LITMIR.BIZ

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more training was unnecessary?’

      ‘Quite unnecessary,’ said the Englishman. ‘Please don’t talk loud. The mare is nervous,’ he added, nodding toward the closed horse-box before which they were standing, and from which was heard the trampling of hoofs among the straw.

      He opened the door, and Vronsky entered the box, which was dimly lit by one small window. In the box stood a muzzled dark-bay mare stepping from foot to foot among the fresh litter. When he had got used to the dim light of the box, Vronsky again instinctively took in at one comprehensive glance all the points of his favourite mare. Frou-Frou was of medium size and by no means free from blemish. She was slenderly built. Her chest, though well arched, was narrow. Her hindquarters tapered rather too much, and her legs, especially her hind legs, were perceptibly bowed inwards. Neither fore nor hind legs were particularly muscular, but on the other hand she was extremely broad in the girth, now that she was lean from her strict training. Seen from the front, her canon bones were very fine and sharp, but unusually wide seen sideways. She appeared all the more narrow in build because so deep in the breadth. But she possessed in the highest degree a characteristic which made one forget all her defects. This was her thoroughbred quality — the kind of blood that tells, as they say in English. The muscles, clearly marked beneath the network of sinews, stretched in the fine, mobile skin, which was smooth as satin, seemed hard as bone. Her lean head with the prominent, bright, sparkling eyes, broadened out to her muzzle with its wide crimson nostrils. Her whole appearance, more especially about the head, was spirited yet gentle. She was one of those creatures who seem as if they would certainly speak if only the mechanical construction of their mouths allowed them to.

      To Vronsky at any rate it seemed that she understood all he was feeling while looking at her.

      As soon as Vronsky entered, she drew a deep breath and, turning her prominent eyes so that their whites became bloodshot, looked from the other side of the box at the newcomers, shook her muzzle, and stepped lightly from foot to foot.

      ‘There, you see how nervous she is,’ said the Englishman.

      ‘Oh, you darling!’ said Vronsky, stepping toward the horse and soothing her.

      But the nearer he came the more nervous she grew. Only when he reached to her head did she suddenly calm down, and the muscles under her fine, delicate coat vibrated. Vronsky stroked her firm neck, adjusted a lock of her mane that had got on to the wrong side of her sharply-defined withers and brought his face close to her dilated nostrils, delicate as a bat’s wing. Her extended nostrils loudly inhaled and exhaled her breath, and she set back one of her finely-pointed ears with a start, and stretched out her black firm lips toward Vronsky, as if wishing to catch hold of his sleeve. But remembering her muzzle she gave it a jerk, and again began stepping from one of her finely chiselled feet to the other.

      ‘Be quiet, darling, be quiet!’ he said, again stroking her flank, and left the box with a joyful conviction that the horse was in the very best condition.

      The mare’s excitement had communicated itself to Vronsky. He felt that the blood was rushing to his heart, and that he, like the horse, wished to move and to bite; it was both frightening and joyful.

      ‘Well then, I rely on you,’ said Vronsky to the Englishman. ‘You will be on the spot at half-past six.’

      ‘All right,’ said the Englishman. ‘And where are you going, my lord?’ he asked unexpectedly, addressing him as ‘my lord,’ which he hardly ever did.

      Vronsky raised his head in amazement and looked as he knew how to, not into the Englishman’s eyes but at his forehead, surprised at the boldness of the question. But realizing that the Englishman in asking the question regarded him not as an employer, but as a jockey, he replied:

      ‘I have to see Bryansky, but I shall be home in an hour.’

      ‘How often have I been asked that question to-day?’ he thought, and blushed, a thing he rarely did. The Englishman looked at him attentively and, as if he knew where he was going, added: ‘The chief thing before a race is to keep cool: don’t be put out or upset.’

      ‘All right,’ said Vronsky smiling, and jumping into the calèche, he told the coachman to drive to Peterhof.

      He had not gone many yards before the clouds, which had been threatening since morning, broke, and there was a downpour of rain.

      ‘This is bad!’ thought Vronsky, raising the hood of the calèche. ‘It was muddy before, but now it will be a swamp.’ Sitting alone in the closed calèche he drew out his mother’s letter and his brother’s note and read them through.

      Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. They all, his mother and his brother and everybody, considered it necessary to interfere with his intimate affairs. This interference roused him to anger, a feeling he rarely experienced. ‘What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody consider it his duty to look after me? And why do they bother me? Because they see it is something they cannot understand. If it were an ordinary, empty Society intrigue they would let me alone. They feel that it is something different, that it is not a game, and that this woman is dearer to me than life. That is incomprehensible, and therefore it vexes them. Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it,’ he said, joining Anna and himself in the word ‘we.’ ‘No, they needs must teach us how to live. They have no conception of what happiness is, and they do not know that without love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us, for there would be no life,’ he thought.

      He was angry with everybody for their interference, just because he felt in his soul that they were right. He felt that the love that united him with Anna was not momentary infatuation, which would pass, as Society intrigues do, without leaving any trace in the lives of the one or the other except pleasant or disagreeable memories. He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love.

      The recollection of incidents often repeated rose vividly in his mind, where lies and deceptions revolting to his nature had been necessary. He remembered most vividly having more than once noticed her feeling of shame at the necessity for this deception and lying. And he experienced a strange feeling which since his union with Anna sometimes overcame him. It was a feeling of revulsion against something, against Karenin, or against himself or against the whole word — he hardly knew which. But he always drove away this strange feeling. And now too, having given himself a shake, he continued the current of his thoughts:

      ‘Yes, formerly she was unhappy, but proud and calm; but now she cannot be calm and dignified, though she still seems so. Yes, this must be brought to an end,’ he decided.

      And for the first time the clear idea occurred to him that it was necessary to put an end to all this falsehood, and the sooner the better. ‘Throw up everything and let us two conceal ourselves somewhere alone with our love,’ said he to himself.

      Chapter 22

      THE downpour did not last long, and as Vronsky approached his destination — with his shaft-horse at full trot pulling alone, and the trace-horses galloping over the mud with the traces loose — the sun appeared again, the roofs of the houses and the old lime trees in the gardens on both sides glittered with the moisture, and the water dripped merrily from the branches and ran down from the roofs. He no longer thought about the shower spoiling the racecourse, but was glad, because, thanks to the rain, he was sure to find Anna at home and alone, for he knew that Karenin, who had recently returned from a watering-place abroad, had not moved from Petersburg.

      Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky, as usual, to attract less attention, alighted before crossing the little bridge that led to the house and walked on.

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