|
Chapter 2
When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, "I
am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without
seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the
council at seven and will be there till ten." Thinking for an instant of the
strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her
husband's insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left the
regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch, he lay
down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the hideous
scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused together
and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant who had played
an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He waked up in
the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a candle. "What
was it? What? What was the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a
little dirty man with a disheveled beard was stooping down doing
something, and all of a sudden he began saying some strange words in
French. Yes, there was nothing else in the dream," he said to himself. "But
why was it so awful?" He vividly recalled the peasant again and those
incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of
horror ran down his spine.
"What nonsense!" thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.
It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and
went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and only worried
at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins' entrance he looked at his
watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a
pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage.
"She is coming to me," thought Vronsky, "and better she should. I don't like
going into that house. But no matter; I can't hide myself," he thought, and
with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has
nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the
door. The door opened, and the hall porter with a rug on his arm called the
Chapter 2
504
carriage. Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this
moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the
very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The
gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat
and on the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin's
fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky's face. Vronsky bowed, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went
on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up
the rug and the opera-glass at the window and disappear. Vronsky went into
the hall. His brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and
angry light in them.
"What a position!" he thought. "If he would fight, would stand up for his
honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or
baseness.... He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never
meant and never mean to do."
Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Anna in
the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna--who
had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked to him to
decide her fate, ready to submit to anything--he had long ceased to think
that their tie might end as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had
retreated into the background again, and feeling that he had got out of that
circle of activity in which everything was definite, he had given himself
entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding him more and more
closely to her.
He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her retreating footsteps.
He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and was now
going back to the drawing room.
"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the tears
came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go on like this, the end will come
much, much too soon."
"What is it, dear one?"
Chapter 2
505
"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours...No, I won't...I
can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn't come. No, I won't." She laid
her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a
profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was
studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was,
every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination
(incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.
Chapter 2
506
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
