And he and his sister stopped to look for her maid.
When they came out of the station, the Vronskys’ carriage had already departed. People coming out of the station were still talking about what had happened.
‘What a terrible way to die!’ said a gentleman walking past. ‘He was sliced in two, they say.’
‘On the contrary, I think it was the easiest, as it was instantaneous,’ said another.
‘They ought to take precautions,’ said a third.
Karenina settled into the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyich saw with surprise that her lips were trembling, and that she was finding it difficult to hold back her tears.
‘What’s the matter, Anna?’ he asked when they had travelled a few hundred yards.
‘It’s a bad omen,’ she said.
‘What nonsense!’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘You have come, that’s the main thing. You can’t imagine how much I am counting on you.’
‘So have you known Vronsky long?’
‘Yes. We are hoping he is going to marry Kitty, you know.’
‘Really?’ said Anna quietly. ‘Well, let’s talk about you now,’ she added, shaking her head as if she wanted physically to banish something extraneous which was bothering her. ‘Let’s talk about your affairs. I received your letter, and here I am.’
‘Yes, all my hopes are pinned on you,’ said Stepan Arkadyich.
‘Well, come on then, tell me everything.’
And Stepan Arkadyich started recounting what had happened.
When they arrived at the house, Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and set off to go to work.
1 ‘You are living love’s dream. So much the better, my dear, so much the better.’
19
WHEN Anna came in, Dolly was sitting in the small drawing room with a fair-haired, chubby little boy who already resembled his father, listening to his French reading lesson. As he was reading, the boy was twisting a button hanging from his jacket and trying to pull it off. His mother had pulled his hand away several times, but the chubby little hand kept reaching for the button. His mother tore off the button and put it in her pocket.
‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’ she said, and went back to her blanket, an old piece of work she always took up at difficult moments and now was knitting nervously, her finger thrust out as she counted stitches. Although the previous day she had instructed her husband to be told that it was no concern of hers whether his sister came or not, she had still prepared everything for her arrival, and had been awaiting her sister-in-law with trepidation.
Dolly was shattered by her grief, utterly consumed by it. But she remembered that her sister-in-law Anna was the wife of one of the most prominent figures in Petersburg and a Petersburg grande dame. As a result of this circumstance she had not gone through with what she had told her husband, that is, she had not forgotten that her sister-in-law was coming. ‘Well, after all, Anna is not to blame for anything,’ thought Dolly. ‘I have no reason to think anything other than the very best about her, and I have only seen her show kindness and friendship towards me.’ It was true that, from what she could remember of her impression of visiting the Karenins in Petersburg, she had not liked their house itself; there was something false in the whole cast of their family life. ‘But why should I not receive her? Just as long as she doesn’t try and console me!’ thought Dolly. ‘All those consolations and admonitions and acts of Christian forgiveness—I have gone over it all a thousand times, and none of it’s any good.’
Dolly had been alone with the children these last days. She did not want to talk about her grief, but she could not talk about anything else with that grief in her heart. She knew that she would end up telling Anna everything, one way or another, and while she relished the prospect of being able to tell her, she was also angry about having to discuss her humiliation with her, his sister, and hear from her the stock phrases of admonition and consolation.
As often happens, she had kept glancing at the clock, awaiting her arrival every minute, but then missed the actual moment of her guest’s arrival, so did not hear the bell.
When she heard the rustle of a dress and light footsteps already in the doorway, she looked round, and her careworn face could not help expressing surprise rather than joy. She rose and embraced her sister-in-law.
‘What, you’re here already?’ she said, kissing her.
‘Dolly, how glad I am to see you!’
‘I am glad too,’ said Dolly, smiling wanly as she tried to work out from the expression on Anna’s face whether she knew. ‘She must know,’ she thought, noticing the sympathy on Anna’s face. ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ she continued, trying to put off as long as possible the moment of explanation.
‘Is this Grisha? Goodness me, how he’s grown!’ said Anna, and after kissing him, with her eyes still fastened on Dolly, she stopped and blushed. ‘No, let’s not go anywhere.’
She took off her scarf, and her hat, and shook her head to disentangle a lock of her abundantly curly black hair which had got caught in it.
‘Well, you are glowing with happiness and health!’ said Dolly, almost with envy.
‘I am? … Yes,’ said Anna. ‘Goodness me. Tanya! She’s the same age as my Seryozha,’ she added, turning to the little girl who had come running in. She took her in her arms and kissed her. ‘A lovely girl, lovely! Show them all to me.’
She identified them all, and remembered not just their names, but the year and month in which they were born, their characters, and their various ailments, and Dolly could not but appreciate this.
‘Well, let’s go and see them,’ she said. ‘Vasya is asleep at the moment, which is a pity.’
After they had inspected the children, they sat down to coffee in the drawing room, alone now. Anna took hold of the tray and then moved it to one side.
‘Dolly,’ she said, ‘he told me.’
Dolly looked coldly at Anna. She was waiting now for the phrases of feigned compassion, but Anna said nothing of the kind.
‘Dolly, my dear!’ she said, ‘I don’t want to speak to you on his behalf, or console you; that’s impossible. But I’m just sorry for you, darling, sorry with all my heart!’
Tears suddenly started from behind the thick lashes of her shining eyes. She sat down closer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her own energetic small hand. Dolly did not move away, but her face did not change its stiff expression. She said:
‘Nothing can console me. Everything is finished after what has gone on, everything is ruined!’
And as soon as she said this, the expression on her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted up Dolly’s dry thin hand, kissed it, and said:
‘But Dolly, what is to be done, what is to be done? What is the best thing to do in this terrible situation? That’s what we need to think about.’
‘It is all over, and there is nothing that can be done,’ said Dolly. ‘And the worst thing of all, you understand, is that I cannot leave him; there’s the children, I’m tied. But I cannot live with him, it’s torture for me to see him.’
‘Dolly, sweetheart, he has talked to me, but I want to hear from you, tell me everything.’
Dolly looked at her quizzically.
Anna’s face showed unfeigned concern and love.
‘All right,’ she said suddenly. ‘But I’ll have to start at the beginning. You know how I got married. With the upbringing I had from Maman, I was not only innocent, but stupid too. I didn’t know anything. They say that men tell their wives about their previous lives, I know, but Stiva …’ she corrected herself, ‘Stepan Arkadyich did not tell me anything. You won’t believe this, but up until now I had thought that I was the only woman he had known. I lived like that for eight years. I not only did not suspect him of being unfaithful, you understand, but I considered it inconceivable, and then, just imagine me having those ideas and suddenly discovering all the horror, all the filth … You have to understand. To be completely secure in my happiness, and suddenly …’ Dolly continued, trying to stop herself sobbing, ‘to stumble across a letter … A letter he wrote to his lover, to my governess. No, it’s just too awful!’ She hurriedly took out a handkerchief and covered her face with it. ‘I can even understand an infatuation,’ she continued after a pause, ‘but to deceive me deliberately, cunningly … and with whom? … To go on being my husband together with her … it’s awful! You can’t understand …’