Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
A temporary stable,—a balagan, or hut,—made out of planks, had been built near the race-course; and here Vronsky's horse should have been brought the evening before. He had not as yet seen her. During the last few days he himself had not been out to drive, but he had intrusted her to the trainer; and Vronsky did not know in what condition he should find her. He was just getting out of his carriage when his konyukh, or groom, a young fellow, saw him from a distance, and immediately called the trainer. This was an Englishman with withered face and tufted chin, and dressed in short jacket and top-boots. He came out toward Vronsky in the mincing step peculiar to jockeys, and with elbows sticking out.
"Well, how is Frou Frou? " said Vronsky, in English.
"All right, sir" said the Englishman, in a voice that came out of the bottom of his throat. "Better not go in, sir," he added, taking off his hat. "I have put a muzzle on her, and that excites her. Better not go in, it excites a horse."
"No, I am going in, I want to see her."
"Come on, then," replied the Englishman, testily; and, without ever opening his mouth, and with his dandified step, he led the way.
They went into a small yard in front of the stable. An active and alert stable-boy in a clean jacket, with whip in hand, met them as they entered, and followed them. Five horses were in the stable, each in its own stall. Vronsky knew that his most redoubtable rival,— Makhotin's Gladiator, a chestnut horse five vershoks high,—was there, and he was more curious to see Gladiator than to see his own racer; but he knew that, according to the etiquette of the races, he could not have him brought out, or even ask questions about him. As he passed along the corridor the groom opened the door of the second stall at the left, and Vronsky saw a powerful chestnut with white feet. He knew it was Gladiator; but with the delicacy of a man who turns away from an open letter which is not addressed to him, he instantly turned away and walked toward Frou Frou's stall.
"That horse belongs to Ma,... k.... mak, .... I never can pronounce his name," said the Englishman, over his shoulder, and pointing to Gladiator's stall with a huge finger, the nail of which was black with dirt.
"Makhotin's? Yes; he is my only dangerous rival."
"If you would mount him, I would bet on you," said the Englishman.
"Frou Frou has more nerve, this one stronger," said Vronsky, smiling at the jockey's praise.
"In hurdle-races, all depends on the mount, and on pluck."
Pluck—that is, audacity and coolness—Vronsky knew that he had in abundance; and, what was far more important, he was firmly convinced that no one could have more of this pluck than he had.
"You are sure that a good sweating was not necessary?"
"Not at all," replied the Englishman. "Please not speak so loud, the horse is restive," he added, jerking his head toward the closed stall in front of which they were standing. They could hear the horse stamping on the straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky entered a box-stall feebly lighted by a little window. A dark bay horse, muzzled, was nervously prancing up and down on the fresh straw. As he gazed into the semi-obscurity of the stall, Vronsky in spite of himself took in at one general observation all the points of his favorite horse. Frou Frou was a horse of medium size, and not faultless in form. Her bones were slender, although her brisket showed powerfully; her breast was narrow, the crupper was rather tapering; and the legs, particularly the hind legs, considerably bowed. The muscles of the legs were not big; but, on the other hand, where the saddle rested the horse was extraordinarily wide, and this was particularly striking by reason of the firmness and the smallness of her belly. The bones of the legs below the knee seemed not thicker than a finger, seen from the front; they were extraordinarily large when seen sidewise. The whole steed, with the exception of the ribs, seemed squeezed in and lengthened out. But she had one merit that outweighed all her faults: she was a thoroughbred, had good blood,—which tells, as the English say. Her muscles, standing out under a network of veins, covered with a skin as smooth and soft as satin, seemed as solid as bone; her slender head, with prominent eyes, bright and animated, widened out at the septum into projecting nostrils with membrane which seemed suffused with blood. In her whole form and especially in her head there was an expression of something energetic and decided, and at the same time good-tempered. It was one of those creatures which do not speak for the single reason that the mechanical construction of their mouths does not permit of it.
Vronsky, at any rate, was convinced that she understood all of his thoughts while he was looking at her. As soon as he went to her she began to take long breaths, and, turning her prominent eyes so that the whites became suffused with blood, she gazed from the opposite side at the visitors, trying to shake off her muzzle, and dancing on her feet with elastic motion.
"You see how excited she is," said the Englishman.
"Whoa, my loveliest, whoa!" said Vronsky, approaching to soothe her; but the nearer he came the more nervous she grew, and only when he had caressed her head did she become tranquil. He could feel her muscles strain and tremble under her delicate, smooth skin. Vronsky smoothed her powerful neck, and put into place a tuft of her mane that she had tossed on the other side; and then he put his face close to her nostrils, which swelled and dilated like the wings of a bat. She drew in the air, and loudly expelled it from her quivering nostrils, pricked up her sharp ears, and stretched out her long black lips to seize his sleeve; but, when she found herself prevented by her muzzle, she shook it, and began to caper again on her slender legs.
"Quiet, my beauty, quiet," said Vronsky, calming her; and he left the stable with the reassuring conviction that his horse was in perfect condition.
But the nervousness of the steed had taken possession of Vronsky; he felt the blood rush to his heart, and, like the horse, he wanted violent action; he felt like prancing and biting. It was a sensation at once strange and joyful.
"Well, I count on you," said he to the Englishman. "Be on the grounds at half-past six."
"All shall be ready. But where are you going, my lord?" asked the Englishman, using the title of "my lord," which he almost never permitted himself to use.
Astonished at this, Vronsky raised his head, and looked at him as he well understood how to do, not into the Englishman's eyes, but at his forehead. He instantly saw that the Englishman had spoken to him, not as to his master, but as to a jockey; and he replied:—
"I have got to see Briansky, and I shall be at home in an hour."
"How many times have I been asked that question to-day!" he said to himself; and he grew red, which was a rare occurrence with him. The Englishman looked at him closely. And, as if he also knew where Vronsky was going, he said:—
"The main thing is to keep calm before the race. Don't get out of sorts; don't get bothered."
"All right," replied Vronsky, with a smile; and, jumping into his carriage, he ordered the coachman to drive to Peterhof.
He had gone but a short distance before the clouds, which since morning had been threatening rain, grew thicker, and a heavy shower fell.
"Too bad!" thought Vronsky, raising the hood of his carriage. "It has been muddy; now it will be a swamp."
Now that he was sitting alone in his covered calash, he took out his mother's letter and his brother's note, and read them over.
Yes, it was always the old story; both his mother and his brother found it necessary to meddle with his love-affairs. This interference aroused his anger,—a feeling which he rarely experienced.
"How does this concern them? Why does every one feel called on to meddle with me, and why do they bother me? Because they see that there is something about this that they can't understand. If it were an ordinary vulgar society intrigue, they would leave me in peace; but they imagine that it is something else, that it is not mere trifling, that this woman is dearer to me than life; that is incredible and vexatious to them. Whatever be our fate, we ourselves have made it, and we shall not regret it," he said to himself, including Anna in the word "we." "But no, they want to teach us how to live. They have no idea of what happiness is. They don't know that, were it not for this love, there would be for us neither joy nor grief in this world; life itself would not exist."
In reality, what exasperated him most against every one was the fact that his conscience told him that they—all of them—were right. He felt that his love for Anna was not a superficial impulse, destined, like so many social attachments, to disappear, and leave no trace beyond sweet or painful memories. He felt keenly all the torture of her situation and his, and how difficult it was in the prominent position which they held in the eyes of society to hide their love, to lie, to deceive, to dissemble, and constantly to think about others, when the passion uniting them was so violent that they both forgot about everything else except their love.
He vividly pictured to himself all the constantly recurring circumstances when it was essential to employ falsehood and deceit, which were so contrary to his nature. He recalled with especial vividness the feeling of shame which he had often surprised in Anna, when she also was driven to tell a lie.
Since this affair with her, he sometimes experienced a strange sensation. This was a feeling of disgust and repulsion for some one, he could not tell for whom he felt it—for Alekseï Aleksandrovitch or himself, or for all society. As far as possible he banished this strange feeling.
"Yes, heretofore she has been unhappy, but proud and calm; now she cannot be proud and content any longer, though she may not betray the fact. Yes, this must end," he would conclude in his own mind.
And for the first time the thought of cutting short this life of dissimulation appeared to him clear and tangible; the sooner, the better.
"She and I must leave everything, and together we must go and hide ourselves somewhere with our love," he said to himself.