This way then to the hospital," he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.
The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path.
After going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large pretentious-looking red building, almost finished.
The iron roof, which was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine.
Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.
"How quickly work gets done with you!" said Sviazhsky. "When I was here last time the roof was not on."
"By the autumn it will all be ready.
Inside almost everything is done," said Anna.
"And what's this new building?"
"That's the house for the doctor and the dispensary," answered Vronsky, seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.
Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still with the architect and began talking rather warmly.
"The front is still too low," he said to Anna, who had asked what was the matter.
"I said the foundation ought to be raised," said Anna.
"Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna," said the architect, "but now it's too late."
"Yes, I take a great interest in it," Anna answered Sviazhsky, 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, tables, 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. "Alexey, 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.
Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully.
Dolly simply wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great satisfaction.
"Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly fitted hospital in Russia," said Sviazhsky.
"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 the 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...."
Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural, simple-hearted eagerness.
"Yes, he's a very nice, good man," she thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in Anna's place.
She liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.
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 stables, where Sviazhsky 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," 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 speak of 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?"