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Chapter 34.
When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his
large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade
Petritsky.
Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected,
and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards
evening he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after
all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite
both of his comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve
o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired
carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang, he
heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s
voice. “If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!” Vronsky told the
servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room.
Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and
flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room,
like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making
coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky,
in full uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting each side of
her.
“Bravo! Vronsky!” shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair.
“Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee
pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the orna-
ment of your study,” he said, indicating the baroness. “You know each
other, of course?”
“I should think so,” said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the
baroness’s little hand. “What next! I’m an old friend.”
“You’re home after a journey,” said the baroness, “so I’m flying. Oh,
I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.”
“You’re home, wherever you are, baroness,” said Vronsky. “How do
you do, Kamerovsky?” he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.
“There, you never know how to say such pretty things,” said the
baroness, turning to Petritsky.
“No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as good.”
“After dinner there’s no credit in them? Well, then, I’ll make you
some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,” said the baroness, sitting
down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot.
“Pierre, give me the coffee,” she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she
called as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her relations
with him. “I’ll put it in.”
“You’ll spoil it!”
“No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?” said the baroness sud-
denly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. “We’ve
been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?”
“No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall
die.”
“So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.”
And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many
jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.
“He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to
do?” (HE was her husband.) “Now I want to begin a suit against him.