Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [115]
She heard the voice of her returning son and, casting a quick glance around the terrace, rose impetuously. Her eyes lit up with a fire familiar to him, she raised her beautiful, ring-covered hands with a quick gesture, took his head, gave him a long look and, bringing her face closer, quickly kissed his mouth and both eyes with her open, smiling lips and pushed him away. She wanted to go, but he held her back.
‘When?’ he said in a whisper, looking at her rapturously.
‘Tonight, at one,’ she whispered and, after a deep sigh, walked with her light, quick step to meet her son.
The rain had caught Seryozha in the big garden, and he and the nanny had sat it out in the gazebo.
‘Well, good-bye,’ she said to Vronsky. ‘We must be going to the races soon now. Betsy has promised to come for me.’
Vronsky looked at his watch and left hastily.
XXIV
When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’ balcony, he was so agitated and preoccupied by his thoughts that he saw the hands on the face, but could not grasp what time it was. He went out to the road and walked to his carriage, stepping carefully through the mud. He was so full of his feeling for Anna that he did not even think what time it was and whether he could still manage to get to Briansky’s. He was left, as often happens, with only the external faculty of memory, which indicated what was to be done after what. He came up to his coachman, who had dozed off on the box in the already slanting shade of a thick linden, admired the iridescent columns of flies hovering over the sweaty horses and, waking the coachman, told him to go to Briansky’s. Only after driving some four miles did he recover sufficiently to look at his watch and grasp that it was half-past five and he was late.
There were to be several races that day: a convoys’ race, then the officers’ mile-and-a-half, the three-mile, and the race in which he would ride. He could make it to his race, but if he went to Briansky‘s, he would come barely in time and when the whole court was there. That was not good. But he had given Briansky his word that he would come and therefore decided to keep going, telling the coachman not to spare the troika.
He arrived at Briansky‘s, spent five minutes with him, and galloped back. This quick drive calmed him down. All the difficulty of his relations with Anna, all the uncertainty remaining after their conversation, left his head; with excitement and delight he now thought of the races, of how he would arrive in time after all, and every now and then the expectation of the happiness of that night’s meeting flashed like a bright light in his imagination.
The feeling of the coming races took hold of him more and more the further he drove into their atmosphere, overtaking the carriages of those driving to the course from their country houses or Petersburg.
There was no one at his quarters by then: they had all gone to the races, and his footman was waiting for him at the gate. While he was changing, the footman told him that the second race had already started, that many gentlemen had come asking for him, and the boy had come running twice from the stable.
After changing unhurriedly (he never hurried or lost his self-control), Vronsky gave orders to drive to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of carriages, pedestrians, soldiers surrounding the racetrack and pavilions seething with people. The second race was probably under way, because he heard the bell just as he entered the shed. As he neared the stables, he met Makhotin’s white-legged chestnut Gladiator, being led to the racetrack in an orange and blue horse-cloth, his ears, as if trimmed with blue, looking enormous.
‘Where’s Cord?’ he asked the stableman.
‘In the stables, saddling up.’
The stall was open, and Frou-Frou was already saddled. They were about to bring her out.
‘Am I late?’
‘All right, all right! Everything’s in order, everything’s in order,’ said the Englishman, ‘don’t get excited.’
Vronsky cast a glance once more over the exquisite, beloved forms