Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 25
Chapter 25
THERE were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race course was a
large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of the pavilion. On this
course nine obstacles had been arranged: the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet
high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope,
an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced
with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the
horse had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled
with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race was just facing the pavilion.
But the race began not in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that
part of the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth,
which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred.
Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse thrust itself
out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire who was starting them, Colonel
Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted
“Away!” and the racers started.
Every eye, every opera glass, was turned on the brightly colored group of riders
at the moment they were in line to start.
“They’re off! They’re starting!” was heard on all sides after the hush of expectation.
And little groups and solitary figures among the public began running from place
to place to get a better view. In the very first minute the close group of horsemen
drew out, and it could be seen that they were approaching the stream in twos and
threes and one behind another. To the spectators it seemed as though they had all
started simultaneously, but to the racers there were seconds of difference that had
great value to them.
Frou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment, and several horses
had started before her, but before reaching the stream, Vronsky, who was holding in
the mare with all his force as she tugged at the bridle, easily overtook three, and
there were left in front of him Mahotin’s chestnut Gladiator, whose hind-quarters
were moving lightly and rhythmically up and down exactly in front of Vronsky, and
in front of all, the dainty mare Diana bearing Kuzovlev more dead than alive.
For the first instant Vronsky was not master either of himself or his mare. Up to
the first obstacle, the stream, he could not guide the motions of his mare.
Gladiator and Diana came up to it together and almost at the same instant; simultaneously
they rose above the stream and flew across to the other side; Frou-Frou
darted after them, as if flying; but at the very moment when Vronsky felt himself in
the air, he suddenly saw almost under his mare’s hoofs Kuzovlev, who was floundering
with Diana on the further side of the stream. (Kuzovlev had let go the reins
as he took the leap, and the mare had sent him flying over her head.) Those details
Vronsky learned later; at the moment all he saw was that just under him, where Frou-
Frou must alight, Diana’s legs or head might be in the way. But Frou-Frou drew up
her legs and back in the very act of leaping, like a falling cat, and, clearing the other
mare, alighted beyond her.
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