第46章

Anna had scarcely drunk her coffee when the Countess Lidia Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, fleshy woman, with an unwholesomely yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but today she seemed, for the first time, to see her with all her shortcomings.

`Well, my friend, were you the bearer of the olive branch?' asked Countess Lidia Ivanovna, the minute she entered the room.

`Yes, it's all over, but it was not at all as serious as we thought,'

answered Anna. `My belle-soeur is, in general, much too categorical.'

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she interrupted Anna:

`Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world - and I am so fatigued today!'

`Oh, why?' asked Anna, trying to repress a smile.

`I'm beginning to weary of vainly breaking lances for the truth, and at times I'm altogether unstrung. The affair with our Dear Sisters [this was a religiously patriotic, philanthropic institution] started off splendidly, but it's impossible to do anything with such people,' added Countess Lidia Ivanovna, with a mocking submissiveness to fate. `They pounced on the idea, and mangled it, and afterward they thrash it out so pettily and trivially. Two or three people, your husband among them, grasp all the significance of this affair but the others merely degrade it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me...'

Pravdin was a well-known Pan-Slavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna told the gist of his letter.

Next the Countess spoke of other unpleasantnesses and intrigues against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, since that day she had to attend the meeting of another society, and also a Slavonic committee.

`All this is as it has always been; but how is it I didn't notice it before?' Anna asked herself. `Or has she been very much irritated today?

It's really ludicrous: her object is to do good; she's a Christian; yet she's forever angry, and forever having enemies - and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.'

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a director of the Department, who told her all the news of the town. At three o'clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich was at the Ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in lending her presence to her son's dinner (he dined apart from his parents), in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her escritoire.

The feeling of unreasoning shame, which she had felt during the journey, and her agitation, had completely vanished. In the accustomed conditions of her life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind only yesterday. `What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put an end to, and I answered just as I should have. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and impermissible. To speak of it would be to attach importance to that which has none.' She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost declaration made her in Peterburg by a young man, a subordinate of her husband's, and how Alexei Alexandrovich had answered that every woman of the world was exposed to this sort of thing, but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and would never permit himself to degrade her and himself by jealousy. `So then, there's no reason to say anything? And, thank God, there isn't anything to say,' she told herself.

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 1, Chapter 33[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 33 Alexei Alexandrovich came back from the Ministry at four o'clock, but as often happened, had no chance to drop in at her room. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign certain papers brought him by his head clerk. At dinnertime (there were always at least three people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexei Alexandrovich; the director of the Department and his wife; and a young man who had been recommended to Alexei Alexandrovich for a post. Anna went into the drawing room to entertain these guests.

Precisely at five o'clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had finished the fifth stroke, Alexei Alexandrovich made his entry, in white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexei Alexandrovich's life was taken up and apportioned.

And in order to accomplish all that each day held for him, he adhered to the strictest orderliness. `Nor haste nor rest,' was his device. He entered the dining hall, bowed to all, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife:

`Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable [he laid stress on the word uncomfortable ] it is to dine alone.'