Anna Karenina

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Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal
to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and
the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching,
pulled her up. "Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak,
because..."

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. "No," she
said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up
the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to
generosity, and sealed it up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my
husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write
more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to
write to him?" she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread
over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger
against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she
had written into tiny bits. "No need of anything," she said to
herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told
the governess and the servants that she was going that day to
Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.



Chapter 16


All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters,
gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.
Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop
for cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor.
Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried down
into the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting at
the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of
packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her
traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle
of some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and
saw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the
front door bell.

"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense of
being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding
her hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet
directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand.

"The courier has orders to wait for an answer," he said.

"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room she
tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded
notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the
letter and began reading it at the end. "Preparations shall be
made for your arrival here...I attach particular significance to
compliance..." she read. She ran on, then back, read it all
through, and once more read the letter all through again from the
beginning. When she had finished, she felt that she was cold all
over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected,
had burst upon her.

In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her
husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could
be unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and
gave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her
more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.

"He's right!" she said; "of course, he's always right; he's a
Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one
understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can't
explain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, so
upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They
don't know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed
everything that was living in me--he has not once even thought
that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at
every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with
himself. Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to
find something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled
to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband?
But the time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself any
longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has
made me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do?
If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne
anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... How
was it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's
characteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in the
right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse
ruin yet..."

She recalled the words from the letter. "You can conjecture what
awaits you and your son...." "That's a threat to take away my
child, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I know
very well why he says it. He doesn't believe even in my love for
my child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridicule
it). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won't
abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that there
could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I
love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I
should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He
knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that."

She recalled another sentence in the letter. "Our life must go
on as it has done in the past...." "That life was miserable
enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it
be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that
I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but
lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know
him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish
swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness.
I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to
catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and
deceit.

"But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I
am?..."

"No; I will break through it, I will break through it!" she
cried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to
the writing table to write him another letter. But at the bottom
of her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break
through anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of
her old position, however false and dishonorable it might be.

She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing she
clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them,
burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child
crying. She was weeping that her dream of her position being
made clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew
beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and far
worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position
in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so
little consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange
it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband
and child to join her lover; that however much she might
struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would
never know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty
wife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at every
instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful
connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life
she could never share. She knew that this was how it would be,
and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even
conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint,
as children cry when they are punished.

The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself,
and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.

"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."

"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide upon
alone? What do I know? What do I want? What is there I care
for?" Again she felt that her soul was beginning to be split in
two. She was terrified again at this feeling, and clutched at
the first pretext for doing something which might divert her
thoughts from herself. "I ought to see Alexey" (so she called
Vronsky in her thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what I ought
to do. I'll go to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," she
said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him
the day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, he
had said that in that case he should not go either. She went up
to the table, wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.
--A."; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.

"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.

"Not going at all?"

"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm
going to the princess's."

"Which dress am I to get ready?"



Chapter 17


The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited
Anna was to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two
ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg
circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, _les sept
merveilles du monde_. These ladies belonged to a circle which,
though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in
which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential
people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalova,
was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the political world. From
all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the hints
in Princess Tverskaya's note referred to her refusal. But now
Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.

Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya's earlier than the other
guests.

At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky's footman, with
side-whiskers combed out like a _Kammerjunker_, went in too.
He stopped at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass.
Anna recognized him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had
told her the day before that he would not come. Most likely
he was sending a note to say so.

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the
footman, pronouncing his "r's" even like a _Kammerjunker_, say,
"From the count for the princess," and hand the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She
longed to turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or
to go herself to see him. But neither the first nor the second
nor the third course was possible. Already she heard bells
ringing to announce her arrival ahead of her, and Princess
Tverskaya's footman was standing at the open door waiting for her
to go forward into the inner rooms.

"The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately.
Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?" announced another
footman in another room.

The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as
at home--worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any
step, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among
outsiders, in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But
she was wearing a dress that she knew suited her. She was not
alone; all around was that luxurious setting of idleness that she
was used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She was
not forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done
of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown
that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her just as she
always did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch and
a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in
the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable
princess.

There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy
noticed it at once.

"I slept badly," answered Anna, looking intently at the footman
who came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky's
note.

"How glad I am you've come!" said Betsy. "I'm tired, and was
just longing to have some tea before they come. You might go"--
she turned to Tushkevitch--"with Masha, and try the croquet
ground over there where they've been cutting it. We shall have
time to talk a little over tea; we'll have a cozy chat, eh?" she
said in English to Anna, with a smile, pressing the hand with
which she held a parasol.

"Yes, especially as I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced
to go on to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a
century," said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her
nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but
a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she
had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained.
She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would
not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to
see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede,
whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people,
she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned
out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky,
she could have thought of nothing better.

"No. I'm not going to let you go for anything," answered Betsy,
looking intently into Anna's face. "Really, if I were not fond
of you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid
my society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining room,
please," she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when
addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

"Alexey's playing us false," she said in French; "he writes that
he can't come," she added in a tone as simple and natural as
though it could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean
anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that
Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky
before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew
nothing.

"Ah!" said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested
in the matter, and she went on smiling: "How can you or your
friends compromise anyone?"

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great
fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it
was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the
concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself
which attracted her.

"I can't be more Catholic than the Pope," she said. "Stremov
and Liza Merkalova, why, they're the cream of the cream of
society. Besides, they're received everywhere, and _I_"--she
laid special stress on the I--"have never been strict and
intolerant. It's simply that I haven't the time."

"No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and
Alexey Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee--
that's no affair of ours. But in the world, he's the most
amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet player. You shall see.
And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza's lovesick swain at
his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position.
He's very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don't know? Oh, that's a new
type, quite new."

Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her
good-humored, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed
her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They
were in the little boudoir.

"I must write to Alexey though," and Betsy sat down to the
table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.

"I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to
dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said,
will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a
minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?" she said
from the door; "I have to give some directions."

Without a moment's thought, Anna sat down to the table with
Betsy's letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: "It's
essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall
be there at six o'clock." She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming
back, in her presence handed the note to be taken.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool
little drawing room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya
before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between
the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting,
and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.

"She's very sweet, and I always liked her," said Anna.

"You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came
up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you.
She says you're a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a
man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov
says she does that as it is."

"But do tell me, please, I never could make it out," said Anna,
after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed
she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking
was of more importance to her than it should have been; "do tell
me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka,
as he's called? I've met them so little. What does it mean?"

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

"It's a new manner," she said. "They've all adopted that manner.
They've flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways
and ways of flinging them."

"Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?"

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible
laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her.

"You're encroaching on Princess Myakaya's special domain now.
That's the question of an _enfant terrible_," and Betsy obviously
tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals
of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh
often. "You'd better ask them," she brought out, between tears
of laughter.

"No; you laugh," said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself,
"but I never could understand it. I can't understand the
husband's role in it."

"The husband? Liza Merkalova's husband carries her shawl, and is
always ready to be of use. But anything more than that in
reality, no one cares to inquire. You know in decent society one
doesn't talk or think even of certain details of the toilet.
That's how it is with this."

"Will you be at Madame Rolandak's fete?" asked Anna, to change
the conversation.

"I don't think so," answered Betsy, and, without looking at her
friend, she began filling the little transparent cups with
fragrant tea. Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a
cigarette, and, fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it.

"It's like this, you see: I'm in a fortunate position," she
began, quite serious now, as she took up her cup. "I understand
you, and I understand Liza. Liza now is one of those naive
natures that, like children, don't know what's good and what's
bad. Anyway, she didn't comprehend it when she was very young.
And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension suits her.
Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with a
subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing,
don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a
misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously.
Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically."

"How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!"
said Anna, seriously and dreamily. "Am I worse than other
people, or better? I think I'm worse."

"_Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!_" repeated Betsy. "But here
they are."



Chapter 18


They heard the sound of steps and a man's voice, then a woman's
voice and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in
the expected guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with
excess of health, the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample
supplies of beefsteak, truffles, and Burgundy never failed to
reach him at the fitting hour. Vaska bowed to the two ladies,
and glanced at them, but only for one second. He walked after
Sappho into the drawing-room, and followed her about as though he
were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes fixed on her as
though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a blonde beauty
with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in
high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously
like a man.

Anna had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by
her beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was
carried, and the boldness of her manners. On her head there was
such a superstructure of soft, golden hair--her own and false
mixed--that her head was equal in size to the elegantly rounded
bust, of which so much was exposed in front. The impulsive
abruptness of her movements was such that at every step the lines
of her knees and the upper part of her legs were distinctly
marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose to
the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material
at the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so
naked in front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an
end.

Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.

"Only fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers," she began telling
them at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her
tail, which she flung back at one stroke all on one side. "I
drove here with Vaska.... Ah, to be sure, you don't know each
other." And mentioning his surname she introduced the young man,
and reddening a little, broke into a ringing laugh at her
mistake--that is, at her having called him Vaska to a stranger.
Vaska bowed once more to Anna, but he said nothing to her. He
addressed Sappho: "You've lost your bet. We got here first. Pay
up," said he, smiling.

Sappho laughed still more festively.

"Not just now," said she.

"Oh, all right, I'll have it later."

"Very well, very well. Oh, yes." She turned suddenly to
Princess Betsy: "I am a nice person...I positively forgot it...
I've brought you a visitor. And here he comes." The unexpected
young visitor, whom Sappho had invited, and whom she had
forgotten, was, however, a personage of such consequence that, in
spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on his entrance.

He was a new admirer of Sappho's. He now dogged her footsteps,
like Vaska.

Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with
Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental,
languid type of face, and--as everyone used to say--exquisite
enigmatic eyes. The tone of her dark dress (Anna immediately
observed and appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with
her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho
was smart and abrupt.

But to Anna's taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said
to Anna that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but
when Anna saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She
really was both innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive
woman. It is true that her tone was the same as Sappho's; that
like Sappho, she had two men, one young and one old, tacked onto
her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there was something
in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the
glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone
out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at
the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark
rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking
into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her,
could not but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face
lighted up at once with a smile of delight.

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, going up to her.
"Yesterday at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but
you'd gone away. I did so want to see you, yesterday especially.
Wasn't it awful?" she said, looking at Anna with eyes that seemed
to lay bare all her soul.

"Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling," said Anna,
blushing.

The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.

"I'm not going," said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to
Anna. "You won't go either, will you? Who wants to play
croquet?"

"Oh, I like it," said Anna.

"There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It's
delightful to look at you. You're alive, but I'm bored."

"How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in
Petersburg," said Anna.

"Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored;
but we--I certainly--are not happy, but awfully, awfully
bored."

Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two
young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.

"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy
themselves tremendously at your house last night."

"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove
back to my place after the races. And always the same people,
always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on
sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do
tell me how you manage never to be bored?" she said, addressing
Anna again. "One has but to look at you and one sees, here's a
woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored. Tell me how
you do it?"

"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching
questions.

"That's the best way," Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of
fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but
with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was
his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her.
On meeting Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy
in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the
world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his
enemy.