Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 30
CHAPTER XXX
A furious snow-storm was raging, and whistling among the wheels of the carriages, around the columns, and into the corners of the station. The carriages, the pillars, the people, everything visible, were covered on one side with snow, and it was increasing momently. Once in a while there would be a lull, but then again it blew with such gusts that it seemed impossible to make way against it. Meantime a few people were running hither and thither, talking gayly, opening and shutting the great doors of the station, and making the platform planks creak under their feet. The flitting shadow of a man passed rapidly by her feet, and she heard the blows of a hammer falling on the iron.
"Send off the telegram," cried an angry voice on the other side of the track in the midst of the drifting storm.
"This way, please, No. 28," cried other voices, and several people covered with snow hurried by. Two gentlemen, with lighted cigarettes in their mouths, passed near Anna. She was just about to reenter the carriage, after getting one more breath of fresh air, and had already taken her hand from her muff, to lay hold of the railing, when the flickering light from the reflector was cut off by a man in a military coat, who came close to her. She looked up, and that instant recognized Vronsky's face.
Raising his hand to his vizor he bowed low, and asked if she needed anything, if he might not be of service to her.
She looked at him for a considerable time without replying, and although he was in the shadow, she saw, or thought she saw, the expression of his face and even of his eyes. It was a repetition of that respectful admiration which had so impressed her on the evening of the ball. More than once that day she had said to herself that Vronsky, for her, was only one of the hundred young men whom one meets in society, that she would never permit herself to give him a second thought! but now, on the first instant of seeing him again, a sensation of pride and joy seized her. She had no need to ask why he was there. She knew, as truly as if he had told her, that he was there so as to be where she was.
"I did not know that you were going to Petersburg. Why are you going?" said she, letting her hand fall from the railing. A joy which she could not restrain shone in her face.
"Why am I going?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I came simply for this,—to be where you are," he said. "I could not do otherwise."
And at this instant the wind, as if it had conquered every obstacle, blew the snow from the roofs of the carriages, and whirled away a piece of sheet-iron which it had torn off, and at the same time the deep whistle of the locomotive gave a melancholy, mournful cry. Never had the horror of a tempest appeared to her more beautiful than now. He had said what her heart longed to hear but what her better judgment condemned. She made no reply, but he perceived by her face how she fought against herself.
"Forgive me if what I said displeases you," he murmured humbly.
He spoke respectfully, courteously, but in such a resolute, decided tone, that for some time she was unable to reply.
"What you said was wrong; and I beg of you, if you are a gentleman, to forget it, as I shall forget it," said she at last.
"I shall never forget, and I shall never be able to forget any of your words, any of your gestures ...."
"Enough, enough!" she cried, vainly endeavoring to give an expression of severity to her face, at which Vronsky was passionately gazing. And grasping the cold railing she mounted the steps, and quickly entered the vestibule of the carriage. But she stopped in the little vestibule, and tried to recall to her imagination what had taken place. But though she found it impossible to remember either her own words or his, she instinctively felt that this brief conversation had brought them frightfully close together, and she was at once alarmed and delighted. After she had stood there a few seconds, she went back into the carriage and sat down in her place.
The nervous strain which had been tormenting her not only returned, but became more intense, until she began to fear every moment that something would snap her brain. She did not sleep all night; but in this nervous tension, and in the fantasies which filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or painful; on the contrary, it was joyous, burning excitement.
Toward morning, Anna dozed as she sat in her armchair; and when she awoke it was broad daylight, and the train was approaching Petersburg. Instantly the thought of her home, her husband, her son, and all the labors of the day and the coming days, filled her mind.
The train had hardly reached the station at Petersburg, when Anna stepped out on the platform; and the first person that she saw was her husband waiting for her.
"Oh, good heavens! Why do his ears stand out so!" she thought, as she looked at his reserved and portly figure and especially at his stiff cartilaginous ears, which, as they propped up the rim of his round hat, struck her for the first time. When he saw her, he came to meet her at the carriage, compressing his lips into his habitual smile of irony, looking straight at her with his great, weary eyes. A disagreeable thought made her heart sink when she saw his stubborn, weary look; she felt that she had expected to find him different. Especially was she astounded by the feeling of self-dissatisfaction which she experienced on meeting him. This feeling was associated with her home, akin to the state of hypocrisy which she recognized in her relations with her husband. This feeling was not novel; she had felt it before without heeding it, but now she realized it clearly and painfully.
"There! you see, I'm a tender husband, tender as the first year of our marriage; I was burning with desire to see you," said he, in his slow, deliberate voice, and with the light tone of raillery that he generally used in speaking to her, a tone of ridicule of any one who should really say such things.
"Is Serozha well?" she asked.
"And is this all the reward," he said, "for my ardor? He is well, very well." ....