if that, too, is impossible, order me to disappear, and I will disappear. You will not see me, if my presence is painful for you.'
'I don't want to drive you away.'
'Just don't change anything. Leave everything as it is,' he said in a trembling voice. 'Here is your husband.'
Indeed just then Alexei Alexandrovich, with his calm, clumsy gait, was entering the drawing room.
Having glanced at his wife and Vronsky, he went over to the hostess, sat down to his cup of tea, and began speaking in his unhurried, always audible voice, in his usual jocular tone, making fun of somebody.
'Your Rambouillet is in full muster,' he said, glancing around the whole company, 'graces and muses.'[13]
But Princess Betsy could not bear this tone of his, which she called by the English word 'sneering', and, being an intelligent hostess, at once led him into a serious conversation on universal military conscription.[14] Alexei Alexandrovich at once got carried away with the conversation and began, earnestly now, to defend the new decree against Princess Betsy, who attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna went on sitting by the little table.
'This is becoming indecent,' one lady whispered, indicating with her eyes Vronsky, Anna and her husband.
'What did I tell you?' Anna's friend replied.
And not these ladies alone, but almost everyone in the drawing room, even Princess Miagky and Betsy herself, glanced several times at the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as if it disturbed them. Alexei Alexandrovich was the only one who never once looked in their direction and was not distracted from the interest of the conversation that had started.
Noticing the unpleasant impression produced on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped some other person into her place to listen to Alexei Alexandrovich, and went over to Anna.
'I'm always surprised at the clarity and precision of your husband's expressions,' she said. 'The most transcendental notions become accessible to me when he speaks.'
'Oh, yes!' said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness and not understanding a word of what Betsy was saying to her. She went over to the big table and took part in the general conversation.
Alexei Alexandrovich, after staying for half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested they go home together; but she, without looking at him, replied that she would stay for supper. Alexei Alexandrovich made his bows and left.
The Karenin coachman, a fat old Tartar in a glossy leather coat, had difficulty holding back the chilled grey on the left, who kept rearing up by the entrance. The footman stood holding the carriage door open. The doorkeeper stood holding the front door. Anna Arkadyevna, with her small, quick hand, was freeing the lace of her sleeve, which had caught on the hooks of her fur coat, and, head lowered, listened with delight to what Vronsky was saying as he saw her off.
'You've said nothing; let's suppose I also demand nothing,' he said, 'but you know it's not friendship I need, for me there is only one possible happiness in life, this word you dislike so ... yes, love ...'
'Love ...' she repeated slowly with her inner voice, and suddenly, just as she freed the lace, added: 'That's why I don't like this word, because it means too much for me, far more than you c
an understand,' and she looked him in the face: 'Goodbye!'
She gave him her hand, and with a quick, resilient step walked past the doorkeeper and disappeared into the carriage.
Her look, the touch of her hand, burned him through. He kissed his palm in the place where she had touched him, and went home, happy in the awareness that he had come closer to attaining his goal in that one evening than he had in the past two months.
VIII
Alexei Alexandrovich found nothing peculiar or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting at a separate table with Vronsky and having an animated conversation about something; but he noticed that to the others in the drawing room it seemed something peculiar and improper, and therefore he, too, found it improper. He decided that he ought to say so to his wife.
On returning home, Alexei Alexandrovich went to his study, as he usually did, sat in his armchair, opened a book about the papacy at a place marked by a paper-knife, and read till one o'clock, as usual; only from time to time he rubbed his high forehead and tossed his head, as if chasing something away. At the usual hour, he rose and prepared for bed. Anna Arkadyevna was not home yet. Book under his arm, he went upstairs; but this evening, instead of the usual thoughts and considerations about official matters, his mind was full of his wife and something unpleasant that had happened with her. Contrary to his habit, he did not get into bed, but, clasping his hands behind his back, began pacing up and down the rooms. He could not lie down, feeling that he had first to think over this newly arisen circumstance.