When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’ balcony, he was so agitated and preoccupied by his thoughts that he saw the hands on the face, but could not grasp what time it was. He went out to the road and walked to his carriage, stepping carefully through the mud. He was so full of his feeling for Anna that he did not even think what time it was and whether he could still manage to get to Briansky’s. He was left, as often happens, with only the external faculty of memory, which indicated what was to be done after what. He came up to his coachman, who had dozed off on the box in the already slanting shade of a thick linden, admired the iridescent columns of flies hovering over the sweaty horses and, waking the coachman, told him to go to Briansky’s. Only after driving some four miles did he recover sufficiently to look at his watch and grasp that it was half-past five and he was late.
There were to be several races that day: a convoys’ race, then the officers’ mile-and-a-half, the three-mile, and the race in which he would ride. He could make it to his race, but if he went to Briansky‘s, he would come barely in time and when the whole court was there. That was not good. But he had given Briansky his word that he would come and therefore decided to keep going, telling the coachman not to spare the troika.
He arrived at Briansky‘s, spent five minutes with him, and galloped back. This quick drive calmed him down. All the difficulty of his relations with Anna, all the uncertainty remaining after their conversation, left his head; with excitement and delight he now thought of the races, of how he would arrive in time after all, and every now and then the expectation of the happiness of that night’s meeting flashed like a bright light in his imagination.
The feeling of the coming races took hold of him more and more the further he drove into their atmosphere, overtaking the carriages of those driving to the course from their country houses or Petersburg.
There was no one at his quarters by then: they had all gone to the races, and his footman was waiting for him at the gate. While he was changing, the footman told him that the second race had already started, that many gentlemen had come asking for him, and the boy had come running twice from the stable.
After changing unhurriedly (he never hurried or lost his self-control), Vronsky gave orders to drive to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of carriages, pedestrians, soldiers surrounding the racetrack and pavilions seething with people. The second race was probably under way, because he heard the bell just as he entered the shed. As he neared the stables, he met Makhotin’s white-legged chestnut Gladiator, being led to the racetrack in an orange and blue horse-cloth, his ears, as if trimmed with blue, looking enormous.
‘Where’s Cord?’ he asked the stableman.
‘In the stables, saddling up.’
The stall was open, and Frou-Frou was already saddled. They were about to bring her out.
‘Am I late?’
‘All right, all right! Everything’s in order, everything’s in order,’ said the Englishman, ‘don’t get excited.’
Vronsky cast a glance once more over the exquisite, beloved forms of the horse, whose whole body was trembling, and tearing himself with difficulty from this sight, walked out of the shed. He drove up to the pavilions at the best time for not attracting anyone’s attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just ending, and all eyes were turned to the horse-guard in the lead and the life-hussar behind him, urging their horses on with their last strength and nearing the post. Everyone was crowding towards the post from inside and outside the ring, and a group of soldiers and officers of the horse-guards shouted loudly with joy at the anticipated triumph of their officer and comrade. Vronsky slipped inconspicuously into the midst of the crowd almost at the moment when the bell ending the race rang out, and the tall, mud-spattered horse-guard, who came in first, lowering himself into the saddle, began to ease up on the reins of his grey, sweat-darkened, heavily breathing stallion.
The stallion, digging his feet in with an effort, slackened the quick pace of his big body, and the horse-guard officer, like a man awakening from a deep sleep, looked around and smiled with difficulty. A crowd of friends and strangers surrounded him.
Vronsky deliberately avoided that select high-society crowd which moved and talked with restrained freedom in front of the pavilions. He could see that Anna was there, and Betsy, and his brother’s wife, but he purposely did not approach them, so as not to become diverted. But the acquaintances he met constantly stopped him, telling details of the earlier races and asking why he was late.
