`Yes, I take a great interest in it,' Anna answered Sviiazhsky, who was expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. `This new building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an afterthought, and was begun without a plan.'
Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the ladies, and led them inside the hospital.
Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were finished.
Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their hair, to greet the gentry.
`This is the reception room,' said Vronsky. `Here there will be a desk, a cupboard, and benches, and nothing more.'
`This way; let us go in here. Don't go near the window,' said Anna, trying the paint to see if it were dry. `Alexei, the paint's dry already,' she added.
From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors, and many other things. Sviiazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply wondered at all as something she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky apparent satisfaction.
`Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly fitted hospital in Russia,' said Sviiazhsky.
`And won't you have a lying-in ward?' asked Dolly. `That's so much needed in the country. I have often...'
In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.
`This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,' he said. `Ah!
Look at this,' and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair that had just been ordered for convalescents. `Look!' He sat down in the chair and began moving it. `The patient can't walk - still too weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air, and he moves, rolls himself along....'
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 21[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 21 `No, I think the Princess is tired, and horses don't interest her,' Vronsky said to Anna, who wanted to go on to the stud farm, where Sviiazhsky wished to see the new stallion. `You go on, while I escort the Princess home, and we'll have a little talk,' he said. `If you would like that?' he added, turning to her.
`I know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted to go back with you,' answered Darya Alexandrovna, rather astonished.
She saw by Vronsky's face that he wanted something from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and, having made sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:
`You guess that I have something I want to say to you,' he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. `I am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of Anna's.' He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald.
Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern expression scared her.
The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to say to her flashed into her brain. `He is going to beg me to come to stay with them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that will receive Anna in Moscow.... Or isn't it Vassenka Veslovsky and his relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty - that he feels he was to blame?' All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her.
`You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,'
he said; `do help me.'
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the linden trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.
`You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna's former friends - I don't count Princess Varvara - but I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?' he asked, looking round at her.
`Oh, yes,' answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, `but...'
`No,' he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position in which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. `No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna's position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.'
`I understand,' said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. `But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,' she said. `Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.'
`In the world it is hell!' he brought out quickly, frowning darkly.
`You can't imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Peterburg during that fortnight.... And I beg you to believe it.'