Anna Karenina

he croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited Anna was
to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two ladies were the
chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in
imitation of some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde. These
ladies belonged to a circle which, though of the highest society, was
utterly hostile to that in which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of
the most influential people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of
Liza Merkalova, was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the political
world. From all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the
hints in Princess Tverskaya’s note referred to her refusal. But now
Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.

Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya’s earlier than the other guests.

At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky’s footman, with
side-whiskers combed out like a Kammerjunker, went in too. He stopped
at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna recognized
him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had told her the day before
that he would not come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so.

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman,
pronouncing his “r’s” even like a Kammerjunker, say, “From the
count for the princess,” and hand the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to
turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself
to see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course
was possible. Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival
ahead of her, and Princess Tverskaya’s footman was standing at the open
door waiting for her to go forward into the inner rooms.

“The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would
you be pleased to walk into the garden?” announced another footman in
another room.

The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at
home—worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step,
impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among outsiders,
in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a
dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that
luxurious setting of idleness that she was used to, and she felt less
wretched than at home. She was not forced to think what she was to do.
Everything would be done of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her
in a white gown that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her
just as she always did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch
and a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in
the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.

There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy noticed it
at once.

“I slept badly,” answered Anna, looking intently at the footman who
came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky’s note.

“How glad I am you’ve come!” said Betsy. “I’m tired, and was just
longing to have some tea before they come. You might go”—she turned to
Tushkevitch—“with Masha, and try the croquet ground over there where
they’ve been cutting it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea;
we’ll have a cozy chat, eh?” she said in English to Anna, with a smile,
pressing the hand with which she held a parasol.

“Yes, especially as I can’t stay very long with you. I’m forced to go
on to old Madame Vrede. I’ve been promising to go for a century,” said
Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not
merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of
satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second
before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the
reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her
own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old
Madame Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other
people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned
out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she
could have thought of nothing better.

“No. I’m not going to let you go for anything,” answered Betsy, looking
intently into Anna’s face. “Really, if I were not fond of you, I should
feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would
compromise you. Tea in the little dining-room, please,” she said, half
closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

“Alexey’s playing us false,” she said in French; “he writes that he
can’t come,” she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it
could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to
Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but,
hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded
for a minute that she knew nothing.

“Ah!” said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the
matter, and she went on smiling: “How can you or your friends
compromise anyone?”

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great
fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not
the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment
was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted
her.

“I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and Liza
Merkalova, why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Besides,
they’re received everywhere, and I”—she laid special stress on the
I—“have never been strict and intolerant. It’s simply that I haven’t
the time.”

“No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey
Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee—that’s no affair of
ours. But in the world, he’s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted
croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as
Liza’s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off
the absurd position. He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t know? Oh,
that’s a new type, quite new.”

Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored,
shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was
hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.

“I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.

“I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner with
me, and no man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that persuade
him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up,
please, and send it off?” she said from the door; “I have to give some
directions.”

Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy’s
letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for me to
see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o’clock.”
She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the
note to be taken.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little
drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the
arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They
criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell
upon Liza Merkalova.

“She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna.

“You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to
me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says
you’re a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would
do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as
it is.”

“But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after
being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not
asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more
importance to her than it should have been; “do tell me, please, what
are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s called? I’ve
met them so little. What does it mean?”

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

“It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner.
They’ve flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and
ways of flinging them.”

“Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?”

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a
thing which rarely happened with her.

“You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now. That’s
the question of an enfant terrible,” and Betsy obviously tried to
restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that
infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh often. “You’d
better ask them,” she brought out, between tears of laughter.

“No; you laugh,” said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself, “but I
never could understand it. I can’t understand the husband’s rôle in
it.”

“The husband? Liza Merkalova’s husband carries her shawl, and is always
ready to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one
cares to inquire. You know in decent society one doesn’t talk or think
even of certain details of the toilet. That’s how it is with this.”

“Will you be at Madame Rolandak’s fête?” asked Anna, to change the
conversation.

“I don’t think so,” answered Betsy, and, without looking at her friend,
she began filling the little transparent cups with fragrant tea.
Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a cigarette, and, fitting it
into a silver holder, she lighted it.

“It’s like this, you see: I’m in a fortunate position,” she began,
quite serious now, as she took up her cup. “I understand you, and I
understand Liza. Liza now is one of those naïve natures that, like
children, don’t know what’s good and what’s bad. Anyway, she didn’t
comprehend it when she was very young. And now she’s aware that the
lack of comprehension suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn’t know on
purpose,” said Betsy, with a subtle smile. “But, anyway, it suits her.
The very same thing, don’t you see, may be looked at tragically, and
turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even
humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too
tragically.”

“How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!” said
Anna, seriously and dreamily. “Am I worse than other people, or better?
I think I’m worse.”

“Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!” repeated Betsy. “But here they
are.”