478 479
“Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored;
but we—I certainly—are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.”
Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two
young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.
“What, bored!” said Betsy. “Sappho says they did enjoy them-
selves tremendously at your house last night.”
“Ah, how dreary it all was!” said Liza Merkalova. “We all drove
back to my place after the races. And always the same people, always
the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas all the
evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me how you
manage never to be bored?” she said, addressing Anna again. “One
has but to look at you and one sees, here’s a woman who may be happy
or unhappy, but isn’t bored. Tell me how you do it?”
“I do nothing,” answered Anna, blushing at these searching ques-
tions.
“That’s the best way,” Stremov put it. Stremov was a man of fifty,
partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a characteristic
and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was his wife’s niece, and he spent
all his leisure hours with her. On meeting Anna Karenina, as he was
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the government, he tried, like a
shrewd man and a man of the world, to be particularly cordial with her,
the wife of his enemy.
“‘Nothing,’” he put in with a subtle smile, “that’s the very best way.
I told you long ago,” he said, turning to Liza Merkalova, “that if you
don’t want to be bored, you mustn’t think you’re going to be bored. It’s
just as you mustn’t be afraid of not being able to fall asleep, if you’re
afraid of sleeplessness. That’s just what Anna Arkadyevna has just
said.”
“I should be very glad if I had said it, for it’s not only clever but
true,” said Anna, smiling.
“No, do tell me why it is one can’t go to sleep, and one can’t help
being bored?”
“To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to
work too.”
“What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And
I can’t and won’t knowingly make a pretense about it.”
“You’re incorrigible,” said Stremov, not looking at her, and he spoke
again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing but
commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to when she
was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia Ivanovna
was of her, with an expression which suggested that he longed with his
whole soul to please her and show his regard for her and even more
than that.
Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the
other players to begin croquet.
“No, don’t go away, please don’t,” pleaded Liza Merkalova, hearing
that Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.
“It’s too violent a transition,” he said, “to go from such company to
old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her a chance for
talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such different feelings
of the highest and most opposite kind,” he said to her.
Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man’s
flattering words, the naive, childlike affection shown her by Liza
Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,— it was all
so easy, and what was in store for her was so difficult, that she was for
a minute in uncertainty whether to remain, whether to put off a little
longer the painful moment of explanation. But remembering what
was in store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision,