Anna Karenina

Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, looked over the carriages and the people getting off and forgot his mother entirely. What he had just learned about Kitty had made him excited and happy. His chest involuntarily swelled and his eyes shone. He felt himself the victor.

‘Countess Vronsky is in this compartment,’ said the dashing conductor, coming up to Vronsky.

The conductor’s words woke him up and forced him to remember his mother and the forthcoming meeting with her. In his soul he did not respect her and, without being aware of it, did not love her, though by the notions of the circle in which he lived, by his upbringing, he could not imagine to himself any other relation to his mother than one obedient and deferential in the highest degree, and the more outwardly obedient and deferential he was, the less he respected and loved her in his soul.

XVIII

Vronsky followed the conductor to the carriage and at the door to the compartment stopped to allow a lady to leave. With the habitual flair of a worldly man, Vronsky determined from one glance at this lady’s appearance that she belonged to high society. He excused himself and was about to enter the carriage, but felt a need to glance at her once more - not because she was very beautiful, not because of the elegance and modest grace that could be seen in her whole figure, but because there was something especially gentle and tender in the expression of her sweet-looking face as she stepped past him. As he looked back, she also turned her head. Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because of their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on his face, as if she recognized him, and at once wandered over the approaching crowd as though looking for someone. In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile.

Vronsky entered the carriage. His mother, a dry old woman with dark eyes and curled hair, narrowed her eyes, peering at her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing the maid her little bag, she offered her small, dry hand to her son and, raising his head from her hand, kissed him on the face.

‘You got my telegram? Are you well? Thank God.’

‘Did you have a good trip?’ her son asked, sitting down beside her and involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met at the entrance.

‘I still don’t agree with you,’ the lady’s voice said.

‘A Petersburg point of view, madam.’

‘Not Petersburg, merely a woman’s,’ she answered.

‘Well, allow me to kiss your hand.’

‘Good-bye, Ivan Petrovich. Do see if my brother is here, and send him to me,’ the lady said just by the door, and entered the compartment again.

‘Have you found your brother?’ asked Countess Vronsky, addressing the lady.

Vronsky remembered now that this was Mme Karenina.

‘Your brother is here,’ he said, getting up. ‘Excuse me, I didn’t recognize you, and then our acquaintance was so brief,’ Vronsky said, bowing, ‘that you surely don’t remember me.’

‘Oh, no, I would have recognized you, because your mother and I seem to have spent the whole trip talking only of you,’ she said, finally allowing her animation, which was begging to be let out, to show itself in a smile. ‘And my brother still isn’t here.’

‘Call him, Alyosha,’ said the old countess.

Vronsky went out on the platform and shouted:

‘Oblonsky! This way!’

Mme Karenina did not wait for her brother, but, on seeing him, got out of the carriage with a light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother came up to her, she threw her left arm around his neck in a movement that surprised Vronsky by its resoluteness and grace, quickly drew him to her, and gave him a hearty kiss. Vronsky, not taking his eyes away, looked at her and smiled, himself not knowing at what. But remembering that his mother was waiting for him, he again got into the carriage.

‘Very sweet, isn’t she?’ the countess said of Mme Karenina. ‘Her husband put her with me, and I was very glad. We talked all the way. Well, and they say that you ... vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.’^d

‘I don’t know what you’re hinting at, maman,’ her son replied coolly. ‘Let’s go, then, maman.’

Mme Karenina came back into the carriage to take leave of the countess.

‘Well, Countess, so you’ve met your son and I my brother,’ she said gaily. ‘And all my stories are exhausted; there was nothing more to tell.’