第196章

A handsome headwaiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upward, wearing an evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of watch charms dangling above his small bay window, stood with his hands in his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids, while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped still. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry toward the staircase, the headwaiter turned round, and, seeing the Russian Count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had come, and that the business about the palazzo had been arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.

`Ah! I'm glad to hear it,' said Vronsky. `Is Madame at home or not?'

`Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now,' answered the waiter.

Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And, glancing casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at him, he would have gone on.

`This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you,' said the headwaiter.

With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman, who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light came into the eyes of both.

`Golenishchev!'

`Vronsky!'

It really was Golenishchev, a comrade of Vronsky's in the Corps of Pages. In the Corps Golenishchev had belonged to the liberal party;he left the Corps without entering the army, and had never taken office under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways on leaving the Corps, and had only met once since.

At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishchev had taken up a sort of lofty intellectually liberal line, and was consequently disposed to look down upon Vronsky's interests and calling in life. Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: `You may like or dislike my ways of life, that's a matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect if you want to know me.' Golenishchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Vronsky. That meeting might have been expected to estrange them still more. But now they beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Vronsky would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishchev, but probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank delight held out his hand to his old comrade.

The same expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishchev's face.

`How glad I am to meet you!' said Vronsky, showing his strong white teeth in a friendly smile.

`I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm very, very glad!'

`Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing.'

`I've been living here for two years. I'm working.'

`Ah!' said Vronsky, with sympathy. `Let's go in.'

And with the habit common among Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.

`Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to see her now,' he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishchev's face.

`Ah, I did not know' (though he did know), Golenishchev answered carelessly. `Have you been here long?' he added.

`Three days,' Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend's face intently.

`Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,'

Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishchev's face and the change of subject. `I can introduce him to Anna - he looks at it properly.'

During the three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had met with the `proper' way of looking at it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it `properly' had been asked exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.

In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the `proper' view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled-for to put all this into words.

Vronsky at once divined that Golenishchev was of this class, and therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And, in fact, Golenishchev's manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.