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Chapter 17.
Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the
station of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first
person he came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who
was expecting his sister by the same train.
“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you meeting?”
“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who
met Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended
the steps. “She is to be here from Petersburg today.”
“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did you
go after the Shtcherbatskys’?”
“Home,” answered Vronsky. “I must own I felt so well content
yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere.”
“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know
a youth in love,”
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to
Levin.
Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny
it, but he promptly changed the subject.
“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.
“I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.
“You don’t say so!”
“Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.”
“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.
“You know her, no doubt?”
“I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure,” Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and
tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
“But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you
surely must know. All the world knows him.”
“I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he’s clever,
learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that’s not...not in my
line,” said Vronsky in English.
“Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splen-
did man,” observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “a splendid man.”
“Oh, well, so much the better for him,” said Vronsky smiling. “Oh,
you’ve come,” he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother’s,
standing at the door; “come here.”
Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky
had felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagina-
tion he was associated with Kitty.
“Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the
diva?” he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.
“Of course. I’m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did yo make the
acquaintance of my friend Levin?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Yes; but he left rather early.”
“He’s a capital fellow,” pursued Oblonsky. “Isn’t he?”
“I don’t know why it is,” responded Vronsky, “in all Moscow people—
present company of course excepted,” he put in jestingly, “there’s some-
thing uncompromising. They are all on the defensive, lose their tem-
pers, as though they all want to make one feel something...”