Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 158
1564 words | Chapter 158
As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had
been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the
least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting
back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while
understand why she was there. “Yes, it’s all over, and I am again
alone,” she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat
down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock
standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.
The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should
dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, “Presently.” A footman
offered her coffee. “Later on,” she said.
The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best, came in
with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little baby, on
seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands,
and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a
float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her
embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile,
not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to
clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a
lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all
this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed
her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this
child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her
could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha.
Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did
not go deep to her heart. On her first child, though the child of an
unloved father, had been concentrated all the love that had never found
satisfaction. Her baby girl had been born in the most painful
circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought
which had been concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little
girl everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now
almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him there was
a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he
judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes. And she was
forever—not physically only but spiritually—divided from him, and it
was impossible to set this right.
She gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and opened the locket
in which there was Seryozha’s portrait when he was almost of the same
age as the girl. She got up, and, taking off her hat, took up from a
little table an album in which there were photographs of her son at
different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began taking them out
of the album. She took them all out except one, the latest and best
photograph. In it he was in a white smock, sitting astride a chair,
with frowning eyes and smiling lips. It was his best, most
characteristic expression. With her little supple hands, her white,
delicate fingers, that moved with a peculiar intensity today, she
pulled at a corner of the photograph, but the photograph had caught
somewhere, and she could not get it out. There was no paper-knife on
the table, and so, pulling out the photograph that was next to her
son’s (it was a photograph of Vronsky taken at Rome in a round hat and
with long hair), she used it to push out her son’s photograph. “Oh,
here is he!” she said, glancing at the portrait of Vronsky, and she
suddenly recalled that he was the cause of her present misery. She had
not once thought of him all the morning. But now, coming all at once
upon that manly, noble face, so familiar and so dear to her, she felt a
sudden rush of love for him.
“But where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my misery?” she
thought all at once with a feeling of reproach, forgetting she had
herself kept from him everything concerning her son. She sent to ask
him to come to her immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited him,
rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell him all, and
the expressions of love with which he would console her. The messenger
returned with the answer that he had a visitor with him, but that he
would come immediately, and that he asked whether she would let him
bring with him Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in Petersburg.
“He’s not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday he has not seen me,”
she thought; “he’s not coming so that I could tell him everything, but
coming with Yashvin.” And all at once a strange idea came to her: what
if he had ceased to love her?
And going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that
she saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea. The fact
that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had
insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that
even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to
avoid meeting her face to face.
“But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew it,
then I know what I should do,” she said to herself, utterly unable to
picture to herself the position she would be in if she were convinced
of his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she
felt close upon despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert.
She rang for her maid and went to her dressing-room. As she dressed,
she took more care over her appearance than she had done all those
days, as though he might, if he had grown cold to her, fall in love
with her again because she had dressed and arranged her hair in the way
most becoming to her.
She heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she went into the
drawing-room it was not he, but Yashvin, who met her eyes. Vronsky was
looking through the photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on
the table, and he made no haste to look round at her.
“We have met already,” she said, putting her little hand into the huge
hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with
his immense frame and coarse face. “We met last year at the races. Give
them to me,” she said, with a rapid movement snatching from Vronsky the
photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him with flashing
eyes. “Were the races good this year? Instead of them I saw the races
in the Corso in Rome. But you don’t care for life abroad,” she said
with a cordial smile. “I know you and all your tastes, though I have
seen so little of you.”
“I’m awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly bad,” said
Yashvin, gnawing at his left mustache.
Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at the
clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying much longer in
Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.
“Not long, I think,” she said hesitatingly, glancing at Vronsky.
“So then we shan’t meet again?”
“Come and dine with me,” said Anna resolutely, angry it seemed with
herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she
defined her position before a fresh person. “The dinner here is not
good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends
in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.”
“Delighted,” said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see
that he liked Anna very much.
Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.
“Are you going too?” she said to him.
“I’m late already,” he answered. “Run along! I’ll catch you up in a
moment,” he called to Yashvin.
She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at
him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep
him.
“Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say to you,” and taking his
broad hand she pressed it on her neck. “Oh, was it right my asking him
to dinner?”
“You did quite right,” he said with a serene smile that showed his even
teeth, and he kissed her hand.
“Alexey, you have not changed to me?” she said, pressing his hand in
both of hers. “Alexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?”
“Soon, soon. You wouldn’t believe how disagreeable our way of living
here is to me too,” he said, and he drew away his hand.
“Well, go, go!” she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly
away from him.
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