Just as all the participants were summoned to the pavilion to receive their prizes and everyone turned there, Vronsky’s older brother, Alexander, a colonel with aiguillettes, of medium height, as stocky as Alexei but more handsome and ruddy, with a red nose and a drunken, open face, came up to him.
‘Did you get my note?’ he said. ‘You’re impossible to find.’
Alexander Vronsky, despite the dissolute and, in particular, drunken life he was known for, was a perfect courtier.
Now, talking with his brother about something very disagreeable for him, and knowing that the eyes of many might be directed at them, he had a smiling look, as if he were joking about some unimportant matter.
‘I did, and I really don’t understand what
‘I’m worried about this - that it was just observed to me that you were not here and that on Monday you were seen in Peterhof.’
‘There are matters that may be discussed only by those directly involved, and the matter you are worried about is such a ...’
‘Yes, but then don’t stay in the service, don’t ...’
‘I ask you not to interfere, that’s all.’
Alexei Vronsky’s frowning face paled and his jutting lower jaw twitched, something that seldom happened to him. Being a man with a very kind heart, he seldom got angry, but when he did, and when his chin twitched, he could be dangerous, as his brother knew. Alexander Vronsky smiled gaily.
‘I only wanted to give you mother’s letter. Answer her and don’t get upset before the race.
But just then another friendly greeting stopped Vronsky.
‘You don’t want to know your friends! Good afternoon,
‘Come to the officers’ mess tomorrow,’ Vronsky said and, pressing his sleeve apologetically, walked to the middle of the racetrack, where the horses were already being brought for the big steeplechase.
Sweating horses, exhausted from racing, were led home accompanied by grooms, and new ones appeared one after the other for the forthcoming race - fresh, for the most part English, horses, in hoods, their bellies tightly girt, looking like strange, huge birds. On the right the lean beauty Frou-Frou was brought in, stepping on her supple and rather long pasterns as if on springs. Not far from her the cloth was being taken off the big-eared Gladiator. Vronsky’s attention was inadvertently drawn to the stallion’s large, exquisite, perfectly regular forms, with wonderful hindquarters and unusually short pasterns, sitting just over the hoof. He wanted to go to his horse but again was stopped by an acquaintance.
‘Ah, there’s Karenin,’ the acquaintance with whom he was talking said to him. ‘Looking for his wife, and she’s in the central pavilion. You haven’t seen her?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Vronsky replied and, not even glancing at the pavilion in which he had been told Anna was, he went over to his horse.
Vronsky had just managed to inspect the saddle, about which he had to give some instructions, when the participants were summoned to the pavilion to draw numbers and start. With serious, stern faces, many of them pale, seventeen officers gathered at the pavilion and each took a number. Vronsky got number seven. The call came: ‘Mount!’
Feeling that he and the other riders were the centre towards which all eyes were turned, Vronsky, in a state of tension, which usually made him slow and calm of movement, approached his horse. In honour of the races, Cord had put on his gala outfit: a black, high-buttoned frock coat, a stiffly starched collar propping up his cheeks, a black Derby hat and top-boots. He was calm and imposing, as always, and held the horse himself by both sides of the bridle, standing in front of her. Frou-Frou continued to tremble as in a fever. Her fire-filled eye looked askance at the approaching Vronsky. Vronsky slipped a finger under the girth. The horse looked still more askance, bared her teeth, and flattened one ear. The Englishman puckered his lips, wishing to show a smile at his saddling being checked.
‘Mount up, you’ll be less excited.’
