Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 28
Chapter 28
ON arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the best hotels;
Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with her child, its nurse, and her
maid, in a large suite of four rooms.
On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s. There he found his mother,
who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and sister-in-law greeted
him as usual: they asked him about his stay abroad, and talked of their common
acquaintances, but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection with
Anna. His brother came the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord
asked him about her, and Alexey Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon his
connection with Madame Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce,
and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much a wife as any other
wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his wife so.
“If the world disapproves, I don’t care,” said Vronsky; “but if my relations want
to be on terms of relationship with me, they will have to be on the same terms with
my wife.”
The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother’s judgment,
could not well tell whether he was right or not till the world had decided the question;
for his part he had nothing against it, and with Alexey he went up to see Anna.
Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna with a certain
formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but it was understood
that his brother knew their real relations, and they talked about Anna’s going to
Vronsky’s estate.
In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence of the new position
in which he was placed, laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would
have thought he must have understood that society was closed for him and Anna;
but now some vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was only the case
in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had
unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the views of society
had changed, and that the question whether they would be received in society
was not a foregone conclusion. “Of course,” he thought, “she would not be received
at court, but intimate friends can and must look at it in the proper light.” One may
sit for several hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed in the same position, if one
knows that there’s nothing to prevent one’s changing one’s position; but if a man
knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the
legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw
them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world. Though at
the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the
test whether the world had not changed by now and would not receive them. But
he very quickly perceived that though the world was open for him personally, it was
closed for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised for him were
dropped to bar the way for Anna.
One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his cousin
Betsy.
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