'There's a way out of every situation. A decision has to be made,' he said. 'Anything's better than the situation you are living in. I can see how you suffer over everything, over society, and your son, and your husband.'
'Ah, only not my husband,' she said with a simple smile. 'I don't know him, I don't think about him. He doesn't exist.'
'You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You suffer over him, too.'
'But he doesn't even know,' she said, and bright colour suddenly began to rise in her face; her cheeks, forehead, and neck turned red, and tears of shame welled up in her eyes. 'And let's not talk about him.'
XXIII
Vronsky had already tried several times, though not as resolutely as now, to bring her to a discussion of her situation, and each time had run into that superficiality and lightness of judgement with which she now responded to his challenge. It was as if there were something in it that she could not or would not grasp, as if the moment she began talking about it, she, the real Anna, withdrew somewhere into herself and another woman stepped forward, strange and alien to him, whom he did not love but feared, and who rebuffed him. But today he ventured to say everything.
'Whether he knows or not,' Vronsky said in his usual firm and calm tone, 'whether he knows or not is not our affair. We can't. .. you can't go on like this, especially now.'
'What's to be done, then, in your opinion?' she asked, with the same light mockery. She, who had so feared he might take her pregnancy lightly, was now vexed that he had drawn from it the necessity for doing something.
'Tell him everything and leave him.'
'Very well, suppose I do that,' she said. 'Do you know what will come of it? I'll tell you everything beforehand.' And a wicked light lit up in her eyes, which a moment before had been tender. ' "Ah, madam, so you love another man and have entered into a criminal liaison with him?" ' (Impersonating her husband, she stressed the word 'criminal', just as Alexei Alexandrovich would have done.) ' "I warned you about the consequences in their religious, civil and familial aspects. You did not listen to me. Now I cannot lend my name to disgrace ..." ' - 'nor my son's,' she was going to say, but she could not joke about her son -' "lend my name to disgrace," and more of the same,' she added. 'Generally, he will say in his statesmanly manner, and with clarity and precision, that he cannot release me but will take what measures are in his power to prevent a scandal. And he will do, calmly and accurately, what he says. That's what will happen. He's not a man, he's a machine, and a wicked machine when he gets angry,' she added, recalling Alexei Alexandrovich in all the details of his figure, manner of speaking and character, holding him guilty for everything bad she could find in him and forgiving him nothing, on account of the terrible fault for which she stood guilty before him.
'But, Anna,' Vronsky said in a soft, persuasive voice, trying to calm her down, 'all the same it's necessary to tell him, and then be guided by what he does.'
'What, run away?'
'Why not run away? I see no possibility of this continuing. And not on my account -I see you're suffering.'
'Yes, run away, and I'll become your mistress?' she said spitefully.
'Anna!' he said, with reproachful tenderness.
'Yes,' she went on, 'I'll become your mistress and ruin... everything.'
Again she was going to say 'my son', but could not utter the word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong, honest nature, could endure this situation of deceit and not wish to get out of it; but he did not suspect that the main reason for it was that word 'son' which she could not utter. When she thought of her son and his future attitude towards the mother who had abandoned his father, she felt so frightened at what she had done that she did not reason, but, like a woman, tried only to calm herself with false reasonings and words, so that everything would remain as before and she could forget the terrible question of what would happen with her son.[29]
'I beg you, I implore you,' she said suddenly in a completely different, sincere and tender tone, taking his hand, 'never speak to me of that!'
'But, Anna ...'
'Never. Leave it to me. I know all the meanness, all the horror of my situation; but it's not as easy to resolve as you think. Leave it to me and listen to me. Never speak of that to me. Do you promise me? ... No, no, promise! ...'
'I promise everything, but I can't be at peace, especially after what you've said. I can't be at peace when you are not at peace ...'
'I?' she repeated. 'Yes, I'm tormented sometimes; but it will go away if you never speak to me of that. It's only when you speak of it that it torments me.'
'I don't understand,' he said.
'I know,' she interrupted him, 'how hard it is for your honest nature to lie, and I'm sorry for you. I often think how you ruined your life for me.'
'I was thinking the same thing just now,' he said. 'How could you have sacrificed everything for me? I can't forgive myself that you are unhappy.'
'I'm unhappy?' she said, coming close to him and looking at him with a rapturous smile of love. 'I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy. I'm unhappy? No, this is my happiness ...'
She heard the voice of her returning son and, casting a quick glance around the terrace, rose impetuously. Her eyes lit up with a fire familiar to him, she raised her beautiful, ring-covered hands with a quick gesture, took his head, gave him a long look and, bringing her face closer, quickly kissed his mouth and both eyes with her open, smiling lips and pushed him away. She wanted to go, but he held her back.
'When?' he said in a whisper, looking at her rapturously.
'Tonight, at one,' she whispered and, after a deep sigh, walked with her light, quick step to meet her son.
The rain had caught Seryozha in the big garden, and he and the nanny had sat it out in the gazebo.
'Well, goodbye,' she said to Vronsky. 'We must be going to the races soon now. Betsy has promised to come for me.'
Vronsky looked at his watch and left hastily.
XXIV
When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins' balcony, he was so agitated and preoccupied by his thoughts that he saw the hands on the face, but could not grasp what time it was. He went out to the road and walked to his carriage, stepping carefully through the mud. He was so full of his feeling for Anna that he did not even think what time it was and whether he could still manage to get to Briansky's. He was left, as often happens, with only the external faculty of memory, which indicated what was to be done after what. He came up to his coachman, who had dozed off on the box in the already slanting shade of a thick linden, admired the iridescent columns of flies hovering over the sweaty horses and, waking the coachman, told him to go to Briansky's. Only after driving some four miles did he recover sufficiently to look at his watch and grasp that it was half-past five and he was late.
There were to be several races that day: a convoys' race, then the officers' mile-and-a-half, the three-mile, and the race in which he would ride. He could make it to his race, but if he went to Briansky's, he would come barely in time and when the whole court was there. That was not good. But he had given Briansky his word that he would come and therefore decided to keep going, telling the coachman not to spare the troika.
He arrived at Briansky's, spent five minutes with him, and galloped back. This quick drive calmed him down. All the difficulty of his relations with Anna, all the uncertainty remaining after their conversation, left his head; with excitement and delight he now thought of the races, of how he would arrive in time after all, and every now and then the expectation of the happiness of that night's meeting flashed like a bright light in his imagination.
The feeling of the coming races took hold of him more and more the further he drove into their atmosphere, overtaking the carriages of those driving to the course from their country houses or Petersburg.
There was no one at his quarters by then: they had all gone to the rac
es, and his footman was waiting for him at the gate. While he was changing, the footman told him that the second race had already started, that many gentlemen had come asking for him, and the boy had come running twice from the stable.
After changing unhurriedly (he never hurried or lost his self-control), Vronsky gave orders to drive to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of carriages, pedestrians, soldiers surrounding the racetrack and pavilions seething with people. The second race was probably under way, because he heard the bell just as he entered the shed. As he neared the stables, he met Makhotin's white-legged chestnut Gladiator, being led to the racetrack in an orange and blue horse-cloth, his ears, as if trimmed with blue, looking enormous.
'Where's Cord?' he asked the stableman.
'In the stables, saddling up.'
The stall was open, and Frou-Frou was already saddled. They were about to bring her out.
'Am I late?'
'All right, all right! Everything's in order, everything's in order,' said the Englishman, 'don't get excited.'
Vronsky cast a glance once more over the exquisite, beloved forms of the horse, whose whole body was trembling, and tearing himself with difficulty from this sight, walked out of the shed. He drove up to the pavilions at the best time for not attracting anyone's attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just ending, and all eyes were turned to the horse-guard in the lead and the life-hussar behind him, urging their horses on with their last strength and nearing the post. Everyone was crowding towards the post from inside and outside the ring, and a group of soldiers and officers of the horse-guards shouted loudly with joy at the anticipated triumph of their officer and comrade. Vronsky slipped inconspicuously into the midst of the crowd almost at the moment when the bell ending the race rang out, and the tall, mud-spattered horse-guard, who came in first, lowering himself into the saddle, began to ease up on the reins of his grey, sweat-darkened, heavily breathing stallion.
The stallion, digging his feet in with an effort, slackened the quick pace of his big body, and the horse-guard officer, like a man awakening from a deep sleep, looked around and smiled with difficulty. A crowd of friends and strangers surrounded him.
Vronsky deliberately avoided that select high-society crowd which moved and talked with restrained freedom in front of the pavilions. He could see that Anna was there, and Betsy, and his brother's wife, but he purposely did not approach them, so as not to become diverted. But the acquaintances he met constantly stopped him, telling details of the earlier races and asking why he was late.
Just as all the participants were summoned to the pavilion to receive their prizes and everyone turned there, Vronsky's older brother, Alexander, a colonel with aiguillettes, of medium height, as stocky as Alexei but more handsome and ruddy, with a red nose and a drunken, open face, came up to him.
'Did you get my note?' he said. 'You're impossible to find.'
Alexander Vronsky, despite the dissolute and, in particular, drunken life he was known for, was a perfect courtier.
Now, talking with his brother about something very disagreeable for him, and knowing that the eyes of many might be directed at them, he had a smiling look, as if he were joking about some unimportant matter.
'I did, and I really don't understand what you are worried about,' said Alexei.
'I'm worried about this - that it was just observed to me that you were not here and that on Monday you were seen in Peterhof.'
'There are matters that may be discussed only by those directly involved, and the matter you are worried about is such a ...'
'Yes, but then don't stay in the service, don't...'
'I ask you not to interfere, that's all.'
Alexei Vronsky's frowning face paled and his jutting lower jaw twitched, something that seldom happened to him. Being a man with a very kind heart, he seldom got angry, but when he did, and when his chin twitched, he could be dangerous, as his brother knew. Alexander Vronsky smiled gaily.
'I only wanted to give you mother's letter. Answer her and don't get upset before the race. Bonne chance!' he added, smiling, and walked away from him.
But just then another friendly greeting stopped Vronsky.
'You don't want to know your friends! Good afternoon, mon cher!' said Stepan Arkadyich, and here, amidst this Petersburg brilliance, his ruddy face and glossy, brushed-up side-whiskers shone no less than in Moscow. 'I arrived yesterday, and I'm very glad I'll see your triumph. When shall we meet?'
'Come to the officers' mess tomorrow,' Vronsky said and, pressing his sleeve apologetically, walked to the middle of the racetrack, where the horses were already being brought for the big steeplechase.
Sweating horses, exhausted from racing, were led home accompanied by grooms, and new ones appeared one after the other for the forthcoming race - fresh, for the most part English, horses, in hoods, their bellies tightly girt, looking like strange, huge birds. On the right the lean beauty Frou-Frou was brought in, stepping on her supple and rather long pasterns as if on springs. Not far from her the cloth was being taken off the big-eared Gladiator. Vronsky's attention was inadvertently drawn to the stallion's large, exquisite, perfectly regular forms, with wonderful hindquarters and unusually short pasterns, sitting just over the hoof. He wanted to go to his horse but again was stopped by an acquaintance.
'Ah, there's Karenin,' the acquaintance with whom he was talking said to him. 'Looking for his wife, and she's in the central pavilion. You haven't seen her?'
'No, I haven't,' Vronsky replied and, not even glancing at the pavilion in which he had been told Anna was, he went over to his horse.
Vronsky had just managed to inspect the saddle, about which he had to give some instructions, when the participants were summoned to the pavilion to draw numbers and start. With serious, stern faces, many of them pale, seventeen officers gathered at the pavilion and each took a number. Vronsky got number seven. The call came: 'Mount!'
Feeling that he and the other riders were the centre towards which all eyes were turned, Vronsky, in a state of tension, which usually made him slow and calm of movement, approached his horse. In honour of the races, Cord had put on his gala outfit: a black, high-buttoned frock coat, a stiffly starched collar propping up his cheeks, a black Derby hat and top-boots. He was calm and imposing, as always, and held the horse himself by both sides of the bridle, standing in front of her. Frou-Frou continued to tremble as in a fever. Her fire-filled eye looked askance at the approaching Vronsky. Vronsky slipped a finger under the girth. The horse looked still more askance, bared her teeth, and flattened one ear. The Englishman puckered his lips, wishing to show a smile at his saddling being checked.
'Mount up, you'll be less excited.'
Vronsky gave his rivals a last look. He knew that during the race he would no longer see them. Two were already riding ahead to the starting place. Galtsyn, one of the dangerous rivals and Vronsky's friend, was fussing around a bay stallion that would not let him mount. A little life-hussar in tight breeches rode by at a gallop, hunched on the croup like a cat, trying to imitate the English. Prince Kuzovlev sat pale on his thoroughbred mare from Grabov's stud, while an Englishman led her by the bridle. Vronsky and all his comrades knew Kuzovlev and his peculiarity of 'weak' nerves and terrible vanity. They knew that he was afraid of everything, afraid of riding an army horse; but now, precisely because it was scary, because people broke their necks, and because by each obstacle there was a doctor, an ambulance wagon with a cross sewn on it and a sister of mercy, he had decided to ride. Their eyes met, and Vronsky winked at him gently and approvingly. There was only one man he did not see - his chief rival, Makhotin on Gladiator.
'Don't rush,' Cord said to Vronsky, 'and remember one thing: don't hold her back at the obstacles and don't send her over, let her choose as she likes.'
'Very well, very well,' said Vronsky, taking the reins.
'Lead the race, if you can; but don't despair till the last moment, even if you're behind.'
Before the hors
e had time to move, Vronsky, with a supple and strong movement, stood in the serrated steel stirrup and lightly, firmly placed his compact body on the creaking leather saddle. Putting his right foot into the stirrup, he evened up the double reins between his fingers with an accustomed gesture, and Cord loosed his grip. As if not knowing which foot to put first, Frou-Frou, pulling at the reins with her long neck, started off as if on springs, rocking her rider on her supple back.
Cord, increasing his pace, walked after them. The excited horse, trying to trick her rider, pulled the reins now to one side, now to the other, and Vronsky tried in vain to calm her with his voice and hand.
They were already nearing the dammed-up stream, heading for the place where they were to start. Many of the riders were in front of him, many behind, when Vronsky suddenly heard the sound of galloping in the mud of the road behind him and was overtaken by Makhotin on his white-legged, big-eared Gladiator. Makhotin smiled, showing his long teeth, but Vronsky gave him an angry look. He generally did not like him and now considered him his most dangerous rival, and he was vexed that the man had ridden past, alarming his horse. Frou-Frou kicked up her left leg in a gallop, made two leaps and, angered by the tight reins, went into a jolting trot, bouncing her rider up and down. Cord also frowned and almost ambled after Vronsky.