________________________________________________
_ Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for
the end of the last act. She had only just time to go into her
dressing room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it,
set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing room,
when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in
Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance,
and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the
mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the
passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the
visitors pass by him into the house.
Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged
coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests
at the other door of the drawing room, a large room with dark
walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with
the light of candles, white cloth, siver samovar, and transparent
china tea things.
The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves.
Chairs were set with the aid of footmen, moving almost
imperceptibly about the room; the party settled itself, divided
into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the
other at the opposite end of the drawing room, round the handsome
wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined
black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it
always does, fro the first few minutes, broken up by mettings,
greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about for
something to rest upon.
"She's exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she's
studied Kaulbach," said a diplomatic attache in the group round
the ambassador's wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."
"Oh, please ,don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can
possibly say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced,
flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old
silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity
and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed enfant terrible.
Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups,
and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one
and then of the other. "Three people have used that very phrase
about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made
a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that remark
so."
The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new
subject had to be thought of again.
"Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful," said the
ambassador's wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant
coversation called by the English, small talk. She addressed the
attache, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.
"They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing
that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get
me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given
me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the
celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so
stale..."
"That has been said long ago," the ambassador's wife interrupted
him, laughing.
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too
amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to
the sure, never-failing topic--gossip.
"Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about
Tushkevitch?" he said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired
young man, standing at the table.
"Oh, yes! He's in thesame style as the drawing room and that's
why it is he's so often here."
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to
what could not be talked on in that room--that is to say, of the
relations of Tushkevitch with their hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been
meanwhile vacillating in just the same way between three
inevitable topics: the latest piece of publick news, the
theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last
topic, that is, ill-natured gossib.
"Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman--the mother, not the
daughter--has ordered a costurme in diable rose color?"
"Nonsense! No, that's too lovely!"
"I wonder that with her sense--for she's not a fool, you know -
that she doesn't see how funny she is."
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the
luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled
merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent
collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came
into the drawing room before going to his club. Stepping
noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya.
"How did you like Nilsson?" he asked.
"Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled
me!" she responded. "Please don't talk to me about the opera;
you know nothing about music. I'd better meet you on your own
ground, and talk about yor majolica and engravings. Come now,
what treasure have yo been buying lately at the old curiosity
shops?"
"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such
things."
"Oh, do show me! I've been learning about them at those--what's
their names?...the bankers...they've some splendid engravings.
They showed them to us."
"Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?" asked the hostess from
the samovar.
"Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told
us thesauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds," Princess
Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was
listening; "and very nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had
to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteenpence, and
everybody was very much pleased with it. I can't run to
hundred-pound sauces."
"She's unique!" said the lady of the house.
"Marvelous!" said someone.
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya's speeches was always
unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the
fact that though she spoke notalways ppropriately, as now, she
said simple things with some sense in them. In thesociety in
hwich she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the
wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had
that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and
so the conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped,
Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party toegether, and
truned to the ambassador's wife.
"Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us."
"No, we're very happy here," the ambassador's wife responded with
a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been
begun.
"It was a very agreeable conversation. Tehy were criticizing the
Karenins, husband and wife.
"Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's
something strange about her," said her friend.
"The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of
Alexey Vronsky," said the ambassador's wife.
"Well, what of it? There's a fable of Gromm's about a man
without a shadow, a man who's lost his shadow. And that's his
punishment for something. I never coud understand how it was a
punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow."
"Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end," said
Anna's friend.
"Bad luck to your tongue!" said Princess Myakaya suddenly.
"Madame Karenina's a splendid woman. I don't like her husband,
but I like her very much."
"Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,"
said the ambassador's wife. "My husband says there are few
statesmen like him in Europe."
"And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,"
said Princess Myakaya. "If our husbands didn't talk to us, we
should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexnadrovitch, to my
thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper...but doesn't
it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to
consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought
myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he a fool,
though only in a whisper, everything's explained, isn't it?"
"How spiteful you are today!"
"Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of the two had to
be a fool. And, well, you know one can't say that of oneself."
" No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied
with his wit.'" The attache repeated the French saying.
"That's just it, just it," Princess Myakaya turned to him. "But
the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's so
nice, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love
with her, and follow her about like shadows?"
"Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it," Anna's friend said in
self-defense.
"If no one follows us about like a shadow, that's no proof that
we've any right to blame her."
And having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Myakaya
got up, and together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group
atthe table, where the conversation was dealing with the king of
Prussia.
"What wicked gossip were you talking over there?" asked Betsy.
"About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey
Alexandrovitch," said the ambassodor's wife with a smile, as she
sat down at the table.
"Pity we didn't hear it!" said Princess Betsy, glancing towards
the door. "Ah, here you are at last!" she said, turning with a
smile to Vronsky, as he came in.
Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he
was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in
wtih the quiet manner with which oneenters a room full of people
from whom one has only just parted.
"Where do I come from?" he said, in answer to a questio from the
ambassador's wife. "Well, there's no help for it, I must
confess. From the opera bouffe. I do believe I've seen it a
hundrerd times, and always with fresh enjoyment. It's exquisite!
I know it's disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, and I
sit out the opera bouffe to the last minute, and enjoy it. This
evening..."
He mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something
about her; but theambassoador's wife, with playful horror, cut
him short.
"Please don't tell us about that horror."
"All right, I won't especially as everyone knows those horrors."
"And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the
correct thing, like the opera," chimed in Princess Myakaya. _
Read next: Part Two: Chapter 7
Read previous: Part Two: Chapter 5
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