Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 33
to Tushkevitch the right to protect her? From every point of view–stupid, stupid!...
And why is she putting me in such a position?” he said with a gesture of despair.
With that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there was standing the
seltzer water and the decanter of brandy, and almost upset it. He tried to catch it, let
it slip, and angrily kicked the table over and rang.
“If you care to be in my service,” he said to the valet who came in, “you had better
remember your duties. This shouldn’t be here. You ought to have cleared away.”
The valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have defended himself, but
glancing at his master, he saw from his face that the only thing to do was to be
silent, and hurriedly threading his way in and out, dropped down on the carpet and
began gathering up the whole and broken glasses and bottles.
“That’s not your duty; send the waiter to clear away, and get my dress coat out.”
Vronsky went into the theater at half-past eight. The performance was in full
swing. The little old box-keeper, recognizing Vronsky as he helped him off with
his fur coat, called him “Your Excellency,” and suggested he should not take a number
but should simply call Fyodor. In the brightly lighted corridor there was no one
but the box-opener and two attendants with fur cloaks on their arms listening at the
doors. Through the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet staccato accompaniment
of the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering distinctly a musical
phrase. The door opened to let the box-opener slip through, and the phrase drawing
to the end reached Vronsky’s hearing clearly. But the doors were closed again at
once, and Vronsky did not hear the end of the phrase and the cadence of the accompaniment,
though he knew from the thunder of applause that it was over. When he
entered the hall, brilliantly lighted with chandeliers and gas jets, the noise was still
going on. On the stage the singer, bowing and smiling, with bare shoulders flashing
with diamonds, was, with the help of the tenor who had given her his arm, gathering
up the bouquets that were flying awkwardly over the footlights. Then she went up
to a gentleman with glossy pomaded hair parted down the center, who was stretching
across the footlights holding out something to her, and all the public in the stalls
as well as in the boxes was in excitement, craning forward, shouting and clapping.
The conductor in his high chair assisted in passing the offering, and straightened
his white tie. Vronsky walked into the middle of the stalls, and, standing still, began
looking about him. That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the
familiar, habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the familiar, uninteresting,
particolored herd of spectators in the packed theater.
There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of some sort in
the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women–God knows who–and uniforms
and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the upper gallery; and among the crowd,
in the boxes and in the front rows, were some forty of the real people. And to those
oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and with them he entered at once into
relation.
The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to his brother’s
box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy,
who, standing with one knee raised and his heel on the footlights, caught
sight of him in the distance and beckoned to him, smiling.
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