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Chapter 27
Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking glass, and, with Annushka's
assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard carriage
wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.
"It's too early for Betsy," she thought, and glancing out of the window she
caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it. "How
unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?" she wondered, and the thought
of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible
that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him with
a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of
falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she
abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she
was saying.
"Ah, how nice of you!" she said, giving her husband her hand, and greeting
Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. "You're staying the
night, I hope?" was the first word the spirit of falsehood prompted her to
utter; "and now we'll go together. Only it's a pity I've promised Betsy. She's
coming for me."
Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy's name.
"Oh, I'm not going to separate the inseparables," he said in his usual
bantering tone. "I'm going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I'm ordered exercise
by the doctors too. I'll walk, and fancy myself at the springs again."
"There's no hurry," said Anna. "Would you like tea?"
She rang.
"Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here. Well,
tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you've not been to see
me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace," she said, turning first
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to one and then to the other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was
the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail
Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her.
Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.
She sat down beside her husband.
"You don't look quite well," she said.
"Yes," he said; "the doctor's been with me today and wasted an hour of my
time. I feel that some one of our friends must have sent him: my health's so
precious, it seems."
"No; what did he say?"
she questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and tried
to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.
All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in her eyes.
But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special significance to
this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them only the direct
sense they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly. There was
nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Anna
recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.
Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch had
allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and bewildered
eyes with which Seryozha glanced first at his father and then at his mother.
But he would not see anything, and he did not see it.
"Ah, the young man! He's grown. Really, he's getting quite a man. How are
you, young man?"
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And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy of his
father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to
calling him young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to
him whether Vronsky were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He
looked round towards his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only
with his mother that he was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch
was holding his son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the
governess, and Seryozha was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he
was on the point of tears.
Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing that
Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey
Alexandrovitch's hand from her son's shoulder, and kissing the boy, led him
out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.
"It's time to start, though," said she, glancing at her watch. "How is it Betsy
doesn't come?..."
"Yes," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his hands and
cracked his fingers. "I've come to bring you some money, too, for
nightingales, we know, can't live on fairy tales," he said. "You want it, I
expect?"
"No, I don't...yes, I do," she said, not looking at him, and crimsoning to the
roots of her hair. "But you'll come back here after the races, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes!" answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And here's the glory of
Peterhof, Princess Tverskaya," he added, looking out of the window at the
elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed extremely high. "What
elegance! Charming! Well, let us be starting too, then."
Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in high
boots, a cape, and block hat, darted out at the entrance.
"I'm going; good-bye!" said Anna, and kissing her son, she went up to
Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. "It was ever so nice
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of you to come."
Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand.
"Well, au revoir, then! You'll come back for some tea; that's delightful!"
she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon as she no longer saw
him, she was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips had touched, and
she shuddered with repulsion.
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