‘What else!’ said Vronsky, smiling gaily and pressing the baroness’s little hand. ‘We’re old friends!’
‘You’re back from a trip,’ said the baroness, ‘so I’ll run off. Oh, I’ll leave this very minute if I’m in the way.’
‘You’re at home right where you are, Baroness,’ said Vronsky. ‘Good day, Kamerovsky,’ he added, coldly shaking Kamerovsky’s hand.
‘See, and you never know how to say such pretty things.’ The baroness turned to Petritsky.
‘No? Why not? I’ll do no worse after dinner.’
‘After dinner there’s no virtue in it! Well, then I’ll give you some coffee, go wash and tidy yourself up,’ said the baroness, sitting down again and carefully turning a screw in the new coffeepot. ‘Pass me the coffee, Pierre.’ She turned to Petritsky, whom she called Pierre after his last name, not concealing her relations with him. ‘I’ll add some more.’
‘You’ll spoil it.’
‘No, I won’t! Well, and your wife?’ the baroness said suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. ‘We’ve got you married here. Did you bring your wife?’
‘No, Baroness. I was born a gypsy and I’ll die a gypsy.’
‘So much the better, so much the better. Give me your hand.’
And the baroness, without letting go of Vronsky’s hand, began telling him her latest plans for her life, interspersing it with jokes, and asking for his advice.
‘He keeps refusing to grant me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?’ (‘He’ was her husband.) ‘I want to start proceedings. How would you advise me? Kamerovsky, keep an eye on the coffee, it’s boiling over — you can see I’m busy! I want proceedings, because I need my fortune. Do you understand this stupidity - that I’m supposedly unfaithful to him,’ she said with scorn, ‘and so he wants to have use of my estate?’
Vronsky listened with pleasure to this merry prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave half-jocular advice, and generally adopted his habitual tone in dealing with women of her kind. In his Petersburg world, all people were divided into two completely opposite sorts. One was the inferior sort: the banal, stupid and, above all, ridiculous people who believed that one husband should live with one wife, whom he has married in church, that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, a man manly, temperate and firm, that one should raise children, earn one’s bread, pay one’s debts, and other such stupidities. This was an old-fashioned and ridiculous sort of people. But there was another sort of people, the real ones, to which they all belonged, and for whom one had, above all, to be elegant, handsome, magnanimous, bold, gay, to give oneself to every passion without blushing and laugh at everything else.
Vronsky was stunned only for the first moment, after the impressions of a completely different world that he had brought from Moscow; but at once, as if putting his feet into old slippers, he stepped back into his former gay and pleasant world.
The coffee never got made, but splashed on everything and boiled over and produced precisely what was needed - that is, gave an excuse for noise and laughter, spilling on the expensive carpet and the baroness’s dress.
‘Well, good-bye now, or else you’ll never get washed, and I’ll have on my conscience the worst crime of a decent person - uncleanliness. So your advice is a knife at his throat?’
‘Absolutely, and with your little hand close to his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end well,’ Vronsky replied.
‘Tonight, then, at the French Theatre!’ And she disappeared, her dress rustling.
Kamerovsky also stood up, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to leave, gave him his hand and went to his dressing room. While he washed, Petritsky described his own situation in a few strokes, to the extent that it had changed since Vronsky’s departure. Of money there was none. His father said he would not give him any, nor pay his debts. One tailor wanted to have him locked up, and the other was also threatening to have him locked up without fail. The commander of the regiment announced that if these scandals did not stop, he would have to resign. He was fed up with the baroness, especially since she kept wanting to give him money; but there was one, he would show her to Vronsky, a wonder, a delight, in the severe Levantine style, the ‘slave-girl Rebecca genre,44 you know’. He had also quarrelled yesterday with Berkoshev, who wanted to send his seconds, but surely nothing would come of that. Generally, everything was excellent and extremely jolly. And, not letting his friend go deeper into the details of his situation, Petritsky started telling him all the interesting news. Listening to his so-familiar stories, in the so-familiar surroundings of his apartment of three years, Vronsky experienced the pleasant feeling of returning to his accustomed and carefree Petersburg life.
‘It can’t be!’ he cried, releasing the pedal of the washstand from which water poured over his robust red neck. ‘It can’t be!’ he cried at the news that Laura was now with Mileev and had dropped Fertinhoff. ‘And he’s still just as stupid and content? Well, and what about Buzulukov?’
‘Ah, there was a story with Buzulukov - lovely!’ cried Petritsky. ‘He has this passion for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. So he went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very good, much lighter. There he stands ... No, listen.’
‘I am listening,’ Vronsky replied, rubbing himself with a Turkish towel.
‘The grand duchess passes by with some ambassador, and, as luck would have it, they begin talking about the new helmets. So the grand duchess wants to show him a new helmet ... They see our dear fellow standing there.’ (Petritsky showed how he was standing there with his helmet.) ‘The grand duchess tells him to hand her the helmet - he won’t do it. What’s the matter? They wink at him, nod, frown. Hand it over. He won’t. He freezes. Can you imagine? ... Then that one ... what’s his name ... wants to take the helmet from him ... he won’t let go! ... He tears it away, hands it to the grand duchess. “Here’s the new helmet,” says the grand duchess. She turns it over and, can you imagine, out of it - bang! - falls a pear and some sweets - two pounds of sweets! ... He had it all stashed away, the dear fellow!’
Vronsky rocked with laughter. And for a long time afterwards, talking about other things, he would go off into his robust laughter, exposing a solid row of strong teeth, when he remembered about the helmet.
Having learned all the news, Vronsky, with the help of his footman, put on his uniform and went to report. After reporting, he intended to call on his brother, then on Betsy, and then to pay several visits, so that he could begin to appear in the society where he might meet Anna. As always in Petersburg, he left home not to return till late at night.
Part Two
I
At the end of winter a consultation took place in the Shcherbatsky home, which was to decide on the state of Kitty’s health and what must be undertaken to restore her failing strength. She was ill, and as spring approached her health was growing worse. The family doctor gave her cod-liver oil, then iron, then common caustic, but as neither the one nor the other nor the third was of any help, and as he advised going abroad for the spring, a famous doctor was called in. The famous doctor, not yet old and quite a handsome man, asked to examine the patient. With particular pleasure, it seemed, he insisted that maidenly modesty was merely a relic of barbarism and that nothing was more natural than for a not-yet-old man to palpate a naked young girl. He found it natural because he did it every day and never, as it seemed to him, felt or thought anything bad, and therefore he regarded modesty in a girl not only as a relic of barbarism but also as an affront to himself.