Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
At tea-time Dolly came out of her room. Stepan Arkadyevitch was not with her; he had left his wife's chamber by the rear door.
"I am afraid you will be cold up-stairs," remarked Dolly, addressing Anna. "I should like to have you come down and be near me."
"Akh! please don't worry about me," replied Anna, trying to divine by Dolly's face if there had been a reconciliation.
"Perhaps it would be too light for you here," said her sister-in-law.
"I assure you, I sleep anywhere and everywhere as sound as a woodchuck."
"What is it?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming in from his library, and addressing his wife.
By the tone of his voice, both Kitty and Anna knew that the reconciliation had taken place.
"I wanted to install Anna down-stairs, but we should have to put up some curtains. No one knows how to do it, and so I must," said Dolly, in reply to her husband's question.
"God knows if they have wholly made it up," thought Anna, as she noticed Dolly's cold and even tone.
"Akh! don't, Dolly, don't make difficulties! Well! if you like, I will fix everything." ....
"Yes," thought Anna, "they must have had a reconciliation."
"I know how you do everything," said Dolly; "you give Matve an order which it is impossible to carry out, and then you go away, and he gets everything into a tangle."
And her customary mocking smile wrinkled the corners of Dolly's lips as she said that.
"Complete, complete reconciliation, complete," thought Anna. "Thank God!" and, rejoicing that she had been the cause of it, she went to Dolly and kissed her.
"Not by any means. Why have you such scorn for Matve and me?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, with an almost imperceptible smile.
Throughout the evening Dolly, as usual, was lightly ironical toward her husband, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and gay, but within bounds, and as if he wanted to make it evident that though he had obtained pardon he had not forgotten his offense.
About half-past nine a particularly animated and pleasant confidential conversation, which was going on at the tea-table, was interrupted by an incident apparently of the slightest importance, but this simple incident seemed to each member of the family to be very strange.
They were talking about one of their Petersburg acquaintances when Anna suddenly arose:—
"I have her picture in my album," she said; "and at the same time I will show you my little Serozha," she added, with a smile of maternal pride.
It was usually about ten o'clock when she bade her son good-night. Often she herself put him to bed before she went out to parties, and now she felt a sensation of sadness to be so far from him. No matter what people were speaking about, her thoughts reverted always to her little curly-haired Serozha, and the desire seized her to go and look at his picture, and to talk about him. Using this first pretext, she, with her light, decided step, started to fetch her album. The stairs to her room started from the landing-place in the large staircase, which led from the heated hall. Just as she was leaving the drawing-room the front door-bell rang.
"Who can that be?" said Dolly.
"It is too early to come after me, and too late for a call," remarked Kitty.
"Doubtless somebody with papers for me," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
As Anna was passing the staircase she saw the servant going up to announce a caller, but the caller stood in the light of the hall lamp, and was waiting. Anna glancing down saw that it was Vronsky, and a strange sensation of joy, mixed with terror, suddenly seized her heart. He was standing with his coat on, and was taking something out of his pocket. At the moment Anna reached the center of the staircase, he lifted his eyes, and saw her, and his face assumed an expression of humility and confusion. She bowed her head slightly in salutation; and as she went on her way she heard Stepan Arkadyevitch's loud voice calling him to come in, and then Vronsky's low, soft, and tranquil voice excusing himself.
When Anna reached the room with the album, he had gone, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling how he came to see about a dinner which they were going to give the next day in honor of some celebrity who was in town.
"And nothing would induce him to come in. What a queer fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she alone understood what he had come for, and why he would not come in. " He must have been at our house," she thought, "and, not finding me, have supposed that I was here; but he did not come in because it was late and Anna here."
They all exchanged glances, but nothing was said, and they began to examine Anna's album.
There was nothing extraordinary or strange in a man calling at half-past nine o'clock in the evening to inquire of a friend about the details of a proposed dinner and not coming in; yet to everybody it seemed strange, and it seemed more strange and unpleasant to Anna than to any one else.