‘Good-bye, my friend,’ the countess replied. ‘Let me kiss your pretty little face. I’ll tell you simply, directly, like an old woman, that I’ve come to love you.’
Trite as the phrase was, Mme Karenina evidently believed it with all her heart and was glad. She blushed, bent forward slightly, offering her face to the countess’s lips, straightened up again, and with the same smile wavering between her lips and eyes, gave her hand to Vronsky. He pressed the small hand offered him and was glad, as of something special, of her strong and boldly energetic handshake. She went out with a quick step, which carried her rather full body with such strange lightness.
‘Very sweet,’ said the old woman.
Her son was thinking the same. He followed her with his eyes until her graceful figure disappeared, and the smile stayed on his face. Through the window he saw her go up to her brother, put her hand on his arm, and begin animatedly telling him something that obviously had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and he found that vexing.
‘Well, so, maman, are you quite well?’ he repeated, turning to his mother.
‘Everything’s fine, excellent. Alexandre was very sweet. And Marie has become very pretty. She’s very interesting.’
Again she began to talk about what interested her most - her grandson’s baptism, for which she had gone to Petersburg - and about the special favour the emperor had shown her older son.
‘And here’s Lavrenty!’ said Vronsky, looking out the window. ‘We can go now, if you like.’
The old butler, who had come with the countess, entered the carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to leave.
‘Let’s go, there are fewer people now,’ said Vronsky.
The maid took the bag and the lapdog, the butler and a porter the other bags. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but as they were getting out of the carriage, several men with frightened faces suddenly ran past. The stationmaster, in a peaked cap of an extraordinary colour, also ran past.
Evidently something extraordinary had happened. People who had left the train were running back.
‘What? ... What? ... Where? ... Threw himself! ... run over! ...’ could be heard among those passing by.
Stepan Arkadyich, with his sister on his arm, their faces also frightened, came back and stood by the door of the carriage, out of the crowd’s way.
The ladies got into the carriage, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyich went after the people to find out the details of the accident.
A watchman, either drunk or too bundled up because of the freezing cold, had not heard a train being shunted and had been run over.
Even before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back, the ladies had learned these details from the butler.
Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mangled corpse. Oblonsky was obviously suffering. He winced and seemed ready to cry.
‘Ah, how terrible! Ah, Anna, if you’d seen it! Ah, how terrible!’ he kept saying.
Vronsky was silent, and his handsome face was serious but perfectly calm.
‘Ah, if you’d seen it, Countess,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘And his wife is here ... It was terrible to see her ... She threw herself on the body. They say he was the sole provider for a huge family.32 It’s terrible!’
‘Can nothing be done for her?’ Mme Karenina said in an agitated whisper.
Vronsky glanced at her and at once left the carriage.
‘I’ll be right back, maman,’ he added, turning at the door.
When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyich was already talking with the countess about a new soprano, while the countess kept glancing impatiently at the door, waiting for her son.
‘Let’s go now,’ said Vronsky, entering.
They went out together. Vronsky walked ahead with his mother. Behind came Mme Karenina with her brother. At the exit, the stationmaster overtook Vronsky and came up to him.
‘You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you be so kind as to designate whom they are meant for?’
‘For the widow,’ Vronsky said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t see any need to ask.’
‘You gave it?’ Oblonsky cried behind him and, pressing his sister’s hand, added: ‘Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a fine fellow? My respects, Countess.’
And he and his sister stopped, looking around for her maid.
When they came out, the Vronskys’ carriage had already driven off. The people coming out were still talking about what had happened.
‘What a terrible death!’ said some gentleman passing by. ‘Cut in two pieces, they say.’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest, it’s instantaneous,’ observed another.
‘How is it they don’t take measures?’ said a third.
Mme Karenina got into the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyich saw with surprise that her lips were trembling and she could hardly keep back her tears.
‘What is it, Anna?’ he asked, when they had driven several hundred yards.
‘A bad omen,’ she said.
‘What nonsense!’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘You’ve come, that’s the main thing. You can’t imagine what hopes I have in you.’
‘Have you known Vronsky for long?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You know, we hope he’s going to marry Kitty.’
‘Oh?’ Anna said softly. ‘Well, now let’s talk about you,’ she added, tossing her head as if she wanted physically to drive away something superfluous that was bothering her. ‘Let’s talk about your affairs. I got your letter and here I am.’
‘Yes, you’re my only hope,’ said Stepan Arkadyich.
‘Well, tell me everything.’
And Stepan Arkadyich started telling.
Driving up to the house, Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and went to his office.
XIX
When Anna came in, Dolly was sitting in the small drawing room with a plump, tow-headed boy who already resembled his father, listening as he recited a French lesson. The boy was reading, his hand twisting and trying to tear off the barely attached button of his jacket. His mother took his hand away several times, but the plump little hand would take hold of the button again. His mother tore the button off and put it in her pocket.
‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’ she said, and went back to knitting a blanket, her handwork from long ago, which she always took up in difficult moments; she was now knitting nervously, flicking the stitches over with her finger and counting them. Though yesterday she had sent word to her husband that she did not care whether his sister came or not, she had everything ready for her arrival and was excitedly awaiting her.
Dolly was crushed by her grief and totally consumed by it. Nevertheless she remembered that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the most important people in Petersburg and a Petersburg grande dame. And owing to this circumstance, she did not act on what she had said to her husband, that is, did not forget that Anna was coming. ‘After all, she’s not guilty of anything,’ thought Dolly. ‘I know nothing but the very best about her, and with regard to myself, I’ve seen only kindness and friendship from her.’ True, as far as she could remember her impression of the Karenins’ house in Petersburg, she had not liked it; there was something false in the whole shape of their family life. ‘But why shouldn’t I receive her? As long as she doesn’t try to console me!’ thought Dolly. ‘All these consolations and exhortations and Christian forgivenesses - I’ ve already thought of it all a thousand times, and it’s no good.’
All those days Dolly was alone with her children. She did not want to talk about her grief, and with this grief in her soul she could not talk about irrelevancies. She knew that one way or another she would tell Anna everything, and her joy at the thought of how she would tell her everything alternated with anger at the need to speak about her humiliation with her, his sister, and to hear ready-made phrases of exhortation and consolation from her.