Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 22
and he’s a member, I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. Du train que cela
va, the whole time will be wasted on it. And I’m afraid that with such a multiplicity
of these bodies, they’ll end in being a mere form. How many are you a member of,
Nikolay Ivanitch?” she turned to Sviazhsky–”over twenty, I fancy.”
Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone. Darya Alexandrovna,
watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it instantly. She noticed,
too, that as she spoke Vronsky’s face had immediately taken a serious and obstinate
expression. Noticing this, and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the
conversation by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky
had without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the country,
Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was connected with some deep
private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.
The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good; but it was
all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners and balls which of
late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all had the same impersonal and
constrained character, and so on an ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it
made a disagreeable impression on her.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn tennis. The
players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with
gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna
made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the
game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with
Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch,
gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a long time. Sviazhsky and
Vronsky both played very well and seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls
served to them, and without haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly
up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over
the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the
players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. Like
the other men of the party, with the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his
solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his
impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed her eyes,
she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not like
the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky
and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up people, all alone without
children, playing at a child’s game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get
through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to
be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater
with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance.
She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in
the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next
day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after
a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to
them.
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