Anna Karenina

Chapter 21
"We've come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good time today," said
Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"
"It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and twirling the
tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the perfect order into
which his affairs had been brought any over-bold or rapid movement might
disturb it.
"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it," said Petritsky.
"I've come from Gritsky's" (that was what they called the colonel); "they're
expecting you."
Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of something
else.
"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the familiar sounds of
polkas and waltzes floating across to him. "What's the fete?"
"Serpuhovskoy's come."
"Aha!" said Vronsky, "why, I didn't know."
The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.
Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that he
sacrificed his ambition to it--having anyway taken up this position,
Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of Serpuhovskoy or hurt
with him for not coming first to him when he came to the regiment.
Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was delighted he had come.
"Ah, I'm very glad!"
The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party were
in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that met
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Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in white linen coats, standing near a
barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored figure of the colonel
surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far as the first step of the
balcony and was loudly shouting across the band that played Offenbach's
quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few soldiers
standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster, and several
subalterns came up to the balcony with Vronsky. The colonel returned to
the table, went out again onto the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and
proposed the toast, "To the health of our former comrade, the gallant
general, Prince Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!"
The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the steps
smiling, with a glass in his hand.
"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the rosy-checked,
smart-looking quartermaster standing just before him, still youngish
looking though doing his second term of service.
It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He looked more
robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same graceful creature,
whose face and figure were even more striking from their softness and
nobility than their beauty. The only change Vronsky detected in him was
that subdued, continual radiance of beaming content which settles on the
faces of men who are successful and are sure of the recognition of their
success by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant air, and immediately
observed it in Serpuhovskoy.
As Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of
pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and waved the
glass in his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by the gesture that he
could not come to him before the quartermaster, who stood craning forward
his lips ready to be kissed.
"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Yashvin told me you were in one of
your gloomy tempers."
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Serpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking
quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went up to
Vronsky.
"How glad I am!" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on one side.
"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Yashvin, pointing to Vronsky;
and he went down below to the soldiers.
"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you there," said
Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.
"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and he turned to the
adjutant: "Please have this divided from me, each man as much as it runs
to." And he hurriedly took notes for three hundred roubles from his
pocketbook, blushing a little.
"Vronsky! Have anything to eat or drink?" asked Yashvin. "Hi, something
for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!"
The fete at the colonel's lasted a long while. There was a great deal of
drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught him again several
times. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to the accompaniment
of the band, the colonel himself danced with Petritsky. Then the colonel,
who began to show signs of feebleness, sat down on a bench in the
courtyard and began demonstrating to Yashvin the superiority of Russia
over Poland, especially in cavalry attack, and there was a lull in the revelry
for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to wash
his hands and found Vronsky there; Vronsky was drenching his head with
water. He had taken off his coat and put his sunburnt, hairy neck under the
tap, and was rubbing it and his head with his hands. When he had finished,
Vronsky sat down by Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom
on a lounge, and a conversation began which was very interesting to both
of them.
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"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said Serpuhovskoy.
"I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."
"She's friendly with Varya, and they're the only women in Petersburg I care
about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He smiled because he foresaw
the topic the conversation would turn on, and he was glad of it.
"The only ones?" Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.
"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife," said
Vronsky, checking his hint by a stern expression of face. "I was greatly
delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit surprised. I expected even
more."
Serpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable to
him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.
"Well, I on the contrary expected less--I'll own frankly. But I'm glad, very
glad. I'm ambitious; that's my weakness, and I confess to it."
"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been successful," said
Vronsky.
"I don't suppose so," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't say life
wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of course I may be
mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the line I've chosen, and
that power of any sort in my hands, if it is to be, will be better than in the
hands of a good many people I know," said Serpuhovskoy, with beaming
consciousness of success; "and so the nearer I get to it, the better pleased I
am."
"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think so too,
but here I live and think life worth living not only for that."
"There it's out! here it comes!" said Serpuhovskoy, laughing. "Ever since I
heard about you, about your refusal, I began.... Of course, I approved of
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what you did. But there are ways of doing everything. And I think your
action was good in itself, but you didn't do it quite in the way you ought to
have done."
"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on what I've
done. And besides, I'm very well off."
"Very well off--for the time. But you're not satisfied with that. I wouldn't
say this to your brother. He's a nice child, like our host here. There he
goes!" he added, listening to the roar of "hurrah!"--"and he's happy, but that
does not satisfy you."
"I didn't say it did satisfy me."
"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted."
"By whom?"
"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a party, or
else everything goes and will go to the dogs."
"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian communists?"
"No," said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being suspected of
such an absurdity. "Tout ca est une blague. That's always been and always
will be. There are no communists. But intriguing people have to invent a
noxious, dangerous party. It's an old trick. No, what's wanted is a powerful