Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
|
were, surmounting all obstacles,
sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some
sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the
engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All the
awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had
said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her
reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.
"Forgive me, if you dislike what I said," he said humbly.
He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so
stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.
"Its wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if youre a good man,
to forget what youve said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget..."
"Enough, enough!" she cried trying assiduously to give a stern
expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And
clutching at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and
got rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But in the little
corridor she paused, going over in her imagination what had
happened. Though she could not recall her own words or his, she
realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had
brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and
blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went
into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained
condition which had tormented her before did not only come back,
but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid
every minute that something would snap within her from the
excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that
nervous tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination,
there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there
was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards
morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she
waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once
thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that
day and the following came upon her.
At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the
first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh,
mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at
his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that
struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round
hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips
falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired
eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at
her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though
she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck
by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she
experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate,
familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she
experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she
had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and
painfully aware of it.
"Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first
year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you," he said
in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he
almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at anyone who
should say in earnest what he said.
"Is Seryozha quite well?" she asked.
"And is this all the reward," said he, "for my ardor? Hes quite
well..."
Chapter 31
Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in
his armchair, looking straight before him or scanning the people
who got in and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions
struck and impressed people who did not know him by his air of
unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and
self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were
things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting
opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man asked him
for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but
a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the
lamp, and the young man made a wry face,
Anna Karenina page 58 Anna Karenina page 60
|
