Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [123]
Without realizing it, Alexei Alexandrovich now sought occasions for having a third person present at his meetings with his wife.
XXVII
Anna was standing in front of the mirror upstairs, pinning the last bow to her dress with Annushka’s help, when she heard the sound of wheels crunching gravel at the entrance.
‘It’s too early for Betsy,’ she thought and, looking out the window, saw the carriage with Alexei Alexandrovich’s black hat and so-familiar ears sticking out of it. ‘That’s untimely. Does he mean to spend the night?’ she thought, and all that might come of it seemed to her so terrible and frightening that, without a moment’s thought, she went out to meet them with a gay and radiant face and, feeling in herself the presence of the already familiar spirit of lying and deceit, at once surrendered to it and began talking without knowing herself what she was going to say.
‘Ah, how nice!’ she said, giving her hand to her husband and greeting Slyudin with a smile as a member of the household. ‘You’ll spend the night, I hope?’ were the first words that the spirit of deceit prompted her to say. ‘And now we can go together. Only it’s a pity I promised Betsy. She’s coming for me.’
Alexei Alexandrovich winced at the name of Betsy.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t separate the inseparables,’ he said in his usual jocular tone. ‘I’ll go with Mikhail Vassilyevich. And the doctors tell me to walk. I’ll stroll on the way and imagine I’m back at the spa.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Anna. ‘Would you like tea?’
She rang.
‘Serve tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexei Alexandrovich has come. Well, how is your health? Mikhail Vassilyevich, you’ve never been here; look how nice it is on my balcony,’ she said, addressing first one, then the other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too quickly. She felt it herself, the more so as, in the curious glance that Mikhail Vassilyevich gave her, she noticed that he seemed to be observing her.
Mikhail Vassilyevich at once went out on the terrace.
She sat down by her husband.
‘You don’t look quite well,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the doctor came today and took an hour of my time. I have the feeling that one of my friends sent him: my health is so precious ...’
‘No, but what did he say?’
She asked him about his health and work, persuading him to rest and move out to stay with her.
She said all this gaily, quickly, and with a special brightness in her eyes, but Alexei Alexandrovich now ascribed no significance to this tone. He heard only her words and gave them only that direct meaning which they had. And he answered her simply, though jocularly. There was nothing special in their conversation, but afterwards Anna could never recall that whole little scene without a tormenting sense of shame.
Seryozha came in, preceded by the governess. If Alexei Alexandrovich had allowed himself to observe, he would have noticed the timid, perplexed look with which Seryozha glanced first at his father, then at his mother. But he did not want to see anything, and did not see anything.
‘Ah, the young man! He’s grown up. Really, he’s becoming quite a man. Hello, young man.’
And he gave the frightened Seryozha his hand.
Seryozha had been timid towards his father even before, but now, since Alexei Alexandrovich had started calling him young man and since the riddle about whether Vronsky was friend or foe had entered his head, he shrank from his father. As if asking for protection, he looked at his mother. He felt good only with her. Alexei Alexandrovich, talking meanwhile with the governess, held his son by the shoulder, and Seryozha felt so painfully awkward that Anna saw he was about to cry.
Anna, who had blushed the moment her son came in, noticing that Seryozha felt awkward, quickly jumped up, removed Alexei Alexandrovich’s hand from the boy’s shoulder, kissed him, took him out to the terrace