And the son, just like the husband, produced in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to descend into reality to enjoy him as he was. But he was charming even as he was, with his blond curls, blue eyes and full, shapely legs in tight-fitting stockings. Anna experienced almost a physical pleasure in the feeling of his closeness and caress, and a moral ease when she met his simple-hearted, trusting and loving eyes and heard his naive questions. She took out the presents that Dolly’s children had sent and told her son about the girl Tanya in Moscow and how this Tanya knew how to read and even taught the other children.
‘And am I worse than she is?’ asked Seryozha.
‘For me you’re the best in the world.’
‘I know that,’ said Seryozha, smiling.
Before Anna had time to have coffee, Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. Countess Lydia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman with an unhealthy yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive dark eyes. Anna loved her, but today she saw her as if for the first time with all her shortcomings.
‘Well, my friend, did you bear the olive branch?’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna asked as soon as she came into the room.
‘Yes, it’s all over, but it was not as important as we thought,’ Anna replied. ‘Generally, my
But Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had the habit of never listening to what interested her. She interrupted Anna:
‘Yes, there is much woe and wickedness in the world - but I’m so exhausted today.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Anna, trying to repress a smile.
‘I’m beginning to weary of breaking lances for the truth in vain, and sometimes I go quite to pieces. The business with the little sisters’ (this was a philanthropic, religious and patriotic institution) ‘would have gone splendidly, but it’s impossible to do anything with these gentlemen,‘ Countess Lydia Ivanovna added in mock submission to her fate. ‘They seized on the idea, distorted it, and now discuss it in such a petty, worthless fashion. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand the full significance of this business, but the others only demean it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me ...’
Pravdin was a well-known Pan-Slavist42 who lived abroad. Countess Lydia Ivanovna proceeded to recount the contents of his letter.
Then she told of further troubles and schemes against the cause of Church unity and left hurriedly, because that afternoon she still had to attend a meeting of some society and then of the Slavic committee.
‘All this was there before; but why didn’t I notice it before?’ Anna said to herself. ‘Or is she very irritated today? In fact, it’s ridiculous: her goal is virtue, she’s a Christian, yet she’s angry all the time, and they’re all her enemies, and they’re all enemies on account of Christianity and virtue.’
After Countess Lydia Ivanovna had left, an acquaintance came, the wife of a director, and told her all the news about town. At three o‘clock she also left, promising to come for dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich was at the ministry. Finding herself alone, Anna spent the time before dinner sitting with her son while he ate (he dined separately), putting her things in order and reading and answering the notes and letters that had accumulated on her desk.
Her agitation and the sense of groundless shame she had experienced during the journey disappeared completely. In the accustomed conditions of her life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable.
She recalled with astonishment her state yesterday. ‘What happened? Nothing. Vronsky said a foolish thing, which it was easy to put an end to, and I replied as I ought to have done. To speak of it with my husband is unnecessary and impossible. To speak of it - would mean giving importance to something that has none.’ She recalled how she had told him of a near declaration that one of her husband’s young subordinates had made to her in Petersburg, and how Alexei Alexandrovich had replied that, living in society, any woman may be subject to such things, but that he fully trusted her tact and would never allow either himself or her to be demeaned by jealousy. ‘So there’s no reason to tell him? Yes, thank God, and there’s nothing to tell,’ she said to herself.
XXXIII
