by Leo Tolstoy
Oblonsky dined at home; the conversation was general, and his wife spoke to him, addressing him familiarly, something she had not done recently. There remained the same estrangement in the relations between husband and wife, but there was no longer any talk of separation, and Stepan Arkadyich could see the possibility of discussion and reconciliation.
Just after dinner Kitty arrived. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only slightly, and she now came to her sister's not without fear of how she would be received by this Petersburg society lady whom everyone praised so much. But Anna Arkadyevna liked her, she saw that at once. Anna obviously admired her beauty and youth, and before Kitty could recover she felt that she was not only under her influence but in love with her, as young girls are capable of being in love with older married ladies. Anna did not look like a society lady or the mother of an eight-year-old son, but in the litheness of her movements, the freshness and settled animation of her face, which broke through now as a smile, now as a glance, would have looked more like a twenty-year-old girl had it not been for the serious, sometimes sad expression of her eyes, which struck Kitty and drew her to Anna. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and kept nothing hidden, but that there was in her some other, higher world of interests, inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.
After dinner, when Dolly went to her room, Anna quickly got up and went over to her brother, who was lighting a cigar.
'Stiva,' she said to him, winking merrily, making a cross over him, and indicating the door with her eyes. 'Go, and God help you.'
He understood her, abandoned his cigar and disappeared through the door.
When Stepan Arkadyich had gone, she returned to the sofa, where she sat surrounded with children. Whether because the children had seen that their mother loved this aunt, or because they themselves felt a special charm in her, the elder two, and after them the young ones, as often happens with children, had clung to the new aunt even before dinner and would not leave her side. Something like a game was set up among them, which consisted in sitting as close as possible to her, touching her, holding her small hand, kissing her, playing with her ring or at least touching the flounce of her dress.
'Well, well, the way we sat earlier,' said Anna Arkadyevna, sitting back down in her place.
And again Grisha put his head under her arm and leaned it against her dress and beamed with pride and happiness.
'So, now, when is the ball?' she turned to Kitty.
'Next week, and a wonderful ball. One of those balls that are always merry.'
'And are there such balls, where it's always merry?' Anna said with tender mockery.
'Strange, but there are. At the Bobrishchevs' it's always merry, and also at the Nikitins', but at the Mezhkovs' it's always boring. Haven't you noticed?'
'No, dear heart, for me there are no longer any balls that are merry,' said Anna, and Kitty saw in her eyes that special world that was not open to her. 'For me there are those that are less difficult and boring ...'
'How can you be bored at a ball?'
'Why can't / be bored at a ball?' asked Anna.
Kitty noticed that Anna knew the answer that would follow.
'Because you're always the best of all.'
Anna was capable of blushing. She blushed and said:
'First of all, I never am, and second, if it were so, what do I need it for?'
'Will you go to this ball?' asked Kitty.
'I suppose it will be impossible not to go. Take it,' she said to Tanya, who was pulling the easily slipped-off ring from her white, tapering finger.
'I'll be very glad if you go. I'd like so much to see you at a ball.'
'At least, if I do go, I'll be comforted at the thought that it will give you pleasure ... Grisha, don't fuss with it, please, it's all dishevelled as it is,' she said, straightening a stray lock of hair Grisha was playing with.
'I imagine you in lilac at the ball.'
'Why must it be lilac?' Anna asked, smiling. 'Well, children, off you go, off you go. Do you hear? Miss Hull is calling you for tea,' she said, tearing the children from her and sending them to the dining room.
'And I know why you're inviting me to the ball. You expect a lot from this ball, and you want everyone to be there, you want everyone to take part.'
'Yes. How do you know?'
'Oh! how good to be your age,' Anna went on. 'I remember and know that blue mist, the same as in the mountains in Switzerland. The mist that envelops everything during the blissful time when childhood is just coming to an end, and the path away from that vast, cheerful and happy circle grows narrower and narrower, and you feel cheerful and eerie entering that suite of rooms, though it seems bright and beautiful . .. Who hasn't gone through that?'
Kitty silently smiled. 'But how did she go through it? I'd so love to know her whole romance!' thought Kitty, recalling the unpoetical appearance of Alexei Alexandrovich, her husband.
'There's something I know. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you, I like him very much,' Anna went on. 'I met Vronsky at the railway station.'
'Ah, he was there?' Kitty asked, blushing. 'But what did Stiva tell you?'
'Stiva gave it all away. And I'd be very glad. I travelled with Vronsky's mother yesterday,' she went on, 'and his mother didn't stop talking to me about him; he's her favourite; I know how partial mothers can be, but...'
'But what did his mother tell you?'
'Oh, a lot! I know he's her favourite, but even so one can tell he's chivalrous ... Well, for instance, she told me he wanted to give the whole fortune to his brother, that while still a child he did something extraordinary, rescued a woman from the water. In short, a hero,' Anna said, smiling and remembering the two hundred roubles he gave at the
station.
But she did not mention the two hundred roubles. For some reason it was unpleasant for her to remember it. She felt there was something in it that concerned her, and of a sort that should not have been.
'She insisted that I call on her,' Anna went on, 'and I'll be glad to see the old lady and will call on her tomorrow. However, thank God Stiva has spent a long time in Dolly's boudoir,' Anna added, changing the subject and getting up, displeased at something, as it seemed to Kitty.
'No, me first! no, me!' the children shouted, having finished their tea and rushing out to Aunt Anna.
'All together!' said Anna and, laughing, she ran to meet them, and embraced and brought down the whole heap of swarming, rapturously squealing children.
XXI
For the grownups' tea Dolly came from her room. Stepan Arkadyich did not come out. He must have left his wife's room through the back door.
'I'm afraid you'll be cold upstairs,' Dolly remarked, addressing Anna. 'I'd like to move you down, and we'll be nearer each other.'
'Oh, now, please don't worry about me,' Anna replied, peering into Dolly's eyes and trying to make out whether or not there had been a reconciliation.
'There's more light here,' her sister-in-law replied.
'I tell you, I sleep always and everywhere like a dormouse.'
'What's this about?' asked Stepan Arkadyich, coming out of his study and addressing his wife.
By his tone Kitty and Anna both understood at once that a reconciliation had taken place.
'I want to move Anna down here, but the curtains must be changed. No one else knows how to do it, I must do it myself,' Dolly replied, turning to him.
'God knows, are they completely reconciled?' thought Anna, hearing her cold and calm tone.
'Oh, enough, Dolly, you keep making difficulties,' said her husband. 'Well, I'll do it, if you like...'
'Yes,' thought Anna, 'they must be reconciled.'
'I know how you'll do it,' Dolly answered, 'you'll tell Matvei to do something impossible, then you'll leave, and he'll get it all wrong' - and habitual mocking smile wrinkled Dolly's lips as she said it.
'Complete, complete reconciliation, complete,' thought Anna, 'thank God!' and rejoicing that she had been the cause of it
, she went over to Dolly and kissed her.
'Not at all, why do you despise me and Matvei so?' Stepan Arkadyich said, smiling barely perceptibly and turning to his wife.
All evening, as usual, Dolly was slightly mocking towards her husband, and Stepan Arkadyich was content and cheerful, but just enough so as not to suggest that, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his guilt.
At half-past nine an especially joyful and pleasant family conversation around the evening tea table at the Oblonskys' was disrupted by an apparently very simple event, but this simple event for some reason seemed strange to everyone. As they talked about mutual Petersburg acquaintances, Anna quickly stood up.
'I have her in my album,' she said, 'and, incidentally, I'll show you my Seryozha,' she added with the smile of a proud mother.
Towards ten o'clock when she usually said good night to her son, and often put him to bed herself before going to a ball, she felt sad to be so far away from him; and whatever they talked about, she kept returning in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She wanted to look at his picture and talk about him. Taking advantage of the first pretext, she got up and, with her light, resolute step, went to fetch the album. The stairs that led up to her room began on the landing of the big, heated front stairway.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room, there was a ring at the door.
'Who could that be?' said Dolly.
It's too early for me and too late for anyone else,' observed Kitty.
Probably someone with papers,' Stepan Arkadyich put in, and, as Anna was crossing the landing, a servant came running up the stairs to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself stood by the lamp. Anna, looking down, at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure suddenly stirred in her heart, together with a fear of something. He stood without removing his coat, and was taking something from
his pocket. Just as she reached the centre of the landing, he raised his eyes, saw her, and something ashamed and frightened appeared in his expression. Inclining her head slightly, she went on, and behind her heard the loud voice of Stepan Arkadyich inviting him to come in, and the soft, gentle and calm voice of Vronsky declining.
When Anna came back with the album, he was no longer there, and Stepan Arkadyich was saying that he had dropped in to find out about a dinner they were giving the next day for a visiting celebrity.
'And he wouldn't come in for anything. He's somehow strange,' Stepan Arkadyich added.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she alone understood why he had called by and why he had not come in. 'He was at our house,' she thought, 'didn't find me, and thought I was here; but he didn't come in because he thought it was late, and Anna's here.'
They all exchanged glances without saying anything and began looking through Anna's album.
There was nothing either extraordinary or strange in a man calling at his friend's house at half-past nine to find out the details of a dinner that was being planned and not coming in; but they all thought it strange. To Anna especially it seemed strange and not right.
XXII
The ball had only just begun when Kitty and her mother went up the big, light-flooded stairway, set with flowers and lackeys in powder and red livery. From the inner rooms drifted a steady rustle of movement, as in a beehive, and while they were adjusting their hair and dresses in front of a mirror between potted trees on the landing, the cautiously distinct sounds of the orchestra's violins came from the ballroom, beginning the first waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, who had been straightening his grey side-whiskers at another mirror and who exuded a smell of scent, bumped into them by the stairway and stepped aside, obviously admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless young man, one of those young men of society whom the old prince Shcherbatsky called twits, wearing an extremely low-cut waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them and, after running past, came back to invite Kitty to a quadrille. The first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky; she had to give this young man the second. A military man, buttoning his glove, stepped aside at the doorway and, stroking his moustache, admired the pink Kitty.
Though Kitty's toilette, coiffure and all the preparations for the ball had cost her a good deal of trouble and planning, she was now entering the ballroom, in her intricate tulle gown over a pink underskirt, as freely and simply as if all these rosettes and laces, and all the details of her toilette, had not cost her and her household a moment's attention, as if she had been born in this tulle and lace, with this tall coiffure, topped by a rose with two leaves.
When the old princess, at the entrance to the ballroom, wanted to straighten the twisted end of her ribbon sash, Kitty drew back slightly. She felt that everything on her must of itself be good and graceful, and there was no need to straighten anything.
Kitty was having one of her happy days. Her dress was not tight anywhere, the lace bertha stayed in place, the rosettes did not get crumpled or come off; the pink shoes with high, curved heels did not pinch, but delighted her little feet. The thick braids of blond hair held to her little head like her own. All three buttons on her long gloves, which fitted but did not change the shape of her arms, fastened without coming off. The black velvet ribbon of her locket encircled her neck with particular tenderness. This velvet ribbon was enchanting, and at home, as she looked at her neck in the mirror, she felt it could almost speak. All the rest might be doubted, but the ribbon was enchanting. Kitty also smiled here at the ball as she glanced at it in the mirror. In her bare shoulders and arms she felt a cold, marble-like quality that she especially liked. Her eyes shone, and her red lips could not help smiling from the sense of her own attractiveness. She had no sooner entered the ballroom and reached the gauzy, ribbony, lacy, colourful crowd of ladies waiting to be invited to dance (Kitty never stayed long in that crowd), than she was invited for a waltz, and invited by the best partner, the foremost partner of the ball hierarchy, the celebrated dirigeur* of balls, the master of ceremonies, a trim, handsome, married man, Yegorushka Korsunsky. Having only just abandoned Countess Banin, with whom he had danced the first round of the waltz, and surveying his domain, that is, the few couples who had started dancing, he saw Kitty come in, hastened to her with that special loose amble proper only to the dirigeur's balls, bowed and, without even asking her consent, held out his arm and put it around her slender waist. She turned, looking for someone to hold her fan, and the hostess, smiling, took it.
* Director or conductor.
'How nice that you came on time,' he said to her, putting his arm around her waist. 'What is this fashion for being late!'
Bending her left arm, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and her small feet in their pink shoes began to move quickly, lightly and rhythmically across the slippery parquet in time with the music.
'It's restful waltzing with you,' he said to her, falling in with the first, not yet quick, steps of the waltz. 'Lovely, such lightness, precision.' He said to her what he said to almost all his good acquaintances.
She smiled at his compliment and went on examining the ballroom over his shoulder. She was not a new debutante, for whom all the faces at a ball blend into one magical impression; nor was she a girl dragged to every ball, for whom all the faces are so familiar that it is boring; she was in between the two - she was excited, but at the same time self-possessed enough to be able to watch. In the left-hand corner of the room she saw grouped the flower of society. There was the impossibly bared, beautiful Lydie, Korsunsky's wife, there was the hostess, there gleamed the bald head of Krivin, always to be found with the flower of society. Young men, not daring to approach, gazed in that direction; and there her eyes picked out Stiva and then noticed the lovely figure and head of Anna, who was in a black velvet dress. And there he was. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she refused Levin. With her far-sighted eyes she recognized him at once, and even noticed that he was looking at her.
'What now, another turn? You're not tired?' said Korsunsky, slightly out of breath.
'No, thank you.'
'Where shall I take you?'
'Mme Karenina is here, I think ... take me to her.'
'Wherever you choose.'
And Korsunsky waltzed on, measuring his step, straight towards the crowd in the left-hand corner of the ballroom, repeating: 'Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames,' and, manoeuvring through that sea of lace, tulle and ribbons without snagging one little feather, he twirled his partner so sharply that her slender, lace-stockinged legs were revealed, and her train swept up fan-like, covering Krivin's knees. Korsunsky bowed, straightened his broad shirtfront, and offered her his arm to take her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, all flushed, removed her train from Krivin's knees and, slightly dizzy, looked around, searching for Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had absolutely wanted, but in low-cut black velvet dress, which revealed her full shoulders and bosom, as if shaped from old ivory, and her rounded arms with their very small, slender hands. The dress was all trimmed with Venetian guipure lace. On her head, in her black hair, her own without admixture, was a small garland of pansies, and there was another on her black ribbon sash among the white lace. Her coiffure was inconspicuous. Conspicuous were only those wilful little ringlets of curly hair that adorned her, always coming out on her nape and temples. Around her firm, shapely neck was a string of pearls.