Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
The coachman reined in his four horses, and looked off to the right toward a field of rye where some muzhiks were sitting beside their cart. The bookkeeper at first started to jump down, but afterward reconsidered, and shouted, imperatively summoning a muzhik to the carriage. The breeze which had blown while they were in motion died down, when they stopped; the horse-flies persisted in sticking to the sweaty horses, which kept angrily shaking them off. The metallic sound of whetting scythes, borne by the breeze across from the telyega, ceased. One of the peasants got up and came over to the calash. "Say, hurry up," cried the bookkeeper, angrily, to the muzhik, who, in his bare feet, came leisurely along the ruts of the dry and little-traveled road, "come here."
The old man, whose curly hair was bound round with a piece of bast, and whose bent back was black with perspiration, quickened his step, and came up to the calash, and took hold of the rim with his sunburnt hand.
"Vozdvizhenskoye? the manor-house?[1] to the count's?" he repeated; "why, all you have to do's to drive on up the hill. First turn to the left. Then straight along the preshpekt and that'll bring you there. Who do you want? The count himself?"
"Do you know whether they are at home, galubchik?" asked Darya Aleksandrovna, not mentioning names, for she did not know how to ask for Anna even of a muzhik.
"Must be at home," said the muzhik, shuffling along in his bare feet and leaving in the dust the tracks of his soles with their five toes. "They must be at home," he repeated, evidently liking to talk. "This afternoon some new guests came. Guests, such quantities of them! .... What do you want," he cried, addressing his comrade, who shouted something from the cart, "They've all been out on horseback. We saw them go by. They must be back by this time. But whose folks are you?"
"We have come from a long way," said the coachman, climbing upon the box. "So then, it is not far."
"I tell you, you are almost there. If you drive on ...." said he, shifting his hand on the rim of the calash.
His young comrade, healthy-looking and thick-set, also came up to the carriage.
"Do you need any help in getting in the harvest?" he asked.
"I don't know, galubchik."
"Well, you understand, you turn to the left and then you'll get there," said the muzhik, evidently reluctant to part with the strangers and anxious to talk.
The coachman touched up his horses, but they had hardly started ere the muzhik cried:—
"Wait! he! hold on!" cried two voices together The coachman reined in again. "There they come. There they are," cried the muzhik. "See what a lot of them," and he pointed to four persons on horseback and two in a char a bancs who were coming along the road.
They were Vronsky and his jockey, Veslovsky and Anna, on horseback, and the princess Varvara with Sviazhsky in the char a bancs. They had been out to ride and to look at the operation of some newly imported reaping-machines.
When the carriage stopped the riders were all walking their horses. In front Anna rode with Veslovsky. Anna rode at an easy gait on a little stout English cob with a cropped mane and docked tail. Her pretty head, with her dark ringlets escaping from under a tall hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in a tightly fitting amazonka, and her whole easy, graceful horsemanship surprised Dolly. At first it seemed to her unbecoming for Anna to be riding horseback. Darya Aleksandrovna connected the idea of horseback riding for ladies with the idea of light, youthful coquetry, which seemed to her did not accord well with Anna's position; but as she examined her more closely she immediately became reconciled to her going on horseback. Notwithstanding all her elegance, everything about her was so simple, easy, and appropriate in her pose and in her habit and in her motions, that nothing could have been more natural.
Next to Anna, on a gray, fiery cavalry horse, rode Vasenka Veslovsky, thrusting his fat legs forward, and evidently very well satisfied with himself. He still wore his Scotch cap with its floating ribbons, and Darya Aleksandrovna could hardly restrain a smile of amusement when she saw him.
Behind them rode Vronsky on a dark chestnut horse of purest blood, which was evidently spoiling for a gallop. He was sawing on the reins to hold him back. Behind them came a little man in a jockey's livery. Sviazhsky and the princess in a new char à bancs, drawn by a plump raven-black trotter, brought up the rear.
Anna's face, as she recognized Dolly in the little person curled up in a corner of the old carriage, suddenly grew bright with a happy smile, and, uttering a cry of joy, she put her cob to a gallop. Riding up to the calash, she leaped off the horse without any one's aid, and, gathering up her skirts, ran to meet her.
"I thought so, and did not dare to think so! What pleasure! you can't imagine my joy," she said, pressing her face to Dolly's, kissing her, and then holding her off at arm's length and looking at her with an affectionate smile. "What a pleasure, Alekseï," she said, glancing at Vronsky, who had also dismounted, and was coming toward them, "what a piece of good fortune!"
Vronsky came up, raising his tall gray hat. "You can't imagine what delight your visit gives us," said he, in a tone which conveyed a peculiar satisfaction, and with a smile which displayed his strong white teeth,
Vasenka, without dismounting from his horse, took off his beribboned cap, and waved it gayly round his head, in honor of the guest.
"This is the Princess Varvara," began Anna, in reply to a questioning look of Dolly as the char à bancs came up.
"Ah!" replied Darya Aleksandrovna, and her face showed involuntary annoyance.
The Princess Varvara was her husband's aunt, and she knew her of old, and did not esteem her. She knew that she had lived all her life long in a humiliating dependence on rich relatives; and the fact that she was living at Vronsky's, at the house of a stranger to her, insulted her through her husband's family. Anna noticed the expression of Dolly's face, and was confused; she blushed, and, dropping the train of her amazonka, she tripped over it.
Darya Aleksandrovna went over to the char à bancs when it had stopped and coolly greeted the Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky was also an acquaintance. He asked after his friend Levin and his young wife; then, casting a fleeting glance at the oddly matched horses and the patched side of the old carriage, he proposed that the ladies should get into the char a bancs.
"I will take this vehicle to go home in; the horse is quiet and the princess is an excellent driver."
"Oh, no," interrupted Anna, coming up; "remain as you are. I will go home with Dolly in the calash."
Darya Aleksandrovna's eyes were dazzled by the unexampled elegance of the carriage, and the beauty of the horses, and the refined brilliancy of the company around her, but more than all was she struck by the change that had taken place in her old friend, her dearly beloved Anna.
Any other woman, less observant, and unacquainted with Anna in days gone by, and especially any one who had not been under the sway of such thoughts as had occupied Darya Aleksandrovna on the way, would not have noticed anything peculiar about Anna. But now Darya Aleksandrovna was struck by the transient beauty characteristic of women when they are under the influence of love, and which she detected now in Anna's face. Everything about her face was extraordinarily fascinating: the well-defined dimples in her cheeks and chin, the curve of her lips, the smile, which, as it were, flitted over her features, the gleam in her eyes, the gracefulness and quickness of her movements, the richness in the tones of her voice, even the manner with which she, with a sort of sternly affectionate manner, replied to Veslovsky, who had asked permission to ride her cob so as to teach it to gallop by a pressure of the leg. It seemed as if she herself was aware of this, and rejoiced in it.
When the two ladies were seated together in the calash, they both suddenly felt a sense of constraint. Anna was confused at the scrutinizingly questioning look which Dolly fixed on her, and Dolly because she could not help feeling ashamed of the dirty old calash in which Anna had taken her seat with her.
The coachman, Filipp, and the bookkeeper experienced the same feeling. The bookkeeper, in order to hide his confusion, fidgeted about in helping the ladies to be comfortably seated; but Filipp, the coachman, frowned and was loath to acknowledge any such superficial superiority. He put on an ironical smile as he scrutinized the raven-black trotter harnessed to the char à bancs, and decided in his own mind that the black trotter might do very well for a prominazhe, but that he could not show forty versts at a heat.
The muzhiks had left their telyega, and gayly and curiously were watching the meeting of the friends, and making their observations.
"They seem tolerably glad; hain't seen each other for some time," remarked the curly-haired old man.
"There, Uncle Gerasim, that black gelding would haul in the sheaves lively!"
"Glian'-ka, look! Is that a woman in trousers?" asked another, pointing at Veslovsky, sitting on the side-saddle.
"Nye, muzhik! see how easy he rides."
"Say, then, my children, we shan't get another nap, shall we?"
"No more sleep now," said the old man, squinting his eyes and glancing at the sun; "past noon! Look! Now get your hooks and to work."
- ↑ Barsky dvor, a dvor, or house and grounds, belonging to a barin or noble.