Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [362]
XXII
Finding Dolly already at home, Anna looked attentively into her eyes, as if asking about the conversation she had had with Vronsky, but she did not ask in words.
‘I think it’s time for dinner,’ she said. ‘We haven’t seen each other at all yet. I’m counting on the evening. Now I must go and dress. You, too, I think. We all got dirty at the construction site.’
Dolly went to her room and felt like laughing. She had nothing to change into because she had already put on her best dress; but to mark her preparations for dinner in some way, she asked the maid to brush her dress, changed the cuffs and the bow, and put lace on her head.
‘This is all I could do,’ she said, smiling, to Anna, who came out to her in a third, again extremely simple, dress.
‘Yes, we’re very formal here,’ she said, as if apologizing for being dressed up. ‘Alexei is rarely so pleased with anything as he is with your visit. He’s decidedly in love with you,’ she added. ‘But aren’t you tired?’
There was no time to talk about anything before dinner. Coming into the drawing room, they found Princess Varvara and the men in their black frock coats already there. The architect was wearing a tailcoat. Vronsky introduced the doctor and the steward to his guest. She had already met the architect at the hospital.
The fat butler, his round, clean-shaven face and the starched bow of his white tie gleaming, announced that the meal was ready, and the ladies rose. Vronsky asked Sviyazhsky to give Anna Arkadyevna his arm, and went over to Dolly himself. Veslovsky got ahead of Tushkevich in offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevich, the steward and the doctor went in by themselves.
The dinner, the dining room, the dinnerware, the servants, the wine and the food were not only in keeping with the general tone of new luxury in the house, but seemed even newer and more luxurious than all the rest. Darya Alexandrovna observed this luxury, which was new to her, and, being herself the mistress of a house - though with no hope of applying to her own house anything of what she saw, so far did its luxury exceed her style of life - involuntarily took note of all the details, asking herself who had done it all and how. Vasenka Veslovsky, her own husband, and even Sviyazhsky, and many other people she knew, never gave it a thought, and took for granted what any decent host wishes his guests to feel - namely, that everything he had arranged so well had cost him, the host, no trouble and had got done by itself. But Darya Alexandrovna knew that not even the porridge for the children’s breakfast got done by itself and that therefore such a complicated and excellent arrangement had required someone’s close attention. And from the look of Alexei Kirillovich as he inspected the table, nodded to the butler, and offered her a choice between cold borscht and soup, she understood that everything was done and maintained through the care of the host himself. It obviously depended no more on Anna than on Veslovsky. She, Sviyazhsky, the princess and Veslovsky were guests alike, cheerfully enjoying what had been prepared for them.
Anna was hostess only in conducting the conversation. And that task - quite difficult for a hostess at a small table in the presence of people like the steward and the architect, people from a completely different world, trying not to be intimidated by the unaccustomed luxury and unable to take part for long in a general conversation - Anna performed with her usual tact, naturalness and even pleasure, as Darya Alexandrovna noticed.
The conversation turned to how Tushkevich and Veslovsky had gone for a boat ride alone, and Tushkevich began telling them about the last race at the Petersburg Yacht Club. But Anna, after a suitable pause, turned at once to the architect, to draw him out of his silence.
‘Nikolai Ivanovich was struck,’ she said of Sviyazhsky, ‘by how the new building has grown since he was here last; but I’m there every day, and every day I’m surprised at how quickly it goes.’
‘It’s good working with his excellency,’ the architect