By addressing his wife in this way, he made it clear to Vronsky that he wished to be left alone, and, turning to him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky addressed Anna Arkadyevna:
‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.
Alexei Alexandrovich looked at Vronsky with his weary eyes.
‘I’d be delighted,’ he said coldly, ‘we receive on Mondays.’ Then, having dismissed Vronsky altogether, he said to his wife: ‘And how good it is that I had precisely half an hour to meet you and that I have been able to show you my tenderness,’ continuing in the same bantering tone.
‘You emphasize your tenderness far too much for me to value it greatly,’ she said in the same bantering tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps behind them. ‘But what do I care?’ she thought and began asking her husband how Seryozha had spent the time without her.
‘Oh, wonderfully! Mariette says he was very nice and ... I must upset you ... didn’t miss you, unlike your husband. But merci once again, my dear, for the gift of one day. Our dear samovar will be delighted.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna ‘samovar’, because she was always getting excited and heated up about things.) ‘She’s been asking about you. And you know, if I may be so bold as to advise you, you might just go to see her today. She takes everything to heart so. Now, besides all her other troubles, she’s concerned with reconciling the Oblonskys.’
Countess Lydia Ivanovna was her husband’s friend and the centre of one of the circles of Petersburg society with which Anna was most closely connected through her husband.
‘I did write to her.’
‘But she needs everything in detail. Go, if you’re not tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, and I’m off to the committee. I won’t be alone at dinner any more,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on, no longer in a bantering tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how I’ve got used to ...’
And, pressing her hand for a long time, with a special smile, he helped her into the carriage.
XXXII
The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He came running down the stairs to her, despite the cries of the governess, and with desperate rapture shouted: ‘Mama, mama!’ Rushing to her, he hung on her neck.
‘I told you it was mama!’ he cried to the governess. ‘I knew it!’
And the son, just like the husband, produced in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to descend into reality to enjoy him as he was. But he was charming even as he was, with his blond curls, blue eyes and full, shapely legs in tight-fitting stockings. Anna experienced almost a physical pleasure in the feeling of his closeness and caress, and a moral ease when she met his simple-hearted, trusting and loving eyes and heard his naive questions. She took out the presents that Dolly’s children had sent and told her son about the girl Tanya in Moscow and how this Tanya knew how to read and even taught the other children.
‘And am I worse than she is?’ asked Seryozha.
‘For me you’re the best in the world.’
‘I know that,’ said Seryozha, smiling.
Before Anna had time to have coffee, Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. Countess Lydia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman with an unhealthy yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive dark eyes. Anna loved her, but today she saw her as if for the first time with all her shortcomings.
‘Well, my friend, did you bear the olive branch?’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna asked as soon as she came into the room.
‘Yes, it’s all over, but it was not as important as we thought,’ Anna replied. ‘Generally, my belle-soeur is too headstrong.’
But Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had the habit of never listening to what interested her. She interrupted Anna:
‘Yes, there is much woe and wickedness in the world - but I’m so exhausted today.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Anna, trying to repress a smile.
‘I’m beginning to weary of breaking lances for the truth in vain, and sometimes I go quite to pieces. The business with the little sisters’ (this was a philanthropic, religious and patriotic institution) ‘would have gone splendidly, but it’s impossible to do anything with these gentlemen,‘ Countess Lydia Ivanovna added in mock submission to her fate. ‘They seized on the idea, distorted it, and now discuss it in such a petty, worthless fashion. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand the full significance of this business, but the others only demean it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me ...’
Pravdin was a well-known Pan-Slavist42 who lived abroad. Countess Lydia Ivanovna proceeded to recount the contents of his letter.
Then she told of further troubles and schemes against the cause of Church unity and left hurriedly, because that afternoon she still had to attend a meeting of some society and then of the Slavic committee.
‘All this was there before; but why didn’t I notice it before?’ Anna said to herself. ‘Or is she very irritated today? In fact, it’s ridiculous: her goal is virtue, she’s a Christian, yet she’s angry all the time, and they’re all her enemies, and they’re all enemies on account of Christianity and virtue.’
After Countess Lydia Ivanovna had left, an acquaintance came, the wife of a director, and told her all the news about town. At three o‘clock she also left, promising to come for dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich was at the ministry. Finding herself alone, Anna spent the time before dinner sitting with her son while he ate (he dined separately), putting her things in order and reading and answering the notes and letters that had accumulated on her desk.
Her agitation and the sense of groundless shame she had experienced during the journey disappeared completely. In the accustomed conditions of her life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable.
She recalled with astonishment her state yesterday. ‘What happened? Nothing. Vronsky said a foolish thing, which it was easy to put an end to, and I replied as I ought to have done. To speak of it with my husband is unnecessary and impossible. To speak of it - would mean giving importance to something that has none.’ She recalled how she had told him of a near declaration that one of her husband’s young subordinates had made to her in Petersburg, and how Alexei Alexandrovich had replied that, living in society, any woman may be subject to such things, but that he fully trusted her tact and would never allow either himself or her to be demeaned by jealousy. ‘So there’s no reason to tell him? Yes, thank God, and there’s nothing to tell,’ she said to herself.
XXXIII
Alexei Alexandrovich returned from the ministry at four o‘clock, but, as often happened, had no time to go to her room. He proceeded to his study to receive the waiting petitioners and sign some papers brought by the office manager. At dinner (three or four people always dined with the Karenins) there were Alexei Alexandrovich’s elderly female cousin, the department director and his wife and a young man recommended to Alexei Alexandrovich at work. Anna came out to the drawing room to entertain them. At exactly five o’clock, before the Peter-the-Great bronze clock struck for the fifth time, Alexei Alexandrovich came out in a white tie and a tailcoat with two stars, because he had to leave right after dinner. Every minute of Alexei Alexandrovich’s life was occupied and scheduled. And in order to have time to do what he had to do each day, he held to the strictest punctuality. ‘Without haste and without rest’ was his motto. He entered the room, bowed to everyone, and hastily sat down, smiling at his wife.