Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 19
in connection with his race horses, to the purveyor of oats and hay, the English saddler,
and so on. He would have to pay some two thousand roubles on these debts
too, in order to be quite free from anxiety. The last class of debts–to shops, to hotels,
to his tailor–were such as need not be considered. So that he needed at least
six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he only had one thousand eight hundred.
For a man with one hundred thousand roubles of revenue, which was what
everyone fixed as Vronsky’s income, such debts, one would suppose, could hardly
be embarrassing; but the fact was that he was far from having one hundred thousand.
His father’s immense property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two
hundred thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time when the
elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess Varya Tchirkova, the daughter
of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey had given up to his elder
brother almost the whole income from his father’s estate, reserving for himself only
twenty-five thousand a year from it. Alexey had said at the time to his brother that
that sum would be sufficient for him until he married, which he probably never
would do. And his brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive regiments,
and was only just married, could not decline the gift. His mother, who had
her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year twenty thousand in addition
to the twenty-five thousand he had reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late
his mother, incensed with him on account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow,
had given up sending him the money. And in consequence of this, Vronsky, who
had been in the habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only
received twenty thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties. To get out of
these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for money. Her last letter, which
he had received the day before, had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it
that she was quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the army, but not
to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society. His mother’s attempt to buy
him stung him to the quick and made him feel colder than ever to her. But he could
not draw back from the generous word when it was once uttered, even though he felt
now, vaguely foreseeing certain eventualities in his intrigue with Madame Karenina,
that this generous word had been spoken thoughtlessly, and that even though
he were not married he might need all the hundred thousand of income. But it was
impossible to draw back. He had only to recall his brother’s wife, to remember how
that sweet, delightful Varya sought, at every convenient opportunity, to remind him
that she remembered his generosity and appreciated it, to grasp the impossibility of
taking back his gift. It was as impossible as beating a woman, stealing, or lying. One
thing only could and ought to be done, and Vronsky determined upon it without an
instant’s hesitation: to borrow money from a money-lender, ten thousand roubles, a
proceeding which presented no difficulty, to cut down his expenses generally, and to
sell his race horses. Resolving on this, he promptly wrote a note to Rolandak, who
had more than once sent to him with offers to buy horses from him. Then he sent for
the Englishman and the money-lender, and divided what money he had according
to the accounts he intended to pay. Having finished this business, he wrote a cold
and cutting answer to his mother. Then he took out of his notebook three notes of
Anna’s, read them again, burned them, and remembering their conversation on the
previous day, he sank into meditation.
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