Anna Karenina

“ere’s Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her,” said
Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna onto the stone terrace where
Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame,
working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitch’s easy chair. “She
says she doesn’t want anything before dinner, but please order some
lunch for her, and I’ll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in.”

Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather patronizing reception,
and began at once explaining to her that she was living with Anna
because she had always cared more for her than her sister Katerina
Pavlovna, the aunt that had brought Anna up, and that now, when
everyone had abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help her in
this most difficult period of transition.

“Her husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my
solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however
difficult it may be for me—not like some other people. And how sweet it
is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like the best of
married couples; it’s for God to judge them, not for us. And didn’t
Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva ... and Sam Nikandrov, and Vassiliev
and Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova.... Did no one say anything
about them? And it has ended by their being received by everyone. And
then, c’est un intérieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-à-fait à
l’anglaise. On se réunit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se sépare.
Everyone does as he pleases till dinner time. Dinner at seven o’clock.
Stiva did very rightly to send you. He needs their support. You know
that through his mother and brother he can do anything. And then they
do so much good. He didn’t tell you about his hospital? Ce sera
admirable—everything from Paris.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had found the men of
the party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace.
There was still a long time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite
weather, and so several different methods of spending the next two
hours were proposed. There were very many methods of passing the time
at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at
Pokrovskoe.

“Une partie de lawn-tennis,” Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome
smile. “We’ll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna.”

“No, it’s too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row in the
boat, show Darya Alexandrovna the river banks.” Vronsky proposed.

“I agree to anything,” said Sviazhsky.

“I imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a stroll—wouldn’t
you? And then the boat, perhaps,” said Anna.

So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevitch went off to the bathing
place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for them.

They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviazhsky, and
Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in the
new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically,
she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Anna’s conduct.
As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary
of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only
excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Anna
with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life among these
strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Darya
Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was
seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook everything for the sake of
the comforts she enjoyed.

As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna’s action;
but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was
disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought
him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud
except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he
overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She
felt with him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her
dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly
ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly
ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.

Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation.
Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house
and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the
same tell him how much she liked his house.

“Yes, it’s a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,”
he said.

“I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?”

“Oh, no!” he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. “If you could
only have seen that court last spring!”

And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried
away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various
details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that,
having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his
home, Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person,
and was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovna’s praise.

“If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed,
it’s not far. Shall we go?” he said, glancing into her face to convince
himself that she was not bored. “Are you coming, Anna?” he turned to
her.

“We will come, won’t we?” she said, addressing Sviazhsky. “Mais il ne
faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se morfondre là
dans le bateau. We must send and tell them.”

“Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here,” said Anna, turning to
Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which she had
previously talked about the hospital.

“Oh, it’s a work of real importance!” said Sviazhsky. But to show he
was not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he promptly added
some slightly critical remarks.

“I wonder, though, count,” he said, “that while you do so much for the
health of the peasants, you take so little interest in the schools.”

“C’est devenu tellement commun les écoles,” said Vronsky. “You
understand it’s not on that account, but it just happens so, my
interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the hospital,”
he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.

The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path. After
going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya
Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large
pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which
was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine.
Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by
scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying
bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.

“How quickly work gets done with you!” said Sviazhsky. “When I was here
last time the roof was not on.”

“By the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is done,”
said Anna.

“And what’s this new building?”

“That’s the house for the doctor and the dispensary,” answered Vronsky,
seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing
himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.

Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still
with the architect and began talking rather warmly.

“The front is still too low,” he said to Anna, who had asked what was
the matter.

“I said the foundation ought to be raised,” said Anna.

“Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna,” said
the architect, “but now it’s too late.”

“Yes, I take a great interest in it,” Anna answered Sviazhsky, who was
expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. “This new
building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an
afterthought, and was begun without a plan.”

Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the
ladies, and led them inside the hospital.

Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were
painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were
finished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they
walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like
marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet
floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a
block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their
hair, to greet the gentry.

“This is the reception room,” said Vronsky. “Here there will be a desk,
tables, and benches, and nothing more.”

“This way; let us go in here. Don’t go near the window,” said Anna,
trying the paint to see if it were dry. “Alexey, the paint’s dry
already,” she added.

From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky
showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he
showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he
showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room,
then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would
make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors,
and many other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest
mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply
wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it
all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great
satisfaction.

“Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly
fitted hospital in Russia,” said Sviazhsky.

“And won’t you have a lying-in ward?” asked Dolly. “That’s so much
needed in the country. I have often....”

In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.

“This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is
intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,” he said. “Ah!
look at this,” and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair
that had just been ordered for the convalescents. “Look.” He sat down
in the chair and began moving it. “The patient can’t walk—still too
weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air,
and he moves, rolls himself along....”

Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything
very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural,
simple-hearted eagerness. “Yes, he’s a very nice, good man,” she
thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and
penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in
Anna’s place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest
that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.