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-
- XIII.
-
-
- The sportsman's saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is
- not missed, the shooting will be lucky, turned out correct.
-
- At ten o'clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of
- thirty verstas, returned to his night's lodging with nineteen head
- of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would
- not go into the gamebag. His companions had long been awake, and had
- had time to get hungry and have breakfast.
-
- "Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen," said Levin,
- counting a second time over the double snipe and jacksnipe, that
- looked so much less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with
- heads crookedly to one side, than they did when they were flying.
-
- The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevich's envy pleased
- Levin. He was pleased too on returning to find that the man sent by
- Kitty with a note was already here.
-
- "I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can
- feel easier than ever. I've a new bodyguard, Marya Vlassyevna."
- (This was the midwife, a new and important personage in Levin's
- domestic life.) "She has come to have a look at me. She found me
- perfectly well, and we are holding her till you are back. All are
- happy and well, and please, don't be in a hurry to come back, but,
- if the sport is good, stay another day."
-
- These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his
- wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed
- lightly over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had
- been unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and
- out of sorts. The coachman said the horse was overstrained.
-
- "Overdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitrievich!" he said. "Yes,
- indeed! Driving ten miles without any sense!"
-
- The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute
- destroyed his good humor, though later he laughed at it a great
- deal, was to find that of all the provisions which Kitty had
- provided in such abundance, that one would have thought there was
- enough for a week, nothing was left. On his way back, tired and
- hungry, from shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision of meat pies
- that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them, as
- Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to give him
- some. It appeared that there were no pies left- nor even any chicken.
-
- "Well, this fellow's appetite!" said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing
- and pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. "I never suffer from loss of
- appetite, but he's really marvelous!..."
-
- "Well, it can't be helped," said Levin, looking gloomily at
- Veslovsky. "Well, Philip, give me some beef, then."
-
- "The beef's been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs," answered
- Philip.
-
- Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation: "You might
- have left me something!" and he felt ready to cry.
-
- "Then disembowel the game," he said in a shaking voice to Philip,
- trying not to look at Vassenka, "and cover them with some nettles. And
- you might at least ask for some milk for me."
-
- But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at
- having shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his
- hungry mortification.
-
- In the evening they went shooting again, and Veslovsky, too, had
- several successful shots, and in the night they drove home.
-
- Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been.
- Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with
- the peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, "Excuse
- our homely ways," and his night's adventures with tug of war, and
- the servant girl, and the peasant, who had asked him was he married
- and on learning that he was not, said to him: "Well, mind you don't
- run after other men's wives- you'd better get round your own." These
- words had particularly amused Veslovsky.
-
- "Altogether, I've enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?"
-
- "I have, very much," Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly
- delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling
- toward Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most
- friendly disposition to him.
-
- XIV.
-
-
- Next day at ten o'clock Levin, who had already gone his rounds,
- knocked at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.
-
- "Entrez!" Veslovsky called to him. "Excuse me, I've only just
- finished my ablutions," he said, smiling, standing before him in his
- underclothes only.
-
- "Don't mind me, please," Levin sat down in the window. "Have you
- slept well?"
-
- "Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?"
-
- "What will you take, tea or coffee?"
-
- "Neither. I'll wait till lunch. I'm really ashamed. I suppose the
- ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your
- horses."
-
- After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even
- doing some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin
- returned to the house with his guest, and went with him into the
- drawing room.
-
- "We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!" said
- Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the samovar. "What
- a pity ladies are cut off from these delights!"
-
- "Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,"
- Levin said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the
- all-conquering air with which their guest addressed Kitty...
-
- The Princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya
- Vlassyevna and Stepan Arkadyevich, called Levin to her side, and began
- to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kitty's confinement, and
- getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the
- trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of
- the event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the
- approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on
- their fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the
- best patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn
- away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting,
- the triangles of linen, to which Dolly attached special importance,
- and so on. The birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which
- was promised him, but which he still could not believe in- so
- marvelous it seemed- presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a
- happiness so immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an
- event so mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of
- what would be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something
- ordinary that did happen to people, jarred on him as confusing and
- humiliating.
-
- But the Princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his
- reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and
- indifference, and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned
- Stepan Arkadyevich to look at an apartment, and now she called Levin
- to her.
-
- "I know nothing about it, Princess. Do as you think fit," he said.
-
- "You must decide when you will move."
-
- "I really don't know. I know millions of children are born away from
- Moscow, and doctors... Why..."
-
- "But if so..."
-
- "Oh, no, as Kitty wishes."
-
- "We can't talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her?
- Why, this spring Natalie Golitzina died from having an ignorant
- doctor."
-
- "I will do just what you say," he said gloomily.
-
- The Princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though
- the conversation with the Princess had indeed jarred upon him, he
- was gloomy not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw
- at the samovar.
-
- "No, it's impossible," he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka
- bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and
- at her, flushed and disturbed.
-
- There was something unclean in Vassenka's attitude, in his eyes,
- in his smile. Levin even saw something unclean in Kitty's attitude and
- look. And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all
- of a sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down
- from a pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of
- despair, rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had
- become hateful to him.
-
- "You do just as you think best, Princess," he said again, looking
- round.
-
- "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!" Stepan Arkadyevich said
- playfully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the Princess's
- conversation, but at the cause of Levin's agitation, which he had
- noticed. "How late you are today, Dolly!"
-
- Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose
- for an instant, and, with the lack of courtesy to ladies
- characteristic of the modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed
- his conversation again, laughing at something.
-
- "Masha has been almost the end of me. She did not sleep well, and is
- dreadfully capricious today," said Dolly.
-
- The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on
- the same lines as on the previous evening- discussing Anna, and
- whether love is to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty
- disliked the conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject
- and the tone in which it was conducted, and especially by the
- knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. But she was
- too simple and unsophisticated to know how to cut short this
- conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure afforded her
- by the young man's very obvious admiration. She wanted to stop this
- conversation, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did, she
- knew it would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation
- put on it. And, in fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with
- Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation
- was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the question struck
- Levin as an unnatural and disgusting piece of hypocrisy.
-
- "What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?" said
- Dolly.
-
- "By all means, please, and I shall come too," said Kitty, and she
- blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would
- come, and she did not ask him. "Where are you going, Kostia?" she
- asked her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a
- resolute step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
-
- "The mechanician came when I was away; I haven't seen him yet," he
- said, not looking at her.
-
- He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he
- heard his wife's familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to
- him.
-
- "What do you want?" he said to her shortly. "We are busy."
-
- "I beg your pardon," she said to the German mechanician; "I want a
- few words with my husband."
-
- The German would have left the room, but Levin said to him:
-
- "Don't disturb yourself"
-
- "The train is at three?" queried the German. "I mustn't be late."
-
- Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.
-
- "Well, what have you to say to me?" he said to her in French.
-
- He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in
- her condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.
-
- "I... I want to say that we can't go on like this; that this is
- misery..." she said.
-
- "The servants are here at the buttery," he said angrily; "don't make
- a scene."
-
- "Well, let's go in here!"
-
- They were standing in the passage room. Kitty would have gone into
- the next room, but there the English governess was giving Tania a
- lesson.
-
- "Well, come into the garden."
-
- In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no
- longer considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his
- agitated face, that they looked like people fleeing from some
- disaster, they went on with rapid steps, feeling that they must
- speak out and clear up misunderstandings, must be alone together,
- and so get rid of the misery they were both feeling.
-
- "We can't go on like this! It's misery! I am wretched; you are
- wretched. What for?" she said, when they had at last reached a
- solitary garden seat at a turn in the linden tree avenue.
-
- "But tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly,
- unclean, humiliatingly horrible?" he said, standing before her again
- in the same position, with his clenched fists on his chest, as he
- had stood before her that night.
-
- "Yes," she said in a shaking voice; "but, Kostia, surely you see I'm
- not to blame? All the morning I've been trying to take a tone... But
- such people... Why did he come? How happy we were!" she said,
- breathless with the sobs that shook her.
-
- Although nothing had been pursuing them, and there was nothing to
- run away from, and they could not possibly have found anything very
- delightful on that garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment
- that they passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant
- faces.
-
- XV.
-
-
- After escorting his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly's part of the
- house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was also in great distress
- that day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a
- little girl, who stood in the corner bawling.
-
- "And you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all
- alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I won't make you a new
- frock," she said, not knowing how to punish her.
-
- "Oh, she is a disgusting child!" she turned to Levin. "Where does
- she get such wicked propensities?"
-
- "Why, what has she done?" Levin said without much interest, for he
- had wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at
- an unlucky moment.
-
- "Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there... I can't tell
- you really what she did. It's a thousand pities Miss Elliot's not with
- us. This one sees to nothing- she's a machine.... Figurez-vous que
- la petite?..."
-
- And Darya Alexandrovna described Masha's crime.
-
- "That proves nothing; it's not a question of evil propensities at
- all, it's simply mischief," Levin assured her.
-
- "But you are upset about something? What have you come for?" asked
- Dolly. "What's going on there?"
-
- And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy
- for him to say what he had meant to say.
-
- "I've not been in there, I've been alone in the garden with Kitty.
- We've had a quarrel for the second time since... Stiva came."
-
- Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes.
-
- "Come, tell me, honor bright, has there been... Not in Kitty, but in
- that gentleman's behavior, a tone which might be unpleasant- not
- unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?"
-
- "You mean, how shall I say... Stand there- stand in the corner!" she
- said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile on her mother's face,
- had been turning round. "The opinion of the world would be that he
- is behaving as young men do behave. Il fait le cour a une jeune et
- jolie femme, and a husband who's a man of the world should only be
- flattered by it."
-
- "Yes, yes," said Levin gloomily; "but you noticed it?"
-
- "Not only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to
- me: Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour a Kitty."
-
- "Well, that's all right then; now I'm satisfied. I'll send him
- away," said Levin.
-
- "What do you mean! Are you crazy?" Dolly cried in horror. "Nonsense,
- Kostia, only think!" she said, laughing. "You can go now to Fanny,"
- she said to Masha. "No, if you wish it, I'll speak to Stiva. He'll
- take him away. He can say you're expecting visitors. Altogether he
- doesn't fit into the house."
-
- "No, no, I'll do it myself."
-
- "But you'll quarrel with him?"
-
- "Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it," Levin said, his eyes flashing with
- real enjoyment. "Come, forgive her, Dolly, she won't do it again,"
- he said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was
- standing irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from
- under her brows to catch her mother's eye.
-
- The mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face
- on her mother's lap, and Dolly laid her thin, tender hand on her head.
-
- "And what is there in common between us and him?" thought Levin, and
- he went off to look for Veslovsky.
-
- As he passed through the hall he gave orders for the carriage to
- be got ready to drive to the station.
-
- "The spring was broken yesterday," said the footman.
-
- "Well, the tarantass then, and make haste. Where's the visitor?"
-
- "The gentleman's gone to his room."
-
- Levin came upon Vassenka at the moment when the latter, having
- unpacked his things from his trunk, and laid out some new songs, was
- putting on his leather gaiters to go out riding.
-
- Whether there was something exceptional in Levin's face, or that
- Vassenka was himself conscious that ce petit brin de cour he was
- making was out of place in this family; he was somewhat (as much as
- a young man in society can be) disconcerted at Levin's entrance.
-
- "You ride in gaiters?"
-
- "Yes, it's much cleaner," said Vassenka, putting his fat leg on a
- chair, fastening the bottom hook, and smiling with simplehearted
- good humor.
-
- He was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Levin felt sorry for
- him and ashamed of himself, as his host, when he saw the shy look on
- Vassenka's face.
-
- On the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken together
- that morning at gymnastics, trying to raise up the swollen bars. Levin
- took the fragment in his hands and began breaking off the split end of
- the stick, not knowing how to begin.
-
- "I wanted..." He paused, but suddenly, remembering Kitty and
- everything that had happened, he said, looking him resolutely in the
- face: "I have ordered the horses to be put to for you."
-
- "How so?" Vassenka began in surprise. "To drive where?"
-
- "For you to drive to the station," Levin said gloomily pinching
- off the end of the stick.
-
- "Are you going away, or has something happened?"
-
- "It happens that I expect visitors," said Levin, his strong
- fingers more and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the split
- stick. "And I'm not expecting visitors, and nothing has happened,
- but I beg you to go away. You can explain my rudeness as you like."
-
- Vassenka drew himself up.
-
- "I beg you to explain..." he said with dignity, understanding at
- last.
-
- "I can't explain," Levin said softly and deliberately, trying to
- control the trembling of his jaw; "and you'd better not ask."
-
- And as the split ends were all broken off, Levin clutched the
- thick ends in his finger, split the stick in two, and carefully caught
- the end as it fell.
-
- Probably the sight of those tense hands, of the same muscles he
- had proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the
- soft voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any
- words. He bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.
-
- "May I not see Oblonsky?"
-
- The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin. "What else was there
- for him to do?" he thought.
-
- "I'll send him to you at once."
-
- "What madness is this?" Stepan Arkadyevich said when, after
- hearing from his friend that he was being turned out of the house,
- he found Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for
- his guest's departure. "Mais c'est ridicule! What flea has bitten you?
- Mais c'est du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man..."
-
- But the place where Levin had been bitten was evidently still
- sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevich would have
- enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short.
-
- "Please don't go into it! I can't help it. I feel ashamed of the way
- I'm treating you and him. But it won't be, I imagine, a great grief to
- him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife."
-
- "But it's insulting to him! Et puis c'est ridicule."
-
- "And to me it's both insulting and distressing! And I'm not in fault
- in any way, and there's no need for me to suffer."
-
- "Well, this I didn't expect of you! On peut etre jaloux, mais a ce
- point c'est du dernier ridicule!"
-
- Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of
- the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard
- the rumble of the tarantass, and saw from behind the trees how
- Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the
- tarantass) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting
- up and down over the ruts.
-
- "What's this?" Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house
- and stopped the tarantass. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had
- totally forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to
- Veslovsky, then clambered into the tarantass and they drove off
- together.
-
- Stepan Arkadyevich and the Princess were much upset by Levin's
- action. And he himself felt not only in the highest degree ridicule,
- but also utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings
- he and his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he
- should act another time, he answered that he would do precisely the
- same.
-
- In spite of all this, toward the end of that day, everyone, except
- the Princess, who could not pardon Levin's action, became
- extraordinarily lively and good-humored, like children after a
- punishment, or grown-up people after a dreary, ceremonious
- reception, so that by the evening Vassenka's dismissal was spoken
- of, in the absence of the Princess, as though it were some remote
- event. And Dolly, who had inherited her father's gift of humorous
- storytelling, made Varenka helpless with laughter as she related for
- the third and fourth time, always with fresh humorous additions, how
- she had just put on her new ribands for the benefit of the visitor,
- and, on going into the drawing room, had suddenly heard the rumble
- of the chariot. And who should be in the chariot but Vassenka himself,
- with his Scotch cap, and his songs, and his gaiters, and all,
- sitting in the hay.
-
- "If only you'd ordered out the carriage! But no! And then I hear:
- 'Stop!' Oh, I thought they've relented. I look out- and a fat German
- is being sat down by him, and they're driving away... And my new
- ribands all for nothing!..."
-
- XVI.
-
-
- Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna.
- She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin disliked.
- She quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to
- have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see
- Anna, and show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of
- the change in her position.
-
- That she might be independent of the Levins in this expedition,
- Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the drive;
- but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.
-
- "What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if
- did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my
- horses," he said. "You never told me that you were going definitely.
- Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what's of
- more importance, they'll undertake the job and never get you there.
- I have horses. And if you don't want to wound me, you'll take mine."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had
- ready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting
- them together from the farm and saddle horses- not at all a
- smart-looking set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the
- whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horses were
- wanted for the Princess, who was going, and for the midwife, it was
- a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number, but the duties
- of hospitality would not let him allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire
- horses when staying in his house. Moreover, he was well aware that the
- twenty roubles that would be asked for the journey were a serious
- matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna's pecuniary affairs, which were
- in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken to heart by the Levins as
- if they were their own.
-
- Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin's advice, started before daybreak.
- The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted
- along merrily, and on the box, beside the coachman, sat the
- countinghouse clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groom for
- greater security. Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on
- reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.
-
- After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant's with whom
- Levin had stayed on the way to Sviiazhsky's, and chatting with the
- women about their children, and with the old man about Count
- Vronsky, whom the latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna, at
- ten o'clock, went on again. At home, looking after her children, she
- had no time to think. So now, after this journey of four hours, all
- the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain,
- and she thought over all her life as she never had before, and from
- the most different points of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to
- herself. At first she thought about the children, about whom she was
- uneasy, although the Princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her)
- had promised to look after them. "If only Masha does not begin her
- naughty tricks, if Grisha isn't kicked by a horse, and Lily's
- stomach isn't upset again!" But these questions of the present were
- succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She began thinking how
- she had to get a new flat in Moscow for the coming winter, to renew
- the drawing-room furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then
- questions of the more remote future occurred to her: how she was to
- place her children in the world. "The girls are all right," she
- thought; "but the boys?"
-
- "It's all very fine for me to be teaching Grisha, but of course
- that's only because I am free myself now, I'm not with child. Stiva,
- of course, there's no counting on. And with the help of good-natured
- friends I can bring them up; but if there's another baby coming?..."
- And the thought struck her how unjustly it was said, that the curse
- laid on woman was that in sorrow she should bring forth children. "The
- birth itself, that's nothing; but the months of carrying the child-
- that's what's so intolerable," she thought, picturing to herself her
- last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. And she recalled the
- conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On
- being asked whether she had any children, the handsome young woman had
- answered cheerfully.
-
- "I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent."
-
- "Well, did you grieve very much for her?" asked Darya Alexandrovna.
-
- "Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. It was
- only a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie."
-
- This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as revolting in spite of
- the good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but now she
- could not help recalling these words. In those cynical words there was
- indeed a grain of truth.
-
- "Yes, in general," thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back over her
- whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life,
- "pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything-
- and, most of all, hideousness. Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even
- Kitty has lost her looks; and I, when I'm with child, become
- hideous, I know it. The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that
- last moment... Then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful
- pains..."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain
- from sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child.
- "Then the children's illnesses, that everlasting apprehension; then
- bringing them up; evil propensities" (she thought of little Masha's
- crime among the raspberries), "education, Latin- it's all so
- incomprehensible and difficult. And, on the top of it all, the death
- of these children." And there rose again before her imagination the
- cruel memory that always tore her mother's heart, of the death of
- her last little baby, who had died of croup; his funeral, the
- callous indifference of all at the little pink coffin, and her own
- torn heart, and her lonely anguish at the sight of the pale little
- brow with the curls falling on temples, and the open, wondering little
- mouth seen in the coffin at the moment when it was being covered
- with the little pink lid with a gallooned cross on it.
-
- "And all this- what's it for? What is to come of it all? This: I'm
- wasting my life, never having a moment's peace, either with child,
- or nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and
- worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are
- growing up unhappy, badly educated and penniless. Even now, if it
- weren't for spending the summer at the Levins', I don't know how we
- should be managing to live. Of course Kostia and Kitty have so much
- tact that we don't feel it; but it can't go on. They'll have children,
- they won't be able to keep us; it's a drag on them as it is. How is
- papa, who has hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that
- I can't even bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard
- with the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even
- if we suppose the greatest good luck, that the children don't die, and
- I bring them up somehow. At the very best they'll simply be decent
- people. That's all I can hope for. And to gain simply that- what
- agonies, what toil!... One's whole life ruined!" Again she recalled
- what the young peasant woman had said, and again she was revolted at
- the thought; but she could not help admitting that there was a grain
- of brutal truth in the words.
-
- "Is it far now, Mikhaila?" Darya Alexandrovna asked the
- countinghouse clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were
- frightening her.
-
- "From this village, they say, it's seven verstas."
-
- The carriage drove along the village street and onto a bridge. On
- the bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the
- sheaves on their shoulders, cheerfully chattering. They stood still on
- the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces
- turned to Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making
- her envious of their enjoyment of life. "They're all living, they're
- all enjoying life," Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed
- the peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated
- comfortably on the soft springs of the old carriage, "while I, let
- out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to
- death, am only looking about me now for an instant. They all live;
- those peasant women, and my sister Natalie, and Varenka, and Anna,
- whom I am going to see- all, but not I."
-
- "And they attack Anna. What for? Am I any better? I have, at any
- rate, a husband I love- not as I should like to love him- still, I
- do love him; while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She
- wants to live. God has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should
- have done the same. Even to this day I don't feel sure I did right
- in listening to her at that terrible time when she came to me in
- Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husband and have begun my
- life anew. I might have loved and have been loved in reality. And is
- it any better as it is? I don't respect him. He's necessary to me,"
- she thought about her husband, "and I put up with him. Is that any
- better? At that time I could still have been admired, I had beauty
- left me still," Darya Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would
- have liked to look at herself in the looking glass. She had a
- traveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted to take it out;
- but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swaying countinghouse
- clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if either of them were to
- look round, and she did not take out the glass.
-
- But, without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it
- was not too late; and she thought of Sergei Ivanovich, who was
- always particularly attentive to her, of Stiva's goodhearted friend,
- Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through the
- scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone else,
- quite a young man, who- her husband had told her it as a joke- thought
- her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And the most passionate
- and impossible romances rose before Darya Alexandrovna's
- imagination. "Anna did quite right, and certainly I shall never
- reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes another person happy, and
- she's not broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always was,
- bright, clever, open to every impression," thought Darya Alexandrovna-
- and a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she pondered on Anna's love
- affair, Darya Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost
- identical love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure,
- the ideal man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed
- the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity of
- Stepan Arkadyevich at this avowal made her smile.
-
- In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led
- to Vozdivzhenskoe.
-
- XVII.
-
-
- The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the
- right, to a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting near a
- telega. The countinghouse clerk was just going to jump down, but on
- second thought he shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and
- beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they
- drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on
- the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of
- a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the telega,
- ceased. One of the peasants got up and came toward the carriage.
-
- "Well, you are slow!" the countinghouse clerk shouted angrily to the
- peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of
- the unbeaten, sun-baked road. "Come along, do!"
-
- A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and
- his bent back dark with perspiration, came toward the carriage,
- quickening his steps, and took hold of the mudguard with his sunburned
- hand.
-
- "Vozdvizhenskoe- the manor house? The Count's?" he repeated. "Go
- on to the end of this slope. Then turn to the left. Straight along the
- avenue, and you'll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The Count
- himself?"
-
- "Well, are they at home, my good man?" Darya Alexandrovna said
- vaguely, not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.
-
- "At home for sure," said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to
- the other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the
- dust. "Sure to be at home," he repeated, evidently eager to talk.
- "Only yesterday visitors arrived. There's a sight of visitors come.
- What do you want?" He turned round and called to a lad, who was
- shouting something to him from the telega. "Oh! They all rode by
- here not long since, to look at a reaping machine. They'll be home
- by now. And who may you belong to?..."
-
- "We've come a long way," said the coachman, climbing onto the box.
- "So it's not far?"
-
- "I tell you, it's just here. As soon as you get out..." he said,
- keeping hold all the while of the mudguard of the carriage.
-
- A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.
-
- "What, is it laborers they want for the harvest?" he asked.
-
- "I don't know, my boy."
-
- "So you keep to the left, and you'll come right on it," said the
- peasant, unmistakably loath to let the travelers go, and eager to
- converse.
-
- The coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off
- when the peasant shouted: "Stop! Hi, friend! Stop!" The coachman
- stopped.
-
- "They're coming! They're yonder!" shouted the peasant. "See what a
- turnout!" he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a
- charabanc, coming along the road.
-
- They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky, and Anna on horseback,
- and Princess Varvara and Sviiazhsky in the charabanc. They had gone
- out to look at the working of a new reaping machine.
-
- When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a
- walking pace. Anna was in front beside Veslovsky. Anna was quietly
- walking her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short
- tail; Anna, with her beautiful head, her black hair straying loose
- under her high hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black
- riding habit, and all the ease and grace of her deportment,
- impressed Dolly.
-
- For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Anna to be on
- horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in
- Darva Alexandrovna's mind, associated with ideas of youthful
- flirtation and frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in
- Anna's position. But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her
- closer, she was at once reconciled to her riding. In spite of her
- elegance, everything was so simple, quiet and dignified in the
- attitude, the dress and the movements of Anna, that nothing could have
- been more natural.
-
- By the side of Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was
- Vassenka Veslovsky in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his
- stout legs stretched out in front, obviously pleased with his own
- appearance. Darya Alexandrovna could not suppress a good-humored smile
- as she recognized him. Behind rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare,
- obviously heated from galloping. He was holding her in, pulling at the
- reins.
-
- After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviiazhsky and
- Princess Varvara in a new charabanc with a big, raven-black trotting
- horse, overtook the party on horseback.
-
- Anna's face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when,
- in the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she
- recognized Dolly. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set
- her horse into a gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off
- without assistance, and, holding up her riding habit, she ran up to
- greet Dolly.
-
- "I thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You
- can't fancy how glad I am!" she said, at one moment pressing her
- face against Dolly and kissing her, and at the next holding her off
- and examining her with a smile. "Here's a delightful surprise,
- Alexei!" she said, looking round at Vronsky, who had dismounted, and
- was walking toward them.
-
- Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.
-
- "You wouldn't believe how glad we are to see you," he said, giving
- peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth
- in a smile.
-
- Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took off his
- cap and greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his
- head.
-
- "That's Princess Varvara," Anna said in reply to a glance of inquiry
- from Dolly as the charabanc drove up.
-
- "Ah!" said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her face betrayed
- her dissatisfaction.
-
- Princess Varvara was her husband's aunt, and she had long known her,
- and did not respect her. She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her
- whole life toadying to her rich relations, but that she should now
- be sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified
- Dolly on account of her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed Dolly's
- expression, and was disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her
- riding habit, and stumbled over it.
-
- Darya Alexandrovna went up to the charabanc and coldly greeted
- Princess Varvara. Sviiazhsky, too, she knew. He inquired how his queer
- friend with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the
- ill-matched horses and the carriage with its patched mudguards,
- proposed to the ladies that they should get into the charabanc.
-
- "And I'll get in this vehicle," he said. "The horse is quiet, and
- the Princess drives capitally."
-
- "No, stay as you were," said Anna, coming up, "and we'll go in the
- carriage," and, taking Dolly's arm, she drew her away.
-
- Darya Alexandrovna's eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant
- carriage of a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid
- horses, and the elegant and gorgeous people surrounding her. But
- what struck her most of all was the change that had taken place in
- Anna, whom she knew so well and loved. Any other woman, a less close
- observer, not knowing Anna before, and particularly not having thought
- as Darya Alexandrovna had been thinking on the road, would not have
- noticed anything special in Anna. But now Dolly was struck by that
- temporary beauty, which is only found in women during the moments of
- love, and which she saw now in Anna's face. Everything in her face,
- the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of her
- lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face, the
- brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of her movements, the
- fullness of the notes of her voice, even the manner in which, with a
- sort of angry friendliness, she answered Veslovsky when he asked
- permission to get on her cob, so as to teach it to gallop with the
- right leg foremost- it was all peculiarly fascinating, and it seemed
- as if Anna herself were aware of it, and rejoicing in it.
-
- When both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden
- embarrassment came over both of them. Anna was disconcerted by the
- intent look of inquiry Dolly fixed upon her. Dolly was embarrassed
- because after Sviiazhsky's phrase about "this vehicle," she could
- not help feeling ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was
- sitting with her. The coachman Philip and the countinghouse clerk were
- experiencing the same sensation. The countinghouse clerk, to conceal
- his confusion, busied himself settling the ladies, but Philip the
- coachman became sullen, and was bracing himself not to be overawed
- in future by this external superiority. He smiled ironically,
- looking at the raven horse, and was already deciding in his own mind
- that this smart trotter in the charabanc was only good for
- promenade, and wouldn't do forty verstas straight off in the heat.
-
- The peasants had all got up from the telega and were inquisitively
- and mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their
- comments on it.
-
- "They're pleased, too; haven't seen each other for a long while,"
- said the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.
-
- "I say, Uncle Gherasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to
- cart the corn, that 'ud be quick work!"
-
- "Look-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?" said one of them, pointing
- to Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a sidesaddle.
-
- "Nay, a man! See how smartly he's going it!"
-
- "Eh, lads! Seems we're not going to sleep, then?"
-
- "What chance of sleep today!" said the old man, with a sidelong look
- at the sun. "Midday's past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come along!"
-
- XVIII.
-
-
- Anna looked at Dolly's thin, careworn face, with its wrinkles filled
- with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she
- was thinking- that is, that Dolly had grown thinner. But, conscious
- that she herself had grown handsomer, and that Dolly's eyes were
- telling her so, she sighed and began to speak about herself.
-
- "You are looking at me," she said, "and wondering how I can be happy
- in my position? Well! It's shameful to confess, but I... I'm
- inexcusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream,
- when you're frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake
- up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived
- through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past,
- especially since we've been here, I've been so happy!..." she said,
- with a timid smile of inquiry looking at Dolly.
-
- "How glad I am!" said Dolly smiling, involuntarily speaking more
- coldly than she wanted to. "I'm very glad for you. Why haven't you
- written to me?"
-
- "Why?... Because I hadn't the courage.... You forget my
- position...."
-
- "To me? Hadn't the courage? If you knew how I... I look at..."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of the morning,
- but for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.
-
- "But of that we'll talk later. What's this- what are all these
- buildings?" she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing
- to the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges
- of acacia and lilac. "Quite a little town."
-
- But Anna did not answer.
-
- "No, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?"
- she asked.
-
- "I consider..." Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but at that
- instant Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob to gallop with
- the right leg foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and
- down in his short jacket on the chamois leather of the sidesaddle.
- "He's doing it, Anna Arkadyevna!" he shouted. Anna did not even glance
- at him; but again it seemed to Darya Alexandrovna out of place to
- enter upon such a long conversation in the carriage, and so she cut
- short her thought.
-
- "I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and
- if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as that person
- is, and not as one would like her or him to be...."
-
- Anna, taking her eyes off her friend's face and dropping her eyelids
- (this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her before), pondered,
- trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And
- obviously interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at
- Dolly.
-
- "If you had any sins," she said, "they would all be forgiven you for
- your coming to see me, and these words."
-
- And Dolly saw that the tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Anna's
- hand in silence.
-
- "Well, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!"
- After a moment's silence she repeated her question.
-
- "These are the servant's houses, stud farm, and stables," answered
- Anna. "And there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but
- Alexei had everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and,
- what I never expected, he has become intensely interested in looking
- after it. But his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does
- splendidly. So far from being bored by it, he works with passionate
- interest. He- with his temperament as I know it- he has become careful
- and businesslike, a first-rate manager, he positively reckons every
- penny in his management of the land. But only in that. When it's a
- question of tens of thousands, he doesn't think of money." She spoke
- with that gleefully sly smile with which women often talk of the
- secret characteristics- only known to them- of those they love. "Do
- you see that big building? That's the new hospital. I believe it
- will cost over a hundred thousand; that's his dada just now. And do
- you know how it all came about? The peasants asked him for some
- meadowland, I think it was, at a cheaper rate, and he refused, and I
- accused him of being miserly. Of course it was not really because of
- that, but because of everything together- he began this hospital to
- prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about money. C'est une
- petitesse, if you like, but I love him all the more for it. And now
- you'll see the house in a moment. It was his grandfather's house,
- and he has had nothing changed outside."
-
- "How beautiful!" said Dolly, looking with involuntary admiration
- at the handsome house with columns, standing out among the
- different-colored greens of the old trees in the garden.
-
- "Isn't it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is
- wonderful."
-
- They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with
- flowers, in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of
- stones round the light mold of a flower bed, and drew up in a
- covered entry.
-
- "Ah, they're here already!" said Anna, looking at the saddle horses,
- which were just being led away from the steps. "It is a good horse,
- isn't it? It's my cob; my favorite. Lead him here and bring me some
- sugar. Where is the Count?" she inquired of two smart footmen who
- darted out. "Ah, there he is!" she said, seeing Vronsky coming to meet
- her with Veslovsky.
-
- "Where are you going to put the Princess?" said Vronsky in French,
- addressing Anna, and without waiting for a reply, he once more greeted
- Darya Alexandrovna, and this time he kissed her hand. "I think the big
- balcony room."
-
- "Oh, no, that's too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see
- each other more. Come, let's go up," said Anna, as she gave her
- favorite horse the sugar the footman had brought her.
-
- "Et vous oubliez votre devoir," she said to Veslovsky, who came
- out too on the steps.
-
- "Pardon, j'en ai tout plein les poches," he answered, smiling,
- putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.
-
- "Mais vous venez trop tard," she said, rubbing her handkerchief on
- her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar.
-
- Anna turned to Dolly, "You can stay some time? For one day only?
- That's impossible!"
-
- "I promised to be back, and the children..." said Dolly, feeling
- embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage,
- and because she knew her face must be covered with dust.
-
- "No, Dolly, darling!... Well, we'll see. Come along, come along!"
- and Anna led Dolly to her room.
-
- That room was not the smart guestchamber Vronsky had suggested,
- but the one which Anna had said Dolly would surely excuse. And this
- room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in
- which Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best
- hotels abroad.
-
- "Well, darling, how happy I am!" Anna said, sitting down in her
- riding habit for a moment beside Dolly. "Tell me about all of you.
- Stiva I had only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the
- children. How is my favorite, Tania? Quite a big girl, I expect?"
-
- "Yes, she's very tall," Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly,
- surprised herself that she should respond so coolly about her
- children. "We are having a delightful stay at the Levins'," she added.
-
- "Oh, if I had known," said Anna, "that you do not despise me!... You
- might have all come to us. Stiva's an old friend and a great friend of
- Alexei's, you know," she added, and suddenly she blushed.
-
- "Yes, but we are all..." Dolly answered in confusion.
-
- "But in my delight I'm talking nonsense. The one thing, darling,
- is that I am so glad to have you!" said Anna, kissing her again.
- "You haven't told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep
- wanting to know. But I'm glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing
- I shouldn't like would be for people to imagine I want to prove
- anything. I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do
- no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I? But it
- is a big subject, and we'll talk over everything properly later. Now
- I'll go and dress and send a maid to you."
-
- XIX.
-
-
- Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewife's eye, scanned
- her room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through
- it, and all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of
- wealth and sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which
- she had only read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia
- and in the country. Everything was new, from the new French hangings
- on the walls to the carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed
- had a spring mattress, and a special sort of bolster and taffeta
- pillowcases on the small pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing
- table, the little sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the chimney
- piece, the window curtains and the portieres were all new and
- expensive.
-
- The smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair
- done up high, and a gown more fashionable that Dolly's, was as new and
- expensive as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness,
- her deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with
- her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that
- had unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the
- very patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home.
- At home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would
- be needed twenty-four arsheenes of nainsook at sixty-five kopecks
- the yard, which was a matter of fifteen roubles, besides the cutting
- out and making, and these fifteen roubles had been saved. But before
- the maid she felt, if not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.
-
- Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom
- she had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to
- go to her mistress, and Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna.
-
- Annushka was obviously much pleased at that lady's arrival, and
- began to chatter away without a pause. Dolly observed that she was
- longing to express her opinion in regard to her mistress's position,
- especially as to the love and devotion of the Count to Anna
- Arkadyevna, but Dolly carefully interrupted her whenever she began
- to speak about this.
-
- "I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my lady's dearer to me than
- anything. Well, it's not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems
- so much love..."
-
- "Kindly order these things washed for me, please," Darya
- Alexandrovna cut her short.
-
- "Certainly. We've two women kept specially for washing small things,
- but most of the linen's done by machinery. The Count goes into
- everything himself. Ah, what a husband he would make!..."
-
- Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her entrance put a stop
- to Annushka's gossip.
-
- Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly scrutinized that
- simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at
- which such simplicity was obtained.
-
- "An old friend," said Anna of Annushka.
-
- Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at
- ease. Dolly saw that she had now completely recovered from the
- impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that
- superficial, careless tone which, as it were, closed the door on
- that compartment in which her deeper feelings and intimate meditations
- were kept.
-
- "Well, Anna, and how is your little girl?" asked Dolly.
-
- "Annie?" (This was what she called her little daughter Anna.)
- "Very well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her?
- Come, I'll show her to you. We had a terrible bother," she began
- telling her, "over nurses. We had an Italian wet nurse. A good
- creature, but so stupid! We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby
- is so used to her that we've gone on keeping her still."
-
- "But how have you managed?..." Dolly was beginning a question as
- to what name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown
- on Anna's face, she changed the drift of her question. "How did you
- manage? Have you weaned her yet?"
-
- But Anna had understood.
-
- "You didn't mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname.
- Yes? That worries Alexei. She has no name- that is, she's a Karenina,"
- said Anna, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the
- eyelashes meeting. "But we'll talk about all that later," her face
- suddenly brightening. "Come, I'll show her to you. Elle est tres
- gentille. She crawls now."
-
- In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in the whole
- house struck her still more. There were little gocarts ordered from
- England, and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the
- fashion of a billiard table, purposely constructed for crawling, and
- swings, and baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all
- English, solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The
- room was large, and very light and lofty.
-
- When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock,
- was sitting in a little elbowchair at the table, having her dinner
- of broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby
- was being fed, and the Russian nurserymaid was evidently sharing her
- meal. Neither the wet nurse nor the head nurse were there; they were
- in the next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in
- the queer French which was their only means of communication.
-
- Hearing Anna's voice, a smart, tall English nurse with a
- disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door,
- hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to defend
- herself though Anna had not found fault with her. At every word Anna
- said the English nurse said hurriedly several times, "Yes, my lady."
-
- The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red
- little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya
- Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with which she stared at
- the stranger. She positively envied the baby's healthy appearance. She
- was delighted, too, at the baby's crawling. Not one of her own
- children had crawled like that. When the baby was put on the carpet
- and its little dress tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming.
- Looking round like some little wild animal at the grown-up big
- people with her bright black eyes, she smiled, unmistakably pleased at
- their admiring her, and, holding her legs sideways, she pressed
- vigorously on her arms, and rapidly drew her whole back up after,
- and then made another step forward with her little arms.
-
- But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the
- English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only
- on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so
- irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could
- explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take
- such an unprepossessing, indecorous woman as nurse to her child.
- Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna saw at
- once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child, had no existence in
- common, and that the mother's visit was something exceptional. Anna
- wanted to get the baby her plaything, and could not find it.
-
- Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many
- teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about the
- two last teeth.
-
- "I sometimes feel sorry I'm, as it were, superfluous here," said
- Anna, going out of the nursery, and holding up her skirt so as to
- escape the plaything standing near the doorway. "It was very different
- with my first child."
-
- "I expected it to be the other way," said Darya Alexandrovna shyly.
-
- "Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seriozha?" said Anna,
- screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away. "But
- we'll talk about that later. You wouldn't believe it, I'm like a
- hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does
- not know what to begin on first. The full dinner is you, and the talks
- I have before me with you, which I could never have with anyone
- else; and I don't know which subject to begin upon first. Mais je ne
- vous ferai grace de rien. I must have everything out with you. Oh, I
- ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,"
- she began. "I'll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara- you know
- her, and I know your opinion and Stiva's about her. Stiva says the
- whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie
- Katerina Pavlovna: that's all true; but she's a good-natured woman,
- and I am so grateful to her. In Peterburg there was a moment when un
- chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But,
- really, she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my
- position. I see you don't understand all the difficulty of my
- position... there in Peterburg," she added. "Here I'm perfectly at
- ease and happy. Well, of that later on, though. Then Sviiazhsky-
- he's the marshal of the district, and he's a very good sort of a
- man, but he wants to get something out of Alexei. You understand, with
- his property, now that we are settled in the country, Alexei can
- exercise great influence. Then there's Tushkevich- you have seen
- him, you know- Betsy's admirer. Now he's been thrown over, and he's
- come to see us. As Alexei says, he's one of those people who are
- very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to appear to be,
- et puis, il est comme il faut, as Princess Varvara says. Then
- Veslovsky... you know him. A very charming boy," she said, and a sly
- smile curved her lips. "What's this wild story about him and the
- Levins? Veslovsky told Alexei about it, and we don't believe it. Il
- est tres gentil et naif," she said again with the same smile. "Men
- need occupation, and Alexei needs a circle, so I value all these
- people. We have to have the house lively and gay, so that Alexei may
- not long for any novelty. Then you'll see the steward- a German, a
- very good fellow, and he understands his work. Alexei has a very
- high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a
- Nihilist perhaps, but, you know, he eats with his knife... But a
- very good doctor. Then the architect... Une petite cour."
-
- XX.
-
-
- "Here's Dolly for you, Princess, you were so anxious to see her,"
- said Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna on the stone terrace
- where Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery
- frame, working at a cover for Count Alexei Kirillovich's easy chair.
- "She says she doesn't want anything before dinner, but please order
- some lunch for her, and I'll go look for Alexei and bring them all
- in."
-
- Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather patronizing
- reception, and began at once explaining to her that she was living
- with Anna because she had always cared more for her than her sister,
- that aunt that had brought Anna up; and that now, when everyone had
- abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help her in this most
- difficult period of transition.
-
- "Her husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my
- solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however
- difficult it may be for me- not like some other people. And how
- sweet it is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like
- the best of married couples; it's for God to judge them, not for us.
- And didn't Biriuzovsky and Madame Avenieva... and Nikandrov himself,
- and Vassiliev with Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova... Did no one
- say anything about them? And it has ended by their being received by
- everyone. And then, c'est un interieur si joli, si comme il faut.
- Tout-a-fait a l'anglaise. On se reunit le matin au breakfast, et
- puis on se separe. Everyone does as he pleases till dinnertime. Dinner
- at seven o'clock. Stiva did very rightly to send you. He needs their
- support. You know that through his mother and brother he can do
- everything. And then they do so much good. He didn't tell you about
- his hospital? Ce sera admirable- everything from Paris."
-
- Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had found the men of
- the party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace.
- There was still a long time before the dinner hour, it was exquisite
- weather, and so several different methods of spending the next two
- hours were proposed. There were very many methods of passing the
- time at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at
- Pokrovskoe.
-
- "Une partie de lawn tennis," Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome
- smile. "We'll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna."
-
- "No, it's too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row
- in the boat- show Darya Alexandrovna the riverbanks," Vronsky
- proposed.
-
- "I agree to anything," said Sviiazhsky.
-
- "I imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a stroll-
- wouldn't you? And then the boat, perhaps," said Anna.
-
- So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevich went off to the
- bathing place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for
- them.
-
- They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviiazhsky, and
- Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in
- the new surroundings in which she found herself Abstractly,
- theoretically, she did not merely justify- she positively approved
- of Anna's conduct. As is indeed not infrequent with women of
- unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of virtuous existence,
- at a distance she not only excused illicit love- she positively envied
- it. Besides, she loved Anna with all her heart. But seeing Anna in
- actual life among these strangers, with this fashionable tone that was
- so new to Darya Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she
- disliked particularly was seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook
- everything for the sake of the comforts she enjoyed.
-
- As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna's action;
- but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was
- disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She
- thought him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be
- proud except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own
- house, he imposed upon her more than ever, and she could not be at
- ease with him. She experienced with him the same feeling she had had
- the maid about her dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt
- not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with
- him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.
-
- Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of
- conversation. Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise
- of his house and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she
- did all the same tell him how much she liked his house.
-
- "Yes, it's a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned
- style," he said.
-
- "I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always
- so?"
-
- "Oh, no!" he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. "If you
- could only have seen the court last spring!"
-
- And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried
- away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the
- various details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was
- evident that, having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and
- beautify his home, Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to
- a new person, and was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovna's
- praise.
-
- "If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not really
- tired, it's not far. Shall we go?" he said, glancing into her face
- to convince himself that she was not bored. "Are you coming, Anna?" he
- turned to her.
-
- "We will come, won't we?" she said, addressing Sviiazhsky. "Mais
- il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevich se
- morfondre la dans le bateau. We must send and tell them."
-
- "Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here," said Anna,
- turning to Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which she
- had previously talked about the hospital.
-
- "Oh, it's a work of real importance!" said Sviiazhsky. But to show
- he was not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he promptly
- added some slightly critical remarks. "I wonder, though, Count," he
- said, "that while you do so much for the health of the peasants, you
- take so little interest in the schools."
-
- "C'est devenu tellement commun les ecoles," said Vronsky. "You
- understand it's not on that account, but it just happens so, my
- interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way, then, to the
- hospital," he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a side path
- leading 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 Sviiazhsky. "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 toward 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 pediment looks 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 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...."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked
- everything very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself,
- with his natural, simplehearted enthusiasm. "Yes, he's a very dear,
- 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.
-
- XXI.
-
-
- "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."
-
- "Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna... nor you want society..."
-
- "Society!" he said contemptuously. "How could I want society?"
-
- "So far- and it may be so always- you are happy and at peace. I
- see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy- she has had time to
- tell me so much already," said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and
- involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered
- her mind whether Anna really were happy.
-
- But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.
-
- "Yes, yes," he said, "I know that she has revived after all her
- sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I
- am afraid of what is before us... I beg your pardon- you would like to
- walk on?"
-
- "No, I don't mind."
-
- "Well, then, let us sit here."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the
- avenue. He stood up, facing her.
-
- "I see that she is happy," he repeated, and the doubt whether she
- were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna's mind. "But can
- it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question,
- but the die is cast," he said, passing from Russian to French, "and we
- are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love
- that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children.
- But the law and all the conditions of our position are such that
- thousands of complications arise which she does not see at present,
- and does not want to see, setting her heart at rest after all these
- sufferings and ordeals. And that one can well understand. But I
- can't help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but
- Karenin's. I cannot bear this falsity!" he said, with a vigorous
- gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry toward Darya
- Alexandrovna.
-
- She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:
-
- "One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a
- Karenin; he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property; and
- however happy we may be in our home life, and however many children we
- may have, there will be no real tie between us. They will be
- Karenin's. You will understand the bitterness and horror of this
- position! I have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She
- does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this.
- Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in her love, but I must
- have occupation. I have found occupation, and am proud of what I am
- doing, and consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former
- companions at Court and in the army. And most certainly I would not
- change the work I am doing for theirs. I am working here, settled in
- my own place, and I am happy and contented, and we need nothing more
- to make us happy. I love my work here. Ce n'est pas un pis-aller, on
- the contrary..."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation
- he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression,
- but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his
- heart, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a
- clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in
- the country fell into the same compartment of his intimate meditations
- as the question of his relations with Anna.
-
- "Well, I will go on," he said, collecting himself. "The great
- thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am
- doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after
- me- and this I have not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that
- his children, the children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but
- will belong to someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It
- is awful!
-
- He paused, evidently much moved.
-
- "Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?" queried Darya
- Alexandrovna.
-
- "Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation," he said,
- calming himself with an effort. "Anna can, it depends on her....
- Even to petition the Czar for legitimization, a divorce is
- essential. And that depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a
- divorce- at that time your husband had arranged it completely. And
- now, I know, he would not refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to
- him. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he
- would not refuse. Of course," he said gloomily, "it is one of those
- Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He
- knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing
- her, he must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is agony
- to her. But the matter is of such importance, that one must passer
- pardessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de
- l'existence d'Anne et de ses enfants. I won't speak of myself,
- though it's hard for me, very hard," he said, with an expression as
- though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. "And so
- it is, Princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor
- of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a
- divorce."
-
- "Yes, of course," Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly
- recalled her last interview with Alexei Alexandrovich. "Yes, of
- course," she repeated with decision, thinking of Anna.
-
- "Use your influence with her, make her write. I don't like- I'm
- almost unable to speak about this to her."
-
- "Very well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think
- of it herself?" said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she
- suddenly at that point recalled Anna's strange new habit of
- half-closing her eyes. And she remembered that Anna drooped her
- eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon.
- "Just as though she half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to
- see everything," thought Dolly. "Yes, indeed, for my own sake and
- for hers, I will talk to her," Dolly said in reply to his expression
- of gratitude.
-
- They got up and walked to the house.
-
- XXII.
-
-
- When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently in her
- eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with
- Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.
-
- "I believe it's dinnertime," she said. "We've not seen each other at
- all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress.
- I expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings."
-
- Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress
- was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in
- order to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the
- maid to brush her dress, changed her cuffs and rosette, and put some
- lace on her head.
-
- "This is all I can do," she said with a smile to Anna, who came in
- to her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.
-
- "Yes, we are too prim here," she said, as it were apologizing for
- her finery. "Alexei is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at
- anything. He has completely lost his heart to you," she added. "You're
- not tired?"
-
- There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going
- into the drawing room they found Princess Varvara already there, and
- the gentlemen of the party in black frock coats. The architect wore
- a swallow-tailed coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to
- his guest. The architect he had already introduced to her at the
- hospital.
-
- A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and
- a starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the
- ladies got up. Vronsky asked Sviiazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna,
- and himself offered his arm to Dolly. Veslovsky was before
- Tushkevich in offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevich
- with the steward and the doctor walked in alone.
-
- The dinner, the dining room, the service, the waiting at table,
- the wine and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general
- tone of modern luxury throughout the house, but seemed even more
- sumptuous and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was
- novel to her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a
- household- though she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to
- her own household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her
- own manner of living- she could not help scrutinizing every detail,
- and wondering how and by whom it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her
- husband, and even Sviiazhsky, and many other people she knew, would
- never have considered this question, and would have readily believed
- what every well-bred host tries to make his guests feel, that is, that
- all that is well-ordered in his house has cost him, the host, no
- trouble whatever, but comes of itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well
- aware that even porridge for the children's breakfast does not come of
- itself, and that therefore, where so complicated and magnificent a
- style of luxury was maintained, someone must give earnest attention to
- its organization. And from the glance with which Alexei Kirillovich
- scanned the table, from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered
- Darya Alexandrovna her choice between cold soup and hot soup, she
- saw that it was all organized and maintained by the care of the master
- of the house himself. It was evident that it all rested no more upon
- Anna than upon Veslovsky. She, Sviiazhsky, the Princess, and
- Veslovsky, were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying what had
- been arranged for them.
-
- Anna was the hostess only in conducting the conversation. The
- conversation was a difficult one for the lady of the house at a
- small table with persons present, like the steward and the
- architect, belonging to a completely different world, struggling not
- to be overawed by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and
- unable to sustain a large share in the general conversation. But
- this difficult conversation Anna directed with her usual tact and
- naturalness, and indeed she did so with actual enjoyment, as Darya
- Alexandrovna observed.
-
- The conversation began about the row Tushkevich and Veslovsky had
- taken alone together in the boat, and Tushkevich began describing
- the last boat races in Peterburg at the Yacht Club. But Anna,
- seizing the first pause, at once turned to the architect to draw him
- out of his silence.
-
- "Nikolai Ivanich was struck," she said meaning Sviiazhsky, "at the
- progress the new building had made since he was here last; but I am
- there every day, and every day I wonder at the rate at which it
- grows."
-
- "It's first-rate working with His Excellency," said the architect
- with a smile (he was respectful and composed, though with a sense of
- his own dignity). "It's a very different matter to have to do with the
- district authorities. Where one would have to write out sheaves of
- papers, here I call upon the Count, and in three words we settle the
- business."
-
- "The American way of doing business," said Sviiazhsky, with a smile.
-
- "Yes, there they build in a rational fashion...."
-
- The conversation passed to the misuse of political power in the
- United States, but Anna quickly brought it round to another topic,
- so as to draw the steward into talk.
-
- "Have you ever seen a reaping machine?" she said, addressing Darya
- Alexandrovna. "We had just ridden over to look at one when we met.
- It's the first time I ever saw one."
-
- "How do they work?" asked Dolly.
-
- "Exactly like scissors. A plank and a lot of little scissors. Like
- this."
-
- Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands, covered
- with rings, and began showing how the machine worked. It was clear
- that she saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but
- aware that her talk was pleasant, and her hands beautiful, she went on
- explaining.
-
- "More like little penknives," Veslovsky said playfully, never taking
- his eyes off her.
-
- Anna gave a just perceptible smile, but made no answer. "Isn't it
- true, Karl Fedorich, that it's just like scissors?" she said to the
- steward.
-
- "Oh, ja," answered the German. "Es ist ein ganz einfaches Ding," and
- he began to explain the construction of the machine.
-
- "It's a pity it doesn't bind too. I saw one at the Vienna
- exhibition, which binds with a wire," said Sviiazhsky. "They would
- be more profitable in use."
-
- "Es kommt drauf an... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden."
- And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. "Das
- lasst sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht." The German was just feeling in the
- pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in,
- but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronsky's
- chilly glance, he checked himself. "Zu compliziert, macht zu viel
- pains," he concluded.
-
- "Wunscht man gains, so hat man auch pains," said Vassenka Veslovsky,
- bantering the German. "J'adore l'allemand," he addressed Anna again
- with the same smile.
-
- "Cessez," she said with playful severity.
-
- "We expected to find you in the fields, Vassilii Semionich," she
- said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; "have you been there?"
-
- "I went there, but I evaporated," the doctor answered with gloomy
- jocoseness.
-
- "Then you've taken a good constitutional?"
-
- "Splendid!"
-
- "Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it's not typhus?"
-
- "Typhus it isn't, but she's not to be found to the best advantage."
-
- "What a pity!" said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of
- civility to her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.
-
- "It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your
- description, Anna Arkadyevna," Sviiazhsky said jestingly.
-
- "Oh, no, why so?" said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew
- there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine,
- that had been noticed by Sviiazhsky too. This new trait of girlish
- coquettishness made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.
-
- "But Anna Arkadyevna's knowledge of architecture is marvelous," said
- Tushkevich.
-
- "To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna saying yesterday: 'by cramp'
- and 'plinths,'" said Veslovsky. "Have I got it right?"
-
- "There's nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much
- of it," said Anna. "But, I dare say, you don't even know what houses
- are made of?"
-
- Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of playfulness
- that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against
- her will.
-
- Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He
- obviously attached no significance to Veslovsky's chattering; on the
- contrary, he encouraged his jests.
-
- "Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?"
-
- "By cement, of course."
-
- "Bravo! And what is cement?"
-
- "Oh, some sort of paste.... No, putty," said Veslovsky, raising a
- general laugh.
-
- The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the
- architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence,
- kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject,
- fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other of the
- company to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the
- quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered
- afterward whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant.
- Sviiazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that
- machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.
-
- "I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin," Vronsky said,
- smiling, "but most likely he has never seen the machines he
- condemns; or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a
- queer fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What
- sort of views can anyone have on such a subject?"
-
- "Turkish views, in general," Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with
- a smile.
-
- "I can't defend his opinions," Darya Alexandrovna said, flaring
- up; "but I can say that he's a highly cultivated man, and if he were
- here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not
- capable of doing so."
-
- "I like him extremely, and we are great friends," Sviiazhsky said,
- smiling good-naturedly. "Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toque; he
- maintains, for instance, that zemstvoes and justices of the peace
- are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything."
-
- "It's our Russian apathy," said Vronsky, pouring water from an
- iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; "we've no sense of
- the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to
- recognize these duties."
-
- "I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties," said
- Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky's tone of superiority.
-
- "For my part," pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or
- other keenly affected by this conversation, "such as I am, I am, on
- the contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me,
- thanks to Nikolai Ivanich" (he indicated Sviiazhsky), "in electing
- me an honorary justice of the peace. I consider that for me the duty
- of being present at the session, of judging some peasants' quarrel
- about a horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I shall
- regard it as an honor if they elect me for the district council.
- It's only in that way I can pay for the advantages I enjoy as a
- landowner. Unluckily they don't understand the importance that the big
- landowners ought to have in the state."
-
- It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely
- confident he was of being right at his own table. She thought how
- Levin, who believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions
- at his own table. But she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
-
- "So we can reckon upon you, Count, for the coming elections?" said
- Sviiazhsky. "But you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the
- spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me!"
-
- "I rather agree with your beau-frere", said Anna, "though not
- quite on the same ground as he," she added with a smile. "I'm afraid
- that we have too many of these public duties in these latter days.
- Just as in the old days there were so many government functionaries
- that one had to call in a functionary for every single thing, so now
- everyone's doing some sort of public duty. Alexei has been here now
- six months, and he's a member, I do believe, of five or six
- different public bodies, a guardian, a justice of the peace, a
- member of the council, a juryman, an equine something. Du train que
- cela va, his whole time will be wasted on it. And I'm afraid that with
- such a multiplicity of these bodies, they'll end in being a mere form.
- How many are you a member of, Nikolai Ivanich?" she turned to
- Sviiazhsky. "Over twenty, I fancy."
-
- Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone.
- Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it
- instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronsky's face had
- immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this,
- and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the
- conversation by talking of Peterburg acquaintances, and remembering
- what Vronsky had without apparent connection said in the garden of his
- work in the country, Dolly surmised that this question of public
- activity was connected with some deep private disagreement between
- Anna and Vronsky.
-
- The dinner, the wine, the dinner set, were all very good; but it was
- all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners and
- balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all
- had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an
- ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a
- disagreeable impression on her.
-
- After dinner they sat on the terrace; then they proceeded to play
- lawn tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on
- opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles, on the
- carefully leveled and rolled croquet ground. Darya Alexandrovna made
- an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand
- the game, and by the time she did understand it she was so tired
- that she sat down with Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the
- players. Her partner, Tushkevich, gave up playing too, but the
- others kept the game up for a long time. Sviiazhsky and Vronsky both
- played very well and seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls
- served to them, and without loitering, they ran adroitly up to them,
- waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over
- the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but
- he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and
- outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the
- ladies' permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure
- in his white shirt sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his
- impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on
- the memory.
-
- When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed
- her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.
-
- During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did
- not like the light tone of playfulness that was kept up all the time
- between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness,
- altogether, of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at
- a child's game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get
- through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again,
- and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as
- though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and
- that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance.
-
- She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went
- well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that
- she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries, which
- she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them
- struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.
-
- When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya
- Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began
- arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of
- relief.
-
- It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna would be
- coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own
- thoughts.
-
- XXIII.
-
-
- Dolly was just about to go to bed when Anna came in to see her,
- attired for the night.
-
- In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to speak of
- matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had
- stopped: "Afterward, by ourselves, we'll talk about everything. I've
- got so much I want to tell you," she had said.
-
- Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk
- about. She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her
- own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so
- inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it
- seemed to her that everything had been said already.
-
- "Well, what of Kitty?" she said with a heavy sigh, looking
- penitently at Dolly. "Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn't she angry with
- me?"
-
- "Angry? Oh, no!" said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
-
- "But she hates me, despises me?"
-
- "Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn't forgiven."
-
- "Yes, yes," said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open
- window. "But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What's the
- meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you
- think? Could it possibly have happened otherwise than that you
- should become the wife of Stiva?"
-
- "Really, I don't know. But this is what I want you to tell me..."
-
- "Yes, yes, but we've not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He's
- a very fine man, they say."
-
- "He's much more than very fine. I don't know a better man."
-
- "Ah, how glad I am! I'm so glad! Much more than very fine," she
- repeated.
-
- Dolly smiled.
-
- "But tell me about yourself. We've a great deal to talk about. And
- I've had a talk with..." Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt
- it awkward to call him either the Count or Alexei Kirillovich.
-
- "With Alexei," said Anna, "I know what you talked about. But I
- wanted to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?"
-
- "How am I to say anything so suddenly? I really don't know."
-
- "No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn't
- forget that you're seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us
- and we are not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived
- quite alone, and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better.
- But imagine me living alone without him, alone, and that will be...
- I see by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be
- half the time away from home," she said, getting up and sitting down
- close by Dolly. "Of course," she interrupted Dolly, who would have
- answered, "of course I won't try to keep him by force. I don't keep
- him indeed. The races are just coming, his horses are running, he will
- go. I'm very glad. But think of me, fancy my position.... But what's
- the use of talking about it!" She smiled. "Well, what did he talk
- about with you?"
-
- "He spoke of what I want to speak about myself, and it's easy for me
- to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility... whether
- you could not..." (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) "correct, or
- improve your position.... You know how I look at it... But all the
- same, if possible, you should get married...."
-
- "Divorce, you mean?" said Anna. "Do you know, the only woman who
- came to see me in Peterburg was Betsy Tverskaia? You know her, of
- course? Au fond, c'est la femme la plus dipravee qui existe. She had
- an intrigue with Tushkevich, deceiving her husband in the basest
- way. And she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my
- position was irregular. Don't imagine I would compare... I know you,
- darling. But I could not help remembering... Well, so what did he
- say to you?" she repeated.
-
- "He said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps
- you will say that it's egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism.
- He wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your
- husband, to have a legal right to you."
-
- "What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my
- position?" she put in gloomily.
-
- "The chief thing he desires... he desires that you should not
- suffer."
-
- "That's impossible. Well?"
-
- "Well, and the most legitimate desire- he wishes that your
- children should have a name."
-
- "What children?" Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing
- her eyes.
-
- "Annie and those to come..."
-
- "He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children."
-
- "How can you tell that you won't?"
-
- "I shall not, because I don't wish it." And, in spite of all her
- emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naive expression of curiosity,
- wonder, and horror on Dolly's face.
-
- "The doctor told me after my illness..."
-
- "Impossible!" said Dolly, opening her eyes wide. For here this was
- one of those discoveries the consequences and deductions from which
- are so immense that all that one feels for the first instant is that
- it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to
- reflect a great, great deal upon it.
-
- This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one
- or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her,
- aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that
- she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder
- at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now
- learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was
- too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.
-
- "N'est-ce pas immoral?" was all she said, after a brief pause.
-
- "Why so? Think- I have a choice between two alternatives: either
- to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and
- companion of my husband- practically my husband," Anna said in a
- tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.
-
- "Yes, yes," said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments
- she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as
- before.
-
- "For you, for other people," said Anna, as though divining her
- thoughts, "there may be reason to hesitate; but for me... You must
- consider- I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And
- how am I to keep his love? Not like this!"
-
- She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist.
-
- With extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of
- excitement, ideas and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna's
- head. "I," she thought, "did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left
- me for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not
- keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and took
- another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in that way? If
- that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and manners still more
- attractive and charming. And, however white and beautiful her bare
- arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her eager face under
- her black curls, he will find something better still, just as my
- disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does."
-
- Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,
- indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other
- arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.
-
- "Do you say that it's not right? But you must consider," she went
- on; "you forget my position. How can I desire children? I'm not
- speaking of the suffering- I'm not afraid of that. Think, only- what
- are my children to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a
- stranger's name. For the very fact of their birth they will be
- forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father, their birth."
-
- "But that is just why a divorce is necessary."
-
- But Anna did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the
- arguments with which she had so many times convinced herself.
-
- "What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid
- bringing unhappy beings into the world!"
-
- She looked at Dolly, but without waiting for a reply she went on:
-
- "I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children," she
- said. "If there are none, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if
- they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it."
-
- These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own
- reflections; but she heard them now without understanding them. "How
- can one wrong creatures that don't exist?" she thought. And all at
- once the idea struck her. Could it possibly, under any
- circumstances, have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had
- never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she
- shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad ideas.
-
- "No, I don't know; it's not right," was all she said, with an
- expression of disgust on her face.
-
- "Yes, but you mustn't forget what you are and what I am.... And
- besides that," added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and
- the poverty of Dolly's objections, seeming still to admit that it
- was not right, "don't forget the chief point, that I am not now in the
- same position as you. For you the question is: Do you desire not to
- have any more children? While for me it is: Do I desire to have
- them? And that's a great difference. You must see that I can't
- desire them in my position."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got
- away from Anna so far, that there lay between them a barrier of
- questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was
- better not to speak.
-
- XXIV.
-
-
- "Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your
- position, if possible," said Dolly.
-
- "Yes, if possible," said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly
- different tone, subdued and mournful.
-
- "Surely you don't mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your
- husband had consented to it."
-
- "Dolly, I don't want to talk about that."
-
- "Oh, we won't then," Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing
- the expression of suffering on Anna's face. "All I see is that you
- take too gloomy a view of things."
-
- "I? Not at all! I'm very satisfied and happy. You see, je fais
- passions. Veslovsky..."
-
- "Yes, to tell the truth, I don't like Veslovsky's tone," said
- Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.
-
- "Oh, that's nonsense! It amuses Alexei, and that's all; but he's a
- boy, and quite under control. You know, I turn him as I please. It's
- just as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!" she suddenly
- changed the subject. "You say I take too gloomy a view of things.
- You can't understand. It's too awful! I try not to take any view of it
- at all."
-
- "But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can."
-
- "But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexei, and say
- I don't think about it. I don't think about it!" she repeated, and a
- flush rose into her face. She got up, straightening her chest, and
- sighed heavily. With her light step she began pacing up and down the
- room, stopping now and then. "I don't think of it? Not a day, not an
- hour passes that I don't think of it, and blame myself for what I
- think... because thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!" she
- repeated. "When I think of it, I can't sleep without morphine. But
- never mind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me- divorce. In the first
- place, he won't give me a divorce. He's under the influence of
- Countess Lidia Ivanovna now."
-
- Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head
- following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.
-
- "You ought to make the attempt," she said softly.
-
- "Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?" she said, evidently
- giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and
- learned by heart. "It means that I, hating him, but still
- recognizing that I have wronged him- and I consider him magnanimous-
- that I humiliate myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the
- effort; I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal, or consent.
- Well, I have received his consent, say..." Anna was at that moment
- at the farthest end of the room, and she stopped there, doing
- something to the curtain at the window. "I receive his consent, but
- my... my son? They won't give him up to me. He will grow up
- despising me, with his father, whom I've abandoned. Do you see, I love
- equally, I think, but both more than myself, two beings- Seriozha
- and Alexei."
-
- She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly,
- with her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white
- dressing gown her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She
- bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her
- brows at Dolly, a thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing
- jacket and nightcap, shaking all over with emotion.
-
- "It is only those two beings whom I love, and one excludes the
- other. I can't have them together, and that's the only thing I want.
- And since I can't have that, I don't care about the rest. I don't care
- about anything- anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I
- can't, I don't like to talk of it. So don't blame me, don't judge me
- for anything. You can't with your pure heart understand all that I'm
- suffering."
-
- She went up, sat down beside Dolly, and, with a guilty look,
- peeped into her face and took her hand.
-
- "What are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don't
- despise me. I don't deserve contempt. I'm simply unhappy. If anyone is
- unhappy, I am," she uttered, and turning away, she burst into tears.
-
- Left alone, Dolly said her prayers and went to bed. She had felt for
- Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now she
- could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of
- her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite
- new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own
- seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any
- account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that
- she would certainly go back the next day.
-
- Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wineglass, and
- dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal
- ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a
- little while, she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful
- frame of mind.
-
- When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her. He
- was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew, staying so
- long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. But in her
- expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he
- could find nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh
- though he was used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that
- it should affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been
- talking of, but he hoped that she would tell him something of her
- own accord. But she only said:
-
- "I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?"
-
- "Oh, I've known her a long while. She's very goodhearted, I suppose,
- mais excessivement terre-a-terre. Still, I'm very glad to see her."
-
- He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.
-
- Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him.
-
-
- Next morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya
- Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in
- his by no means new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses
- and his carriage with the patched mudguards, drove with gloomy
- determination into the covered gravel approach.
-
- Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the
- gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her
- hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and
- that it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew
- that now, after Dolly's departure, no one again would stir up within
- her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It
- hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the
- best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly
- grow weedy in the life she was leading.
-
- As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a
- delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men
- how they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly the coachman,
- Philip, expressed himself unasked:
-
- "Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all
- they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grain left
- by cock-crow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now you
- could get from innkeepers for forty-five kopecks. At our place, no
- fear, all comers may have as much as they can eat."
-
- "The master's a screw," put in the countinghouse clerk.
-
- "Well, did you like their horses?" asked Dolly.
-
- "The horses! There's no two opinions about them. And the food was
- good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna.
- I don't know what you thought," he said, turning his handsome,
- good-natured face to her.
-
- "I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?"
-
- "Eh, we must!"
-
- On reaching home and finding everyone entirely safe and particularly
- charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness telling
- them about her arrival, her warm reception, about the luxury and
- good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and about their recreations,
- and she would not allow a word to be said against them.
-
- "One has to know Anna and Vronsky- I have got to know him better
- now- to see how fine they are, and how touching," she said, speaking
- now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of
- dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced there.
-
- XXV.
-
-
- Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the autumn in
- the country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no
- steps to obtain a divorce. It was a decided thing between them that
- they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived
- alone, especially in the autumn, and without guests in the house, that
- they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to
- change it.
-
- Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired.
- They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and
- both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her
- appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of
- reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion.
- She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers
- and journals she received, and read them with that concentrated
- attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion.
- Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Vronsky, she studied
- in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her
- with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even
- with questions relating to horse breeding or sport. He was amazed at
- her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to
- ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked
- for in some book, and show it to him.
-
- The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not
- merely assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her
- chief thought was still of herself- how far she was dear to Vronsky,
- how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky
- appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which
- had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he
- wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As
- time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in
- these snares, he had an ever-growing desire, not so much to escape
- from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom. Had it not
- been for this growing desire to be free, not to have scenes every time
- he wanted to go to the town to a session or a race, Vronsky would have
- been perfectly satisfied with his life. The role he had taken up,
- the role of a wealthy landowner, one of that class which ought to be
- the very heart of the Russian aristocracy, was entirely to his
- taste; and now, after spending six months in that role, he derived
- even greater satisfaction from it. And his management of his estate,
- which occupied and absorbed him more and more, was most successful. In
- spite of the immense sums which the hospital, the machinery, the
- cows ordered from Switzerland, and many other things, cost him, he was
- convinced that he was not wasting but increasing his substance. In all
- matters affecting income, the sales of timber, wheat, and wool, the
- letting of lands, Vronsky was hard as a rock, and knew well how to
- keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on this and his
- other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving no risk,
- and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme
- degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German
- steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his
- original estimate always far larger than really required, and then
- representing to Vronsky that he might get the thing cheaper, and so
- make a profit, Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward,
- cross-examined him, and only agreed to his suggestions when the
- implement to be ordered or constructed was the very newest, not yet
- known in Russia, and likely to excite wonder. Apart from such
- exceptions, he resolved upon an increased outlay only where there
- was a surplus, and in making such an outlay he went into the
- minutest details, and insisted on getting the very best for his money;
- so that by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was clear
- that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance.
-
- In October there were the provincial nobility elections in the
- Kashinsky province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviiazhsky,
- Koznishev, Oblonsky, and a small part of Levin's land.
-
- These elections were attracting public attention from several
- circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking
- part in them. There had been a great deal of talk about these
- elections, and great preparations were being made for them. Persons
- who never attended the elections were coming from Moscow, from
- Peterburg, and from abroad to attend these.
-
- Vronsky had long before promised Sviiazhsky to go to them.
-
- Before the elections Sviiazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe,
- drove over to fetch Vronsky.
-
- On the day before there had been almost a quarrel between Vronsky
- and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was the very dullest autumn
- weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing
- himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold expression,
- informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to her before.
- But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with great
- composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked
- intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at
- his look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and
- knew that it only happened when she had determined upon something
- without letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he
- was so anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and
- half sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in- her
- reasonableness.
-
- "I hope you won't be dull?"
-
- "I hope not," said Anna. "I got a box of books yesterday from
- Gautier's. No, I shan't be dull."
-
- "She's trying to take that tone, and so much the better," he
- thought, "or else it would be the same thing over and over again."
-
- And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a
- candid explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their
- intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation.
- From one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he
- felt that it was better so. "At first there will be, as this time,
- something undefined, kept back, and then she will get used to it. In
- any case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine
- independence," he thought.
-
- XXVI.
-
-
- In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty's confinement. He had
- spent a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergei
- Ivanovich, who had property in the Kashinsky province, and took
- great interest in the question of the approaching elections, made
- ready to set off to the elections. He invited his brother, who had a
- vote in the Selezniovsky district, to come with him. Levin had,
- moreover, to transact in Kashin some extremely important business
- relating to the wardship, and to the receiving of certain redemption
- money for his sister, who was abroad.
-
- Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was bored in
- Moscow, and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the
- proper nobleman's uniform, costing eighty roubles. And this eighty
- roubles paid for the uniform was the chief reason that finally decided
- Levin to go. He went to Kashin.
-
- Levin had been five days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each
- day, and busily engaged about his sister's business, which still
- dragged on. The district marshals of nobility were all occupied with
- the elections, and it was impossible to get the simplest thing done
- that depended upon the court of wardship. The other matter, the
- receipt of the sums due, was also met by difficulties. After long
- negotiations over the lifting of the prohibition, the money was at
- last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most obliging person, could
- not hand over the order, because it must have the signature of the
- president, and the president, though he had not given over his
- duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these worrying
- negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and talking with
- pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the unpleasantness of the
- petitioner's position, but were powerless to assist him- all these
- efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling of misery in Levin
- akin to the mortifying helplessness one experiences in dreams, when
- one tries to use physical force. He felt this frequently as he
- talked to his exceedingly good-natured solicitor. This solicitor
- did, it seemed, everything possible, and strained every nerve to get
- him out of his difficulties. "I tell you what you might try," he
- said more than once; "go to so-and-so and so-and-so," and the
- solicitor drew up a regular plan for getting round the fatal point
- that hindered everything. But he would add immediately, "It'll mean
- some delay, anyway, but you might try it." And Levin did try, and
- did go. Everyone was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to
- crop up again in the end, and again to bar the way. What was
- particularly trying, was that Levin could not make out with whom he
- was struggling, to whose interest it was that his business should
- not be done. That no one seemed to know; the solicitor certainly did
- not know. If Levin could have understood why, just as he saw why one
- can only approach the booking office of a railway station in single
- file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him. But
- in the case of the hindrances that confronted him in his business,
- no one could explain why they existed.
-
- But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was
- patient, and if he could not see why it was all arranged like this, he
- told himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and
- that most likely it must be so, and he tried not to resent it.
-
- In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried
- now not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully
- as he could the question which was so earnestly and ardently absorbing
- honest and excellent men whom he respected. Since his marriage there
- had been revealed to Levin so many new and serious aspects of life
- which had previously, through his frivolous attitude to them, seemed
- of no importance, that in the question of the elections, too, he
- assumed and tried to find some serious significance.
-
- Sergei Ivanovich explained to him the meaning and object of the
- proposed radical change at the elections. The marshal of the
- province in whose hands the law had placed the control of so many
- important public functions- the guardianship of wards (the very
- department which was giving Levin so much trouble just now), the
- disposal of large sums subscribed by the nobility of the province, the
- high schools, for girls, for boys, and military, and primary
- instruction on the new statute and finally, the Zemstvo- the marshal
- of the province, Snetkov, was a nobleman of the old school,
- dissipating an immense fortune, a goodhearted man, honest after his
- own fashion, but utterly without any comprehension of the needs of
- modern days. He always took, in every question, the side of the
- nobility; he was positively antagonistic to the spread of primary
- education, and he succeeded in giving a purely party character to
- the Zemstvo which ought by rights to be of such an immense importance.
- What was needed was to put in his place a fresh, capable, perfectly
- modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to frame their policy so as
- to derive, from the rights conferred upon the nobles (not as the
- nobility, but as an element of the Zemstvo), all the benefits of
- self-government that could possibly be derived from them. In the
- wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of other
- provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of
- forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might
- serve as a model for other provinces- for all Russia. And hence the
- whole question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to
- elect as marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviiazhsky, or, better
- still, Neviedovsky, a former university professor, a man of remarkable
- intelligence, and a great friend of Sergei Ivanovich.
-
- The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the
- nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard
- for persons, but for the service and welfare of the native country,
- and hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province
- would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and
- vindicate the exalted confidence of the Monarch.
-
- When he had finished his speech, the governor walked out of the
- hall, and the noblemen noisily and eagerly- some even
- enthusiastically- followed him and thronged round him while he put
- on his fur coat and conversed amicably with the marshal of the
- province. Levin, anxious to see into everything and not miss anything,
- also stood there in the crowd, and heard the governor say: "Please,
- tell Marya Ivanovna my wife is very sorry she could not visit the
- charity school." And thereupon the nobles in high good humor sorted
- out their fur coats and all drove off to the cathedral.
-
- In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest, and
- repeating the words of the dean, vowed with the most awesome oaths
- to do all the governor had hoped they would do. Church services always
- affected Levin, and as he uttered the words: "I kiss the cross," and
- glanced round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he
- felt touched.
-
- On the second and third days there was business relating to the
- finances of the nobility, and the high school for girls, of no
- importance whatever, as Sergei Ivanovich explained, and Levin, busy
- seeing after his own affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the
- fourth day the auditing of the marshal's accounts took place at the
- high table of the marshal of the province. And then there occurred the
- first skirmish between the new party and the old. The committee
- which had been deputed to verify the accounts reported to the
- meeting that all was in order. The marshal of the province got up,
- thanked the nobility for their confidence, and shed tears. The
- nobles gave him a loud welcome and shook hands with him. But at that
- instant a nobleman of Sergei Ivanovich's party said that he had
- heard that the committee had not verified the accounts, considering
- such a verification an insult to the marshal of the province. One of
- the members of the committee incautiously admitted this. Then a
- small gentleman, very young-looking but very venomous, began to say
- that it would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the province
- to give an account of his expenditures of the public moneys, and
- that the misplaced delicacy of the members of the committee was
- depriving him of this moral satisfaction. Then the members of the
- committee tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergei Ivanovich
- began to prove that they must logically admit either that they had
- verified the accounts or that they had not, and he developed this
- dilemma in detail. Sergei Ivanovich was answered by the talker of
- the opposite party. Then Sviiazhsky spoke, and then the venomous
- gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and ended in
- nothing. Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this
- subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergei Ivanovich whether
- he supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergei Ivanovich
- answered:
-
- "Oh, no! He's an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of
- paternal family arrangements in the management of nobility affairs
- must be broken down."
-
- On the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals. It was
- rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Selezniovsky district
- Sviiazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a
- dinner that evening.
-
- XXVII.
-
-
- The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the
- province. The rooms, large and small, were full of nobleman in all
- sorts of uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not
- seen each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from
- Peterburg, some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility.
- There was much discussion around the province table under the portrait
- of the Czar.
-
- The nobles, both in the larger and in the smaller rooms, grouped
- themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances,
- from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a
- group, and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to
- the farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from
- the other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two
- classes: the old and the new. The old were for the most part either in
- the old uniform of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and
- hats, or in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry uniforms,
- earned by their former service. The uniforms of the older men were
- embroidered in the old-fashioned way with small puffs on their
- shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and short in the waists, as
- though their wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore the
- uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad shoulders,
- unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black collars and
- with the embroidered laurel leaves of justices of the peace. To the
- younger men belonged the Court uniforms that here and there brightened
- up the crowd.
-
- But the division into young and old did not correspond with the
- division of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed,
- belonged to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on
- the contrary, were whispering with Sviiazhsky, and were evidently
- ardent partisans of the new party.
-
- Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and
- taking light refreshments, close to his own friends, and, listening to
- what they were saying, he vainly exerted all his intelligence trying
- to understand what was said. Sergei Ivanovich was the center round
- which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that moment
- to Sviiazhsky and Khliustov, the marshal of another district, who
- belonged to their party. Khliustov would not agree to go with his
- district to ask Snetkov to be a candidate, while Sviiazhsky was
- persuading him to do so, and Sergei Ivanovich was approving of the
- plan. Levin could not make out why the opposition had to ask the
- marshal to be a candidate when they wanted to supersede him.
-
- Stepan Arkadyevich, who had just been drinking and taking some snack
- lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the
- bedchamber, wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered
- batiste.
-
- "We are placing our forces," he said, pulling out his side whiskers,
- "Sergei Ivanovich!"
-
- And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviiazhsky's
- contention.
-
- "One district's enough, and Sviiazhsky's obviously of the
- opposition," he said, words evidently intelligible to all except
- Levin.
-
- "Why, Kostia, you, it seems, get the taste for these affairs too!"
- he added, turning to Levin and drawing his arm through his. Levin
- would have been glad indeed to get the taste for these affairs, but
- could not make out what the point was, and retreating a few steps from
- the speakers, he explained to Stepan Arkadyevich his inability to
- understand why the marshal of the province should be asked to be a
- candidate.
-
- "O sancta simplicitas!" said Stepan Arkadyevich, and briefly and
- clearly he explained it to Levin.
-
- If, as at previous elections, all the districts asked the marshal of
- the province to be a candidate, then he would be elected without a
- ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had agreed to call
- upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline the candidacy
- entirely; and then the old party might choose another of their
- party, which would throw them completely out in their reckoning. But
- if only one district, Sviiazhsky's, did not call upon him to be a
- candidate, Snetkov would let himself be balloted for. They were
- even, some of them, going to vote for him, and purposely to let him
- get a good many votes, so that the enemy might be thrown off the
- scent, and when a candidate of the other side was put up, they too
- might give him some votes. Levin understood to some extent, but not
- fully, and would have put a few more questions, when suddenly everyone
- began talking and making a noise, and they moved toward the big room.
-
- "What is it? Eh? Whom?... Proxy? Whose? What?... They won't pass
- him?... No proxy?... They won't let Fliorov in?... Eh, because of
- the charge against him?... Why, at this rate, they won't admit anyone.
- It's a swindle!... The law!" Levin heard exclamations on all sides,
- and he moved into the big room together with the others, all
- hurrying somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the
- crowding noblemen, he drew near the high table where the marshal of
- the province, Sviiazhsky, and the other leaders, were hotly
- disputing about something.
-
- XXVIII.
-
-
- Levin was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily
- and hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking,
- prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft
- voice of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the venomous
- gentleman, and then the voice of Sviiazhsky. They were disputing, as
- far as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the
- act and the exact meaning of the words: "liable to be called up for
- trial."
-
- The crowd parted to make way for Sergei Ivanovich approaching the
- table. Sergei Ivanovich, waiting till the venomous gentleman had
- finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be
- to refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act.
- The act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a
- ballot.
-
- Sergei Ivanovich read the act and began to explain its meaning,
- but at that point a tall, stout, stoop-shouldered landowner, with dyed
- mustache, in a tight uniform that made the back of his neck bulge
- up, interrupted him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his
- finger ring, he shouted loudly:
-
- "A ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more talking!"
-
- Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall nobleman
- with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more and
- more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said.
-
- He was shouting for the very course Sergei Ivanovich had proposed;
- but it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this
- feeling of hatred spread through the whole party and roused in
- opposition to it the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly
- form, on the other side. Shouts were raised, and for a moment all
- was confusion, so that the marshal of the province had to call for
- order.
-
- "A ballot! A ballot! Whoever is a nobleman understands! We shed
- our blood for our country!... The confidence of the Monarch.... No
- checking of the accounts of the marshal- he's not a cashier!... But
- that's not the point.... Votes, please! What vileness!..." shouted
- furious and violent voices on all sides. Looks and faces were even
- more violent and furious than their words. They expressed the most
- implacable hatred. Levin did not in the least understand what it was
- all about, and he marveled at the passion with which it was disputed
- whether or not the decision about Fliorov should be put to the vote.
- He forgot, as Sergei Ivanovich explained to him afterward, this
- syllogism: that it was necessary for the public good to get rid of the
- marshal of the province; that to get rid of the marshal it was
- necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes
- it was necessary to secure Fliorov's right to vote; that to secure the
- recognition of Fliorov's right to vote they must decide on the
- interpretation to be put on the act.
-
- "And one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious
- and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life,"
- concluded Sergei Ivanovich. But Levin forgot all that, and it was
- painful to him to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had
- respect, in such an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To
- escape from this painful feeling he went away into the other room
- where there was nobody except the waiters at the refreshment bar.
- Seeing the waiters busy washing up the crockery and setting in order
- their plates and wineglasses, seeing their alert and vivacious
- faces, Levin felt an unexpected sense of relief, as though he had come
- out of a stuffy room into the fresh air. He began walking up and down,
- looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly liked the way
- one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his scorn for the other
- younger ones, and was jeered at by them, was teaching them how to fold
- napkins properly. Levin was just about to enter into conversation with
- the old waiter, when the secretary of the court of wardship, a
- little old man whose speciality it was to know all the noblemen of the
- province by name and patronymic, drew him away.
-
- "Please come, Konstantin Dmitrievich," he said, "your brother's
- looking for you. They are voting on the legal point."
-
- Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed
- his brother, Sergei Ivanovich, to the table where Sviiazhsky was
- standing with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in
- his fist and sniffing at it. Sergei Ivanovich put his hand into the
- box, put the ball somewhere, and, making room for Levin, stopped.
- Levin advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much
- embarrassed, he turned to Sergei Ivanovich with the question, "Where
- am I to put it?" He asked this softly, at a moment when there was
- talking going on near, so that he had hoped his question would not
- be overheard. But the persons speaking paused, and his improper
- question was overheard. Sergei Ivanovich frowned.
-
- "That is a matter for each man's own decision," he said severely.
-
- Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand
- under the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his
- right hand. Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have
- thrust his left hand in too, and so he thrust it in though too late,
- and, still more overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat
- into the background.
-
- "A hund'ed and twenty-six fo' admission! Ninety-eight against!" sang
- out the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter
- r. Then there was a laugh; a button and two hazelnuts were found in
- the box. The nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party
- had conquered.
-
- But the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Levin heard
- that they were asking Snetkov to be candidate, and he saw that a crowd
- of noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something.
- Levin went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of
- the province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him,
- which he did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to
- the nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service.
- Several times he repeated the words: "I have served to the best of
- my powers with truth and good faith; I value your goodness and thank
- you," and suddenly he stopped short from the tears that choked him,
- and went out of the room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the
- injustice being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from
- the strain of the position he was placed in, feeling himself
- surrounded by enemies, his emotion infected the assembly, the majority
- were touched, and Levin felt a tenderness for Snetkov.
-
- In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Levin.
-
- "Beg pardon- excuse me, please," he said as to a stranger, but,
- recognizing Levin, he smiled timidly. It seemed to Levin that he would
- have liked to say something, but could not speak for emotion. His face
- and his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white
- trousers striped with galloons, as he moved hurriedly along,
- reminded Levin of some hunted beast who sees that he is in evil
- plight. This expression on the marshal's face was particularly
- touching to Levin, because, only the day before, he had been at his
- house about his guardianship business and had seen him in all his
- grandeur, a kindhearted, fatherly man. The big house with the old
- family furniture; the rather slovenly, far from stylish, but
- respectful footmen- unmistakably old house serfs who had stuck to
- their master; the stout, good-natured wife in a cap with lace and a
- Turkish shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her daughter's daughter;
- the young son, a sixth-form high school boy, coming home from
- school, and greeting his father by kissing his big hand; the
- genuine, cordial words and gestures of the old man- all this had the
- day before roused an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in
- Levin. This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Levin now,
- and he longed to say something pleasant to him.
-
- "So you're our marshal again," he said.
-
- "It's not likely," said the marshal, looking round with a scared
- expression. "I'm worn-out, I'm old. If there are men younger and
- more deserving than I, let them serve."
-
- And the marshal disappeared through a side door.
-
- The most solemn moment was at hand. They were to proceed immediately
- to the election. The leaders of both parties were reckoning white
- and black on their fingers.
-
- The discussion upon Fliorov had given the new party not only
- Fliorov's vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they
- could send to fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to
- take part in the elections by the wiles of the other party. Two
- noble gentlemen, who had a weakness for strong drink, had been made
- drunk by the partisans of Snetkov, and a third had been relieved of
- his uniform.
-
- On learning this, the new party had made haste, during the dispute
- about Fliorov, to send some of their men in a cab to clothe the
- stripped gentleman, and to bring along one of the intoxicated to the
- meeting.
-
- "I've brought one after bringing him to by throwing water- over
- him," said the landowner who had gone on this errand, to Sviiazhsky.
- "Never mind- he'll do."
-
- "Not too drunk- he won't fall down?" said Sviiazhsky, shaking his
- head.
-
- "No, he's first-rate. If only they don't give him any more
- here.... I've told the barman not to give him anything, on any
- account."
-
- XXIX.
-
-
- The narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking
- refreshment, was full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense,
- and every face betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was
- specially keen for the leaders of each party, who knew every detail,
- and had reckoned up every vote. They were the generals organizing
- the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank and file before an
- engagement, though they were getting ready for the fight, sought for
- other distractions in the interval. Some were lunching, standing at
- the bar, or sitting at the table; others were walking up and down
- the long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends whom
- they had not seen for a long while.
-
- Levin did not care to eat, and he was not a smoker; he did not
- want to join his own friends- that is Sergei Ivanovich, Stepan
- Arkadyevich, Sviiazhsky, and the rest, because Vronsky in his
- equerry's uniform was standing with them in eager conversation.
- Levin had seen him already at the meeting on the previous day, and
- he had studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went to the
- window and sat down, scanning the groups, and listening to what was
- being said around him. He felt depressed, especially because
- everyone else was, as he saw, eager, anxious, and interested, and he
- alone, with an old, toothless little man with mumbling lips, wearing a
- naval uniform who sat beside him, had no interest in it, and nothing
- to do.
-
- "He's such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no
- difference. Only think of it! He couldn't collect it in three
- years!" he heard vigorously uttered by a stoop-shouldered, short
- country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging over his embroidered
- collar, and new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels
- that tapped energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance
- at Levin, this gentleman sharply turned his back.
-
- "Yes, it's a dirty business, there's no denying," another puny
- landowner assented in a high voice.
-
- Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout
- general, hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably
- seeking a place where they could talk without being overheard.
-
- "How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I
- expect. Damn the fellow- Prince indeed! He'd better not say it- that's
- swinish!"
-
- "But excuse me! They take their stand on the act," was being said in
- another group; "the wife must be registered as a noble."
-
- "Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We're all gentlemen,
- aren't we? Have trust in us."
-
- "Shall we go on, Your Excellency- fine champagne?"
-
- Another group was following a nobleman who was shouting something in
- a loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.
-
- "I always advised Marya Semionovna to let for a fair rent, for she
- can never save a profit," he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker
- was a country gentleman with white mustache, wearing the regimental
- uniform of an old general staff officer. It was the very landowner
- Levin had met at Sviiazhsky's. He knew him at once. The landowner
- too stared at Levin, and they exchanged greetings.
-
- "Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last
- year at our district marshal's, Nikolai Ivanovich's."
-
- "Well, and how is your land doing?" asked Levin.
-
- "Oh, still just the same, always at a loss," the landowner
- answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and
- conviction that it must be thus. "And how do you come to be in our
- province?" he asked. "Come to take part in our coup d'etat?" he
- said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent.
-
- "All Russia's here- gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything
- short of the ministry." He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan
- Arkadyevich in white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a
- general.
-
- "I ought to own that I don't very well understand the drift of the
- provincial elections," said Levin.
-
- The landowner looked at him.
-
- "Why, what is there to understand? There's no meaning in it at
- all. It's a decaying institution that goes on running only by the
- force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it's an
- assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of the boards,
- and so on, but not of noblemen."
-
- "Then why do you come?" asked Levin.
-
- "From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up
- connections. It's a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell
- the truth, there are one's own interests. My son-in-law wants to run
- as a permanent member; they're not rich people, and he must be brought
- forward. These gentlemen, now- what do they come for?" he said,
- pointing to the venomous gentleman, who was talking at the high table.
-
-
- "That's the new generation of nobility."
-
- "New it may be, but nobility it isn't. They're landed proprietors-
- but we're the landowners. As noblemen, they're cutting their own
- throats."
-
- "But you say it's an institution that's served its time."
-
- "That it may be, but still, it ought to be treated a little more
- respectfully. Snetkov, now... We may be of use, or we may not, but
- we're the growth of a thousand years. If we're laying out a garden,
- planning one before the house, you know, and there you've a tree
- that's stood for centuries in the very spot... Old and gnarled it
- may be, and yet you don't cut down the old fellow to make room for the
- flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree.
- You won't grow him again in a year," he said cautiously, and he
- immediately changed the conversation. "Well, and how is your estate
- doing?"
-
- "Oh, not very well. I make about five per cent."
-
- "Yes, but you don't reckon your own work. Aren't you worth something
- too? I'll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the
- land, I had a salary of three thousand roubles from the service. Now I
- do more work than I did in the service, and, like you, I get five
- per cent on the land, and thank God for that. But one's work is thrown
- in for nothing."
-
- "Then why do you do it, if it's a clear loss?"
-
- "Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It's habit, and one
- knows it's as it should be. And what's more," the landowner went on,
- leaning on the window and chatting on, "my son, I must tell you, has
- no taste for it. There's no doubt he'll be a savant. So there'll be no
- one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year I've planted an
- orchard."
-
- "Yes, yes," said Levin, "that's perfectly true. I always feel
- there's no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one
- does it.... It's a sort of duty one feels to the land."
-
- "But I tell you what," the landowner pursued; "a neighbor of mine, a
- merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the park.
- 'No,' said he, 'Stepan Vassilyevich- everything's well looked after
- but your garden's neglected.' But, as a fact, it's well kept up. 'To
- my thinking, I'd cut down the linden trees. Only do it when they're
- running sap. Here's a thousand lindens, and each would make two good
- bundles of bast. And nowadays that bast's worth something. And you'd
- cut down the lot of the linden shells.'"
-
- "And with what he made he'd buy up livestock, or buy some land for a
- trifle, and let it out to the peasants," Levin added, smiling. He
- had evidently more than once come across those commercial
- calculations. "And he'd make his fortune. But you and I must thank God
- if we keep what we've got and leave it to our children."
-
- "You're married, I've heard?" said the landowner.
-
- "Yes," Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. "Yes, all this is
- rather strange," he went on. "So we live on without any reckoning,
- as though we were the vestals of antiquity, set to guard a sacred fire
- or something."
-
- The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
-
- "There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolai Ivanovich, or
- Count Vronsky, who's settled here lately- they try to set up an
- agronomic industry; but so far it leads to nothing but making away
- with capital."
-
- "But why is it we don't do like the merchants? Why don't we cut down
- our parks for bast?" said Levin, returning to a thought that had
- struck him.
-
- "Why, as you said, to guard the fire. Besides, that's not work for a
- nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn't done here at the elections,
- but yonder, each in his own nook. There's a class instinct, too, of
- what one ought and oughtn't to do. There are the peasants, too- I
- wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the
- land he can. However bad the land is, he'll work it. Without a
- reckoning too. At a simple loss."
-
- "Just as we do," said Levin. "Very, very glad to have met you," he
- added, seeing Sviiazhsky approaching him.
-
- "And here we've met for the first time since we met at your
- place," said the landowner to Sviiazhsky, "and we've had a good
- talk, too."
-
- "Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?" said
- Sviiazhsky with a smile.
-
- "That we're bound to do."
-
- "You've been relieving your feelings."
-
- XXX.
-
-
- Sviiazhsky took Levin's arm, and went with him to his own friends.
- This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan
- Arkadyevich and Sergei Ivanovich, and looking straight at Levin as
- he drew near.
-
- "Delighted! I believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you... at
- Princess Shcherbatskaia's," he said, giving Levin his hand.
-
- "Yes, I quite remember our meeting," said Levin, and, blushing
- crimson, he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.
-
- With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviiazhsky, obviously
- without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with
- Levin. But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking
- round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to smooth
- over his rudeness.
-
- "What are we waiting for now?" asked Levin, looking at Sviiazhsky
- and Vronsky.
-
- "For Snetkov. He has to refuse or accept the candidacy," answered
- Sviiazhsky.
-
- "Well, and what has he done- consented or not?"
-
- "That's the point: he's done neither," said Vronsky.
-
- "And if he refuses, who will run then?" asked Levin, looking at
- Vronsky.
-
- "Whoever chooses to," said Sviiazhsky.
-
- "Shall you?" asked Levin.
-
- "Certainly not I," said Sviiazhsky, looking confused, and turning an
- alarmed glance at the venomous gentleman, who was standing beside
- Sergei Ivanovich.
-
- "Who then? Neviedovsky?" said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot
- into it.
-
- But this was worse still. Neviedovsky and Sviiazhsky were the two
- candidates.
-
- "I certainly shall not, under any circumstances," answered the
- venomous gentleman.
-
- This was Neviedovsky himself. Sviiazhsky introduced him to Levin.
-
- "Well, do you find it exciting too?" said Stepan Arkadyevich,
- winking at Vronsky. "It's something like a race. One might bet on it."
-
- "Yes, it is keenly exciting," said Vronsky. "And once taking the
- thing up, one's eager to see it through. It's a fight!" he said,
- scowling and setting his powerful jaws.
-
- "What a businessman Sviiazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly."
-
- "Oh, yes!" Vronsky assented indifferently.
-
- A silence followed, during which Vronsky- since he had to look at
- something- looked at Levin, at his feet, at his frock coat, then at
- his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in
- order to say something:
-
- "How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a
- justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one."
-
- "It's because I consider the justice of the peace a silly
- institution," morosely answered Levin, who had been all the time
- looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so
- as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.
-
- "I don't think so- quite the contrary," Vronsky said, with calm
- surprise.
-
- "It's a plaything," Levin cut him short. "We don't want justices
- of the peace. I've never had a single thing to do with them during
- eight years. And what I have had, was decided wrongly by them. The
- justice of the peace is over thirty miles from me. For a matter of two
- roubles or so, I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen."
-
- And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the
- miller, and when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for
- slander. All this was utterly uncalled-for and stupid, and Levin
- felt it himself as he said it.
-
- "Oh, this is such an original fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevich
- with his most soothing, almond-oil smile. "But come along; I think
- they're voting...."
-
- And they separated.
-
- "I can't understand," said Sergei Ivanovich, who had observed his
- brother's gaucherie, "I can't understand how anyone can be so
- absolutely devoid of political tact. That's where we Russians are so
- deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him
- you're ami cochon, and you beg him to be candidate. Count Vronsky,
- now... I'm not making a friend of him- he's asked me to dinner, and
- I'm not going; but he's one of our side- why make an enemy of him?
- Then you ask Neviedovsky if he's going to run. That's not done."
-
- "Oh, I don't understand it at all! And it's all such nonsense,"
- Levin answered somberly.
-
- "You say it's all such nonsense- yet as soon as you have anything to
- do with it, you make a muddle."
-
- Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.
-
- The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in
- the air of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not
- been called upon by all to run, had nevertheless made up his mind to
- run for office. All was silence in the room. The secretary announced
- in a loud voice that Mikhail Stepanovich Snetkov, captain of the
- guards, would now be balloted for as marshal of the province.
-
- The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls,
- from their tables to the province table, and the election began.
-
- "Put it in the right side," whispered Stepan Arkadyevich, as Levin
- with his brother followed the marshal of his district to the table.
- But Levin had forgotten by now the machination that had been explained
- to him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevich might be mistaken in
- saying "the right side." Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went
- up, he held the ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong,
- just at the box he changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the
- ball to the left. An adept in the business, standing at the box and
- seeing by the mere action of the elbow where each put his ball,
- scowled with annoyance. It was no good for him to use his insight.
-
- Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard.
- Then a single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against.
-
- The marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was
- noise and eager movement toward the doors. Snetkov came in, and the
- nobles thronged round him, congratulating him.
-
- "Well, now, is it over?" Levin asked Sergei Ivanovich.
-
- "It's only just beginning," Sviiazhsky said, replying for Sergei
- Ivanovich with a smile. "Some other candidate may receive more votes
- than the marshal."
-
- Levin had quite forgotten about that again. Now he could only
- remember that there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too
- bored to think what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to
- get out of the crowd.
-
- As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently
- needed him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the
- refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he
- saw the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to have
- something, and Levin agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and
- talking to the waiters of their former masters, Levin, not wishing
- to go back to the hall, where it was all so distasteful to him,
- proceeded to walk through the galleries.
-
- The galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning
- over the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was
- being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing smart
- lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers.
- Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried the
- marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In one group
- Levin heard his brother's praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:
-
- "How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It's worth missing one's lunch.
- He's exquisite! So clear and distinct- all of it! There's not one of
- you in the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel,
- and he's very far from being so eloquent."
-
- Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began
- looking and listening.
-
- All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers,
- according to their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in
- a uniform, who shouted in a loud high voice:
-
- "As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the
- province we call upon staff captain Eugenii Ivanovich Apukhtin!" A
- dead silence followed, and then a weak old voice was heard:
-
- "Declined!"
-
- "We call upon the privy councilor Piotr Petrovich Bol," the voice
- began again.
-
- "Declined!" a high boyish voice replied.
-
- Again it began, and again came the "Declined." And so it went on for
- about an hour. Levin, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and
- listened. At first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant;
- then feeling sure that he could not make it out he began to be
- bored. Then, recalling all the excitement and vindictiveness he had
- seen on all the faces, he felt sad; he made up his mind to go, and
- went downstairs. As he passed through the entry to the galleries he
- met a dejected high school boy walking up and down with
- tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a couple- a lady running
- quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy prosecutor.
-
- "I told you you weren't late," the deputy prosecutor was saying at
- the moment when Levin moved aside to let the lady pass.
-
- Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in
- his waistcoat pocket for his overcoat check, when the secretary
- overtook him. "This way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievich; they are
- voting."
-
- The candidate who was being voted on was Neviedovsky, who had so
- stoutly denied all idea of candidacy.
-
- Levin went up to the door of the room; it was locked. The
- secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin was met by two red-faced
- gentlemen, who darted out.
-
- "I can't stand any more of it," said one red-faced gentleman.
-
- After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out.
- His face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.
-
- "I told you not to let anyone out!" he cried to the doorkeeper.
-
- "I let someone in, Your Excellency!"
-
- "Mercy on us!" And with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province
- walked with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room,
- his white-trousered legs wavering from fatigue.
-
- Neviedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and
- he was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused,
- many were pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were
- disgusted and unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a
- state of despair which he could not conceal. When Neviedovsky went out
- of the room, the crowd thronged round him and followed him
- enthusiastically, just as they had followed the governor on the
- first day, when he had opened the meetings, and just as they had
- followed Snetkov when he had been elected.
-
- XXXI.
-
-
- The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined
- that day with Vronsky.
-
- Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the
- country and wanted to show Anna his right to independence, and also to
- repay Sviiazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he
- had taken for Vronsky at the Zemstvo election, but chiefly for the
- strict performance of all those duties of a nobleman and landowner
- which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least
- expected that the election would interest him so, so keenly excite
- him, and that he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was
- quite a new man in the circle of the nobility of the province, but his
- success was unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he
- had already obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to
- his wealth and aristocracy; the capital house in the town lent him
- by his old friend Shirkov, who had a post in the department of
- finances and was director of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the
- excellent cook Vronsky had brought from the country; and his
- friendship with the governor, who was a schoolfellow of Vronsky- a
- schoolfellow he had patronized and protected indeed. But what
- contributed more than all to his success was his direct, equable
- manner with everyone, which very quickly made the majority of the
- noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed haughtiness. He
- was himself conscious that, except for that mad gentleman married to
- Kitty Shcherbatskaia, who had a propos de bottes poured out a stream
- of irrelevant absurdities with such spiteful fury, every nobleman with
- whom he had made acquaintance had become his adherent. He saw clearly,
- and other people recognized it, too, that he had done a great deal
- to secure the success of Neviedovsky. And now at his own table,
- celebrating Neviedovsky's election, he was experiencing an agreeable
- sense of triumph over the success of his candidate. The election
- itself had so fascinated him that, if he could succeed in getting
- married during the next three years, he began to think of running
- for office himself- much as, after winning a race ridden by a
- jockey, he had longed to ride a race himself.
-
- Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Vronsky sat at
- the head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a
- general of high rank. To all the rest he was the master of the
- province, who had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and
- aroused a feeling of respect and even of awe in many people, as
- Vronsky saw; to Vronsky he was Katka Maslov- that had been his
- nickname in the Pages' Corps- whom he felt to be shy and tried to
- put at ease. On the left hand sat Neviedovsky with his youthful,
- stubborn, and venomous countenance. With him Vronsky was simple and
- deferential.
-
- Sviiazhsky took his failure very lightheartedly. It was indeed no
- failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to
- Neviedovsky: they could not have found a better representative of
- the new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every
- honest person, as he said, was on the side of today's success and
- was celebrating over it.
-
- Stepan Arkadyevich was glad, too, because he was having a good time,
- and because everyone was pleased. The episodes of the elections served
- as a good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviiazhsky comically imitated
- the tearful discourse of marshal, and observed, addressing
- Neviedovsky, that His Excellency would have to select another, more
- complicated method of auditing accounts than tears. Another nobleman
- jocosely described how footmen in stockings had been imported for
- the marshal's ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless
- the new marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.
-
- Continually during dinner they said of Neviedovsky: "Our Marshal"
- and "Your Excellency."
-
- This was said with the same pleasure with which a young wife is
- called "Madame" and by her husband's name. Neviedovsky affected to
- be not merely indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was
- obvious that he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on
- himself not to betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new,
- liberal party.
-
- In the course of dinner several telegrams were sent to people
- interested in the result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevich,
- who was in high spirits, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram:
- "Neviedovsky elected by twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people."
- He dictated it aloud, saying: "We must let them share our
- rejoicing." Darya Alexandrovna, getting the message, simply sighed
- over the rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an
- afterdinner affair. She knew Stiva had a weakness after dining for
- faire jouer le telegraphe.
-
- Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not
- from Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely
- dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party- some twenty- had been
- selected by Sviiazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of
- the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and
- well-bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new
- marshal of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of
- "our amiable host."
-
- Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a
- tone in the provinces.
-
- Toward the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor
- asked Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the brethren
- which his wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been
- getting up:
-
- "There'll be a ball, and you'll see the belle of the province. Worth
- seeing, really."
-
- "Not in my line," Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase.
- But he smiled, and promised to come.
-
- Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking,
- Vronsky's valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.
-
- "From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger," he said with a
- significant expression.
-
- "Astonishing! How like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,"
- said one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky,
- frowning, read the letter.
-
- The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its
- contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had
- promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that
- the letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time
- fixed. The letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not
- reached her yet.
-
- The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was
- unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him. "Annie is very
- ill, the doctor says it may be inflammation of the lungs. I am
- losing my head all alone. Princess Varvara is no help, but a
- hindrance. I expected you the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and
- now I am sending to find out where you are and what you are doing. I
- wanted to come myself, but thought better of it, knowing you would
- dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know what to do."
-
- The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter
- ill- and this hostile tone.
-
- The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy,
- burdensome love to which he had to return, struck Vronsky by their
- contrast. But he had to go, and by the first train that night he set
- off home.
-
- XXXII.
-
-
- Before Vronsky's departure for the elections, Anna had reflected
- that the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left
- home might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to
- her, and resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear
- the parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which
- he had looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded
- her, and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.
-
- In solitude, later, thinking over that glance which had expressed
- his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same
- point- the sense of her own humiliation. "He has the right to go
- away when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave
- me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought
- not to do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a
- cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable,
- impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a
- great deal," she thought. "That glance shows the beginning of
- coolness."
-
- And though she felt sure that a coolness was beginning, there was
- nothing she could do; she could not in any way alter her relations
- to him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep
- him. And so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by
- morphine at night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what
- would come if he ceased to love her. It is true there was still one
- means; not to keep him- for that she wanted nothing more than his
- love- but to be nearer to him, to be in such a position that he
- would not leave her. That means was divorce and marriage. And she
- began to long for that, and made up her mind to agree to it the
- first time he or Stiva approached her on the subject.
-
- Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the
- five days that he was to be absent.
-
- Walks, conversation with Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital,
- and, most of all, reading- reading of one book after another- filled
- up her time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without
- him, and she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the
- thought of him and of what he was doing there- just at that time her
- little girl was taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that
- did not distract her mind, especially as the illness was not
- serious. However hard she tried, she could not love this little child,
- and to feign love was beyond her powers. Toward the evening of that
- day, still alone, Anna was in such a panic about him that she
- decided to start for the town, but on second thought wrote him the
- contradictory letter that Vronsky received, and, without reading it
- through, sent it off by a special messenger. The next morning she
- received his letter and regretted her own. She dreaded a repetition of
- the severe look he had flung at her at parting, especially when he
- would learn that the baby was not dangerously ill. But still, she
- was glad she had written to him. By now Anna was admitting to
- herself that she was a burden to him, that he would relinquish his
- freedom regretfully to return to her, and in spite of that she was
- glad he was coming. Let him weary of her, but he would be here with
- her, so that she would see him, would know of every action he took.
-
- She was sitting in the drawing room near a lamp, with a new volume
- of Taine, and, as she read, listening to the sound of the wind
- outside, and every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several
- times she had fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had
- been mistaken. At last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the
- coachman's shout and the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even
- Princess Varvara, playing solitaire, confirmed this, and Anna,
- flushing hotly, got up; but, instead of going down, as she had done
- twice before, she stood still. She suddenly felt ashamed of her
- duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he might meet her. All
- feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was only afraid of the
- expression of his displeasure. She remembered that her child had
- been perfectly well again for the last day. She felt positively
- vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her letter
- was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here- all of him,
- with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting
- everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.
-
- "Well, how is Annie?" he said apprehensively from below, looking
- up to Anna as she ran down to him.
-
- He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm
- overboots.
-
- "Oh, she is better."
-
- "And you?" he said, shaking himself.
-
- She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never
- taking her eyes off him.
-
- "Well, I'm glad," he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress,
- which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many
- times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she
- so dreaded settled upon his face.
-
- "Well, I'm glad. And are you well?" he said, wiping his damp beard
- with his handkerchief and kissing her hand.
-
- "Never mind," she thought, "only let him be here, and so long as
- he's here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me."
-
- The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of
- Princess Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking
- morphine in his absence.
-
- "What am I to do? I couldn't sleep.... My thoughts prevented me.
- When he's here I never take it- hardly ever."
-
- He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit
- questions to bring him to what gave him most pleasure- his own
- success. She told him of everything that interested him at home; and
- all that she told him was of the most cheerful description.
-
- But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she
- had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful
- impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:
-
- "Tell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you
- didn't believe me?"
-
- As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his
- feelings were to her, he had not forgiven her for that.
-
- "Yes," he said, "the letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and
- then you thought of coming yourself."
-
- "It was all the truth."
-
- "Oh, I don't doubt it."
-
- "Yes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see."
-
- "Not for one moment. I'm only vexed, that's true, that you seem
- somehow unwilling to admit that there are duties..."
-
- "The duty of going to a concert...."
-
- "But we won't talk about it," he said.
-
- "Why not talk about it?" she said.
-
- "I only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up.
- Now, for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the
- house.... Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? Don't you know that I
- can't live without you?"
-
- "If so," said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, "it means that
- you are sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go
- away, as men do...."
-
- "Anna, that's cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life."
-
- But she did not hear him.
-
- "If you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we
- must separate or else live together."
-
- "Why, you know, that's my one desire. But to do that..."
-
- "We must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on
- like this.... But I will come with you to Moscow."
-
- "You talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so
- much as never to be parted from you," said Vronsky, smiling.
-
- But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a
- cold look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.
-
- She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.
-
- "And, if things have come to such a pass, it's a calamity!" that
- glance told her. It was a moment's impression, but she never forgot
- it.
-
- Anna wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and toward the
- end of November, taking leave of Princess Varvara, who wanted to go to
- Peterburg, she went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an
- answer from Alexei Alexandrovich, and after that the divorce, they now
- established themselves together, like married people.
-
- PART SEVEN
-
-
- I.
-
-
- The Levins had been two months in Moscow. The date had long passed
- on which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people
- learned in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she
- was still about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any
- nearer than two months ago. The doctor, the midwife, and Dolly and her
- mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the
- approaching event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy.
- Kitty was the only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.
-
- She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of
- love for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing
- already, and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by
- now altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life
- independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but
- at the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.
-
- All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her,
- so attentively looking out for her, so entirely pleasant was
- everything presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that
- it must all soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and
- pleasanter life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this mode of
- life was that here her husband was not as she loved him to be, and
- as he was in the country.
-
- She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the
- country. In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as
- though he were afraid someone would be rude to him, and, still more,
- to her. At home in the country, definitely knowing himself to be in
- his right place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere, was
- occupied all the time. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as
- though afraid of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do.
- And she felt pity for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an
- object of pity; on the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in
- society, as one sometimes looks at those one loves, trying to see
- him as if he were a stranger, so as to catch the impression he must
- make on others, she saw with a panic even of jealous fear that he
- was far indeed from being a pitiable figure, that he was very
- attractive with his honesty, his rather old-fashioned, reserved
- courtesy to women, his powerful figure, and striking, as she
- thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from without, but
- from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was the only
- way she could define his condition to herself. Sometimes she
- inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town;
- sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order
- his life here so that he could be satisfied with it.
-
- What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not
- go to a club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky's
- type- she knew now what that meant... it meant drinking, and going
- somewhere after drinking. She could not think without horror of
- where men went on such occasions. Was he to go into society? But she
- knew he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in
- the society of young women, and that she could not wish for. Should he
- stay at home with her, her mother, and her sisters? But much as she
- liked and enjoyed their conversations forever on the same subjects-
- "Alines-Nadines," as the old Prince called the sisters' talks- she
- knew it must bore him. What was there left for him to do? To go on
- writing his book? He had indeed attempted to do it; and at first he
- used to go to the library and make extracts and look up references for
- his book, but, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less
- time he had to do anything. And besides, he complained that he had
- talked too much about his book here, and that consequently all his
- ideas about it were muddled and had lost their interest for him.
-
- One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever
- happened between them here in town. Whether it was that their
- conditions, in town, were different, or that they had both become more
- careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow
- from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the
- country.
-
- One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of
- view, did indeed happen- which was Kitty's meeting with Vronsky.
-
- The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty's godmother, who had always
- been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she
- did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went
- with her father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky.
-
- The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting
- was that at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress
- the features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood
- rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush- she felt it- overspread her
- face. But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who
- purposely began talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished,
- she was perfectly ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if
- necessary, exactly as she spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and,
- more than that, to do so in such a way that everything, to the
- faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband,
- whose unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant.
-
- She said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke
- about the elections, which he called "our parliament." (She had to
- smile to show she saw the joke.) But she turned away immediately to
- Princess Marya Borissovna, and did not once glance at him till he
- got up to go; then she looked at him, but evidently only because it
- would be uncivil not to look at a man when he is saying good-by.
-
- She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their
- meeting Vronsky, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the
- visit, during their usual walk, that he was pleased with her. She
- was pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had
- the power, while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all
- the memories of her old feeling for Vronsky, not only to seem, but
- to be, perfectly indifferent and composed with him.
-
- Levin flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had
- met Vronsky at Princess Marya Borissovna's. It was very hard for her
- to tell him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of
- the meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her
- with a frown.
-
- "I am very sorry you weren't there," she said. "It wasn't so much
- the fact that you weren't in the room... I couldn't have been so
- natural in your presence... I am blushing now much more- much, much
- more," she said, blushing till the tears came into her eyes. "But it's
- a pity you couldn't have looked through a peephole."
-
- The truthful eyes told Levin that she was satisfied with herself,
- and, in spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began
- questioning her, which was all she wanted. When he had heard
- everything, even to the detail that for the first second she could not
- help flushing, but that afterward she was just as direct and as much
- at her ease as with any chance acquaintance, Levin was quite happy
- again and said he was glad of it, and would not now behave as stupidly
- as he had done at the election, but would try the first time he met
- Vronsky to be as friendly as possible.
-
- "It's so wretched to feel that there's any man who is almost your
- enemy, and whom it's painful to meet," said Levin. "I'm very, very
- glad."
-
- II.
-
-
- "Do go then, please, and call on the Bols," Kitty said to her
- husband, when he came in to see her at eleven o'clock before going
- out. "I know you are dining at the club; papa put down your name.
- But what are you going to do in the morning?"
-
- "I am only going to Katavassov," answered Levin.
-
- "Why so early?"
-
- "He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him
- about my work. He's a distinguished savant from Peterburg," said
- Levin.
-
- "Yes; wasn't it his article you were praising so? Well, and after
- that?" said Kitty.
-
- "I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister's business."
-
- "And the concert?" she queried.
-
- "I shan't go there all alone."
-
- "No? Do go; there are going to be some new things.... That used to
- interest you so. I should certainly go."
-
- "Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner," he said, looking at
- his watch.
-
- "Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on
- Countess Bol."
-
- "But is it absolutely necessary?"
-
- "Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in,
- sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up, and go away."
-
- "Oh, you wouldn't believe it! I've got so out of the way of all this
- that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It's such a horrible thing
- to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with
- nothing to do, wastes their time and upsets himself, and then goes
- away!"
-
- Kitty laughed.
-
- "Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married,
- didn't you?"
-
- "Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so
- unaccustomed to it that, by God, I'd sooner go two days running
- without my dinner than pay this call! One's so ashamed! I feel all the
- while that they're annoyed, that they're saying: What has he come
- for?"
-
- "No, they won't. I'll answer for that," said Kitty, looking into his
- face with a laugh. She took his hand. "Well, good-by.... Do go,
- please."
-
- He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she
- stopped him.
-
- "Kostia, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?"
-
- "Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?" he
- said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.
-
- "No, wait a minute." She held his hand. "Let's talk about it, it
- worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessarily, but money seems
- simply to fly away. We don't manage well, somehow."
-
- "Not at all," he said with a little cough, looking at her from under
- his brows.
-
- That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense
- dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was
- displeased, not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of
- what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.
-
- "I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance
- on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case."
-
- "Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether it's too much...."
-
- "Not at all, not at all," he repeated. "Well, good-by, darling."
-
- "No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice
- it would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying you all, and
- we're wasting our money."
-
- "Not at all, not at all. Not once since I've been married have I
- said that things could have been better than they are...."
-
- "Truly?" she said, looking into his eyes.
-
- He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when
- he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened
- questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. "I was
- positively forgetting her," he thought. And he remembered what was
- before them, so soon to come.
-
- "Will it be soon? How do you feel?" he whispered, taking her two
- hands.
-
- "I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it, or
- know anything about it."
-
- "And you're not frightened?"
-
- She smiled contemptuously.
-
- "Not the least little bit," she said.
-
- "Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavassov's."
-
- "No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for
- a walk on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I shall
- expect you before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly's position
- is becoming utterly impossible? She's in debt all round; she hasn't
- a penny. We were talking yesterday with mamma and Arsenii" (this was
- her sister's husband, Lvov), "and we determined to send you with him
- to talk to Stiva. It's really unbearable. One can't speak to papa
- about it.... But if you and he..."
-
- "Why, what can we do?" said Levin.
-
- "You'll be at Arsenii's, anyway; talk to him- he will tell you
- what we decided."
-
- "Oh, I agree to everything Arsenii thinks beforehand. I'll go and
- see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I'll go with
- Natalie. Well, good-by."
-
- On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had
- been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their
- household in town.
-
- "Little Adonis" (that was the left shaft horse brought up from the
- country) "has been shod anew, but she is still lame," he said. "What
- does Your Honor wish to be done?"
-
- During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his
- own horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this
- part of their expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it
- appeared that their own horses came dearer than hired horses, and they
- still hired additional horses.
-
- "Send for the veterinary- there may be a bruise."
-
- "And for Katerina Alexandrovna?" asked Kouzma.
-
- Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that
- to get in Moscow from the Vozdvizhenka to the Ssivtzev-Vrazhek he
- had to have two powerful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the
- carriage a quarter of a versta through the snowy mush and to keep it
- standing there four hours, paying five roubles every time.
-
- Now it seemed quite natural.
-
- "Hire a pair for our carriage from the livery stable," said he.
-
- "Yes, sir."
-
- And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life,
- Levin settled a question which, in the country, would have called
- for so much personal trouble and exertion, and, going out on the
- steps, he called a sleigh, sat down, and drove to the Nikitskaia. On
- the way he thought no more of money, but mused on the introduction
- that awaited him to the Peterburg savant, a writer on sociology, and
- what he would say to him about his book.
-
- Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been
- struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country,
- unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side.
- But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this
- matter which is said to happen to drunkards- the first glass sticks in
- the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third
- they're like tiny little birds. When Levin had changed his first
- hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his footman and hall
- porter he could not help reflecting that these liveries were of no use
- to anyone- but they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the
- amazement of the Princess and Kitty when he suggested that they
- might do without liveries- that these liveries would cost the wages of
- two laborers for the summer- that is, would pay for about three
- hundred working days from Easter to the fast of Advent, and each a day
- of hard work from early morning to late evening- and that
- hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the next note,
- changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations, that cost
- twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin the reflection
- that twenty-eight roubles meant nine chetverts of oats, which men
- would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and threshed and
- winnowed and sifted and sown- this next one he parted with more
- easily. And now the notes he changed no longer aroused such
- reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor
- devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to the pleasure given by
- what was bought with it, was a consideration he had long ago
- dismissed. His business calculation that there was a certain price
- below which he could not sell certain grain was forgotten too. The
- rye, for the price of which he had so long held out, had been sold for
- fifty kopecks a chetvert cheaper than it had been fetching a month
- ago. Even the consideration that with such an expenditure he could not
- go on living for a year without debt, even that had no force. Only one
- thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without inquiring
- where it came from, so as to know that one had the wherewithal to
- buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had hitherto been fulfilled;
- he had always had the money in the bank. But now the money in the bank
- had gone, and he could not quite tell where to get the next
- installment. And this it was which, at the moment when Kitty had
- mentioned money, had disturbed him; but he had no time to think
- about it. He drove off, thinking of Katavassov and the meeting with
- Metrov which was before him.
-
- III.
-
-
- Levin had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old
- friend at the university, Professor Katavassov, whom he had not seen
- since his marriage. He liked in Katavassov the clearness and
- simplicity of his conception of life. Levin thought that the clearness
- of Katavassov's conception of life was due to the poverty of his
- nature; Katavassov thought that the disconnectedness of Levin's
- ideas was due to his lack of intellectual discipline; but Levin
- enjoyed Katavassov's clearness, and Katavassov enjoyed the abundance
- of Levin's untrained ideas, and they liked to meet and to dispute.
-
- Levin had read to Katavassov some parts of his book, and he had
- liked them. On the previous day Katavassov had met Levin at a public
- lecture and told him that the celebrated Metrov, whose article Levin
- had so much liked, was in Moscow, that he had been much interested
- by what Katavassov had told him about Levin's work, and that he was
- coming to see him tomorrow at eleven, and would be very glad to make
- Levin's acquaintance.
-
- "You're positively a reformed character, my dear, I'm glad to
- see," said Katavassov, meeting Levin in the little drawing room. "I
- heard the bell and thought: Impossible! It can't be he at the exact
- time!... Well, what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They're a race
- of warriors."
-
- "Why, what's happened?" asked Levin.
-
- Katavassov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the
- war, and, going into his study, introduced Levin to a short,
- thickset man of pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The conversation
- touched for a brief space on politics and on how recent events were
- looked at in the higher spheres in Peterburg. Metrov repeated a saying
- that had reached him through a most trustworthy source, reported as
- having been uttered on this subject by the Czar and one of the
- ministers. Katavassov had heard also on excellent authority that the
- Czar had said something quite different. Levin tried to imagine
- circumstances in which both sayings might have been uttered, and the
- conversation on that topic dropped.
-
- "Yes, here he's practically written a book on the natural conditions
- of the laborer in relation to the land," said Katavassov; "I'm not a
- specialist, but I, as a student of natural science, was pleased at his
- not taking mankind as something outside biological laws; but, on the
- contrary, perceiving his dependence on his surroundings, and in that
- dependence seeking the laws of his development."
-
- "That's very interesting," said Metrov.
-
- "To tell the truth, I began to write a book on agriculture; but,
- studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer," said
- Levin, reddening, "I could not help coming to quite unexpected
- results."
-
- And Levin began carefully, as though feeling his ground, to
- expound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the
- generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent
- he could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know
- and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the savant.
-
- "But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian
- laborer?" said Metrov; "in his biological characteristics, so to
- speak, or in the condition in which he is placed?"
-
- Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which
- he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the
- Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from
- that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to
- add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due
- to the consciousness of his vocation to settle vast unoccupied
- expanses in the East.
-
- "One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the
- general vocation of a people," said Metrov, interrupting Levin. "The
- condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the
- land and to capital."
-
- And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov began
- expounding to him the special point of his own theory.
-
- In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand,
- because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov,
- like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had
- attacked the current theory of political economy, looked at the
- position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of
- capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit
- that in the eastern- much the larger- part of Russia rent was as yet
- nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian
- peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves,
- and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the
- most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point of view that
- he considered every laborer, though in many points he differed from
- the economists and had his own theory of the wage fund, which he
- expounded to Levin.
-
- Levin listened reluctantly, and at first made objections. He would
- have liked to interrupt Metrov, to explain his own thought, which in
- his opinion would have rendered further exposition of Metrov's
- theories superfluous. But later on, feeling convinced that they looked
- at the matter so differently, that they could never understand one
- another, he did not even oppose his statements, but simply listened.
- Although what Metrov was saying was by now utterly devoid of
- interest for him, he yet experienced a certain satisfaction in
- listening to him. It flattered his vanity that such a learned man
- should explain his ideas to him so eagerly, with such intensity and
- confidence in Levin's understanding of the subject, sometimes with a
- mere hint referring him to a whole aspect of the subject. He put
- this down to his own credit, unaware that Metrov, who had already
- discussed his theory over and over again with all his intimate
- friends, talked of it with special eagerness to every new person,
- and in general was eager to talk to anyone of any subject that
- interested him, even if still obscure to himself.
-
- "We are late though," said Katavassov, looking at his watch directly
- Metrov had finished his discourse.
-
- "Yes, there's a meeting of the Society of Amateurs today in
- commemoration of the fifty-year jubilee of Svintich," said
- Katavassov in answer to Levin's inquiry. "Piotr Ivanovich and I were
- going. I've promised to deliver an address on his labors in zoology.
- Come along with us, it's very interesting."
-
- "Yes, and it's really time to start," said Metrov. "Come with us,
- and from there, if you care to, come to my place. I should very much
- like to hear your work."
-
- "Oh, no! It's no good yet- it's unfinished. But I shall be very glad
- to go to the meeting."
-
- "I say, my dear, have you heard? He has handed in a minority
- report," Katavassov called from the other room, where he was putting
- on his dress coat.
-
- And a conversation sprang up on the university question.
-
- The university question was a very important event that winter in
- Moscow. Three old professors in the council had not accepted the
- opinion of the younger professors. The young ones had registered a
- separate resolution. This resolution, in the judgment of some
- people, was monstrous, in the judgment of others it was the simplest
- and most just thing to do, and the professors were split into two
- parties.
-
- One party, to which Katavassov belonged, saw in the opposite party a
- scoundrelly betrayal and treachery, while the opposite party saw in
- them childishness and lack of respect for the authorities. Levin,
- though he did not belong to the university, had several times
- already during his stay in Moscow heard and talked about this
- matter, and had his own opinion on the subject. He took part in the
- conversation that was continued in the street, as all three walked
- to the old buildings of the university.
-
- The meeting had already begun. Round the cloth-covered table, at
- which Katavassov and Metrov seated themselves, there were some
- half-dozen persons, and one of these was bending close over a
- manuscript, reading something aloud. Levin sat down in one of the
- empty chairs that were standing round the table, and in a whisper
- asked a student sitting near what was being read. The student, eying
- Levin with displeasure, said:
-
- "The biography."
-
- Though Levin was not interested in the biography, he could not
- help listening, and learned some new and interesting facts about the
- life of the distinguished man of science.
-
- When the reader had finished, the chairman thanked him and read some
- verses of the poet Ment, sent him on the jubilee, and said a few words
- by way of thanks to the poet. Then Katavassov in his loud, ringing
- voice read his address on the scientific labors of the man whose
- jubilee was being kept.
-
- When Katavassov had finished, Levin looked at his watch, saw it
- was past one, and thought that there would not be time before the
- concert to read his paper to Metrov, and indeed, he did not now care
- to do so. During the reading he had thought over their conversation.
- He saw distinctly now that though Metrov's ideas might perhaps have
- value, his own ideas had a value too, and their ideas could only be
- made clear and lead to something if each worked separately in his
- chosen path, and that nothing would be gained by communicating these
- ideas. And having made up his mind to refuse Metrov's invitation,
- Levin went up to him at the end of the meeting. Metrov introduced
- Levin to the chairman, with whom he was talking of the political news.
- Metrov told the chairman what he had already told Levin, and Levin
- made the same remarks on his news that he had already made that
- morning, but for the sake of variety he expressed also a new opinion
- which had only just struck him. After that the conversation turned
- again on the university question. As Levin had already heard it all,
- he made haste to tell Metrov that he was sorry he could not take
- advantage of his invitation, took leave, and drove to Lvov's.
-
- IV.
-
-
- Lvov, the husband of Natalie, Kitty's sister, had spent all his life
- in the capitals and abroad, where he had been educated, and had been
- in the diplomatic service.
-
- During the previous year he had left the diplomatic service, not
- owing to any "unpleasantness" (he never had any "unpleasantness"
- with anyone), and was transferred to the Palace Department in
- Moscow, in order to give his two boys the best education possible.
-
- In spite of the striking contrast in their habits and views and
- the fact that Lvov was older than Levin, they had seen a great deal of
- one another that winter, and had taken a great liking to each other.
-
- Lvov was at home, and Levin went in to him unannounced.
-
- Lvov, in a house coat with a belt and in chamois leather shoes,
- was sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue lenses he
- was reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his
- beautiful hand he held a half-burned cigar carefully away from him.
-
- His handsome, delicate, and still youthful-looking face, to which
- his curly, glistening silvery hair gave a still more aristocratic air,
- lighted up with a smile when he saw Levin.
-
- "Capital! I intended to send to you. How's Kitty? Sit here, it's
- more comfortable." He got up and pushed up a rocking chair. "Have
- you read the last circular in the Journal de St Petersbourg? I think
- it's excellent," he said with a slight French accent.
-
- Levin told him what he had heard from Katavassov was being said in
- Peterburg, and, after talking a little about politics, he told him
- of his interview with Metrov, and the learned society's meeting. To
- Lvov it was very interesting.
-
- "That's what I envy you, that you are able to mix in these
- interesting scientific circles," he said. And as he talked, he
- passed as usual into French, which was easier for him. "It's true I
- haven't the time for it. My official work and the children leave me no
- time; and then I'm not ashamed to own that my education has been too
- defective."
-
- "That I don't believe," said Levin with a smile, feeling, as he
- always did, touched at Lvov's low opinion of himself, which was not in
- the least put on from a desire to seem or to be modest, but was
- absolutely sincere.
-
- "Oh, yes, indeed! I feel now how badly educated I am. To educate
- my children I positively have to look up a great deal, and, in fact,
- actually to study myself. For it's not enough to have teachers-
- there must be someone to look after them; just as on your land you
- want laborers and an overseer. See what I'm reading"- he pointed to
- Buslaev's Grammar on the desk- "it's expected of Misha, and it's so
- difficult.... Come, explain to me.... Here he says..."
-
- Levin tried to explain to him that it couldn't be understood, but
- that it had to be taught; but Lvov would not agree with him.
-
- "Oh, you're laughing at it!"
-
- "On the contrary, you can't imagine how, when I look at you, I'm
- always learning the task that lies before me- that is, the education
- of one's children."
-
- "Well, there's nothing for you to learn," said Lvov.
-
- "All I know," said Levin, "is that I have never seen better
- brought-up children than yours, and I wouldn't wish for children
- better than yours."
-
- Lvov visibly tried to restrain the expression of his delight, but he
- was positively radiant with smiles.
-
- "If only they're better than I! That's all I desire. You don't
- know yet all the work," he said, "with boys who've been left like mine
- to run wild abroad."
-
- "You'll catch up with all that. They're such clever children. The
- great thing is the education of character. That's what I learn when
- I look at your children."
-
- "You talk of the education of character. You can't imagine how
- difficult that is! You have hardly succeeded in combating one tendency
- when others crop up, and the struggle begins again. If one had not a
- support in religion- you remember we talked about that- no father
- could bring children up relying on his own strength alone, without
- that help."
-
- This subject, which always interested Levin, was cut short by the
- entrance of the beauty Natalya Alexandrovna, dressed to go out.
-
- "I didn't know you were here," she said, unmistakably feeling no
- regret, but a positive pleasure, in interrupting this conversation
- on a topic she had heard so much of that she was by now weary of it.
- "Well, how is Kitty? I am dining with you today. I tell you what,
- Arsenii," she turned to her husband, "you take the carriage."
-
- And the husband and wife began to discuss their arrangements for the
- day. As the husband had to drive to meet someone on official business,
- while the wife had to go to the concert and some public meeting of a
- committee on the South-Eastern Question, there was a great deal to
- consider and settle. Levin had to take part in their plans as one of
- themselves. It was settled that Levin should go with Natalie to the
- concert and the meeting, and that from there they should send the
- carriage to the office for Arsenii and he should call for her and take
- her to Kitty's; or that, if he had not finished his work, he should
- send the carriage back and Levin would go with her.
-
- "He's spoiling me," Lvov said to his wife: "he assures me that our
- children are splendid, when I know how much bad there is in them."
-
- "Arsenii goes to extremes, I always say," said his wife. "If you
- look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it's true, as
- papa says- that when we were brought up there was one extreme- we were
- kept in the attic, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it's
- just the other way- the parents are in the washhouse, while the
- children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live
- at all, but to exist altogether for their children."
-
- "Well, what if they like it better? Lvov said, with his beautiful
- smile, touching her hand. "Anyone who didn't know you would think
- you were a stepmother, not a true mother."
-
- "No, extremes are not good in anything," Natalie said serenely,
- putting his paper knife straight in its proper place on the table.
-
- "Well, come here, you perfect children," Lvov said to the two
- handsome boys who came in, and, after bowing to Levin, went up to
- their father, obviously wishing to ask him about something.
-
- Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would
- say to their father, but Natalie began talking to him, and then Lvov's
- colleague in the service, Makhotin, walked in, wearing his Court
- dress, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept
- up without a break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town
- council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksina.
-
- Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it
- as he was going into the hall.
-
- "O, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky," he said, as Lvov
- was standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off.
-
- "Yes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-freres, to attack him," he
- said, blushing. "But why should I?"
-
- "Well, then, I will attack him," said Madame Lvova, with a smile,
- standing in her round white dogskin opera cloak waiting till they
- had finished speaking. "Come, let us go."
-
- V.
-
-
- At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were
- performed.
-
- One was a fantasia, King Lear in the Heath; the other was a
- quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the
- new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After
- escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column
- and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He
- tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his
- impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his
- arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the
- ladies in bonnets, the ribbons of which, since it was a concert,
- they had carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either
- thinking of nothing at all, or thinking of all sorts of things
- except the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or
- talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight
- before him, listening.
-
- But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he
- felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a
- continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some
- feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new
- musical motifs, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer-
- exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary
- musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable,
- because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything.
- Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one
- another without any ground, like the emotions of a madman. And those
- emotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly.
-
- During the whole performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching
- people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the
- fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless
- strain on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides.
- Everyone got up, moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some
- light on his own perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin
- began to walk about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a
- well-known musical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.
-
- "Marvelous!" Pestsov was saying in his deep bass. "How are you,
- Konstantin Dmitrievich? Particularly sculpturesque and plastic, so
- to say, and richly colored is that passage where you feel Cordelia's
- approach, where woman, das ewig Weibliche, enters into conflict with
- fate. Isn't it?"
-
- "You mean... What has Cordelia to do with it?" Levin asked
- timidly, forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent King
- Lear.
-
- "Cordelia comes in... See here!" said Pestsov, tapping his finger on
- the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and passing it
- to Levin.
-
- Only then Levin recollected the title of the fantasia, and made
- haste to read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare
- that were printed on the back of the program.
-
- "You can't follow it without that," said Pestsov, addressing
- Levin, as the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had
- no one to talk to.
-
- In the entr'acte Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the
- merits and defects of the music of the Wagner school. Levin maintained
- that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying
- to take music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes
- wrong when it tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to
- do, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who
- carved in marble certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of
- the poet on the pedestal. "These phantoms were so far from being
- phantoms that they were positively clinging to the stairs," said
- Levin. The comparison pleased him, but he could not remember whether
- he had not used the same phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he
- said it he felt confused.
-
- Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its
- highest manifestations only by the conjunction of all kinds of art.
-
- The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear. Pestsov,
- who was standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time,
- condemning the music for its excessive affected assumption of
- simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity of the
- Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he went out Levin met many more
- acquaintances, with whom he talked of politics, of music, and of
- common acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bol, whom he had
- utterly forgotten to call upon.
-
- "Well, go at once then," Madame Lvova said, when he told her;
- "perhaps they'll not be at home, and then you can come to the
- meeting to fetch me. You'll find me still there."
-
- VI.
-
-
- "Perhaps they're not at home?" said Levin, as he went into the
- hall of Countess Bol's house.
-
- "At home; please walk in," said the porter, resolutely removing
- his overcoat.
-
- "How annoying!" thought Levin with a sigh, taking off one glove
- and stroking his hat. "What did I come for? What have I to say to
- them?"
-
- As he passed through the first drawing room Levin met in the doorway
- Countess Bol, with a careworn and severe face, giving some order to
- a servant. On seeing Levin she smiled, and asked him to come into
- the next little drawing room where he heard voices. In this room there
- were sitting in armchairs the two daughters of the Countess, and a
- Moscow colonel, whom Levin knew. Levin walked up, greeted them, and
- sat down beside the sofa, with his hat on his knees.
-
- "How is your wife? Have you been at the concert? We couldn't go.
- Mamma had to be at the requiem."
-
- "Yes, I heard.... What a sudden death!" said Levin.
-
- The Countess came in, sat down on the sofa, and she too asked
- after his wife and inquired about the concert.
-
- Levin answered, and repeated an inquiry about Madame Apraksina's
- sudden death.
-
- "But she was always in poor health."
-
- "Were you at the opera yesterday?"
-
- "Yes, I was."
-
- "Lucca was very good."
-
- "Yes, very good," he said, and, as it was utterly of no
- consequence to him what they thought of him, he began repeating what
- they had heard a hundred times about the characteristics of the
- singer's talent. Countess Bol pretended to be listening. Then, when he
- had said enough and had paused, the colonel, who had been silent
- till then, began to talk. The colonel too talked of the opera and
- illumination. At last, after speaking of the proposed folle journee at
- Turin's, the colonel laughed, got up noisily, and went away. Levin too
- rose, but he saw by the face of the Countess that it was not yet
- time for him to go. He must stay two minutes longer. He sat down.
-
- But as he was thinking all the while how stupid it was, he could not
- find a subject for conversation, and sat silent.
-
- "You are not going to the public meeting? They say it will be very
- interesting," began the Countess.
-
- "No, I promised my belle-soeur to fetch her from it," said Levin.
-
- A silence followed. The mother once more exchanged glances with
- one of the daughters.
-
- "Well, now I think the time has come," thought Levin, and he got up.
- The ladies shook hands with him, and begged him to say mille choses to
- his wife for them.
-
- The porter asked him, as he gave him his coat: "Where is Your
- Honor staying?" and immediately wrote down his address in a big
- handsomely bound book.
-
- "Of course I don't care, but still I feel ashamed and awfully
- stupid," thought Levin, consoling himself with the reflection that
- everyone does it. He drove to the public meeting, where he was to find
- his sister-in-law, so as to drive home with her.
-
- At the public meeting of the committee there were a great many
- people, and almost all the highest society. Levin was in time for
- the report which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the
- reading of the report was over, people moved about, and Levin met
- Sviiazhsky, who invited him very pressingly to come that evening to
- a meeting of the Society of Agriculture, where a celebrated report was
- to be delivered, and Stepan Arkadyevich, who had only just come from
- the races, and many other acquaintances; and Levin heard and uttered
- various criticisms on the meeting, on the new play, and on a public
- trial. But, probably from the mental fatigue he was beginning to feel,
- he made a blunder in speaking of the trial, and this blunder he
- recalled several times with vexation. Speaking of the sentence upon
- a foreigner who had been condemned in Russia, and of how unfair it
- would be to punish him by exile abroad, Levin repeated what he had
- heard the day before in conversation from an acquaintance.
-
- "I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp
- by putting it into the water," said Levin. Then he recollected that
- this idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance and uttered as
- his own, came from a fable of Krilov's, and that the acquaintance
- had picked it up from a newspaper article.
-
- After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty in good
- spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club.
-
- VII.
-
-
- Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and
- visitors were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club
- for a very long while- not since he lived in Moscow, when he was
- leaving the university and going into society. He remembered the club,
- the external details of its arrangement, but he had completely
- forgotten the impression it had made on him in old days. But as soon
- as, driving into the wide semicircular court and getting out of the
- cab, he mounted the steps, and the hall porter, adorned with a
- crossbelt, noiselessly opened the door to him with a bow; as soon as
- he saw in the porter's room the cloaks and galoshes of members who
- thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he
- heard the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the
- low-stepped, carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing,
- and the third porter at the top doors, a familiar figure grown
- older, in the club livery, opening the door without haste or delay,
- and scanning the visitors as they passed in- Levin felt the old
- impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression of repose,
- comfort, and propriety.
-
- "Your hat, please," the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club
- rule of checking his hat in the porter's room. "Long time since you've
- been here. The Prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan
- Arkadyevich is not here yet."
-
- The porter not only knew Levin, but also all his connections and
- relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.
-
- Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the
- room partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet,
- Levin passed by a shuffling old man, and entered the dining room, full
- of noise and people.
-
- He walked along the tables, almost all full, and scrutinized the
- visitors. He saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a
- little; some were intimate friends. There was not a single cross or
- worried-looking face. All seemed to have checked their cares and
- anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all
- deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.
- Sviiazhsky was here and Shcherbatsky, Neviedovsky and the old
- Prince, and Vronsky and Sergei Ivanovich.
-
- "Ah! Why are you late?" the Prince said smiling, and giving him
- his hand over his own shoulder. "How's Kitty?" he added, smoothing out
- the napkin he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.
-
- "Very well; they are dining at home, all three of them."
-
- "Ah, 'Alines-Nadines' to be sure! There's no room with us. Go to
- that table, and make haste and take a seat," said the Prince, and
- turning away he carefully took a plate of burbot soup.
-
- "Levin, this way!" a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on.
- It was Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them
- were two chairs tipped over. Levin gladly went up to them. He had
- always liked the goodhearted rake, Turovtsin- he was associated in his
- mind with memories of his courtship- and at that moment, after the
- strain of intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin's
- good-natured face was particularly welcome.
-
- "For you and Oblonsky. He'll be here directly."
-
- The young man, holding himself very erect, with eyes forever
- twinkling with enjoyment, was an officer from Peterburg, Gaghin.
- Turovtsin introduced them.
-
- "Oblonsky's always late."
-
- "Ah, here he is!
-
- "Have you only just come?" said Oblonsky, coming quickly toward
- them. "Good day. Had some vodka? Well, come along then."
-
- Levin got up and went with him to the big table spread with
- spirits and appetizers of the most varied kinds. One would have
- thought that out of two dozen delicacies one might find something to
- one's taste, but Stepan Arkadyevich asked for something special, and
- one of the liveried waiters standing by immediately brought what was
- required. They drank a pony each and returned to their table.
-
- At once, while they were still at their soup, Gaghin was served with
- champagne, and told the waiter to fill four glasses. Levin did not
- refuse the wine, and asked for a second bottle. He was very hungry,
- and ate and drank with great enjoyment, and with still greater
- enjoyment took part in the lively and simple conversation of his
- companions. Gaghin, dropping his voice, told the last good story
- from Peterburg, and the story, though improper and stupid, was so
- ludicrous that Levin broke into roars of laughter so loud that those
- near looked round.
-
- "That's in the same style as, 'that's a thing I can't endure!' You
- know the story?" said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Ah, that's exquisite!
- Another bottle," he said to the waiter, and he began to relate his
- good story.
-
- "Piotr Illyich Vinovsky invites you to drink with him," a little old
- waiter interrupted Stepan Arkadyevich, bringing two delicate glasses
- of sparkling champagne, and addressing Stepan Arkadyevich and Levin.
- Stepan Arkadyevich took the glass, and looking toward a bald man
- with red mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him,
- smiling.
-
- "Who's that?" asked Levin.
-
- "You met him once at my place, don't you remember? A good-natured
- fellow."
-
- Levin did the same as Stepan Arkadyevich and took the glass.
-
- Stepan Arkadyevich's anecdote too was very amusing. Levin told his
- story, and that too was successful. Then they talked of horses, of the
- races, of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly
- Vronsky's Atlas had won the first prize. Levin did not notice how
- the time passed at dinner.
-
- "Ah! And here they are!" Stepan Arkadyevich said toward the end of
- dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to
- Vronsky, who came up with a tall colonel of the Guards. Vronsky's face
- too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in
- the club. He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevich's
- shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to
- Levin with the same good-humored smile.
-
- "Very glad to meet you," he said. "I looked out for you at the
- election, but I was told you had gone away."
-
- "Yes, I left the same day. We've just been talking of your horse.
- I congratulate you," said Levin. "It was run in very fast time."
-
- "Yes; you've race horses too, haven't you?"
-
- "No, my father had; but I remember and know something about them."
-
- "Where have you dined?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich.
-
- "We were at the second table, behind the columns."
-
- "We've been celebrating his success," said the tall colonel. "It's
- his second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he
- has with horses."
-
- "Well, why waste precious time? I'm going to the 'infernal
- regions,'" added the colonel, and he walked away.
-
- "That's Iashvin," Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat
- down in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered
- him, and ordered a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club
- atmosphere or the wine he had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky
- of the best breeds of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the
- slightest hostility to this man. He even told him, among other things,
- that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Princess Marya
- Borissovna's.
-
- "Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna- she's exquisite!" said Stepan
- Arkadyevich, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all
- laughing. Vronsky in particular laughed with such simplehearted
- amusement that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.
-
- "Well, have we finished?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting up with a
- smile. "Let us go."
-
- VIII.
-
-
- Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gaghin through the
- lofty rooms to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he
- walked with a peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room,
- he came upon his father-in-law.
-
- "Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?" said the Prince,
- taking his arm. "Come along, come along!"
-
- "Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It's
- interesting."
-
- "Yes, it's interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite
- different. You look at such little ancients, now," he said, pointing
- to a club member with bent back and pendulous lip, shuffling toward
- them in his soft boots, "and imagine that they were shlupiks like that
- from their birth up."
-
- "Shlupiks?"
-
- "I see you don't know that name. That's our club designation. You
- know the game of rolling eggs: when one's rolled a long while it
- becomes a shlupik. So it is with us; one goes on coming and coming
- to the club, and ends by becoming a shlupik. Ah, you laugh! but we
- look out, for fear of dropping into it ourselves. You know Prince
- Chechensky?" inquired the Prince; and Levin saw by his face that he
- was just going to relate something funny.
-
- "No, I don't know him."
-
- "You don't say so! Well, Prince Chechensky is a well-known figure.
- No matter, though. He's always playing billiards here. Only three
- years ago he was not a shlupik, and kept up his spirits, and even used
- to call other people shlupiks. But one day he turns up, and our
- porter... You know Vassilii? Why, that fat one; he's famous for his
- bons mots. And so Prince Chechensky asks him, 'Come, Vassilii who's
- here? Any shlupiks here yet?' And he says: 'You're the third.' Yes, my
- dear boy, that he did!"
-
- Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the Prince
- walked through all the rooms: the great room where tables had
- already been set, and the usual partners were playing for small
- stakes; the divan room, where they were playing chess, and Sergei
- Ivanovich was sitting talking to somebody; the billiard room, where,
- about the sofa in a recess, there was a lively party drinking
- champagne- Gaghin was one of them. They peeped into the "infernal
- regions," where a good many men were crowding round one table, at
- which Iashvin was sitting. Trying not to make a noise, they walked
- into the dark reading room, where under the shaded lamps there sat a
- young man with a wrathful countenance, turning over one journal
- after another, and a bald general buried in a book. They went, too,
- into what the Prince called the intellectual room, where three
- gentlemen were engaged in a heated discussion of the latest
- political news.
-
- "Prince, please come, we're ready," said one of his card party,
- who had come to look for him, and the Prince went off. Levin sat
- down and listened, but recalling all the conversation of the morning
- he felt all of a sudden fearfully bored. He got up hurriedly, and went
- to look for Oblonsky and Turovtsin, with whom it had been so pleasant.
-
- Turovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the billiard room, and
- Stepan Arkadyevich was talking with Vronsky near the door at the
- farther corner of the room.
-
- "It's not that she's dull; but this undefined, this unsettled
- position," Levin caught, and he was going to hurry away, but Stepan
- Arkadyevich called him.
-
- "Levin!" said Stepan Arkadyevich; and Levin noticed that his eyes
- were not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always happened
- when he had been drinking, or when he was touched. Today it was due to
- both causes. "Levin, don't go," he said, and he warmly squeezed his
- arm above the elbow, obviously not at all wishing to let him go.
-
- "This is a true friend of mine- almost my greatest friend," he
- said to Vronsky. "You also are still closer and dearer to me. And I
- want you, and I know you ought, to be friends, and great friends,
- because you're both splendid fellows."
-
- "Well, there's nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends,"
- Vronsky said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his hand.
-
- Levin quickly took the offered hand, and squeezed it warmly.
-
- "I'm very, very glad," said Levin.
-
- "Waiter, a bottle of champagne," said Stepan Arkadyevich.
-
- "And I'm very glad," said Vronsky.
-
- But in spite of Stepan Arkadyevich's desire, and their own desire,
- they had nothing to talk about, and both felt it.
-
- "Do you know, he has never met Anna?" Stepan Arkadyevich said to
- Vronsky. "And I want above everything to take him to see her. Let us
- go, Levin!"
-
- "Really?" said Vronsky. "She will be very glad to see you. I
- should be going home at once," he added, "but I'm worried about
- Iashvin, and I want to stay on till he finishes."
-
- "Why, is he losing?"
-
- "He keeps losing, and I'm the only friend that can restrain him."
-
- "Well, what do you say to pyramids? Levin, will you play?
- Capital!" said Stepan Arkadyevich. "Get the table ready," he said to
- the marker.
-
- "It has been ready a long while," answered the marker, who had
- already set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one
- about for his own diversion.
-
- "Well, let us begin."
-
- After the game Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gaghin's table, and
- at Stepan Arkadyevich's suggestion Levin took a hand in the game.
- Vronsky sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were
- incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the
- "infernal" to keep an eye on Iashvin. Levin was enjoying a
- delightful sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He
- was glad that all hostility was at an end with Vronsky, and the
- sense of peace, decorum and comfort never left him.
-
- When the game was over, Stepan Arkadyevich took Levin's arm.
-
- "Well, let us go to Anna's, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I
- promised her long ago to bring you. Where were you intending to
- spend the evening?"
-
- "Oh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviiazhsky to go to the Society
- of Agriculture. By all means, let us go," said Levin.
-
- "Very good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here," Stepan
- Arkadyevich said to the waiter.
-
- Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid
- his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained
- by the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and, swinging his
- arms, he walked through all the rooms to the exit.
-
- IX.
-
-
- "Oblonsky's carriage!" the porter shouted in an angry bass. The
- carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few
- moments, while the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates,
- that Levin was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of
- repose, comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the
- carriage drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the
- uneven road, heard the angry shout of a driver coming toward them, saw
- in the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this
- impression was dissipated, and he began to think over his actions, and
- to wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Anna. What
- would Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevich gave him no time for
- reflection, and, as though divining his doubts, he dispersed them.
-
- "How glad I am," he said, "that you should know her! You know
- Dolly has long wished for it. And Lvov's been to see her, and often
- goes. Though she is my sister," Stepan Arkadyevich pursued, "I don't
- hesitate to say that she's a remarkable woman.... But you will see.
- Her position is very painful, especially now."
-
- "Why especially now?"
-
- "We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce.
- And he's agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son,
- and the business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been
- dragging on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she
- will marry Vronsky. How stupid these old ritual forms are- 'Isaiah,
- rejoice!'- which no one believes in, and which only prevent people
- being comfortable!" Stepan Arkadyevich put in. "Well, then their
- position will be as regular as mine, as yours."
-
- "What is the difficulty?" said Levin.
-
- "Oh, it's a long and tedious story The whole business is in such
- an indefinite state with us. But the point is, she has been for
- three months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the
- divorce; she goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Dolly, because, do
- you understand, she doesn't care to have people come as a favor.
- That fool Princess Varvara, even she has left her, considering this
- a breach of propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other
- woman would not have found resources in herself. But you'll see how
- she has arranged her life- how calm, how dignified she is. To the
- left, in the alley opposite the church!" shouted Stepan Arkadyevich,
- leaning out of the window of the carriage. "Phew! How hot it is!" he
- said, in spite of twelve degrees of frost, flinging open his
- unbuttoned overcoat still more.
-
- "But she has a daughter: no doubt she's busy looking after her?"
- said Levin.
-
- "I believe you picture every woman simply as a female, une
- couveuse," said Stepan Arkadyevich. "If she's occupied, it must be
- with her children. No, she brings her up capitally, I believe, but one
- doesn't hear about her. She's busy, in the first place, with what
- she writes. I see you're smiling ironically, but you're wrong. She's
- writing a children's book, and doesn't talk about it to anyone, but
- she read it to me and I gave the manuscript to Vorkuev... you know,
- the publisher.... And he's an author himself too, I fancy. He
- understands those things, and he says it's a remarkable piece of work.
- But are you fancying she's a writing woman? Not a bit of it. She's a
- woman with a heart, before everything, but you'll see. Now she has a
- little English girl with her, and a whole family she's looking after."
-
- "Oh, something in a philanthropic way?"
-
- "Why, you will look at everything in the worst light. It's not
- from philanthropy, it's from the heart. They- that is, Vronsky- had
- a trainer, an Englishman, first-rate in his own line, but a
- drunkard. He's completely given up to drink- delirium tremens- and the
- family were cast on the world. She saw them, helped them, got more and
- more interested in them, and now the whole family is on her hands. But
- not by way of patronage, you know, helping with money; she's herself
- preparing the boys in Russian for the high school, and she's taken the
- little girl to live with her. But you'll see her for yourself."
-
- The carriage drove into the courtyard, and Stepan Arkadyevich rang
- loudly at the entrance where a sleigh was standing.
-
- And, without asking the servant who opened the door whether the lady
- were at home, Stepan Arkadyevich walked into the hall. Levin
- followed him, more and more doubtful whether he were doing right or
- wrong.
-
- Looking at himself in the glass, Levin noticed that he was red in
- the face, but he felt certain he was not drunk, and he followed Stepan
- Arkadyevich up the carpeted stairs. At the top Stepan Arkadyevich
- inquired of the footman, who bowed to him as to an intimate friend,
- who was with Anna Arkadyevna, and received the answer that it was M.
- Vorkuev.
-
- "Where are they?"
-
- "In the study."
-
- Passing through the dining room, a room not very large, with dark
- paneled walls, Stepan Arkadyevich and Levin walked over the soft
- carpet to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a
- big dark shade. Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall,
- lighting up a big full-length portrait of a woman, which Levin could
- not help looking at. It was the portrait of Anna, painted in Italy
- by Mikhailov. While Stepan Arkadyevich went behind the treillage,
- and the man's voice which had been speaking paused, Levin gazed at the
- portrait, which stood out from the frame in the brilliant light thrown
- on it, and he could not tear himself away from it. He positively
- forgot where he was, and not even hearing what was said, he could
- not take his eyes off the marvelous portrait. It was not a picture,
- but a living, charming woman, with black curling hair, with bare
- arms and shoulders, with a pensive smile on the lips, covered with
- soft down; triumphantly and softly she looked at him with eyes that
- baffled him. She was not living, only because she was more beautiful
- than any living woman can be.
-
- "I am delighted." He heard suddenly near him a voice, unmistakably
- addressing him, the voice of the very woman he had been admiring in
- the portrait. Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and
- Levin saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the
- portrait, in a dark-blue gown of changeable blue, not in the same
- position nor with the same expression, but with the same perfection of
- beauty which the artist had caught in the portrait. She was less
- dazzling in reality, but, on the other hand, there was something fresh
- and seductive in the living woman which was not in the portrait.
-
- X.
-
-
- She had risen to meet him, without concealing her pleasure at seeing
- him; and in the quiet ease with which she held out her little and
- vigorous hand, introduced him to Vorkuev, and indicated a
- red-haired, pretty little girl who was sitting at work, calling her
- her pupil, Levin recognized and liked the manners of a woman of the
- great world, always self-possessed and natural.
-
- "I am delighted, delighted," she repeated, and on her lips these
- simple words took for Levin's ears a special significance. "I have
- known you and liked you for a long while, both from your friendship
- with Stiva and for your wife's sake.... I knew her for a very short
- time, but she left on me the impression of an exquisite flower- just a
- flower. And to think she will soon be a mother!"
-
- She spoke easily and without haste, looking now and then from
- Levin to her brother, and Levin felt that the impression he was making
- was good, and he felt immediately at home, at ease and happy with her,
- as though he had known her from childhood.
-
- "Ivan Petrovich and I settled in Alexei's study," she said in answer
- to Stepan Arkadyevich's question whether he might smoke, "just so as
- to be able to smoke"- and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether
- he would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigarette case
- and took a corn-leaf cigarette.
-
- "How are you feeling today?" her brother asked her.
-
- "Oh, nothing. Nerves, as usual."
-
- "Yes, isn't it extraordinarily fine?" said Stepan Arkadyevich,
- noticing that Levin was glancing at the picture.
-
- "I have never seen a better portrait."
-
- "And extraordinarily like, isn't it?" said Vorkuev.
-
- Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar
- brilliance lighted up Anna's face when she felt his eyes on her. Levin
- flushed, and to cover his confusion would have asked whether she had
- seen Darya Alexandrovna lately; but at that moment Anna spoke:
-
- "We were just talking, Ivan Petrovich and I, of Vashchenkov's last
- pictures. Have you seen them?"
-
- "Yes, I have seen them," answered Levin.
-
- "But, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you... You were saying?..."
-
- Levin asked if she had seen Dolly lately.
-
- "She was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school
- people on Grisha's account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been
- unfair to him."
-
- "Yes, I have seen his pictures. I didn't care for them very much,"
- Levin went back to the subject she had started.
-
- Levin talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude
- to the subject with which he had been talking all the morning. Every
- word in his conversation with her had a special significance. And
- talking to her was pleasant; still pleasanter was it to listen to her.
-
- Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and
- carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great
- weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.
-
- The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new
- illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked the
- artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness. Levin said
- that the French had carried conventionality further than anyone, and
- that consequently they see a great merit in the return to realism.
- In the fact of not lying they see poetry.
-
- Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much pleasure
- as this remark. Anna's face lighted up at once, as she immediately
- appreciated the thought. She laughed.
-
- "I laugh," she said, "as one laughs when one sees a very true
- portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art now,
- painting- and literature too, indeed- Zola, Daudet. But perhaps it
- is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious,
- conventional types, and then- all the combinaisons made- they are
- tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true
- figures."
-
- "That's perfectly true," said Vorkuev.
-
- "So you've been at the club?" she said to her brother.
-
- "Yes, yes, this a woman!" Levin thought, forgetting himself and
- staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at that
- moment was all at once completely transformed. Levin did not hear what
- she was talking of as she leaned over to her brother, but he was
- struck by the change of her expression. Her face- so handsome a moment
- before in its repose- suddenly wore a look of strange curiosity,
- anger, and pride. But this lasted only an instant. She half-closed her
- eyes, as though recollecting something.
-
- "Oh, well, but that's of no interest to anyone," she said, and she
- turned to the English girl.
-
- "Please order the tea in the drawing room," she said in English.
-
- The girl got up and went out.
-
- "Well, how did she get through her examination?" asked Stepan
- Arkadyevich.
-
- "Splendidly! She's a very gifted child and a sweet character."
-
- "It will end in your loving her more than your own."
-
- "There a man speaks. In love there's no such thing as more or
- less. I love my daughter with one love, and her with another."
-
- "I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, "that if she
- were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English
- girl to the public question of the education of Russian children,
- she would be doing a great and useful work."
-
- "Yes, but I can't help it; I couldn't do it. Count Alexei
- Kirillovich urged me very much" (as she uttered the words Count Alexei
- Kirillovich she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he
- unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look), "he
- urged me to take up the school in the village. I visited it several
- times. The children were very dear, but I could not feel drawn to
- the work. You speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and, come as it
- will, there's no forcing it. I took to this child- I could not
- myself say why."
-
- And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance- all
- told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing
- his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they
- understood one another.
-
- "I quite understand that," Levin answered. "It's impossible to
- give one's heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I
- believe that that's just why philanthropic institutions always give
- such poor results."
-
- She was silent for a while, then she smiled. "Yes, yes," she agreed;
- "I never could. Je n'ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole
- asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m'a jamais reussi. There are so
- many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that
- way. And now more than ever," she said with a mournful, confiding
- expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably
- intending her words only for Levin, "now when I have such need of some
- occupation, I cannot." And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was
- frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the
- subject. "I know about you," she said to Levin; "that you're not a
- public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my
- ability."
-
- "How have you defended me?"
-
- "Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won't you have some
- tea?" She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.
-
- "Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, indicating the book.
- "It's well worth taking up."
-
- "Oh, no, it's all so sketchy."
-
- "I told him about it," Stepan Arkadyevich said to his sister,
- nodding at Levin.
-
- "You shouldn't have. My writing is something after the fashion of
- those little baskets and carvings which Liza Mertsalova used to sell
- me from the prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in
- that society," she turned to Levin; "and they were miracles of
- patience, the work of those poor wretches."
-
- And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so
- extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She
- had no wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As
- she said that she sighed, and her face, suddenly assuming a hard
- expression, looked, as it were, turned to stone. With that
- expression on her face she was more beautiful than ever; but the
- expression was new; it was utterly unlike that expression, radiant
- with happiness and creating happiness, which had been caught by the
- painter in her portrait. Levin looked more than once at the portrait
- and at her figure, as taking her brother's arm she walked with him
- to the high doors, and he felt for her a tenderness and pity at
- which he wondered himself.
-
- She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go into the drawing room, while she
- stayed behind to say a few words to her brother. "About her divorce,
- about Vronsky, and what he's doing at the club, about me?" wondered
- Levin. And he was so keenly interested by the question of what she was
- saying to Stepan Arkadyevich, that he scarcely heard what Vorkuev
- was telling him of the qualities of the story for children Anna
- Arkadyevna had written.
-
- At tea the same pleasant sort of talk, full of interesting matter,
- continued. There was not a single instant when a subject for
- conversation was to seek; on the contrary, it was felt that one had
- hardly time to say what one had to say, and eagerly held back to
- hear what the others were saying. And all that was said, not only by
- her, but by Vorkuev and Stepan Arkadyevich- all, so it seemed to
- Levin, gained peculiar significance from her attention to him and
- her criticism.
-
- While he followed this interesting conversation, Levin was all the
- time admiring her- her beauty, her intelligence, her culture, and at
- the same time her directness and her cordiality. He listened and
- talked, and all the while he was thinking of her inner life, trying to
- divine her feelings. And though he had judged her so severely
- hitherto, now by some strange chain of reasoning he was justifying her
- and also was sorry for her, and afraid that Vronsky did not fully
- understand her. At ten o'clock, when Stepan Arkadyevich got up to go
- (Vorkuev had left earlier), it seemed to Levin that he had only just
- come. Regretfully Levin too rose.
-
- "Good-by," she said, holding his hand and glancing into his face
- with a winning look. "I am very glad que la glace est rompue."
-
- She dropped his hand, and half-closed her eyes.
-
- "Tell your wife that I love her as before, and that if she cannot
- pardon me my position, then my wish for her is that she may never
- pardon me. To pardon it, one must go through what I have gone through,
- and may God spare her that."
-
- "Certainly, yes, I will tell her..." Levin said, blushing.
-