Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX
Anna took her seat in her carriage in an even unhappier state of mind than she had been when she left her house. In addition to her former sufferings, she now felt the humiliation and sense of moral degeneracy which her meeting with Kitty had clearly made evident.
"Where would you wish to go now? Home?" asked Piotr.
"Yes, home," she replied, now not thinking at all where she was going.
"They looked on me as some strange, incomprehensible curiosity.—What can that man be saying so eagerly to the other?" thought she, seeing two passersby talking together. "Is it possible to say what one really feels? I wanted to confess to Dolly, and I am glad that I kept still. How she would have rejoiced at my unhappiness! She would have tried to hide it, but at heart she would have been glad; she would have thought it just that I should be punished for that happiness which she begrudged me. And Kitty would have been still more pleased. How I read her through and through! She knows her husband liked me uncommonly well, and she is jealous, and hates me; and, what's more, she despises me. In her eyes, I am an immoral woman. If I had been an immoral woman I might have made him fall in love with me, if I had wanted to! I confess I thought of it.—There goes a man who is delighted with his own looks," she said to herself, as a tall, florid man went by, and, mistaking her for an acquaintance, lifted his shiny hat from his shiny bald head, and instantly recognized his mistake.
"He thought he knew me! He knows me quite as well as any one in the world knows me. I don't know myself; I only know my appetites as the French say.— They covet some of that bad ice-cream," she said to herself, as she watched two little street children standing in front of a vender, who had just set down from his head his tub of ice-cream, and was wiping his face with a corner of his coat.
"We all want our sweet delicacies; if not sugarplums, then bad ice-cream, just like Kitty, who, not catching Vronsky, took Levin. She envies me, she hates me; and we all hate one another, I Kitty, and Kitty me. That is a fact.—Tiutkin coiffeur—Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin. .... I will tell him this nonsense when he comes," thought she, and smiled, and then instantly remembered that there was no one now to whom she could tell amusing things. "There is nothing amusing, nothing gay; it is all disgusting. The vesper-bell is ringing, and that storekeeper is crossing himself so quickly that one would think he was afraid of losing the chance.
"Why these churches, these bells, these lies? Just to hide the fact that we all hate one another, like those izvoshchiks who are swearing at each other so angrily. Yashvin was right when he said, 'He is after my shirt, and I am after his.' That is a fact."
She was so engrossed by these thoughts that she forgot her grief for a while, and was surprised when the carriage stopped in front of her house. The sight of the Swiss, coming to meet her, reminded her that she had sent a letter and a telegram.
"Is there an answer yet?"
"I will go and see," said the Swiss; and, looking on the secretary, he came back in a moment with a telegram in a thin, square envelop. Anna read:—
I cannot be back before ten o 'clock. Vronsky.
"And has the messenger come back?"
"Not yet," replied the Swiss.
"Ah! if that is so, then I know what I must do;" and, feeling a vague sense of anger and a desire for vengeance arising in her soul, she ran up-stairs.
"I myself will go and find him," thought she. "Before I go away forever, I will tell him all. I never hated any one as I hate this man!"
And when she caught sight of Vronsky's hat hanging on the peg, she shivered with aversion. She did not reflect that the despatch was in answer to her telegram, and that he could not as yet have received her note. She imagined him now chatting gayly with his mother and the Princess Sorokin, without a thought of her suffering.
"Yes, I must go as quickly as possible," she said, not knowing at all whither she should go.
She felt that she must fly from the thoughts that oppressed her in this terrible house. The servants, the walls, the furniture, everything about it, filled her with disgust and pain, and crushed her with a terrible weight.
"Yes, I must go to the railroad station, and if not there, then somewhere else, to punish him."
She looked at the time-table in the newspaper. The evening train went at two minutes past eight.
"Yes, I shall have plenty of time."
She ordered the two other horses to be harnessed, and she had transferred from her trunk to her traveling-bag things enough to last for several days. She knew that she should never come back again. She revolved a thousand plans in her head, and determined that when she had done what she had in mind to do, either at the countess's country seat, or at the station, she would go to the first city on the Nizhni Novgorod Railway and stay there.
Dinner was on the table. She went to it, smelt the bread and cheese, and persuading herself that the odor of the victuals was repugnant to her, she ordered the carriage again, and went out. The house was already casting a shadow across the wide street; but the sky was clear, and it was warm in the sun. Annushka, who brought her things, and Piotr, who carried them to the carriage, and the coachman, who was evidently angry, all were disagreeable to her, and vexed her with their words and motions."I do not need you, Piotr."
"Who will get your ticket?"
"Well, go if you wish; it makes no difference to me," she said pettishly.
Piotr nimbly mounted the box, and, folding his arms, ordered the coachman to drive to the station.