‘Of course not; what have Matvey and I done to deserve such contempt?’ said Stepan Arkadyich to his wife with a barely perceptible smile.
Dolly subjected her husband to her usual faint mockery all evening, and Stepan Arkadyich was good-humoured and jolly, but not excessively so, as he did not want to show that he had forgotten his guilt after being forgiven.
At half-past nine the family chatter round the Oblonskys’ tea table, which happened to be particularly happy and convivial that evening, was broken up by what seemed to be the simplest of events, but this simple event for some reason seemed strange to everybody. While they were talking about mutual Petersburg acquaintances, Anna quickly rose.
‘She’s in my album,’ she said, ‘and I’ll also be able to show you my Seryozha, by the way,’ she added with a proud maternal smile.
Towards ten o’clock, which was when she usually said goodnight to her son, and often put him to bed herself before she went to a ball, she began to feel sad that she was so far away from him; and no matter what they talked about, her thoughts kept coming back to her curly-headed Seryozha. She yearned to look at his picture and talk about him. Seizing the first opportunity, she got up and set off with her light, determined step to fetch the album. The stairs leading up to her room began at the landing of the heated main staircase in the hall.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room a bell rang in the lobby.
‘Who can that be?’ said Dolly.
‘It’s early for me, and late for anyone else,’ remarked Kitty.
‘Probably someone with papers,’ added Stepan Arkadyich, and while Anna was walking past the staircase, a servant ran upstairs to announce the arrival of the visitor, who was standing by the lamp. Glancing downwards, Anna immediately recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure mixed with an amorphous fear suddenly stirred in her heart. He was standing there without removing his coat, and taking something out of his pocket. Just as she came level with the middle of the staircase he raised his eyes, saw her, and his face took on a frightened, sheepish expression. She went on, with her head slightly inclined, and next came the booming voice of Stepan Arkadyich, asking him to come in, and the quiet, soft, and calm voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was no longer there, and Stepan Arkadyich was recounting how he had dropped by to find out about the dinner they were giving for a visiting celebrity.
Kitty blushed. She thought she was the only one who realized why he had stopped by, and why he had not come in. ‘He was at our house,’ she thought, ‘and did not find me there, so thought I might be here; but he did not come in, because he thought it was late, and because Anna is here.’
They all exchanged glances without saying anything, and started looking at Anna’a album.
There was nothing unusual or strange about someone calling on a friend at half-past nine to find out the details of a dinner that was being planned, and not coming in; but it did seem strange to everyone. It seemed strange and wrong most of all to Anna.
22
THE ball had just begun when Kitty and her mother stepped on to the central staircase, which was bathed in light and embellished with flowers and powdered footmen in red livery. From the interior came a steady rustle of movement which filled the rooms like bees buzzing in a hive, and while they adjusted their hair in front of a mirror between the potted plants on the landing, the delicately clear sounds of the violins in the orchestra could be heard striking up the first waltz in the ballroom. An old gentleman in civilian dress who had been adjusting his grey whiskers in front of another mirror, and exuded the smell of cologne, bumped into them on the staircase and stood aside, clearly admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A clean-shaven youth, one of those society youths whom old Prince Shcherbatsky called young pups, wearing an extremely open-cut waistcoat and straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after dashing past came back in order to invite Kitty for the quadrille. The first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, so she had to give this youth the second. An officer who was buttoning his glove stepped aside at the door, stroking his moustache as he admired the pink Kitty.
Despite the fact that her dress, her hair, and all her preparations for the ball caused Kitty a great deal of trouble and thought, she now entered the ball so effortlessly and simply in her intricate tulle gown over a pink slip that it was as if none of the rosettes and lace, or any details of her dress had caused her or her servants a moment’s thought, as if she had been born in all this tulle and lace and with this tall hairstyle, crowned by a rose and two leaves.
When the old princess wanted to put the twisted ribbon of her sash in order before they entered the ballroom, Kitty gently demurred. She felt that everything on her should look good and graceful on its own and that nothing needed to be adjusted.
This was one of Kitty’s happy days. Her dress was not too tight, her lace collar was not drooping anywhere, the rosettes had not crumpled or been torn off, and her pink slippers with the high, curved heels did not pinch, but energized her slender feet. The thick braids of blonde hair clung to her small head as if they were her own. All three buttons on the long glove which encased her arm without changing its shape had fastened without breaking. The black velvet ribbon of her locket encircled her neck to particular gentle effect. The velvet ribbon was enchanting, and as she gazed at her neck in the mirror at home, Kitty felt this velvet ribbon was speaking. There might be some doubt about everything else, but the velvet ribbon was enchanting. Kitty had also smiled here at the ball when she had looked at it in the mirror. Her bare shoulders and arms felt as cool as marble, which was a feeling Kitty particularly liked. Her eyes shone, and her rosy lips could not but smile from an awareness of her attractiveness. No sooner had she entered the ballroom and approached the crowd of ladies in brightly coloured tulle, ribbons, and lace, awaiting invitations to dance (Kitty never lingered long in this crowd) than she was invited for the waltz, and by the best dancer, the top dancer in the ball hierarchy, famous as a director of balls and master of ceremonies, the handsome, portly, married man Yegorushka Korsunsky. Having just left Countess Banina, with whom he had danced the first round of the waltz, and surveyed his charges, that is, the handful of couples already on the dance-floor, he saw Kitty entering, made a beeline for her in that relaxed saunter which is the preserve of ball directors, bowed, and held out his arm so he could clasp her slender waist without even asking for her consent. She looked around for someone to whom she could hand her fan, and the hostess took it from her with a smile.
‘How good that you have come on time,’ he said to her, putting his arm round her waist. ‘I don’t understand this habit of arriving late.’
She bent her left arm in order to place it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began moving quickly, lightly, and evenly in time to the music across the slippery parquet.
‘One relaxes waltzing with you,’ he said to her as they launched into the first slow steps of the waltz. ‘Your lightness and précision are sheer delight,’ he told her, which is what he said to almost all his close acquaintances.
She smiled at his praise, and continued to survey the ballroom over his shoulder. She was not one of those girls who had just come out, for whom all the faces at a ball merge into one magical impression; nor was she one of those girls dragged to balls for whom the faces are all so familiar they become boring; she was somewhere in the middle—she was excited, but at the same time she had enough self-possession to observe her surroundings. She could see that the cream of society had gathered in the left-hand corner of the ballroom. The beautiful and audaciously naked Lydia, Korsunsky’s wife, was there, the hostess was there, as was Krivin, always to be found with the cream of society, his bald head shining; that is where the youths were looking, not daring to go over; her eyes picked out Stiva there, and then she saw the lovely figure and head of Anna in a black velvet dress. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening when she had refused Levin. She immediately recognized him with her far-sighted eyes, and even noticed that he was looking at her.