Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 17
738 words | Chapter 17
Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her
youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life,
and still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole
fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been
educated in the Corps of Pages.
Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once
got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go
more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always
hitherto been outside it.
In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and
coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and
innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered
his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At
balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at
their house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all
sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a
special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he
could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming
more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better
he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know
that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite
character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of
marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common
among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was
the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his
discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he
could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have
heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would
have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could
not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and
above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed
that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not
only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was,
in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all,
ridiculous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were
saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ that the secret
spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much
stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could
and ought to be taken he could not imagine.
“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious
feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he
had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of
tenderness at her love for him—“what is so exquisite is that not a word
has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in
this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly
than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most
of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet,
loving eyes! When she said: ‘Indeed I do....’
“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.” And
he began wondering where to finish the evening.
He passed in review of the places he might go to. “Club? a game of
bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. _Château des
Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick
of it. That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better.
I’ll go home.” He went straight to his room at Dussots’ Hotel, ordered
supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow,
fell into a sound sleep.
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter