Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
When he returned to his lonely room, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch involuntarily recalled, little
by little, the conversations that had taken place at the dinner and in the evening. Darya
Aleksandrovna's words about pardon merely aroused his vexation. Whether he should apply
the Christian rule to his case or not, was a question too difficult to be lightly decided;
besides, he had already considered this question, and decided it in the negative. Of all that
had been said that day, the remark of that good stupid Turovtsuin had made the liveliest
impression on his mind: —
He did bravely, for he challenged the other man and killed him.
Evidently all approved this conduct; although out of politeness they had not said so openly.
"However, this matter is ended; it is useless to think about it," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch
to himself; and giving no more thought to anything except the preparations for his departure
and his tour of inspection, he went to his room and asked of the Swiss who showed him
the way if he had seen his valet. The Swiss said his valet had only just gone out. Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch ordered tea to be brought, and sitting down at the table opened a railway
guide and began to study the departure of trains for his journey.
"Two telegrams," said his valet, returning and coming into the room. "Will your Excellency
please excuse me, I have only just stepped out."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them; the first announced the nomination
of stremof to the place for which he had been ambitious.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch threw down the despatch, and with a flushed face began to walk back
and forth through the room.
"Qiios vult perdue dementat," said he, applying quos to all those who had taken part in this
nomination. He was not disturbed by the fact that he himself had not been nominated, that
he had evidently been outwitted; but it was incomprehensible to him — amazing — that
they could not see that Stremof, that babbler, that speechifier, was the least fitted of
all men for the place. Could they not understand that they were ruining themselves, that they
were destroying their prestige, by such a choice.
"Some more news of the same sort," he thought with bitterness as he opened the second telegram.
It was from his wife; her name, "Anna," in blue pencil, was the first thing that struck
his eyes.
I am dying. I beg you to come; I shall die easier if I have your forgiveness.
He read these words with scorn, and threw the paper on the floor.
That there was some piece of trickery, some deception, in this, admitted of no doubt in
his mind at first thought.
"There is no deceitfulness of which she is not capable. She must be on the eve of her
confinement, and it is her sickness. But what can be her object?' To legalize the child
to compromise me? to prevent the divorce?' but what does it mean, 'I am dying?'"
He re-read the telegram, and suddenly realized its full meaning.
"If it is true, — if the suffering, the approach of death, have caused her to repent
sincerely, and if I should call this pretense, and refuse to go to her, that would not only
be cruel, but foolish, and all would blame me."
"Piotr, order a carriage; I am going to Petersburg!" said he to the valet.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch decided to go to Petersburg and to see his wife. If her illness was a
pretense, he would say nothing and go away again; on the other hand, if she were really
ill unto death, and wanted to see him before she died, he would forgive her; and, if he
reached her too late, he could at least pay his last respects to her.
During the journey he gave no more thought of what he should do.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, tired and dusty with his night in the coach, reached Petersburg
in the mist of the early morning. He rode along the still deserted nevsky Prospekt,
looking straight before him, without thinking of what was awaiting him at home. He could
not think about it, because as soon as he tried to imagine what might be, he could not
drive away the suggestion that his wife's death would put a sudden end to all difficulties
of his situation.
The bakers, the closed shops, the night izvoshchiks, the dvorniks sweeping the sidewalks, — all
passed like a flash before his eyes; he noticed everything, in his endeavors to stifle the
thought of what was before him — of what he dared not hope for and yet hoped for.
He reached his house; an izvoshchik and a carriage with a coachman asleep were standing
before the door.
As he entered the vestibule Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, as it were, snatched at a decision from the
most hidden recess of his brain, and succeeded in mastering it. It was to this effect: "If
she has deceived me, I will be calm and go away again; but if she has told the truth,
I will do what is proper."
The Swiss opened the door even before Aleksei Aleksandrovitch rang the bell; the Swiss Petrof,
known as kapitonuitch, presented a strange appearance, dressed in an old coat and slippers
without any cravat.
"How is the baruinya?"
"In the night there was a change for the better."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch stopped short and turned very pale; he now realized how deeply
he had hoped for her death.
"And how is she?"
Karnei, the servant in morning dress, came quickly down the stairs.
"Very low," he said. "There was a consultation yesterday, and the doctor is here now."
"Take my things," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, a little comforted to learn that there was
still hope of death; and he went into the reception-room.
A uniform overcoat hung in the hall. Aleksei Aleksandrovitch noticed it, and asked: —
"Who is here?"
"The doctor, the nurse, and Count Vronsky."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch went through the inner rooms. There was no one in the drawing-room;
but the sound of his steps brought the nurse, in a cap with lilac ribbons, out of the boudoir.
She came to Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, and, taking him by the hand, with the familiarity
that the approach of death permits, led him into the sleeping-room.
"Thank the Lord that you have come! She talks of nothing but you; always of you," she said.
"Bring some ice quick!" said the imperative voice of the doctor from the chamber.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch went into her boudoir. On a little low chair by her table, sat Vronsky
weeping, his face covered with his hands. He started at the sound of the doctor's voice,
uncovered his face, and saw Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. The sight of the husband disturbed him so
much that he sat back in his chair, crouching his head down between his shoulders as if
he wanted to disappear out of sight; then, making a great effort, he rose and said: —
"She is dying; the doctors say that there is no hope I am in your power. Only allow
me to remain here. .... I will conform to your wishes in every
other respect. I .... "
When he saw Vronsky in tears, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch felt the involuntary tenderness that the sufferings
of others always caused him; he turned away his head without replying, and went to the
door.
Anna's voice could be heard from the sleeping-room, lively, gay, and with clear intonations.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch went in and approached her bed. She was lying with her face turned
toward him. Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes brilliant; her little white hands, coming
out of the sleeves of her nightdress, were playing with the corner of the coverlet. Not
only did she seem fresh and well, but in the happiest frame of mind; she talked fast and
loud, accenting her words with precision and nicety.
"Because Aleksei — I am speaking of Aleksei Aleksandrovitch — strange, isn't it, and
cruel, that both should be named Aleksei — Aleksei would not have refused me; I should have forgotten;
he would have forgiven. ....Yes! why does he not come? He is good;
he himself does not know how good he is Akh! BozhemoY! what agony! Give me some water,
quick! Akh! but that is not good for her, .... my little daughter. well! then, very
good; give her to the nurse. I am willing; that will be even better. Now when he comes,
she will be hateful in his sight; take her away."
"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come; here he is," said the nurse, trying to draw her attention
to Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
"Oh, what nonsense!" continued Anna, without seeing her husband. "There! give the little
one to me, give her to me! He hasn't come yet. You pretend that he will not forgive
me because you do not know him. No one knows him, I alone.... His eyes, one must know them.
Serozha's are very like them; that is why I can no longer look at them. Has Serozha
had his dinner? I know he will be forgotten. Oh, do not forget him! Let Serozha be brought
into the corner-chamber, and let Mariette sleep near him."
Suddenly she shrank back and was silent; and, with a look of terror, raised her arms above
her head as if to ward off a blow. She had recognized her husband.
"No, no," she said quickly, "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of dying. Aleksei, come
here. I am in a hurry, because there is no time to be lost. I have only a few minutes
to live; the fever will be upon me again, and I shall know nothing more. Now I am conscious;
I understand everything and I see everything."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch's wrinkled face expressed acute suffering; he took her hand, and he
wanted to speak, but his lower lip trembled so that he could not utter a word, and his
emotion hardly allowed him to glance at the dying woman. Every time that he turned his
head toward her, he saw her eyes fixed on him with a humility and enthusiastic affection
which he had never seen there before.
"Wait! you do not know Wait, wait!" .... She stopped to collect her thoughts. "Yes," she
began again, "yes, yes, yes, this is what I want to say. Do not be astonished. I am
always the same .... but there is another I within me, her I fear: it is she who loved
him, him, and hated you; and I could not forget what I had once been. That was not I! Now
I am myself, entirely, really myself, and not another. I am dying, I know that I am
dying; ask him if I am hot. I feel it now; there are those terrible weights on my hand
and my feet and on my fingers My fingers! they are enormous, but all that will soon
be over One thing only is indispensable to me: forgive me, forgive me wholly! I am a
sinner; but Serozha's nurse told me that there was a holy martyr — what was her name? — who
was worse than I. I will go to Rome; there is a desert there. I shall not trouble anybody
there. I will only take Serozha and my little daughter No, you cannot forgive me; I know
very well that it is impossible. Go away, go away! you are too perfect!"
She held him with one of her burning hands, and pushed him away with the other.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch's emotion had been all the time increasing, and now it reached
such a degree that he could no longer control himself. He suddenly felt that what he had
considered his spiritual discord was, on the contrary, a blessed state of the soul which
imparted to him what seemed like a new and hitherto unknown happiness. He had not believed
that the Christian law, which he had taken for a guide in life, ordered him to forgive
and love his enemies; but now his soul was filled with joyous love and forgiveness to
his enemies. He knelt beside the bed, he laid his forehead on her arm, the fever of which
burned through the sleeve, and sobbed like a child. She bent toward him, placed her arm
around her husband's bald head, and raised her eyes defiantly and proudly.
"There, I knew that it would be so. Now farewell, farewell all!.... They are coming back again.
Why don't they go away?.... There! take off all these furs from me!"
The doctor disengaged her arms, laid her back gently on her pillows, and drew the covering
over her. Anna made no resistance, looking all the while straight before her, with shining
eyes.
"Remember that I have only asked your pardon; I ask nothing more Why doesn't he come?" she
said, suddenly looking toward the door, toward Vronsky.
"Come! come here, and give him your hand."
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and, when he saw Anna, he hid his face in his hands
again.
"Uncover your face; look at him, he is a saint," said she. "Yes, uncover your face! look at
him!" she repeated in an irritated manner. "Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, uncover his face;
I want to see him."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and uncovered his face, disfigured by the
expression of suffering and humiliation which it wore.
"Give him your hand; forgive him."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch held out his hand to him, without trying to keep back the tears.
"Thank the Lord! thank the Lord!" said she; "now everything is right. I will stretch out
my feet a little, like that; that is better. How ugly those flowers are! they do not look
like violets," she said, pointing to the hangings in her room. "Bozhe moif! Bozhe mpi! when
will this be over? Give me some morphine, doctor; some morphine. Bozhe mof! Bozhe mol!"
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that this was puerperal fever and that there was not one chance in a hundred
of her living. All that day there was fever, with alleviations of delirium and unconsciousness.
Toward midnight she lay unconscious and her heart had almost ceased to beat.
The end was expected every moment.
Vronsky went home, but he came back the next morning to learn how she was. Aleksei Aleksandrovitch
came to meet him in the reception-room, and said to him, "Stay; perhaps she will ask for
you." Then he himself took him to his wife's boudoir. In the morning the restlessness,
the rapidity of thought and speech, returned; but soon unconsciousness intervened again.
The third day was much the same, and the doctors began to hope. On this day Aleksei Aleksandrovitch
went into the boudoir where Vronsky was, closed the door, and sat down in front of him.
"Aleksei Aleksandrovitch," said Vronsky, feeling that an explanation was at hand, "I cannot
speak, I cannot think. Have pity on me! Hard as it may be for you, believe me, it is still
more terrible for me."
He was going to rise; but Aleksei Aleksandrovitch prevented him, and said: —
"Pray listen to me; it is unavoidable. I am forced to explain to you the feelings that
guide me, and will continue to guide me, that you may avoid making any mistake in regard
to me. You know that I had decided on a divorce, and that I had taken the preliminary steps
to obtain one? I will not deny that at first I was undecided, I was in torment. I confess
that the desire to avenge myself on you and on her pursued me. When I received the telegram,
and came home, I felt the same desire. I will say more; I wished for her death, but...."
He was silent for a moment, considering whether he would wholly reveal his thoughts — "but
I have seen her and I have forgiven her. The happiness I feel at being able to forgive
clearly shows me my duty. I have absolutely forgiven her. I desire to offer the other
cheek to the smiter; I wish to give my cloak to him who has robbed me of my coat. I only
ask one thing of God, — that He will not take away from me this joy of forgiving."
Tears filled his eyes. Vronsky was amazed at the calm, luminous face.
"This is my position. You may drag me in the mire, and make me the laughing-stock of creation;
but I will not give up Anna for that, nor will I utter a word of reproach to you," continued
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. "My duty seems clear and plain to me: I must
remain with her; I shall remain with her. If she wishes to see you, I shall inform you
of it; but now I think it will be better for you to go away."
He rose; sobs choked his voice. Vronsky rose too, and, standing with bowed head and humble
attitude, looked up at Karenin, without a word to say. He was incapable of understanding
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch's feelings; but he felt that this was something too high for
him, something even unapproachable for a person who looked on the world as he did.
CHAPTER XVIII
After this conversation with Aleksei Aleksandrovitch Vronsky went out on the steps of the Karenin
house and stopped, hardly knowing where he was and what he had to do. He felt humiliated,
perplexed, and deprived of all means of washing away his shame; he felt thrown out of the
path where till now he had walked proudly and easily. All the rules which had been the
guides of his life, and which he had believed irreproachable, proved false and untrue. The
deceived husband, whom he had considered a melancholy character, an accidental obstacle,
at times absurd, happily for him had suddenly been raised by her to a height inspiring respect;
and this husband on this height appeared not ugly, not false, not ridiculous, but good,
grand, and generous. Vronsky could not understand it; their roles had suddenly been interchanged.
He felt Karenin's grandeur and straightforwardness, and his own baseness and falsity. He felt
that this husband was magnanimous in his grief, while he himself seemed little and miserable
in his deception. But this consciousness of inferiority, in comparison to a man whom he
had unjustly scorned, constituted only a small part of his grief.
He felt profoundly unhappy from the fact that his passion for Anna, which of late had as
it seemed to him grown cool, was more violent than ever now that he knew he was to lose
her. During her illness he had seen her as she was, had learned to know her very soul,
and it seemed to him that he had never really loved her till now. He must lose her just
as he had come to know her and love her truly, — lose her, and be left with the most humiliating
recollections. More horrible than anything else was his ridiculous and odious position
when Aleksei Aleksandrovitch had uncovered his face while he was hiding it in his hands.
Standing motionless on the steps of the Karenin house, he seemed to be entirely unconscious
of what he was doing.
"Shall I call an izvoshchik?" asked the Swiss.
"Yes, an izvoshchik."
When he reached home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without undressing, threw
himself down on a divan, folded his arms, and laid his head on them. His head was heavy.
The strangest reminiscences, thoughts, and impressions succeeded one another in his mind
with extraordinary rapidity and clearness. Now it was a drink which he poured out and
gave the invalid from a spoon; now he saw the nurse's white hands, then Aleksei Aleksandrovitch's
singular attitude as he knelt on the floor by the bed.
"Sleep, and forget," he said to himself, with the calm resolution of a man in good health
who knows that when he feels tired he can sleep if he will. His ideas became confused;
he felt himself falling into the abyss of forgetfulness. The billows of the sea of unconscious
life were already beginning to swell over his head, when suddenly something like a violent
electric shock passed through him. He started up so abruptly that his body bounded upon
the springs of the divan; and he found himself in his terror on his knees. His eyes were
as wide open as if he had not slept at all. The heaviness of his head and the lassitude
which he felt in all his members but a moment before had suddenly vanished.
"You may drag me in the mire."
These words of Aleksei Aleksandrovitch rang in his ears. He saw him standing before him;
he saw, too, Anna's feverish face, and her brilliant eyes looking tenderly, not at Jiini,
but at Aleksei Aleksandrovitch; he saw the stupid, ridiculous figure he must have presented
when Aleksei Aleksandrovitch drew away his hands from his face. Again he threw himself
back on the divan, and closed his eyes.
"Sleep, and forget," he repeated to himself.
But though his eyes were closed he saw clearer than ever Anna's face, just as it looked on
that memorable evening of the races.
"It's impossible, and will not be; how can she efface this from her memory? I cannot
live without this! but how can we be reconciled? how can we be reconciled?"
He unconsciously pronounced these words aloud, and their mechanical repetition for some minutes
prevented the recollections and forms which besieged his brain from returning. But the
repetition of the words did not long deceive his imagination. Again, one after the other
with extraordinary swiftness, the sweet moments of the past and his recent humiliation began
to arise in his mind. "Uncover his face," said Anna's voice. He took away his hands,
and realized how humiliated and ridiculous he must have appeared.
He still lay there trying to sleep, though he felt that there was not the slightest hope
of it, and repeating in a whisper some formula with the design of driving away the new and
distressing hallucinations that kept arising. He listened to his own voice repeating, with
a strange persistence: "You did not know how to appreciate her, you did not know how to
value her; you did not know how to appreciate her, you did not know how to value her."
"What is going to happen to me?" Am I going mad?" he asked himself. "Perhaps so. Why do
people go mad? and why do they commit suicide?"
And, while he was answering himself, he opened his eyes and was surprised to see at his head
a cushion embroidered by Varia, his brother's wife. He lightly touched the tassel of the
cushion and tried to fix the thought of Varia in his mind and how she looked the last time
he saw her; but any idea foreign to what tormented him was still more intolerable.
"No, I must sleep." He placed the cushion under his head, but it required an effort
to keep his eyes closed. He leaped to his feet and sat down. "All is over with me; what
else can I do?" And his imagination vividly pictured what life without Anna would be.
"Ambition Serpukhovskoif? the world? the court?" no more these had power to stop him. All this
once had some meaning, but now it had none. He rose from the divan, took off his coat,
loosened his necktie and bared his shaggy chest that he might breathe more freely, and
began to stride up and down the room.
"This makes people insane," he repeated; "this causes suicide .... to avoid disgrace," he
added slowly.
He went to the door and closed it; then, with a look of determination, and with his teeth
set, he went to the table, took his revolver, examined it, turned the loaded chamber round,
and stopped to consider. He stood motionless for two minutes, with the revolver in his
hand, his head bowed in the attitude of intense thought.
"Of course," he said to himself, as if a logical sequence of clear and exact ideas led him
to this unquestionable decision; but in reality this to him conclusive Of Course was only
the consequence of a continued circle of recollections and impressions which he had gone over for
the tenth time in the last hour. There were the same recollections of a happiness lost
forever, the conception of the meaninglessness of all that was now before him in life, the
same consciousness of his shame. There was the same repetition of these impressions and
thoughts.
"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his mind directed itself to the same
enchanted circle of thoughts and recollections; and holding the revolver to the left side
of his breast, with an unflinching grip he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound
of the report, but the violent blow that he received in the chest knocked him over. He
tried to save himself by catching hold of the table; he dropped his revolver, staggered,
and fell on the floor, looking about him with astonishment. He could not recognize his room;
the twisted legs of the table, the waste-paper basket, the tiger-skin on the floor, — all
seemed strange to him.
The quick steps of his servant running to the drawing-room obliged him to get control
of himself; he collected his thoughts with an effort, and seeing that he was on the floor,
and that blood was on his hands and on the tiger-skin, he realized what he had done.
"What stupidity! I missed my aim," he muttered, feeling round for his pistol. It was quite
near him, but he could not find it. As he continued to grope for it, he lost his balance,
and fell again, bathed in his own blood.
His valet, an elegant person with side-whiskers, who complained freely to his friends about
his delicate nerves, was so frightened at the sight of his master lying on the floor
that he let him lie bleeding, and ran for help.
In an hour Varia, Vronsky's sister-in-law, arrived, and with the assistance of the three
doctors whom she sent for in all directions, and who all came at once, she succeeded in
putting the wounded man to bed, and established herself as his nurse.
CHAPTER XIX
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, when he prepared to see his wife again, had not foreseen the
contingency of her repentance being genuine, and then of her recovery after she had obtained
his pardon. This mistake appeared to him in all its seriousness two months after his return
from Moscow; but the mistake which he had made proceeded not only from the fact that
he had not foreseen this eventuality, but also from the fact that not until the day
when he looked on his dying wife had he understood his own heart. Beside the bed of his dying
wife, he had given way, for the first time in his life, to that feeling of sympathy for
the griefs of others, against which he had always fought as one fights against a dangerous
weakness. His pity for her and remorse at having wished for her death, but above all
the joy of forgiving, had made him suddenly feel, not only a complete alleviation of his
sufferings, but also a spiritual calmness such as he had never before experienced. He
suddenly felt that the very thing that had been a source of anguish was now the source
of his spiritual joy; what had seemed insoluble when he was filled with hatred and anger,
became clear and simple now that he loved and forgave.
He had pardoned his wife, and he pitied her because of her suffering and repentance. He
had forgiven Vronsky, and pitied him too, especially after he heard of his desperate
act. He also pitied his son more than before, because he felt that he had neglected him.
But what he felt for the new-born child was more than pity, it was almost tenderness.
At first, solely from a feeling of pity, he looked after this little new-born girl, who
was not his daughter, and who was so neglected during her mother's illness that she would
have surely died if he had not taken her in charge; and, before he was aware of it, he
became attached to her. He would go several times a day into the nursery, and sit there,
so that the wet-nurse and the bonne, though they were a little intimidated at first, gradually
became accustomed to his presence. He stayed sometimes for half an hour, silently gazing
at the saffron-red, wrinkled, downy face of the sleeping child, following her motions
as she scowled, and puckered her lips, watching her rub her eyes with the back of her little
hands, curling up her round fingers. And at these moments especially, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch
felt calm and at peace with himself, seeing nothing abnormal in his situation, nothing
that he felt the need of changing.
However, as time went on, he felt more and more that he would not be permitted to remain
in this situation, however natural it seemed to him, and that nobody would allow it.
He felt that, besides the holy and spiritual force that guided his soul, there was another
force, brutal, equally if not more powerful, which directed his life, and that this power
would not give him the peace that he desired. He felt that every one was looking at him,
and questioning his attitude, not understanding it, and expecting him to do something. Especially
he felt the unnaturalness and constraint of his relations with his wife.
When the tenderness which she felt at the expectation of death had passed away, Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch began to notice how Anna feared him, how she dreaded his presence, and did
not dare to look him in the face; she seemed to be always pursued by a thought she dared
not express, — and as if she had a presentiment that their present relations could not last;
she, too, expected some move from her husband.
Toward the end of February, the little girl, who had been named Anna for her mother, was
taken ill. In the morning Aleksei Aleksandrovitch had seen her in the nursery, and, after he
had left orders about calling the doctor he went to the ministry meeting. Having transacted
his business he returned at four o'clock; as he entered the anteroom, he noticed an
Adonis of a lackey, in livery and bearskin cloak, holding a white rotonda, or mantle,
lined with American fox.
"Who is here?" he asked.
"The Princess Yehzavyeta Feodorovna Tverskaya," replied the lackey, with a smile, as it seemed
to Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
All through this painful period Aleksei Aleksandrovitch noticed that his society friends, especially
the women, showed a very marked interest in him and in his wife. He noticed in them all
that veiled look of amusement which he saw in the lawyer's eyes, and which he now saw
in the lackey's. They all seemed delighted, as if they were going to a wedding. When people
met him, and inquired after his health, they did so with this same half-concealed hilarity.
The presence of the Princess Tverskaya was not agreeable to Aleksei Aleksandrovitch,
both because he had never liked her, and because she called up unpleasant memories, and so
he went directly to the nursery.
In the first room, Serozha, leaning on a table, with his feet in a chair, was drawing, and
chattering merrily. the English governess, who had replaced the French woman soon after
Anna's illness, was sitting near the child, with her fancy work in her hand; she rose,
made a courtesy, and put Serozha's feet down,
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch smoothed his son's hair, answered the governess's questions about
his wife's health, and asked what the doctor said about baby.
"The doctor said that it was nothing serious. He ordered baths, sir."
"She is still in pain, nevertheless," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, hearing the child
cry in the next room.
"I believe, sir, that the wet-nurse does not suit her," replied the Englishwoman, decidedly.
"What makes you think so?" he asked, as he paused on his way.
"It was the same at the Countess Pahl's, sir. They dosed the child with medicine, while
it was merely suffering from hunger, sir. The wet-nurse had not enough milk for it."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch considered for a few moments, and then went into the adjoining
room. The child was crying as she lay in her nurse's arms, with her head thrown back, refusing
the full breast that was offered her, and screamed, without yielding to the blandishments
of the two women bending over her.
"Isn't she any better?" asked Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
"She is very worrisome," replied the old nurse, in a whisper.
"Miss Edwards says that perhaps the nurse hasn't enough milk for her," said he.
"I think so too, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch."
"Why haven't you said so?"
"Whom should I say it to?" Anna Arkadyevna is still ill," replied the old nurse, discontentedly.
The old nurse had been in the family a long time, and these simple words struck Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch as an allusion to his position.
The child cried harder and harder, losing its breath, and becoming hoarse. The old nurse
threw up her hands in despair, took the little one from the wet-nurse, and rocked her as
she walked back and forth.
"You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
The wet-nurse, a healthy-looking woman of fine appearance, sprucely dressed, who was
afraid of losing her position, muttered to herself, as she fastened her dress over her
great ***, smiling scornfully at the doubt of her not having enough nourishment. In her
smile Aleksei Aleksandrovitch also detected ridicule of his position.
"Poor little thing!" said the old nurse, trying to hush the child and still walking back and
forth.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch sat down in a chair, sad and crestfallen, and followed the old
nurse with his eyes as she walked up and down with the child. When at last she had pacified
it and placed it in the cradle, and, having arranged the little pillow, had moved away,
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch rose, and went up to it on tiptoe. For a moment he was silent,
and looked with melancholy face at the little thing. But suddenly a smile which moved his
hair and the skin on his forehead spread over his face, and he quietly left the room.
He went into the dining-room, rang the bell, and ordered the servant that answered it to
send for the doctor again. He was displeased because his wife seemed to take so little
interest in this charming baby, and in this state of annoyance he wished neither to go
to her room, nor to meet the Princess Betsy; but his wife might wonder why he did not come
as usual; he crushed down his feelings and went to her chamber. As he walked along toward
the door on a thick carpet, he unintentionally overheard a conversation which he would not
have cared to hear.
"If he were not going away, I should understand your refusal, and his also. But your husband
ought to be above that," said Betsy.
"It is not for my husband's sake, but my own, that I don't wish it. So say nothing more
about it," repeated Anna's agitated voice.
"Yes, but you can't help wanting to say good-by to the man who shot himself on your account."
....
"That is the very reason I do not wish to see him again."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, with an expression of fear and guilt, stopped, and started to
go away without being heard; but, considering that this would lack dignity, he turned round
again, and, coughing, went toward the chamber. The voices were hushed, and he went into the
room.
Anna, in a gray khalat, with her thick dark hair cut short on her round head, was sitting
in a reclining-chair. All her animation disappeared, as usual, at the sight of her husband; she
bowed her head, and glanced uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the latest fashion, with
a little hat perched on the top of her head, like a cap over a lamp, in a dove-colored
gown, trimmed with bright-colored bands on the waist on one side, and on the skirt on
the other, was sitting beside Anna. She sat up as straight as possible, and welcomed Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch with a nod and a sarcastic smile.
"Ah!" she began, affecting surprise, "I am delighted to meet you at home. You never show
yourself anywhere, and I haven't seen you since Anna was taken ill. I learned of your
anxiety from others. Indeed! you are a wonderful husband!" said she, with a significant and
flattering look, as much as to say that she conferred on him the "order" of magnanimity
on account of his behavior toward his wife.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch bowed coldly, and, kissing his wife's hand, inquired how she
was.
"Better, I think," she replied, avoiding his look.
"However, your face has a feverish look," he said, emphasizing the word "feverish."
"We have talked too much," said Betsy. "It was selfish on my part, and I am going now."
She rose; but Anna, suddenly flushing, seized her quickly by the arm.
"No, stay, I beg of you. I must tell you, .... 'you' she addressed Aleksei Aleksandrovitch,
while the color increased on her neck and brow. "I cannot, nor do I wish to, hide anything
from you," said she.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch cracked his knuckles and bent his head.
"Betsy has told me that Count Vronsky wishes to come to our house to say good-by before
he goes to tashkend."
She did not look at her husband, and she evidently was in haste to get through with it, however
hard it might be. "I have said that I could not receive him."
"You said, my dear, that it would depend on Aleksei Aleksandrovitch," corrected Betsy.
"Yes! No, I cannot see him, and it would not do any...." she stopped suddenly, and looked
inquiringly at her husband's face; he was not looking at her. "In short, I do not wish
.... "
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch approached, and wanted to take her hand.
Anna's first impulse was to withdraw her hand from her husband's clammy hand with its big,
swollen veins; but she evidently controlled herself, and pressed it.
"I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but.... " he began, then stopped, awkward
and annoyed, feeling that what he could easily and clearly decide when by himself, he could
not settle in the presence of the Princess Tverskaya, who was the incarnation of that
brutal force which he had to take as the guide of his life in the eyes of the world, and
obliged him to renounce his feelings of love and forgiveness. He stopped as he looked at
the Princess Tverskaya.
"Well, good-by, my treasure," said Betsy, rising. She kissed Anna, and went out. Karenin
accompanied her.
"Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, I know that you are an extraordinarily magnanimous man," said
Betsy, stopping in the middle of the boudoir to press his hand again with unusual fervor;
"I am a stranger, and I love her so much, and esteem you so highly, that I take the
liberty of giving you a bit of advice. Let him come. Aleksei Vronsky is the personification
of honor, and he is going to Tashkend."
"I thank you for your sympathy and your advice, princess; but the question whether my wife
can or cannot receive anybody is for her to decide."
He spoke these words with dignity, raising his eyebrows as usual; but he felt at once
that, whatever his words had been, dignity was inconsistent with the situation. The sarcastic
and wicked smile with which Betsy greeted his remark proved it beyond a doubt.
CHAPTER XX
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the "hall" and returned to his wife; she
was lying down, but, hearing her husband's steps, she sat up quickly in her former position,
and looked at him in a frightened way. He saw that she had been crying.
"I am very grateful to you for your confidence in me," said he, gently, repeating in Russian
the remark that he had just made in French before Betsy.
When he spoke to her in Russian, and used the familiar second person singular Uii, this
tui irritated Anna in spite of herself. "I am very grateful for your decision; for I
agree with you that, since Count Vronsky is going away, there is no necessity of his coming
here; besides.... "
"Yes! but as I have said that, why repeat it?" interrupted Anna, with an annoyance which
she could not control. "No necessity," she thought, "for a man to say farewell to the
woman he loves, for whom he has wished to commit suicide, and who cannot live without
him!"
She pressed her lips together, and fixed her flashing eyes on her husband's hands with
their swollen veins, as he stood slowly rubbing them together.
"We will not say any more about that," she added, more calmly.
"I have given you perfect freedom to decide this question, and I am happy to see .... " Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch began again.
"That my desires are in conformity with yours," finished Anna, quickly, exasperated to hear
him speak so slowly, when she knew beforehand what he was going to say.
"Yes," he affirmed; "and the Princess Tverskaya shows very poor taste to meddle in family
affairs, she of all others." ....
"I don't believe what they say about her," said Anna.
"I only know that she loves me sincerely."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch sighed, and was silent. Anna played nervously with the tassels of
her khalat, and looked at him now and then, with that feeling of physical repulsion which
she reproached herself for, without being able to overcome. All that she wished for
at this moment was to be rid of his distasteful presence.
"Ah! I have just sent for the doctor," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
"What for? I am well."
"For the baby, the little one cries so much; they think that the nurse hasn't enough nourishment
for her."
"Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I urged it so? all the same " (Aleksei Aleksandrovitch
understood what she meant by all the same" she is a baby, and they will kill her." She
rang, and sent for the little one. "I wanted to nurse her, and you wouldn't let
me, and now you blame me."
"I do not blame you for anything." ....
"Yes, you do blame me! Bozhe moi! why didn't I die!" She began to sob. " Forgive me: I
am nervous and unjust," she said, trying to control herself. "But go away."
"No, this state of things cannot go on," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch to himself, as he
left his wife's room.
Never before had he been so convinced of the impossibility of prolonging such a situation
before the world: never had his wife's dislike of him, and the strength of that mysterious
brutal force which had taken possession of his life, to rule it contrary to the needs
of his soul and to make him change his relations to his wife, appeared to him with such clearness.
He saw clearly that the world and his wife exacted something from him which he did not
fully understand. He felt that it aroused within him feelings of hatred, which disturbed
his peace, and destroyed the worth of his victory over himself. Anna, in his opinion,
ought to have nothing more to do with Vronsky; but if everybody considered this impossible,
he was ready to tolerate their meeting, on condition that the children should not be
disgraced, or his own life disturbed.
Wretched as this was — it was, nevertheless, better than a rupture whereby she would be
placed in a shameful and hopeless position, and he himself would be deprived of all that
he loved. But he felt his powerlessness in this struggle, and knew beforehand that all
were against him and that he would be prevented from doing what seemed to him wise and good,
and that he would be obliged to do what was bad, but necessary to be done.
CHAPTER XXI
Betsy had not left the "hall" when Stepan Arkadyevitch appeared on the threshold. He
had come from Eliseyef's, where they had just received fresh oysters.
"Ah, princess! You here? What a fortunate meeting! I have just been at your house."
"The meeting is but for a moment; I am going," replied Betsy, smiling, as she buttoned her
gloves.
"Wait just a moment, princess; allow me to kiss your little hand before you put on your
glove. Nothing pleases me so much, in returning to ancient ways, as the custom of kissing
a lady's hand."
He kissed Betsy's hand.
"When shall we meet again?"
"You don't deserve to see me," replied Betsy, laughing.
"Oh, yes, I do! for I have become a very serious man. I regulate not only my own family affairs,
but also other people's," said he, with a significant expression in his face.
"Ah! r am delighted to hear it," replied Betsy, instantly knowing that he referred to Anna.
Going back into the "hall," they stood in a corner.
"He is killing her," she whispered, with conviction. "It is impossible, impossible...."
"I am very glad that you think so," replied Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his head with
sympathetic commiseration. "That is why I am in Petersburg."
"The whole town are talking about it," said she; "this situation is intolerable. She is
fading away before our very eyes. He doesn't understand that she is one of those women
whose feelings cannot be treated lightly. One of two things, — either he ought to
take her away, and act decidedly, or else be divorced. But this is killing her."
"Yes, yes.... exactly ...." said Oblonsky, with a sigh.
"I have come for that; that is to say, not entirely for that .... I have just been made
chamberlain, so I had to show my gratitude; but the main thing was to arrange this matter."
"Well! may the Lord help you!" said Betsy.
Stepan Arkadyevitch accompanied the Princess Betsy to the door, once more kissed her wrist
just above her glove, where the pulse beats, and after paying her such an impudent compliment
that she did not know whether to laugh or take offense, he left her to go to his sister.
He found her in tears.
In spite of the exuberance of his lively spirits, Stepan Arkadyevitch fell instantly and with
perfect genuineness into the tone of sympathetic and poetical tenderness which suited his sister's
frame of mind. He asked how she felt, and how she had passed the day.
"Wretchedly, very wretchedly! Night and day, the future and the past, all .... wretched,"
she replied.
"It seems to me, you have yielded to the blues. You must have courage; look life in the face.
It is hard, I know, but...."
"I have heard that some women love men for their very vices," began Anna, suddenly; "but
I hate him for his virtue. I cannot live with him. Understand me, the sight of him has a
physical effect on me which drives me out of my mind. I cannot, cannot live with him!
What shall I do?" I have been unhappy before, and I thought it impossible to be more so,
but this horrible state of things surpasses all that I could have imagined. Can you believe
that, though I know how good and perfect he is, and how unworthy of him I am, still I
hate him! I hate him for his magnanimity. There is absolutely nothing left for me but
to ...."
She was going to add "die," but Stepan Arkadyevitch did not let her finish.
"You are ill and nervous, believe me; you exaggerate everything. There is really nothing
so very terrible."
And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one except Stepan Arkadyevitch, meeting such despair,
would have ventured to smile, — for it would have seemed rude, — but his smile was so
full of kindness, and an almost effeminate sweetness, that, instead of irritating, it
was calming and soothing; his gentle soothing words and smile acted like oil of sweet almonds.
Anna at once felt the effect.
"No, Stiva," said she, "I am lost, lost! worse than lost. And yet, I am not yet lost: I cannot
still say that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that all is not yet over. I seem like
a cord too tightly stretched, which must break. But the end has not yet come, and it will
be terrible."
"No, no; the cord can be carefully unstrung. There is no difficulty without some way out
of it."
"I have thought it over, and thought it over, and I see only one...."
Again he saw by her look of dismay that the one way that she meant was death, and again
he did not allow her to finish.
"No, listen to me; you cannot judge of your position so well as I. Let me tell you frankly
my opinion." He smiled again cautiously, with his almond-oily smile. "I will begin at the
beginning: you married a man twenty years older than yourself, and you married without
love, — or, at least, without knowing what love was. It was a mistake — as well admit
it."
"A terrible mistake!" said Anna,
"But, I repeat it, it was an accomplished fact. You then had, let us say, the misfortune
to fall in love — not with your husband; that was a misfortune, but that, too, was
an accomplished fact. Your husband knew it, and forgave it." After each sentence he stopped,
as if to give her time to reply, but she said nothing. "Now, the question is, can you continue
to live with your husband? do you wish it? does he wish it?; I know nothing about it,
nothing."
"But you yourself have just said that you could no longer endure him."
"No, I did not say so. I deny it. I know nothing, I understand nothing."
"Yes! but allow me ...."
"You cannot understand it. I feel that I am precipitated, head first, into an abyss, and
I may not save myself. I cannot."
"You will see that we can prevent you from falling, and from being crushed. I understand
you. I feel that you are not able to express your feelings, your desires."
"I desire nothing, nothing — only to end all this."
"He sees this, and knows it. Do you suppose that he doesn't feel the strain as much as
you do? You suffer, he suffers; and what way of escape is there from all this torture?
Then, when a divorce would settle everything...."
Stepan Arkadyevitch with difficulty expressed his principal idea, and looked to Anna to
see what effect it would have.
She said nothing and shook her head disapprovingly. But by the expression of her face, which suddenly
lighted up with something of her former beauty, he saw that, if she did not wish this, it
was because the thought of its being realized was too enticing.
"I am awfully sorry for you! how happy I should be if I could arrange it for you!" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. "Don't say a word! If God will only permit me to express all that I feel!
I am going to find Aleksei Aleksandrovitch."
Anna looked at him out of her brilliant, thoughtful eyes, and did not reply.
CHAPTER XXII
Stepan Arkadyevitch went into his brother-in-law's cabinet, with the solemn face which he tried
to assume when he sat in his official chair at a council-meeting. Alekseif Aleksandrovitch,
with his arms behind his back, was walking up and down the room, considering the same
thing that Stepan Arkadyevitch had been discussing with his wife.
"Shall I disturb you?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, suddenly feeling an unwonted embarrassment.
In order to conceal his embarrassment, he took a new cigar-case out of his pocket, smelt
of the leather, and took out a cigarette.
"No. Do you wish to see me?" asked Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, reluctantly.
"Yes ....I would like ....I must.... yes, I must have a talk with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, surprised at his confusion.
This feeling was so strange and unexpected to him, that he did not recognize in it the
voice of conscience, warning him that what he hoped to do was evil. He recovered himself
with an effort, and conquered the weakness which took possession of him.
"I hope that you believe in my love for my sister, and in my sincere sympathy and regard
for you," said he, and his face grew red.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch listened, and made no reply; but his face struck Stepan Arkadyevitch
by its expression of humility and pain.
"I intended, I came on purpose, to speak with you about my sister, and the situation in
which you and she are placed," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, still struggling with his unusual
embarrassment.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch smiled sadly, looked at his brother-in-law, and, without replying,
went to the table, took up a half-written letter, and handed it to him.
"I can think of nothing else. This is what I began to write, thinking that I could express
myself better in a letter, for my presence irritates her," said he, giving him the letter.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took the paper, and looked with perplexity and surprise at his brother-in-law's
dull eyes, which were fixed on him; then he read: —
I see that my presence is disagreeable to you; painful as it is for me to recognize
it, I know that it is so, and it cannot be otherwise. I do not blame you. God knows that,
during your illness, I resolved to forget the past, and to begin a new life. I am not
sorry, I never shall be sorry, for what I did then. I desired only one thing, — your
salvation, the salvation of your soul, and now I see that I have not succeeded. Tell
me yourself, what will give you true peace and happiness, and I will submit to whatever
you may deem just and right.
Stepan Arkadyevitch gave the letter back to his brother-in-law; and with the same perplexity,
he simply stared at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to say. This silence was so uncomfortable
to both that Stepan Arkadyevitch's lips trembled convulsively, while he did not take his eyes
from Karenin's face.
"That is what I wanted to say to her," said Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, turning away.
"Yes, yes," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not go on, the tears so choked his
utterance. "Yes, yes, I understand you."
"I should like to know what she wishes," said he, at last.
"I am afraid that she herself does not realize her own situation. She is not a judge of the
matter," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, trying to recover himself. "She is crushed, literally
crushed, by your magnanimity; if she should read your letter, she would be unable to say
a word, and could only bow her head still lower."
"Yes! But what is to be done in such a case? How can it be settled? How can I know what
she wishes?"
"If you will allow me to express my opinion, I think it is for you to state clearly what
measure you believe necessary to put an end to this situation at once."
"Consequently, you think it ought to be ended at once?" interrupted Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
"But how?" he added, passing the back of his hand over his eyes in an unusual way. " I
see no possible way out of it!"
"There is a way out of every difficulty, however serious it may be," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
rising, and growing more animated. "There was a time when you wished for a divorce .... if
you are convinced now that you can never be happy together again .... "
"Happiness may be understood in different ways. Let us grant that I agree to everything,
that I have no wishes in the matter, what escape is there from our situation?"
"If you wish for my advice," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same smooth, almond-oily, affectionate
smile with which he had spoken to his sister; and this smile was so persuasive that Aleksei
Aleksandrovitch, giving himself up to the weakness which overpowered him, was involuntarily
inclined to believe what his brother-in-law said. "She will never say what her wishes
are. But there is one thing possible, one thing that she may hope for," continued Stepan
Arkadyevitch," and that is to break the bonds which are only the cause of cruel recollections.
In my opinion, it is indispensable to put your relations on an entirely new footing,
and that can only be done by both of you resuming your freedom."
"Divorce!" interrupted Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, with disgust.
"Yes, I suppose that divorce .... yes, divorce," repeated Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing. "Taking
everything into consideration, that is the most sensible course when two married people
find themselves in such a situation as yours. What is to be done, when husband and wife
find that living together is impossible? This can always be brought about."
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch drew a deep sigh, and covered his eyes.
"There is only one consideration, — whether one of the parties wishes to marry again.
If not, it is very simple," continued Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering more and more from
his feeling of constraint.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, with his face distorted by emotion, muttered something to himself,
but made no reply. What seemed so simple to Oblonsky, he had turned over a thousand thousand
times in his mind, and, instead of finding it very easy, found it utterly impossible.
Now that the conditions for divorce were known to him, it seemed to him impossible, because
the sense of his personal dignity, as well as his respect for religion, prevented him
from confessing to a fictitious accusation of adultery and still less permitting his
wife, whom he had once pardoned and still loved, to be disgraced and put to shame. Divorce
seemed impossible from still other and even more important reasons.
What would become of their son? To leave him with his mother was impossible. The divorced
mother would have her own illegitimate family, in which the child's position and training
would be wretched. Should he keep the child for himself? But he knew that would be an
act of vengeance, and vengeance he did not want
But, above all, what made divorce impossible in his eyes was the thought that, in consenting
to it, he himself would contribute to Anna's destruction. The words spoken by Darya Aleksandrovna,
when he was in Moscow, remained graven in his heart, that in getting a divorce, he was
thinking only of himself, and forgetting that it would be her irretrievable ruin. These
words, now that he had forgiven her and had become attached to the children, had a very
significant meaning to him. to consent to a divorce, to give Anna her liberty, was to
cut away the last tie that bound himself to life, to her children whom he loved, and was
to take away her last help in the way of salvation, and to push her over the precipice.
If she became a divorced woman, he knew very well that she would be united to Vronsky,
and such a bond would be criminal and illegal; because a woman, according to the laws of
the Church, cannot enter into a second marriage during the lifetime of her husband.
"And who knows but, after a year or two, either he might abandon her, or she might form a
new liaison" thought Aleksei Aleksandrovitch; "and I, having allowed an illegal divorce,
should be responsible for her fall."
He had gone over all this a hundred times, and was convinced that divorce was not by
any means so simple as his brother-in-law would make it out; that it was wholly impossible.
He did not admit a word of what Stepan Arkadyevitch said; he had a thousand arguments to refute
such reasoning; and, notwithstanding this, he listened, feeling that his words were the
manifestation of that irresistible force which ruled his life, and to which he would finally
submit.
"The only question is, how, on what conditions, you will consent to a divorce; for she will
never dare to ask anything of you, and will give herself up entirely to your magnanimity."
"My God! my God! why has this come upon me?" thought Aleksei Aleksandrovitch; and, as he
remembered the condition of divorce in which the husband assumed the blame, from shame
he buried his face in his hands, as Vronsky had done.
"You are distressed; I understand it; but if you will consider ...."
"Whosoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man
would take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,' " thought Aleksei Aleksandrovitch.
— "Yes, yes!" he cried, in his piping voice." I will take all the shame upon myself; I will
even give up my son But will it not be better to leave all that? However, do as you please."
....
And turning away from his brother-in-law, that he might not see his face, he sat down
near the window. He was grieved; he was ashamed; but with this grief and shame he felt a sense
of happiness and emotion in the consciousness of his own humility.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was touched.
"Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, be assured that she will appreciate your generosity," said
he, after a pause. "It is, without doubt, the will of God," he added; but he felt, as
soon as the words were out of his mouth, what a foolish remark it was, and he could hardly
restrain a smile at his own foolishness.
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch would have replied, but tears prevented him.
"This trial comes by fate, and it must be accepted. I accept it as an accomplished fact,
and I will try to help you and her," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
When Stepan Arkadyevitch left his brother-in-law's cabinet, he was touched, but this fact did
not prevent him from being delighted at having settled this matter; for he was certain that
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch would not go back on his word. His satisfaction suggested a
conundrum which he could ask his wife and intimate friends: —
"What is the difference between me and a field-marshal? The field-marshal makes divorces, and nobody
is the better for it; while I make divorces, and three people are better off. Or, rather,
what resemblance is there between me and a field-marshal? Where ....but by and by I'll
improve on it," he said to himself with a smile.
CHAPTER XXii
Vronsky's wound was dangerous, although it did not reach the heart. He hung for several
days between life and death. When for the first time he was in a condition to talk,
only Varia, his brother's wife, was in his room.
"Varia!" said he, looking at her gravely, " I shot myself accidentally. Now please never
speak to me about this, but tell every one so; otherwise it will seem too stupid!"
Varia bent over him without replying, examining his face with a happy smile. His eyes were
bright, but no longer feverish, but their expression was stern.
"Well! Thank the Lord!" she replied. "Are you suffering?"
"A little on this side," said he, pointing to his chest.
"Let me change the dressing, then."
Squinting, he silently watched her change it, and when she had finished, he said: —
"I am not delirious now. See to it, I beg of you, that nobody says that I shot myself
intentionally."
"Nobody says so. I hope, however, that after this you will not shoot yourself accidentally
again," she said with a questioning smile.
"Probably I shall not; but it would have been better...."
And he smiled gloomily.
In spite of these words and this smile which so alarmed Varia, when the inflammation had
subsided and he began to recover, he felt that he was free from a part of his misfortunes.
By his action he had washed away, as it were, his shame and humiliation, which had weighed
on him before. Henceforth he could think calmly of Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. He recognized
all his magnanimity without being crushed by it. Besides, he was able to be himself
again, to look people in the face, and could live, governing himself by his customary habits.
What he could not tear from his heart, in spite of all his efforts, was the regret,
bordering on despair, at having lost Anna forever; since he was firmly resolved, now
that he had redeemed his fault toward Karenin, not to place himself between the repentant
wife and her husband. But he could not put out of his heart the regret at the loss of
her love; he could not blot out the memory of happy moments which he had spent with her,
and not half appreciated till now, and which pursued him continually in all their fascination.
Serpukhovsko'f thought of sending him to Tashkend, and Vronsky accepted the proposition without
the least hesitation. But the nearer the time for his leaving came, the more cruel seemed
the sacrifice to what he considered his duty.
His wound was healed, and he had already gone out and was engaged in making his preparations
for his journey to Tashkend.
"To see her once more, and then bury myself and die," he thought; and while paying his
farewell visit to Betsy, he expressed his wish to her.
The latter set out at once as an ambassador to Anna, but brought back her refusal.
"So much the better," thought Vronsky, on receiving her reply; "this is a weakness which
would have cost me my last strength."
The next morning Betsy herself went to Vronsky, announcing that she had had, through Oblonsky,
positive information that Aleksei Aleksandrovitch consented to a divorce, and that consequently
Vfonsky might see Anna.
Without even pausing to show Betsy from his room, forgetting his resolutions, without
finding out when he could see her, or where her husband would be, Vronsky immediately
went to the Karenins'. He flew up the steps, not seeing anything or any one, and with hasty
steps, almost running, entered Anna's room, and, without even noticing whether there might
not be some one else in the room, he took her in his arms, and began covering her hands,
her face, and her neck with kisses.
Anna was prepared to see him again, and had made up her mind what to say to him; but she
had no time to speak. Vronsky's passion overpowered her. She wanted to calm him, to calm herself,
but it was already too late. Her lips trembled so that for a long time she was unable to
speak a word.
"Yes, you have conquered me; I am yours!" she succeeded in saying at last, pressing
his hand to her breast.
"So it had to be!" said he, " and as long as we live, it must be so; I know it now."
"It is true," she replied, growing paler and paler as she put her arms around Vronsky's
neck. "However, there is something terrible in this after what has happened."
"All that will be forgotten, forgotten; we shall be happy! If there were any need of
our love increasing, it would increase, because there is something terrible about it," said
he, raising his head, and displaying his strong teeth as he smiled.
She could only reply with a smile, — not with words, — with her eyes which expressed
such love for him.
"I do know you with your short hair. You are lovely so! Just like a little boy! But how
pale you are!"
"Yes; I am still very weak," she replied, smiling; and her lips began to tremble again.
"We will go to Italy; you will grow strong there," said he.
"Is it possible that we could be like husband and wife, alone, by ourselves?" said she,
looking him in the eye.
"I am only surprised at one thing, — that it has not always been so."
"Stiva says that lie will consent to everything, but I will not accept his generosity," said
she, looking thoughtfully above Vronsky's head. "I do not wish for a divorce. It is
all the same to me now. I only wonder what he will decide with regard to Serozha."
Vronsky could not understand how, in these first moments of their reunion, she could
think of her son and of divorce. How could it be all the same to her?
"Don't speak of that, don't think of it," said he, turning Anna's hand over and over
in his, to draw her attention to him; but she did not look at him.
"Oh! why did I not die? it would have been so much better!" said she; and though she
did not sob, the tears rolled down her pale cheeks; she tried, nevertheless, to smile,
that she might not give him pain.
Once Vronsky would have thought it impossible and disgraceful to give up the flattering
and perilous mission to Tashkend, but now he refused it without any hesitation; then,
noticing that his refusal was misinterpreted by the authorities, he gave in his resignation.
A month later, Aleksei Aleksandrovitch was left alone with his son, and Anna went abroad
with Vronsky, without a divorce, and resolutely refusing to accept one.
PART FIFTH CHAPTER I
THE Princess Shcherbatskaya found it would not be possible to have the wedding before
Lent, which would come in five weeks, because the trousseau would not be half done; but
she could not help agreeing with Levin that after Lent it might be too late, as an old
aunt of the prince's was very ill and liable to die, and then mourning would still further
postpone it. So having decided to divide the trousseau into two parts, — one large, the
other small, — the princess agreed to have the wedding before Lent. She decided that
she would prepare the smaller part of the trousseau at once, and send the larger part
afterward, and she was very indignant with Levin because he would not answer her seriously
whether this would suit him or not. This arrangement was all the more convenient because the young
couple intended to set out for the country immediately after the ceremony, and would
not need the larger part of the things.
Levin continued in the same condition of lunacy, in which it seemed to him that he and his
happiness constituted the chief and only aim of creation, and that it was wholly unnecessary
for him to think or to bother himself about anything but that his friends would arrange
everything for him. He did not even make any plans or arrangements for his coming life,
but left others to decide for him, knowing all would be admirable. His brother, Sergyef
Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and the princess ruled him absolutely; he was satisfied to
accept whatever they proposed.
His brother borrowed the money that he needed; the princess advised him to leave Moscow after
the wedding; Stepan Arkadyevitch advised him to go abroad. He consented to everything.
"Make whatever plans you please," he thought, " I am happy; and whatever you may decide
on, my joy will be neither greater nor less."
But when he told Kitty of Stepan Arkadyevitch's suggestion about going abroad, he was surprised
to see that she did not approve of it, and that she had her own very decided plans for
the future. She knew that Levin's heart was at home in his work, and although she neither
understood his affairs, nor tried to understand them, still they seemed to her very important;
as their home would be in the country, she did not wish to go abroad where they were
not going to live, but insisted on settling down in the country where their home was to
be. This very firm determination surprised Levin; but as it seemed to him all right,
he begged Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had excellent taste, to go to Pokrovsky and take charge
of the improvements in his house. It seemed to him that that belonged to his friend's
province.
"By the way," said Stepan Arkadyevitch one day, after his return from the country, where
he had arranged everything for the young couple's reception, "have you your certificate of confession?"
"No; why?"
"You can't be married without it."
"Ai', ai', af!" cried Levin; "but it is nine years since I have been to confession I, I
hadn't even thought of it!"
"That is good!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, " and you call me a nihilist! But
that can't be allowed to go on; you must prepare for the sacrament!"
"When?" there are only four days more!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this matter also, and Levin prepared for his devotions. For
Levin as for any man who is an unbeliever, yet respects the faith of others, it was very
hard to attend and participate in all religious ceremonies. Now in his tender and sentimental
frame of mind, the necessity of dissimulating was not only odious to him, it was well-nigh
impossible. Now, he would be obliged either to lie or to mock at sacred things, at a time
when his heart was bursting, when he felt at the height of bliss. He felt that he could
do neither. But in spite of all his efforts to persuade Stepan Arkadyevitch that there
must be some other way of obtaining a certificate without being forced to confess, Stepan Arkadyevitch
declared that it was impossible.
"Yes, but what harm will it do you? only two days! and the priest is a capital, bright
little old man. He will pull this tooth for you without your knowing it."
During the first mass that he attended Levin did his best to recall the strong religious
impressions of his youth, when he was between sixteen and seventeen years old; but he found
that this was perfectly impossible. He then tried to look on religious forms as an ancient
custom, without any real meaning, something like the habit of making calls; this also
he felt that he could never do. Like most of his contemporaries. Levin was completely
undecided in regard to his religious views. He could not believe; at the same time he
was not firmly convinced that all these things were unreasonable. And therefore not being
in a condition to believe in the efficacy of what he was doing, or to look on it with
utter indifference as on an empty formality, he experienced a sense of pain and annoyance
during the time allotted to his devotions; his conscience cried out that to do what he
himself did not understand was false and wicked.
During the time of the service, he listened to the prayers, striving to attribute to them
some significance which should not be in too open contradiction with his convictions; but
finding that he could not understand them, but was compelled to criticize them, he tried
not to listen, but occupied himself with his thoughts — with the observations and recollections
that arose in his mind with extraordinary vividness during the solemn night-office in
the church. He stayed through mass, vespers, and evening prayers and on the next morning
he rose earlier than usual, and came at eight o'clock, without having eaten anything, to
morning prayers and confession.
There was no one in the church except a mendicant soldier, two old women, and the officiating
priests. A young deacon with a long, thin back clearly defined in two halves beneath
his short cassock came to meet him, and going to a little table near the wall, began to
read prayers. Levin, hearing him repeat in a hurried, monotonous voice, clipping his
words, the words, "Lord, have mercy upon us," felt that his thought was locked up and sealed,
and that to touch it and stir it now was out of the question, since, if he did, confusion
would ensue; and therefore he stood behind the deacon, not listening and not trying to
fathom what he said, but thinking his own thoughts.
"What a wonderful amount of expression there is about her hands," he thought, recalling
the evening before, which he had spent with Kitty at the table in one corner of the drawing-room.
There had not been much to talk about, as was usually the case at this time; she had
rested her hand on the table, opening and shutting it, and laughing as she made this
motion. He remembered how he had kissed this hand and then examined the lines that crossed
the pink palm.
"Have mere' on us again," thought Levin, making the sign of the cross, and bowing, while he
noticed the deacon's supple movements, as he prostrated himself in front of him. "Then
she took my hand, and in turn examined it. 'You have a famous hand,' she said to me."
He looked at his own hand, and then at the deacon's, with its stubbed fingers. "Yes!
Now it will soon be over. No; he is beginning another prayer. Yes; he is bowing to the ground;
that always comes just before the end."
The deacon took the three-ruble note, discreetly slipped into his hand, under his rough shaggy
cuff, and promised to register Levin's name; then quickly clacking in his new boots across
the flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. In a moment he looked out and
beckoned to Levin. The thought till that moment locked up in Levin's brain began to stir,
but he made haste to bring it to order. "It will be arranged somehow," he said to himself
and went toward the ambo. He mounted several steps, turned to the right, and saw the priest,
a little old man, whose thin beard was almost white, with kindly but rather weary eyes,
standing near the reading-desk, turning over the leaves of a missal. After a slight bow
to Levin, he began to read the prayers; having finished them, he kneeled and faced Levin:
—
"Christ is here, invisible though, to hear your confession," said he, pointing to the
crucifix. "Do you believe all that the Holy Apostolic Church teaches us?" he continued,
turning his eyes from Levin's face and crossing his hand under his stole.
"I have doubted, I still doubt everything .... " said Levin, in a voice which sounded
disagreeable to his own ears, and he was silent.
The priest waited a few moments to see if he would say anything more, then closing his
eyes and speaking rapidly with a Vladimirsky accent, he said: —
"To doubt is characteristic of human weakness; we must pray the Lord Almighty to strengthen
you. What are your principal sins?"
The priest spoke without the least interruption, and as if he were afraid of losing time.
"My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and i am generally doubting."
"To doubt is characteristic of human weakness," said the priest, using the same words; "what
do you doubt principally?"
"Everything. I sometimes even doubt the existence of God," said Levin, in spite of himself,
horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But his words seemed to make no impression
on the priest.
"How can you doubt the existence of God?" he asked, with an almost imperceptible smile.
Levin was silent.
"What doubts can you have about the Creator when you contemplate His works?" pursued the
priest, in his quick habitual utterance, "Who ornamented the celestial vault with its stars?
who decked the earth with all its beauty? How can these things exist without a Creator?'.'
And he cast a questioning glance at Levin.
Levin felt that it would be out of place to enter into a philosophical discussion with
the priest, and, therefore, in his reply said only what referred directly to the question:
— we do not know."
"You do not know? Then how can you doubt that god has created everything?" asked the priest,
with a lighthearted perplexity.
"I cannot understand it," replied Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid, and
that in such a position they could not be other than stupid.
"Pray to God, have recourse to Him; the Fathers of the Church themselves doubted, and asked
God to strengthen their faith. The devil has mighty power, and we should resist him. Pray
to God, pray to God," repeated the priest, rapidly.
Then he kept silent for a moment, as if he were buried in thought.
"They tell me that you intend to marry the daughter of my parishioner and spiritual son,
the Prince Shcherbatsky," he added with a smile. "She is a beautiful girl."
"Yes," replied Levin, blushing for the priest. "Why does he need to ask such questions at
confession?" he said to himself.
And, as if replying to his thought, the priest continued: —
"You are preparing for marriage, and perhaps God may grant you offspring. Isn't that so?"
Now, what education will you give to your little children if you do not conquer the
temptations of the devil, who causes you to doubt?" he asked with gentle reproach. " If
you love your children as a good father, you will not only wish for them riches, luxury,
and honor, but still more, their salvation and their spiritual enlightenment by the light
of truth; is this not so? How will you reply to the innocent child who asks you, Papasha,
who made all that delights me on the earth, — the water, the sunshine, the flowers,
the plants? ' Will you answer, ' I know nothing about it '? Can you ignore what the Lord God
in His infinite goodness has revealed to you? And if the child asks you, ' What awaits me
beyond the tomb?' what will you say to him if you know nothing? How will you answer him?
Will you give him up to the seductions of the world and the devil? That is not right!"
said he, stopping, and turning his head on one side, looked at Levin out of his kindly,
gentle eyes.
Levin was silent, not because he was afraid this time to enter into a discussion with
the priest, but because nobody had ever put such questions to him before, and because
he thought there was plenty of time to consider them before his children should be in a state
to question him.
"You are about to enter upon a phase of life," continued the priest, " where one must choose
his path and keep to it. Pray God in His mercy to keep and sustain you; and in conclusion:
May our Lord God, Jesus Christ, pardon you, my son, in His goodness and loving-kindness
to all mankind." And the priest, ending the formulas of absolution, took leave of him,
after giving him his blessing.
Levin, returning home that day, felt happy enough at the thought of being free from a
false situation without having been obliged to lie. Besides, there remained with him a
vague idea that what that good and gentle little old man said to him was not altogether
so stupid as he at first had thought it was going to be, and that he really had something
worth clearing up sometime.
"Not now, of course," he thought, "but later on."
Levin felt more than ever at this time that there were troubled and obscure places in
his soul, and that, concerning his religion, he was in exactly the same position which
he so clearly saw others occupying, and disliked, and which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky for.
Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly's, and in trying to explain to Stepan
Arkadyevitch the excitable condition in which he found himself, was very gay; he said that
he was like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, which, delighted at having learned
his lesson, wags his tail, and is eager to leap over the table and through the window.
CHAPTER II
The princess and Darya Aleksandrovna insisted on strictly observing the established customs;
so Levin was not to see his "bride" on the day of the wedding, and he dined at his hotel
with three bachelors, who met in his room by chance: they were Sergyei Ivanovitch; Katavasof,
an old university friend, now professor of natural sciences, whom Levin had met on the
street and brought home to dinner; Chirikof, his shafer or best man, justice of the peace
at Moscow, and Levin's companion in bearhunting.
The dinner was very lively. Sergyef Ivanovitch was in the best of spirits, and greatly enjoyed
Katavasof's originality. Katavasof, feeling that his originality was appreciated and understood,
made a great display of it and Chirikof added his share of gayety to the conversation.
"So, here is our friend Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Katavasof, with the slow speech of a
professor accustomed to talk ex cathedra; "what a talented fellow he was! I speak of
him in the past, for he no longer exists. He loved science when he left the university;
he took an interest in humanity; now he employs half his faculties in deceiving himself, and
the other half in apologizing for the deception."
"I never met a more confirmed enemy of marriage than you," said Sergyef Ivanovitch.
"No, I am not its enemy; I am a friend of the distribution of labor. People who cannot
do anything ought to be the ones to propagate the race. All the rest should devote themselves
to their intellectual development and welfare. That is my opinion. I know a great many people
are inclined to confound these two, but I am not of the number."
"How delighted I should be to hear that you were in love!" exclaimed Levin. "Pray invite
me to your wedding."
"But I am already in love."
"Yes, with some cuttlefish. You know," said Levin, turning to his brother," Mikhail Semyonuitch
has written a work on the nutrition, and .... "
"Now, I beg of you not to confuse matters! It is of no consequence what I have written;
but it is a fact that I love a cuttlefish."
"That need not prevent your loving a wife."
"No; but my wife would object to my loving the cuttlefish."
"Why so?"
"You will see how it will be. Now, you love your farming, hunting Well! just wait awhile!"
"I met Arkhip to-day," said Chirikof;" he says that there are quantities of elk at Prudnoye,
and two bears."
"Well! you may hunt them without me."
"You see how it is," said Sergyef Ivanovitch, "You may as well say good-by to bear-hunting;
your wife won't allow it."
Levin smiled. The idea that his wife would object to his hunting seemed so delightful
that he was ready to renounce the pleasure of ever meeting a bear again.
"However, I am sorry to hunt those two bears without you," said Chirikof. "Do you remember
the last time at Khapilovo? The hunting was marvelous."
Levin did not care to spoil his friend's illusion that life would be worth nothing without hunting,
and so he made no reply.
"The custom of saying good-by to one's bachelor life is not without meaning," said Sergyei
Ivanovitch. "However happy one may be, a man regrets his
liberty." "Confess that, like Gogolevsky, when he was
engaged, you feel like jumping out of the window."
"Certainly; but he won't confess it," said Katavasof, with a loud laugh.
"The window is open Come now, let us go to
Tver! We might find one bear in her lair. Indeed, we have still time to catch the five
o'clock train," said Chirikof, smiling. "Hear them laugh!"
"Well, upon my honor," replied Levin, smiling, too,
"I cannot discover the least trace of regret in my soul for my lost liberty."
"Yes! your soul is in such a chaos now that you cannot find anything in it," said Katavasof.
"Wait till it becomes calmer; then you will see."
"No, if I felt in the least degree that there was nothing beyond my feeling of " — he
did not like to speak of love before Katavasof — "of happiness, I should regret my lost
freedom. But it is not so at all; I am even delighted at my loss of freedom."
"You are a hopeless case," exclaimed Katavasof. "However, let us drink to his recovery, or
let us at least hope for him that one per cent of his illusions may be accomplished.
And even that would be such happiness as was never known on this earth!"
Shortly after dinner the guests separated, to dress for the wedding.
When he was left alone, and had a chance to think over the conversation of these bachelors.
Levin again asked himself whether he really regretted the liberty of which his friends
had just been talking, and he smiled at the idea.
"Liberty? why liberty? Happiness for me consists in loving, in thinking her thoughts, in wishing
her wishes, without any liberty. That is happiness!"
"But can I know her thoughts, her wishes, her feelings?" whispered some voice. The smile
disappeared from his face and he fell into a deep study. And suddenly a strange feeling
came over him: fear and doubt came over him — doubt about everything.
"Suppose she does not love me? What if she is marrying me merely for the sake of being
married? what if she does not herself know what she is doing?" he asked himself, " Will
she, perhaps, see her mistake, and discover, after we are married, that she does not love
me, and that she never can love me?"
And strange, even painful, thoughts about Kitty came to his mind; he began to be violently
jealous of Vronsky, just as he had been the year before; there came up before him, like
the memory of yesterday, that evening when he had seen them together, and he suspected
her of not having confessed everything to him.
He quickly sprang up.
"No," said he, in despair, " I cannot let this remain so! I will go and find her, — I
will talk with her, and say to her again, for the last time: ' We are free; is it not
better to stop just where we are? Anything is better than lifelong unhappiness, shame,
distrust!"
And with despair in his heart, full of hatred toward all mankind, toward himself and Kitty,
he left the hotel and hastened to her house.
He found her in one of the rear rooms sitting on a large chest, busy with her maid, looking
over dresses of all colors, spread out over the backs of the chairs and on the floor.
"Akh!" she exclaimed, beaming with joy at seeing him. "What brings thee? What brings
you?" Even up to this last day she sometimes said tui, sometimes viii. " I was not expecting
you! I am just disposing of my maiden wardrobe."
"Ah! that is good!" he replied, frowning at the maid.
"Run away, Duniasha; I will call you," said Kitty; and as soon as she had gone she asked,
using the second person of the pronoun, "What is the matter with thee?" this time resolutely.
She remarked her lover's strange, excited, and gloomy face, and was seized with fear.
"Kitty, I am in torture, and I cannot suffer alone 1 " he said to her with despair in his
voice, stopping in front of her and looking into her eyes in a beseeching way. He at once
saw by her face, so sincere and loving, that nothing whatever would result from his determination;
yet he felt an urgent need of being reassured from her own lips.
"I came to tell you that it is not yet too late; that everything can even now be taken
back."
"What? I do not understand. What is the matter with thee?"
"I am — as I have said and thought a thousand times before — I am not worthy of you. You
once could not. consent to marry me. Think of it! Perhaps you are mistaken now. Think
of it well. You cannot love me ....if.... it is better to acknowledge it," he continued,
without looking at her. "I shall be miserable, but no matter; let people say what they please;
anything is better than unhappiness! .... But anything is better now, while there is yet
time .... "
"I do not understand you," she replied, frightened. "You mean you want to take back your word
.... break off our.... "
"Yes, if you do not love me."
"You must be insane!" she exclaimed, red with vexation. But the sight of Levin's piteous
face arrested her anger; and pushing the frocks from one of the chairs, she sat down near
him.
"What are you thinking of? Tell me all."
"I think that you cannot love me. Why should you love me?"
"Bozhe mof! what can I do?" .... said she; and she burst into tears.
"Akh! what have I done?" he cried instantly, and throwing himself on his knees, he covered
her hands with kisses.
When the princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them completely reconciled.
Kitty had not only convinced him of her love, but in answer to his question she had explained
to him why she loved him. She said that she loved him because she understood him perfectly;
because she knew that he could love, and that all he loved was good and beautiful.
Levin found the explanation perfectly satisfactory. When the princess came in, they were sitting
side by side on the big chest, looking over the frocks, and discussing their fate. Kitty
wanted to give Duniasha the brown frock that she wore the day Levin proposed to her; and
he insisted that it should not be given to any one, and that Duniasha should have the
blue frock.
"But don't you see that she is a brunette, and the blue frock will not be becoming to
her? .... I have thought it all over." ....
When she learned why Levin was there, the princess was half vexed at him, and sent him
home to make his own toilet and leave Kitty in peace, as Charles was going to dress Kitty's
hair.
"She is quite excited enough," said she; "she has eaten nothing for days, and is losing
all her beauty; and here you come to trouble her with your foolishness. Come, go away now,
my dear."
Levin went back to the hotel, guilty and ashamed, but reassured. His brother, Darya Aleksandrovna,
and Stepan Arkadyevitch, in full dress, were already waiting with holy images to bless
him. There was no time to be lost. Darya Aleksandrovna had to go home again to get her son perfumed
and curled for the occasion; the child was to carry the sacred image before the bride.
Then one carriage must be sent for the shafer or best man, while another was to come to
the hotel for Sergyei Ivanovitch. This day was full of complications.
One thing was certain, that no delay was permissible, for it was already half-past six.
The ceremony of the benediction was anything but solemn. Stepan Arkadyevitch assumed a
comically grave attitude beside his wife, raised the sacred image, and obliged Levin
to kneel before it, while he blessed him with an affectionate and wicked smile; at last
he kissed him three times; and Darya Aleksandrovna did the same very hastily, for she was in
a great hurry to get away, and in great perplexity about the carriage arrangements.
"Well! This is what we will do: you go for him in our carriage, and perhaps Sergyeif
Ivanovitch will be so good as to come immediately, and to send back his." ....
"Certainly, with pleasure."
"We will come back together. Has the luggage been sent."" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Yes," replied Levin; and he called Kuzma to help him dress.
CHAPTER III
A THRONG of people, principally women, surrounded the church, brilliantly lighted for the wedding;
those who could not get inside were pushing up around the windows and elbowing one another
as they strove to look through the gratings.
Already more than twenty carriages stood in a line in the street, under the supervision
of policemen. A police officer stood at the entrance in brilliant uniform, unmindful of
the cold. Carriages kept driving up and departing; now ladies in full dress, holding up their
trains; now men taking off their hats, or kipis. In the church itself both chandeliers
and all the candles before the images were already burning. The golden gleam on the red
background of the ikonostas, and the gilded chasing of the ikons, and the silver of the
candelabra and of the censers, and the flaggings of the floor, and the tapestries and the banners
suspended in the choir and the steps of the pulpit, and the old dingy missals, and the
priestly robes, were all flooded with light.
On the right-hand side of the warm church, amid the brave array of dress-coats, uniforms,
and white neckties, and satin, silk, and velvet robes; of coiffures, flowers, and bare necks
and arms, and long gloves, there was a constant flow of restrained but lively conversation,
which echoed strangely beneath the high, vaulted roof.
Whenever the door opened with a plaintive creak the murmur ceased, and every one turned
around, hoping at last to see the bridal pair. But the door had already opened more than
ten times, and each time it proved to be some belated guest, or guests, admitted among the
number of the friends on the right, or some spectator who had been clever enough to deceive
or elude the police officer, and sat down among the strangers on the left.
The friends and strangers had passed through every phase of waiting; at first they supposed
that the bride and bridegroom would be there any minute, and did not attach any importance
to the delay; then they began to look around at the door more and more frequently, wondering
what could have happened; at last the delay began to be awkward, and the relatives and
invited guests tried to assume an air of indifference, as if they were absorbed in their conversation.
The archdeacon, as ii. to let people know that his time was precious, every now and
then gave an impatient cough, which made the windows rattle; in the choir the singers,
tired of waiting, could be heard, now trying their voices, and now blowing their noses;
the priest kept sending, now a sacristan, now a deacon, to find out if the bridegroom
was coming, and appeared himself more and more frequently at the side doors in his lilac
cassock with its embroidered sash.
Finally a lady looked at her watch, and said to the one sitting next her, "This is very
strange!" And immediately all the invited guests began to express their surprise and
discontent aloud. One of the shafers, or best men, went to see what had happened.
During ail this time Kitty, in her white dress, long veil, and wreath of orange blossoms,
was standing in the "hall" of the Shcherbatsky mansion with her sister, Madame Lvova, and
her nuptial godmother, looking out of the window, and had been waiting for half an hour
for the shafer to announce the bridegroom's arrival at the church.
Levin, meanwhile, in black trousers, but without either coat or waistcoat, was walking up and
down his room at the hotel, opening the door every minute to look out into the corridor.
But in the corridor nothing like what he wanted was to be seen, and, wringing his hands in
despair, he would pour forth his complaints to Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was calmly smoking.
"Did you ever see a man in such a horribly absurd situation?"
"Yes, abominable!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his tranquil smile. "But be calm; they
will have it here very soon."
"No, hang it!" said Levin, with restrained fury, "And these idiotic open waistcoats.
Absolutely useless!" he added, looking at his tumbled shirt-***.
"And what if my trunks have already gone to the railway station?" he exclaimed in despair.
"Then you can wear mine."
"I might have done that in the first place."
"Don't be ridiculous .... wait; it is sure to come all right."
The fact was that when Levin began to dress, Kuzma, his old servant, was supposed to have
taken out his dress-coat, his waistcoat, and all that was necessary.
"But the shirt!" cried Levin.
"You have your shirt on," replied Kuzma, with an innocent smile.
Kuzma had not thought to provide a clean shirt, and, having received his orders to pack everything
up and take them to the Shcherbatskys' house, from which the young couple was to start away
that same evening, he had done so, leaving out only his dress-suit. The one that Levin
had worn all day was tumbled, and unfit to wear with his open waistcoat; it would take
too long to send to the Shcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy one; the lackey returned empty-handed
— everything was shut up: it was Sunday. A shirt was brought from Stepan Arkadyevitch's
house — it was ridiculously broad and short; at last, in despair, he had to send to the
shcherbatskys' to have his trunks opened. So, while the people were waiting in the church,
the unfortunate groom, like a wild beast in a cage, was ramping with despair up and down
his room, looking out into the corridor, and in his horror and despair imagining what kitty
might be thinking all this time.
Finally the guilty Kuzma rushed into the room all out of breath, with the shirt in his hand.
"I got there just in time, as they were carrying off the trunks!" he exclaimed.
In three minutes Levin rushed through the corridor, without daring to look at his watch,
for fear of increasing his agony of mind.
"You can't change anything," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a smile, following leisurely. "I told
you it would come out all right."
CHAPTER IV
"Here they come! — There he is! — Which one? Is it the youngest? Just look at her!
Poor little matushka, more dead than alive!" was murmured through the crowd, as Levin,
having met the bride at the entrance, came into the church with her.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the reason of the delay, and a smile passed over the
congregation as it was whispered about. Levin neither saw any one nor anything, but kept
his eyes fixed on his bride.
Every one said that she had grown very homely during these last days, and certainly she
did not look so pretty under her bridal wreath as usual; but such was not Levin's opinion.
He looked at her high coiffure, with the long white veil attached, and white flowers, at
her high plaited collar encircling her slender neck in a peculiarly maidenly fashion, and
just showing it a little in front, — her remarkably graceful figure; and she seemed
more beautiful to him than ever. But it was not because the flowers or her veil or her
Paris gown added anything to her beauty, but because of the expression of her lovely face,
her eyes, her lips, with their innocent sincerity, preserved in spite of all this adornment.
"I was beginning to think that you had made up your mind to run away," she said to him
with a smile.
"What happened to me was so absurd that I am ashamed to tell you about it," he replied,
reddening, and he was compelled to turn to Sergyef Ivanovitch, who came up at that moment.
"The tale of the shirt is a good one," said Sergyef Ivanovitch, throwing back his head
with a laugh.
"Yes, yes," replied Levin, without understanding a word which had been said.
"Well, Kostia, now is the time to make a serious decision," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pretending
to look greatly scared. "The question is a grave one, and you must appreciate its full
importance. I have been asked whether the candles shall be new ones, or those that have
been partly burned; the difference is ten rubles," he added, pursing his lips in a smile.
"I have decided about it, but I am afraid that you will not approve of it."
Levin knew that there was some joke about it, but he could not smile.
"What will you decide on? new ones, or old ones? — that is the question."
"Yes, yes; new ones."
"Well, I am very glad. The question is settled," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Of how little importance
a man is at such a time as this!" he murmured to Chirikof, while Levin drew near to his
bride, after looking at her in a bewildered way.
"Notice, Kitty, who first sets foot on the carpet!" said the Countess Nordstone, stepping
up to her. — "You look your best," she added, addressing
Levin.
"Are you frightened?" asked Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.
"You aren't cold, are you? You look pale. Bend forward a moment," said Madame Lvova,
raising her beautiful round arms to repair some disarrangement of her sister's flowers.
Dolly came up, and tried to say something; but she could not speak, and burst into tears
and laughed unnaturally.
Kitty looked at those around her as absent-mindedly as Levin.
During this time the officiating clergymen had put on their sacerdotal robes, and the
priest, accompanied by the deacon, came to the lectern placed at the entrance of the
sacred doors. The priest addressed a few words to Levin; but Levin failed to understand what
he said.
"Take the bride's hand and go forward," whispered his best man to him.
For a long time he was unable to make out what was expected of him. For a long time
they tried to coach him and were ready to give it up, because he did the opposite of
what he was told. Finally, he comprehended that he was to take Kitty's right hand with
his right hand, without changing his position. When at last he took his bride by her hand
in the proper way, the priest advanced a few steps, and stopped in front of the lectern.
The relatives and invited guests followed the young couple with a murmur of voices and
a rustling of trains. Some one stooped down to arrange the bride's train; in the church,
a silence so profound reigned that the drops of wax could be heard falling from the candles.
The old priest, in a calotte, his white hair shining like silver, drawn back behind his
ears, drew forth his little wrinkled hands from beneath his heavy silver chasuble, ornamented
with a cross of gold, approached the lectern, and turned over the leaves of the missal.
Stepan Arkadyevitch came softly and spoke in his ear, made a sign to Levin, and then
stepped back.
The priest lighted two candles decorated with flowers, and, holding them slanting in his
left hand, so that the wax slowly fell from them, turned toward the young couple. It was
the same old man who had heard Levin's confession. He looked at the bride and bridegroom out
of his sad, weary eyes, and then, with a sigh, blessed Levin with his right hand; then, with
especial tenderness, placed his fingers on Kitty's bended head, gave them the candles,
and taking the censer moved quietly away.
"Is this all real?" thought Levin, and he glanced at his bride. He looked down somewhat
from above on her profile, and by the motion of her lips and her eyebrows he knew that
she felt his look. She did not raise her head; but the high-plaited collar which reached
to her little pink ear trembled a little. He saw that she was stifling a sigh, and her
hand, imprisoned in its long glove, trembled as it held the candle.
The whole affair of the shirt, his late arrival, his conversation with his relatives and friends,
their displeasure, his ridiculous position, — everything at once vanished from his memory,
and he was conscious of a mixed feeling of terror and joy.
The archdeacon, a tall, handsome man, his hair curling all around his head and wearing
a stikhar, or surplice, of silver cloth, came briskly forward, and with the customary gesture
raised his stole with two fingers, and stopped before the priest.
"Bless us, O Lord!" slowly, one after the other, rocking the atmosphere into billows
of sound, echoed the solemn syllables.
"May the Lord bless you now and through all ages," replied the old priest in a sweet and
musical voice, still turning over the leaves.
And the response, chanted by the invisible choir, filled the church to the very roof
of the vault with a deep, full sound, which increased, then ceased for a moment, and softly
died away.
They prayed as usual for the eternal repose and welfare of their souls, for the synod,
and the emperor, and then for the servants of God, Konstantin and Yekaterina, that day
about to wed.
"Let us pray the Lord to send them His love. His peace, and His aid," the whole church
seemed to say in the voice of the archdeacon.
Levin listened to these words, and was impressed by them.
"How did they know that aid was exactly what I need? Yes, aid. What can I know, what can
I do, without aid?" he thought, recalling his recent doubts and fears.
When the deacon had ended the liturgy, the priest, with a book in his hand, turned toward
the bridal couple: —
"O God Eternal, who unitest by an indissoluble bond those who are separate," he read, in
a strong melodious voice, "Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca, and showest Thy mercy
to their descendants, bless also these Thy servants, Konstantin and Yekaterina, and pour
forth Thy benefits upon them. Because thou art a merciful and beneficent God, we offer
Thee the glory! To the Father, and to the Son, and to the holy Ghost, as it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be .... "
"Amen," again chanted the invisible choir.
"' Who unitest by an indissoluble bond those who are separate! How those profound words
respond to what one feels at such a time! Does she understand it as I do?" thought Levin.
And looking down he gazed into her eyes.
From the expression of Kitty's face he concluded that she did feel it as he did; but he was
mistaken: she scarcely comprehended the words of the service, and during the time of the
espousal did not even hear them. She could not hear them or comprehend them, so powerful
was the single feeling which filled her heart and kept increasing all the time. This feeling
was one of delight at the perfect fulfilment of what had been taking place in her heart
during the past month and a half, and during those six weeks had made her happy and restless
by turns.
From that day when, in her cinnamon-colored gown, in the "hall" of their house on the
Arbatsky, she had silently approached Levin to give herself wholly to him, from that day,
from that moment, she felt a complete rupture had been made with all her past life, and
another existence, new and unknown, without, however, changing her outward life, had begun.
These six weeks had been at once a very happy and very trying time. Her whole life, her
hopes and desires, were all concentrated on this man, whom she did not even yet fully
understand, to whom she was united by a sentiment which she understood still less, and which
attracted her and repelled her by turns, and at the same time she had gone on living in
the conditions of her former life. Living this old life, she was horrified at herself,
at her complete and invincible indifference toward her whole past: to things, to habits,
even to her relatives, whom she loved, and who loved her, her mother, who was pained
by her indifference, and her gentle father, whom she had loved more than any one else
in the world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at the next she was
filled with joy at that which had brought her to such a feeling. She could not imagine
or desire anything except life with this man; but this new life had not yet begun, and she
could form no definite idea of it. It was only an expectation, a fear and joy of something
new and unknown. And now this expectation, as well as her remorse for not regretting
the past, were at an end, and the new life was beginning. This new and unknown future
could not fail to be alarming, but whether it was alarming or not, it was only the fulfilment
of what had taken place in her soul six weeks before, only the sanctification of what had
been taking place in her soul for a long time.
The priest, turning to the lectern again, with difficulty took off Kitty's little ring,
and passed it as far as the first joint of Levin's finger.
"I unite thee, Konstantin, servant of God, to Yekaterina, servant of God;" and he repeated
the same formula in placing a large ring on Kitty's delicate little rosy finger, pathetic
in its weakness.
The bridal pair tried to understand what was expected of them, but each time made a mistake,
and the priest corrected them in a low voice. At last the priest, blessing them with his
fingers, again gave Kitty the large ring, and Levin the small one, and again they got
confused, and twice passed the rings from hand to hand, failing to interchange them
as they should have done.
Dolly Chirikof and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped out to assist them in their difficulty. The
people around them smiled and whispered; but the tenderly solemn expression on the faces
of the young couple did not change. On the contrary, even when they were blundering with
the rings, they looked more serious and solemn than before; and the smile on Stepan Arkadyevitch's
face died away, as he whispered to them that they were to put on their own rings. It seemed
to him that a smile might be offensive to them.
"O Thou who, from the beginning of the world, hast created man, male and female," continued
the priest, after the ceremony of the rings, " and hast given to man the woman to be his
aid and delight, therefore, O Thou, our Lord God, who hast given Thy blessing to Thy chosen,
to Thy servants, our fathers, to Thine inheritance, do thou bless Thy servants Konstantin and
Yekaterina, and confirm their nuptials in faith and concord and truth and love!"
Levin's breast heaved; disobedient tears filled his eyes. He kept feeling more and more that
all his thoughts on marriage, his visions of how he should dispose his life, had hitherto
been infantile, and that there was something that had never been comprehensible to him;
and now he understood its meaning less than ever, although he was now wholly in its power.
CHAPTER V
All Moscow, all the relatives and acquaintances, were at the church. And during the time of
the marriage service, in the brilliant light that flooded the church, in that throng of
handsomely dressed women and girls, and of men in white neckties, in swallow-tails, or
in uniform, there was a decorously subdued conversation, especially among the men, for
the women were absorbed in observing all the details of a ceremony which is always so full
of interest for them.
A little group of friends surrounded the bride, and among them were her two sisters, Dolly,
and the beautiful Madame Lvova just returned from abroad.
"Why is Mary in lilac at a wedding? It is almost mourning," said Madame Korsunsky.
"With her complexion it's her only salvation," replied Madame Drubetsky. "But I wonder why
they had the ceremony in the evening? That savors of the merchant."
"It is pleasanter. I, too, was married in the evening," said Madame Korsunsky, sighing,
and recalling how beautiful she had been on that day, and how ridiculously in love with
her her husband had been, and how it was all so different now!
"They say that those who have been best men more than ten times never marry. I tried to
make myself proof against marriage, in this way, but the place was taken," said Count
Siniavin to the handsome young princess Charskaya, who had designs on him.
A smile was her only reply. She was looking at kitty, and thinking how and when she would
stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty's place; and how she would then remind him of the joke
that he had made.
Shcherbatsky confided to the old Freflina Nikolayeva his intention to place the crown
on Kitty's head-dress to bring her good luck.
"There is no need of wearing a head-dress," replied Freflina Nikolayeva, who had long
ago decided that if the old widower whom she was setting her cap for should offer himself,
she would be married very simply. "I don't like this display."
Sergyeif Ivanovitch was talking with Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly declaring that the fashion
of wedding tours was becoming widespread because young couples were always rather bashful.
"Your brother may well be proud of his choice. She is charming. You must envy him."
"The time has gone by for that, Darya Dmitrievna," he replied, and an unexpected expression of
sadness overspread his face.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his pun on divorce.
"Somebody ought to arrange her wreath," replied the latter, without listening.
"What a pity that she has grown so ugly!" said the countess Nordstone to Madame Lvova.
"After all, he isn't worth her little finger, is he?"
"I don't agree with you; I am very much pleased with him, and not only because he is going
to be my beautiful," replied Madame Lvova. "How well he appears! It is so difficult to
appear well at such a time and not to be absurd. He is neither ridiculous nor stiff; one feels
that he is touched."
"Did you expect this marriage?"
"Almost. He has always been in love with her."
"Well, we shall see which will be the first to step on the carpet. I have advised Kitty
to look out for that."
"That makes no difference," replied Madame Lvova; "in our family we are all submissive
wives."
"But I have taken pains to keep mine under the thumb. — How is it with you, Dolly?"
Dolly was standing near them, and heard them, but she did not reply. She was affected; tears
filled her eyes, and she could not have uttered a word without crying. She was glad for Kitty
and Levin; she was thinking of her own wedding; and as she glanced at the brilliant Stepan
Arkadyevitch, she forgot the real state of things, and only remembered his first, innocent
love. She was thinking, too, of other women, — her relatives and acquaintances, — whom
she remembered at this important and solemn hour of their lives; how they, like Kitty,
stood under the crown; how they renounced the past with joy, and began a mysterious
future, with hope and fear in their hearts. Among the number she recalled her dear Anna,
the details of whose approaching divorce she had just heard; she had seen her enveloped
in a white veil, as pure as Kitty, with her wreath of orange-blossoms. And now? It is
terribly strange!" she whispered.
The sisters and friends were not the only ones to follow with interest the minutest
details of the ceremony; there were women among the strangers looking on, who held their
breath, for fear of losing a single movement of bride or bridegroom, and who replied absent-mindedly
to the jokes or idle remarks of the men, often not even hearing them,
"Why is she so troubled? Are they marrying her against her will?"
"Against her will? to such a handsome man? Is he a prince?"
"Is that her sister in white satin? There! Just hear the deacon howl, ' Let her fear
her husband '!"
"Are the singers from Chudof?"
"No; from the synod."
"I have asked the servant about it. He says that her husband is going to take her away
to his estate. Awfully rich, they say. That is why she is marrying him."
"They make a handsome pair."
"And you pretend to say, Marya Vasilievna, that they don't wear crinolines^ any longer.
Just look at that one in a puce-colored dress! You would say she was an ambassador's wife
by the way she is dressed. Do you see now?"
"What a sweet little creature the bride is! — like a lamb for the slaughter. You may
say what you please, I can't help pitying her."
Such were the remarks of the spectators who had succeeded in getting past the door of
the church.
CHAPTER VI
As the service of espousal was coming to an end, one of the officiating priests spread
a piece of rose-colored silk in front of the lectern, in the center of the church, the
choir chanted an artistic and complicated psalm, in which the tenor and bass sang responsively,
and the priest, turning to the young couple, attracted their attention to the piece of
rose-colored fabric.
They were both familiar with the superstition that whichever one of a, bridal couple first
sets foot on the carpet becomes the real head of the family, but neither kitty nor Levin
remembered anything about it after they had gone a few steps, And they did not hear the
remarks exchanged about them, or the discussions between those who thought that he was the
first and those who were sure that they touched it simultaneously.
After the customary questions as to their willingness to enter into the bonds of matrimony,
and would they plight their mutual troth, and their answers, which sounded strangely
loud to their own ears, a new office began. Kitty listened to the words of the prayers
and tried to understand them, but she could not. The farther the ceremony proceeded, the
more her heart overflowed with triumphant joy, which prevented her from fixing her attention.
They prayed to God that "the pair might have the gift of chastity, and might rejoice in
the sight of many sons and daughters;" they recalled how God had made
"the first woman from Adam's side," that "the woman must leave father and mother and cling
to her husband, and they twain shall be one flesh," and that this is a great miracle;
they prayed God " to give them fecundity and prosperity, as he had blessed Isaac and Rebecca,
Joseph, Moses, and Sephora, and to let them see their children to the third and fourth
generation."
"All this is lovely," thought Kitty, as she heard these words; "all this is just as it
should be." And a smile of happiness, which was reflected on the faces of all who saw
her, shone on her fair, lovely face.
"Put it entirely on," were the words heard in every part of the church, as the priest
brought forward the crowns, and Shcherbatsky, in his three-button gloves, tremblingly held
the wreath high above Kitty's head.
"Put it on," whispered the latter, smiling.
Levin turned round, and was struck by the radiant joy which filled her face, and the
same feeling, in spite of himself, took possession of him; he felt, like her, happy and serene.
They listened with joy in their hearts to the reading of the Epistle, and the archdeacon's
voice echoing the jast verse, fully appreciated by the strangers, who were impatiently waiting
for it. Joyfully they drank the warm red wine and water from the flat cup, and they felt
still more joyful when the priest, throwing back his chasuble, led them around the lectern,
holding both their hands in his, while the bass sang, at the top of his voice, Isa'iye
likiii. Shcherbatsky and Chirikof, carrying the crowns, smiling and constantly treading
on the bride's train, now straggled behind, now bumped into the crowned couple, as the
priest paused in front of the relics. The gleam of joy on Kitty's face seemed to be
communicated to all present. Levin was sure that the deacon and the priest fell under
its influence as well as himself.
When the crowns had been taken from their heads, the priest read the last prayers and
congratulated the young couple. Levin looked at Kitty and thought he had never seen her
so beautiful; it was the beauty of that new radiance of happiness which transformed her;
he wanted to say something to her, but did not know whether the ceremony was yet over
or not. The priest relieved him from his uncertainty, and said gently to him, with a kindly smile:
—
"Kiss your wife, and you, kiss your husband," and he took their candles.
Levin, with circumspection, kissed his wife's smiling lips, gave her his arm, and went out
of the church with a new and strange feeling of being suddenly very near to her. He had
not believed, he could not believe, that all this was reality. Nor until their astonished
and timid eyes met did he believe it, because he felt that they were indeed one.
That same evening, after the supper, the young couple started for the country.
CHAPTER VII
Vronsky and Anna had been traveling together in Europe for three months. They had visited
Venice, Rome, Naples; and now they were just arrived at a small Italian city, where they
intended to make a considerable stay.
At the hotel the head butler, a regular Adonis of a man, who wore his thick pomaded hair
parted behind from the neck, and a dress-coat with a wide expanse of white shirt-front and
watch-charms over his rotund belly, was standing with his hands thrust into his pockets, scornfully
blinking his eyes, and giving curt answers to a gentleman who had entered the hotel.
Hearing steps on the other side of the entrance, the head butler turned around, and, seeing
the Russian count, who rented his most expensive apartments, he respectfully drew his hands
out of his pockets, and, with a low bow, informed the count that a messenger had come to say
that the palazzo was at his service. The agent was ready to sign the agreement.
"Ah! I am very glad," said Vronsky. "Is madame at home?"
"She has been out, but she has returned," replied the butler.
Vronsky took off his wide-brimmed soft hat, and wiped his heated forehead with his handkerchief,
and smoothed his hair, which was so arranged as to hide his bald spot. Then, casting a
hasty glance at the stranger, who had stopped, and was looking at him earnestly, he started
to go.
"This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring for you," said the head butler.
With a mingled feeling of vexation because he never could get away from acquaintances,
and of pleasure at the idea of any distraction from his monotonous existence, Vronsky once
more looked at the gentleman, who had started to go and then stopped, and at one and the
same time their eyes met. "Golenishchef!"
"Vronsky!"
It was indeed Golenishchef, one of Vronsky's schoolmates in the Corps of Pages. He had
belonged to the liberal party in the Corps, and, after his graduation, he had taken a
civil rank, and had not served. The comrades had entirely drifted apart since their graduation,
and had met only once. At that meeting Vronsky had perceived that Golenishchef looked down
from the lofty heights of his chosen liberal profession on Vronsky's profession and career.
Consequently, Vronsky at that meeting with Golenishchef had given him that cold and haughty
reception with which it was his fashion to treat people, as much as to say: " You may
like or dislike my manner of life, but it is absolutely of no consequence to me; you
must respect me if you want to know me." Golenishchef had been scornfully indifferent to Vronsky's
manner. That meeting, it would seem, should have driven them still farther apart; yet
now, at the sight of each other, they each uttered a cry of delight. Vronsky had never
realized how glad he would be to see Golenishchef; but the fact was that he did not know how
bored he was. He forgot the unpleasant impression of their previous meeting, and with manifest
pleasure extended his hand to his old comrade. And likewise a look of satisfaction succeeded
the troubled expression on Golenishchef's face.
"How glad I am to see you!" said Vronsky, with a friendly smile which showed his handsome
white teeth.
"I heard the name Vronsky, but which .... I did not know .... I am very, very glad."
"But come in. Well, what are you doing?"
"Oh, I have been living here for more than a year, working."
"Ah!" said Vronsky, with interest. "But come in." And, according to the habit of Russians,
instead of saying in Russian what he did not wish to be understood by servants, he said
in French: —
"Do you know Madame Karenin? We have been traveling together. I was just going to her
room."
And while he was speaking he studied Golenishchef s face.
"Ah! I did not know," remarked Golenishchef, carelessly; but he did know, "Have you been
here long?"
"I? Oh, this is the fourth day," replied Vronsky, continuing to study his companion.
"Yes! He is a gentleman, and looks upon things in the right light," he said to himself, giving
a favorable interpretation to Golenishchef's way of turning the conversation; "he can be
presented to Anna; his views are all right"
Vronsky, during this three months which he had been spending with Anna abroad, had felt
every time that he met with new acquaintances a hesitation as to the manner in which they
would look on his relations with Anna, and for the most part the men had looked on them
" in the right light." If he or they had been asked what they meant by the expression "in
the right light," they would have found it hard to tell. In reality, those that according
to Vronsky looked on it " in the right light " had never looked on it at all, but as a
general thing contented themselves with a wise discretion, not asking questions or making
allusions, and behaved altogether as well-bred people behave when presented with delicate
and complex questions such as surround life on all sides. They pretended that they fully
appreciated the meaning and significance of the situation, recognized and even approved
of it, but considered it ill-judged and superfluous to explain it.
Vronsky instantly saw that Golenishchef was one of these discreet people, and was therefore
glad to meet him.
In fact Golenishchef behaved toward Madame Karenin when he was introduced to her in exactly
the manner that Vronsky demanded; it evidently cost him no effort to avoid all words that
would lead to any awkwardness.
He had never seen Anna before, and was delighted with her beauty, and still more with the perfect
simplicity with which she accepted the situation. She flushed when she saw Vronsky come in with
Golenishchef, and this infantile color which spread over her frank and lovely face pleased
him immensely. But he was delighted because from the very first, as if purposely, even
in the presence of a stranger, which might have caused restraint, she called Vronsky
Aleksei, and told how they had just rented a house which the people called a palazso,
and how she was going to occupy it with him. The simple and straightforward facing of their
situation was delightful to Golenishchef. Perceiving Anna's happy and vivacious manner,
knowing Aleksei Aleksandrovitch and Vronsky, it seemed to him that he thoroughly understood
her. It seemed to him that he understood what she herself did not understand: how she could
desert her unhappy husband and her son, and lose her good repute, and still feel animated,
gay, and happy.
"It is in the guide-book," said Golenishchef, speaking of the Palazzo which Vronsky called
by name. "There is a superb Tintoretto there. In his
latest manner."
"Do you know that? It is splendid weather; let's go over and look at it again," said
Vronsky, addressing Anna.
"I should like to very much. I will go and put on my hat. Did you say it was hot?" said
she, pausing at the door and looking back to Vronsky. And again the bright color came
into her face.
Vronsky saw by her look that she was uncertain how he wished to treat Golenishchef, and that
she was afraid that her behavior might not be what he desired.
He looked at her long and tenderly. Then he replied: —
"No, not very."
And it seemed to her that she comprehended him perfectly, and especially that he was
satisfied with her, and, replying with a smile, she went out with a quick and graceful motion.
The friends looked at each other, and there came into the faces of both an expression
of embarrassment, as if Golenishchef, admiring her, wished to make some complimentary remark,
and had not the courage, while Vronsky both wished and feared to hear it.
"Well, then," Vronsky began, so that some conversation might be started, " so you are
settled here? Are you still interested in the same pursuits?" he asked, remembering
that he had been told that Golenishchef was writing something.
"Yes; I have been writing the second part of the
'Two Origins," replied Golenishchef, kindling with delight at this question; "that is, to
be more exact, I am not writing yet, but have been collecting and preparing my materials.
It will be far more extended, and will touch on almost all questions. At home, in Russia,
they can't understand that we are successors of Byzantium," and he began a long and vehement
explanation.
Vronsky at first felt awkward because he did not know about the first part of the "Two
Origins," about which the author spoke as if it were something well known. But afterward,
as Golenishchef began to develop his thought, and Vronsky saw what he meant, then, even
though he did not know about the "Two Origins," he listened not without interest, for Golenishchef
spoke well.
But Vronsky was surprised and annoyed at the irritable excitement under which Golenishchef
labored while talking about the object that absorbed him. The longer he spoke, the brighter
grew his eyes, the more animated were his arguments in refutation of imaginary opponents,
and the more angry and excited the expression of his face.
Vronsky remembered Golenishchef at the School of pages, — a lad of small stature, thin,
nervous, agile, a good-hearted and gentlemanly lad, always at the head of his class, and
he could not understand the reasons for such irascibility and he did not approve of it.
And it especially displeased him that Golenishchef, a man of good social standing, should put
himself down on the level of these common scribblers, and get angry with them because
they criticized him. Was it worth while? It displeased him; but, nevertheless, he felt
that Golenishchef was making himself miserable and he was sorry for him.
This unhappiness, almost amounting to insanity, was particularly noticeable on his mobile
and rather handsome face, while he went on so hurriedly and heatedly expressing his thoughts
that he did not notice Anna's return.
As Anna came in, wearing her hat and with a mantle thrown over her shoulders, and stood
near them, twirling her sunshade in her lovely, slender hand, Vronsky felt a sense of relief
in turning away from Golenishchef's feverish eyes fixed keenly on him, and looked with
an ever new love at his charming companion, radiant with life and gayety.
It was hard for Golenishchef to come to himself, and at first he was surly and cross; but Anna,
who was flatteringly amiable toward every one, for such at this time was her disposition,
quickly brought him into sympathy with her gay and natural manner. After essaying various
topics of conversation, she brought him round to painting, about which he spoke very well,
and she listened to him attentively. They walked over to the palazzo and made a thorough
inspection of it.
"I am very glad of one thing," said Anna to Golenishchef; "Aleksei will have a nice atelier.
Of course you'll take this room! she added, turning to Vronsky and speaking to him in
Russian, using the familiar tni (thou) as if she already looked on Golenishchef as an
intimate, before whom it was not necessary to be reserved.
"Do you paint?" asked Golenishchef, turning vivaciously to Vronsky.
"Yes, I used to paint long ago, and now I am going to take it up again," replied Vronsky,
with color.
"He has great talent," cried Anna, with a radiant smile. "Of course I am not a judge.
But good judges say so."
CHAPTER VIII
Anna, during this first period of freedom and rapid convalescence, felt herself inexcusably
happy and full of joyous life. The memory of her husband's unhappiness did not poison
her pleasure. This memory in one way was too horrible to think of. In another, her husband's
unhappiness was the cause of a happiness for her too great to allow regret. The memory
of everything that had followed since her sickness, the reconciliation with her husband,
the quarrel, Vronsky's wound, his sudden appearance, the preparations for the divorce, the flight
from her husband's home, the separation from her son, — all this seemed like a delirious
dream, from which she awoke and found herself abroad alone with Vronsky. The recollection
of the injury which she had done her husband aroused in her a feeling akin to disgust,
and like that which a drowning man might experience after having pushed away a person clinging
to him. The other person was drowned. Of course, what had been done was evil, but it was the
only possible salvation, and it was better not to return to those horrible memories.
One consoling argument in regard to her conduct occurred to her at the first moment of the
rupture, and now, whenever she thought of all that had passed, she went over this argument.
"I have done my husband an irrevocable injury," she said to herself, " but at least I get
no advantage from his misfortune. I also suffer and shall suffer. I give up all that was dearest
to me; I give up my good name and my son. I have sinned, and therefore I do not desire
happiness, do not desire a divorce, and I accept my shame and the separation from my
son."
But, however sincere Anna was when she reasoned thus, she had not suffered. She had felt no
shame. With that tact which both she and Vronsky possessed to perfection, they had avoided,
while abroad, any meeting with Russian ladies, and they had never put themselves into any
false position, but had associated only with those who pretended to understand their situation
much better than they themselves did. Nor even the separation from her son, whom she
loved, caused her any pain at this time. Her baby, her daughter, was so lovely and had
so filled her heart since only the daughter was left to her, that she rarely thought of
the son.
The joy of living caused by her convalescence was so keen, the conditions of her existence
were so new and delightful, that Anna felt inexcusably happy. The more she came to know
Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for his own sake and for his love for
her. The complete surrender to him was a delight. His presence was always a joy to her. All
the traits of his character as she came to know them better and better became to her
inexpressibly dear. His appearance, now that he dressed in civil attire instead of uniform,
was as entrancing to her as for a young girl desperately in love. In all he said, thought,
or did, she saw something noble and elevated. She herself often felt frightened at this
excessive worship of him. She tried in vain to find any imperfection in him. She did not
dare to confess to him her own inferiority, lest he, knowing it, should love her less.
And now there was nothing that she feared so much, although there was not the slightest
occasion for it, as to lose his love. But she could not fail to be grateful to him for
the way he treated her or to show him how much she prized it.
Although in her opinion he had shown such a decided vocation for statesmanship, in which
he would certainly have played an important part, and had sacrificed his ambition for
her, still he had never expressed the slightest regret. He was more than ever affectionately
respectful, and careful that she should never feel in the slightest degree the compromising
character of her position. This man, so masculine, not only never opposed her, but moreover it
might be said that he had no will besides hers, and his only aim seemed to be to anticipate
her desires. And she could not but appreciate this, though this very assiduity in his attentions,
this atmosphere of solicitude which he threw around her, was sometimes oppressive to her.
Vronsky, meantime, notwithstanding the complete realization of all that he had desired so
long, was not entirely happy. He soon began to feel that the accomplishment of his desires
was only a small portion of the mountain of pleasure which he had anticipated. This realization
now proved to him the eternal error made by men who imagine their happiness lies in the
accomplishment of their desires. During the first of the time after he had begun to live
with her, and had put on his citizen's clothes, he experienced all the charm of a freedom
such as he had never known before and the freedom of love, and he was satisfied with
that; but not for long. He soon began to feel rising in his soul the desire of desires — toska,
melancholy, homesickness, etmui. Involuntarily, he began to follow every light caprice as
if they were serious aspirations and ends.
It was necessary to fill sixteen hours each day with some occupation, living, as they
did, abroad, in perfect freedom, away from the social and military duties that took Vronsky's
time at Petersburg. He could not think of indulging in the pleasures such as he had
enjoyed as a bachelor during his previous trips abroad, for one experiment of that kind
— a scheme of a late supper with some acquaintances — reduced Anna to a most unexpected and
uncomfortable state of dejection. The enjoyment with foreign or Russian society was impossible
on account of the peculiarity of their relation. And to amuse himself with the curiosities
of the country was not to be spoken of, not only because he had already seen them, but
because as a Russian and a man of sense, he could not find in them that immense importance
that the English are pleased to attach to them.
And as a hungry animal throws itself on everything that presents itself, hoping to find in it
something to eat, so Vronsky, with perfect spontaneity, attacked, now politics, now new
books, now painting.
As, when he was young, he had shown some inclination toward art, and, not knowing what to do with
his money, had begun to collect engravings, he had tried his hand at painting. And now
he took it up again, and employed in it that unexpended superfluity of energy which demanded
employment. He had the capacity for appreciating art, and he thought that this was all that
an artist needed. After having for some time hung doubtful which he would choose, — the
religious, the historical, genre, or the realistic, — he actually began to paint. He understood
all kinds, and could get inspiration from each; but he could not imagine that it was
possible to be entirely ignorant of the various styles of art and to draw inspiration directly
from what is in the soul itself, not caring what may be the result or to what famous school
it may belong. As he did not know this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life,
but from life as expressed in art, so he became easily and speedily inspired, and with equal
ease and rapidity succeeded in making what he undertook to paint a very good resemblance
to that style which he was trying to imitate.
More than all others, the graceful and effective French school appealed to him, and in this
style he began a portrait of Anna in an Italian costume; and this portrait seemed to him and
to all that saw it very successful.
CHAPTER IX
The old, dilapidated palazzo into which they moved supplied Vronsky with the agreeable
illusion that he was not so much a Russian proprietor, a shtalmefster in retirement,
as he was an enlightened amateur and protector of art, in his own modest way an artist, who
had sacrificed society, his ties, his ambition, for a woman's love. This ancient palace, with
its lofty stuccoed ceilings, its frescoed walls, its mosaic floors, its yellow tapestries,
its thick, yellow curtains at the high windows, its vases on mantelpiece and consoles, its
carved doors, and its melancholy halls hung with paintings, lent itself readily to his
illusion.
This new rdle which Vronsky had chosen, together with their removal to the palazzo and acquaintance
with several interesting persons, which came about through golenishchef, made the first
part of this period very enjoyable. Under the instruction of an Italian professor of
painting, he made some studies from nature, and he took up the study of Italian life during
the middle Ages. Medieval Italian life became so fascinating to him that he began to wear
his hat and throw his plaid over his shoulders in the medieval style, which was very becoming
to him.
"Here we are alive, and yet we know nothing," said Vronsky one morning to Golenishchef,
who came in to see him. " Have you seen Mikhailof's painting?" he asked, and at the same time
handed him a Russian paper just received, and indicated an article on this artist, who
was living in that very city, and had just completed a picture about which many reports
had long been in circulation, and which had been sold on the easel. The article severely
criticized the government and the academy that an artist of such genius was left without
any encouragement and aid.
"I have seen it," replied Golenishchef. "Of course he is not without talent, but his tendencies
are absolutely false. He always shows the Ivanof-Straussrenan conception of Christ and
religious art."
"What is the subject of his painting?" asked Anna.
"Christ before Pilate. The Christ is a Jew with all the realism of the new school."
And as this subject was a favorite one with him, he began to develop his ideas.
"I cannot understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. The type of the Christ
in art was clearly represented by the old masters. Accordingly, if they want to paint,
not God, but a sage or a revolutionist, let them take Franklin or Socrates, or Charlotte
Corday, — but not Christ. They take the very person whom art should not attempt to
portray, and then ...."
"Is it true that this Mikhailof is in such poverty?" asked Vronsky, who felt that in
his quality of Russian Maecenas he ought to find some way of aiding the artist, whether
his painting was good or not.
"It is doubtful. He is a famous portrait painter. Have you not seen his portrait of Madame Vasilchikof?
but it seems he doesn't care to paint portraits any longer, and perhaps that is the reason
he is in need. I say that...."
"Couldn't we ask him to paint Anna Arkadyevna's portrait?"
"Why mine?" she demanded. "After your portrait of me, I want no other. It would be better
to let him paint Ani [so she called her daughter], or her," she added, looking out of the window
at the pretty Italian nurse, who was just taking the baby into the garden. And at the
same time she gave Vronsky a furtive glance. This pretty Italian woman, whose face Vronsky
had taken as a model for a picture, was the only secret woe in Anna's life. Vronsky painted
her picture, admired her beauty and her medieval quaintness, and Anna did not dare to confess
to herself that she feared she was going to be jealous, and was accordingly all the more
kind to her and her little boy.
Vronsky also looked out of the window, and at Anna's eyes, and, instantly turning to
Golenishchef, said: —
"And so you know this Mikhailof?"
"I have met him. But he is an original — a cJmdak — without any education, you know,
one of these new-fashioned savages such as you meet with nowadays — you know them — these
free-thinkers, who rush headlong into atheism, materialism, universal negation. Once," golenishchef
went on to say, either not noticing or not wishing to notice that both Vronsky and Anna
were ready to speak, " once the free-thinker was a man educated in the conceptions of religion,
law, and morality, who did not ignore the laws by which society is regulated, and who
reached freedom of thought only after long struggles. But now we have a new type of them,
— free-thinkers who grow up without even knowing that there are such things as laws
in morality and religion, who will not admit that sure authorities exist, and who possess
only the sentiment of negation; in a word, savages. Mikhaflof is one of these. He is
the son of a major-domo, or ober-lakei? Moscow, and never had any education. When he entered
the academy, and had made a reputation, he was willing to be taught, for he is not a
fool; and, with this end in view, he turned to that source of all learning, — the magazines
and reviews. Now you know in the good old times, if a man — let us say a Frenchman
— wanted to get an education, he would study the classics, — the preachers, the tragic
poets, the historians, the philosophers; and you can see all the intellectual labor that
involved. But nowadays he turns to negative literature, and succeeds very speedily in
getting a smattering of such a science. And, again, twenty years ago, he would have found
in this same literature traces of the struggle against the authorities and secular traditions
of the past; he would have understood from this dispute that there was some thing else.
But now he turns directly to a literature where the old traditions are of no avail at
all, but men say up and down there is nothing — natural selection, evolution, struggle
for existence, negation, and all. In my article.... "
"Do you know," said Anna, after exchanging several glances with Vronsky, and noticing
that he was not interested in the artist's education, but was occupied only with the
thought of helping him and getting him to paint the portrait. "What do you say?" said
she, resolutely cutting short Golenishchef's verbiage, "let us go and see him."
Golenishchef, after deliberating, readily consented; and, as the artist lived in a remote
quarter, they had a carriage called. An hour later, Anna, occupying the same seat in the
calash with Golenishchef and Vronsky, drove up to an ugly new house in a distant part
of the city. When they learned from the concierge's wife, who came to receive them, that Mikhaflof
permitted visitors to his studio, but that he was now at his lodgings a few steps distant,
they sent her to him with their cards, and begged to be admitted to see his paintings.
CHAPTER X
The painter Mikhaflof was at work as usual, when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishchef
were brought him. He had been painting all the morning in his studio on his great picture,
but, when he reached his house, he became enraged with his wife because of her failure
to make terms with their landlady, who demanded money.
"I have told you twenty times not to go into explanations with her. You are a fool anyway;
but when you try to argue in Italian, you are three times as much of a fool," said he,
at the end of a long dispute.
"Why do you get behindhand so?" It is not my fault if I had any money.... "
"For heaven's sake, give me some peace!" cried Mikhailof, his voice thick with tears; and,
putting his hands over his ears, he hastily rushed to the workroom, separated from the
sitting-room by a partition, and bolted the door. "She hasn't any common sense," he said
to himself, as he sat down at his table, and, opening a portfolio, addressed himself with
feverish ardor to a sketch which he had already begun.
He never worked with such zeal and success as when his life went hard, and especially
when he had been quarreling with his wife. "Akh! it must be somewhere!" he said to himself,
as he went on with his work. He had begun a study of a man seized with a fit of anger.
He had made the sketch some time before; but he was dissatisfied with it. "No," said he,
"that one was better .... but where is it ?".. ..He went back to his wife with an air
of vexation, and, without looking at her, asked his eldest daughter for the piece of
paper which he had given her. The paper with the sketch on it was found, but it was soiled
and covered with drops of tallow. Nevertheless, he took it as it was, laid it on the table,
examined it from a distance, squinting his eyes; then suddenly he smiled, with a satisfied
gesture.
"So! so!" he cried, taking a pencil, and drawing some rapid lines. One of the tallow spots
gave his sketch a new aspect.
He sketched in this new pose,* and suddenly remembered the prominent chin and energetic
face of the man of whom he bought his cigars, and instantly he gave his design the same
kind of a face and prominent chin. He laughed with delight. The figure ceased to be something
vague and dead, but became animated, and took a form which could not be bettered. This figure
was alive, and was clearly and indubitably delineated. it was possible to correct the
sketch in conformity with the demands of this figure; it was possible and even requisite
to set the legs in a different way, to make an absolute change in the position of the
left arm, to rearrange the hair; but after he had finished these corrections he made
no changes in the figure but only cleared away what concealed it. He, as it were, took
from it the veils behind which it was not wholly visible. Each new stroke only the more
exposed the entire figure in all its energetic power, just as it had suddenly appeared to
him in the spot made by the wax. He laughed with delight. He was carefully finishing his
design when the two cards were brought him.
"I will come instantly," he replied.
He went to his wife.
"There, come, Sasha, don't be vexed," he said, with a smile tender and timid. "You were wrong;
so was I. I will settle matters."
And, having made his peace with her, he put on an olive-green overcoat with velvet collar,
took his hat, and went to his studio. His successfully completed sketch was already
quite forgotten, now he was delighted and surprised by the visit of these stylish Russians
who had come to see him in a carriage.
In the depth of his soul his opinion on the painting which was on his easel at that time
was as follows: —
"No one has ever painted another like it." He did not believe that his painting was better
than all the Raphaels; but he knew that no one had ever put into a picture what he had
tried to put into this one. This he knew assuredly, and had known it ever since he had begun to
paint it. Nevertheless, the criticisms of others, whatever they were, possessed for
him an enormous weight and stirred him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, however
insignificant, which showed that the critic saw even the smallest part of what he himself
saw in this picture, stirred him to the depths of his soul. He felt that his critics had
a depth of insight superior even to his own, and he expected to have them discover in his
picture new features that had escaped his own observation.
And often in the judgments of visitors who came to look at it, it seemed to him, he discovered
this. He hurried to the door of his studio, and, in spite of his emotion, was struck by
the soft radiance of Anna, who was standing in the shadow of the portico and listening
to something which Golenishchef was saying to her, and at the same time eagerly watching
the artist's approach. The artist, without definite consciousness of it, instantly stowed
away in the pigeonholes of his brain the impression she made on him, to make use of it some day,
just as he had used the tobacconist's chin.
The visitors, whose ideas of Mikhailof had been greatly modified by Golenishchef's description
of him, were still more disenchanted when they saw him. Mikhaflof was a thick-set man,
of medium height, and with a nimble gait, and in his cinnamon-colored hat, his olivegreen
coat, and his trousers worn tight when the style was to wear them loose, produced an
unfavorable impression, increased by the vulgarity of his broad face and the mixture of timidity
and pretentious dignity which it expressed.
"Do me the honor to enter," he said, trying to assume an air of indifference, and, going
to the vestibule, he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.
CHAPTER XI
As they entered the studio, Mikhailof again glanced at his guests, and stored away in
his memory the expression of Vronsky's face, especially its cheek-bones. Notwithstanding
the fact that this man's artistic sense was always at work storing up new materials, notwithstanding
the fact that his emotion grew greater and greater as the crucial moment for their criticism
of his work approached, still he quickly and shrewdly gathered from almost imperceptible
indications his conclusions regarding his three visitors.
"That one [meaning Golenishchef] must be a Russian resident in Italy." Mikhailof did
not remember either his name or the place where he had met him, or whether he had ever
spoken to him; he remembered only his face, as he remembered all the faces that he had
ever seen, but he also remembered that he had once before classed him in the immense
category of pretentiously important but really expressionless faces. An abundance of hair
and a very high forehead would make the casual observer take him to be a man of importance,
but his face had an insignificant expression of puerile agitation concentrated in the narrow
space between his eyes.
Vronsky and Anna were, according to Mikhaflof's intuition, rich and distinguished Russians,
ignorant of art, like all rich Russians who play the amateur and the connoisseur.
"They have undoubtedly seen all the old galleries," he thought, " and now are visiting the studios
of the German charlatans and the imbecile English pre-Raphaelites, and have come to
me in order to complete their survey."
He knew very well the fashion in which the dilettanti — the more intellectual they
were, the worse they were — visited the studios of modern painters, with the single
aim of having the right to say that art was declining, and that, the more you study the
moderns, the better you see how inimitable the great masters of old were.
He expected all this, he saw it in their faces, and he read it in the indifference with which
his visitors conversed together as they walked up and down the studio, leisurely examining
the manikins and busts, while waiting for him to take the covering off his painting.
But, in spite of this, all the time that he was turning over his studies, raising his
window-blinds, and uncovering his paintings, he experienced a powerful emotion, and all
the more so because, though he considered that all distinguished and wealthy Russians
must necessarily be " cattle " and fools, yet Vronsky, and particularly Anna, pleased
him.
"Here," he said, stepping back from the easel and pointing to the painting, "is the 'Christ
before Pilate.' Matthew, chapter xxvii."
He felt his lips tremble with emotion, and he took his place behind his guests. During
the few seconds, during which the visitors looked silently at the painting, Mikhaylof
also looked at it and looked at it with the indifference of a stranger. In those few seconds
he anticipated a superior and infallible criticism from these three persons, whom but a moment
before he had despised. He forgot all that he had thought about his painting during the
three years while he had been painting it; he forgot all those merits which had been
so indubitable to him; he looked at it now with the cold and critical look of a stranger,
and found nothing good in it. he saw in the foreground the irate face of Pilate and the
Christ's serene countenance, and in the middle distance the figures of Pilate's servants,
and among them John, looking on at the proceedings. Each face, with its attempted expression,
with its faults, with its rectifications, each face which, with its own peculiar character,
had, as it were, been a growth from himself, and had cost him so much travail and delight,
— and all these faces, which he had changed so many times so as to unify them, — all
the shades of color, all the nuances, obtained with such extraordinary pains, — all this,
taken together and looked at in such a way, now seemed to him commonplace, a thousand
fold commonplace! The face which he had regarded with the most complacency — the face of
the christ in the very center of the picture, which had roused his enthusiasm as he had
developed it — was wholly spoilt for him when he looked at his painting with their
eyes.
He saw a well-painted picture, — nay, not even well-painted, — for now he clearly
detected hosts of faults in it — a repetition of all those interminable Christs of Titian,
Raphael, Rubens — and the same soldiers and Pilate! All about it was trivial, poor,
and antiquated, and even badly painted, — spotty and feeble! They would be justified in repeating
politely hypocritical remarks in his presence, pitying him and ridiculing him after they
were gone!
The silence, which in reality did not last more than a minute, seemed to him intolerably
long, and to abridge it and show that he was not agitated, he made an effort, and addressed
Golenishchef: — "I think that I have had the honor of meeting you before," said he,
glancing anxiously first at Anna, then at Vronsky, so that he might not lose for an
instant the changing expression of their faces.
"Certainly; we met at Rossi's the evening when that Italian girl, the new Rachel, made
a recitation; don't you remember?" replied Golenishchef, turning away his face from the
picture without the least show of regret, and addressing the artist.
Seeing, however, that Mikhallof was expecting him to say something about the picture, he
added: —
"Your work has made great progress since the last time I saw it; and I am now, just as
I was then, greatly impressed with your Pilate. You have represented a good but feeble man,
— a chinovnik to the bottom of his soul, — who is absolutely blind to what he is
doing. But it seems to me .... "
Mikhallof's mobile face suddenly lighted up, his eyes gleamed, he wanted to reply; but
his emotion prevented him, and he pretended to have a fit of coughing. In spite of his
low estimation of Golenishchef's artistic instinct, in spite of the insignificance of
the remark, true though it was, about the expression of Pilate's face represented as
the face of a functionary, in spite of the humiliation which such a remark spontaneously
elicited at the first sight of the painting implicitly subjected him to, — since the
more important features of the painting were left unnoticed, Mikhailof was in raptures
over this criticism. Golenishchef had expressed his own conception of Pilate! The fact that
this observation was one out of a million possible observations, all of which, as Mikhadof
knew perfectly well, would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishchef's
remark. He suddenly conceived a liking for his guest, and suddenly flew from dejection
to enthusiasm. Instantly his whole painting became vital once more with a life inexpressibly
complex and profound. He again tried to say that he himself had that conception of Pilate,
but his lips trembled so that he had no control over them, and he could not say a word.
Vronsky and Anna were talking in that low tone of voice peculiar to picture exhibitions,
and caused by the desire not to say anything that might give offense to the artist, and,
more than all, not to let any one hear those absurd remarks which are so easily made in
regard to art. Mikhailof thought that his picture was making an impression on them also,
and he approached them.
"What an admirable expression the Christ has," said Anna. This expression pleased her more
than anything else in the painting, and she felt that the Christ was the principal figure
in it, and therefore that this eulogy would be agreeable to the artist. She added,
"One can see that he pities Pilate."
This, again, was one of those million accurate but idle observations which his picture, and
especially the figure of the Christ, might have elicited. She said that Christ pitied
Pilate. In the expression of the Christ there was bound to be an expression of pity, because
there was in it the expression of love, a supernal color, a readiness for death, and
a realization of the idleness of words. Of course, Pilate should stand for the functionary,
the chinovnik, and the Christ should show pity for him, — since one is the incarnation
of the fleshly life, the other of the spiritual life. All this and much besides flashed through
Mikhailof's mind. And once more his face was radiant with joy.
"Yes! And how that figure is painted! how much atmosphere! One could go round it," said
Golenishchef, evidently showing by this observation that he did not approve of the design and
scope ^ of the figure.
"Yes; it is a wonderful masterpiece," said Vronsky.
"How alive those figures in the background are! There is technique for you!" he added,
turning to Golenishchef, and alluding to a discussion in which he had avowed his discouragement
in the technique of the art.
"Yes, yes; very remarkable," said Golenishchef and Anna, simultaneously. Notwithstanding
the condition of enthusiasm to which he had risen, the remark about technique nettled
Mikhadof; he scowled and looked at Vronsky with an angry expression. He had often heard
this word technique, and he really did not know what was meant by it. He knew that this
word signified the mechanical ability to paint and sketch, and had nothing to do with the
thing painted. He had often noticed, as in the present case, that technical skill was
opposed to the intrinsic merit of a work, as if it were possible to paint a bad picture
with talent. He knew that it required great attention and care in removing the cloth not
to injure the work, and in removing all the covers; but the technique of painting was
not in that. If in the same way to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he
saw, then the cook or the child would not hesitate to express what they saw. But the
most experienced and skilful of technicians could not paint anything by mechanical ability
only; it requires that the realm of inspiration ^ should be opened before him. Moreover, he
saw that the very fact of talking about technique made it impossible to praise him for it. In
everything that he had painted and was painting he saw the glaring faults resulting from the
carelessness with which he had removed the covers — faults impossible now to rectify
without ruining the whole production. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw
the remains of veils that had not been perfectly removed, and spoiled the painting.
"The only criticism that I should dare to make, if you will allow me...." said Golenishchef.
"Oh! I should be very glad .... beg you to favor me," replied Mikhaylof, pretending to
smile.
"It is that you have painted a man made God, and not God made man. However, I know that
that was your intention."
"I cannot paint any Christ that is not in my heart," replied Mikhallof, gloomily.
"Yes, but in that case, excuse me, if you will allow me to express my thought.... Your
painting is so beautiful, that this observation can do it no harm; and, besides, it is my
own individual opinion. You look on this in one way. Your very motive is peculiar. Take
Ivanof, for example, — I imagine that if the Christ is to be reduced to the proportions
of an historical figure, then it would be better for him to choose a new historical
theme, — one less hackneyed."
"But suppose this theme is the grandest of all for art?"
"By searching, others may be found just as grand. But the fact is, art, in my estimation,
cannot suffer discussion; now this question is raised in the minds of believers or non-believers
by Ivanof's painting: Is that God, or not God? and thus the unity of the impression
is destroyed."
"Why so?" It seems to me that this question can no longer exist for enlightened men,"
replied Mikhailof.
Golenishchef was not of this opinion; and, dwelling on his first thought about the unity
of the impression required by art, he made an onslaught on Mikhaflof.
Mikhaflof grew excited, but could not say anything in defense of his ideas.
CHAPTER XII
Anna and Vronsky, wearying of their friend's learned loquacity, exchanged glances. Finally
Vronsky, without saying anything to his host, went over to a small painting.
"Oh! How charming! What a gem — wonderful! how fascinating!" said both of them at once.
"What pleases them so.?" thought Mikhadof. He had completely forgotten this picture,
painted three years before. He had forgotten all the anguish and joy which that painting
had caused him while he had been working at it day and night for days at a time — he
had forgotten about it as he always forgot about his pictures when once they were finished.
He did not even like to look at it, and he had brought it out only because he was expecting
an Englishman who had thought of purchasing it.
"That is nothing," he said — " only an old study."
"But it is capital," replied Golenishchef, very honestly, falling under the charm of
the painting.
Two children were fishing under the shade of a laburnum. The elder, all absorbed in
his work, was cautiously disentangling his float from a bush. The younger one was lying
in the grass, leaning his blond, frowzy head on his hand, and gazing at the water with
great, pensive blue eyes. What was he thinking about?"
The enthusiasm caused by this study brought back somewhat of Mikhailof's first emotion;
but he did not love the vain memories of the past, and, therefore, pleasant as such praise
was to him, he preferred to take his guests to a third painting.
But Vronsky asked him if the painting was for sale; but to Mikhadof, who was excited
by the presence of visitors, the question of money was very distasteful.
"It was put up for sale," said he, darkly frowning.
After his visitors had gone, Mikhailof sat down before his painting of Christ and Pilate,
and mentally reviewed all that had been said, and if not said had been understood by them.
And how strange! the observations which seemed so weighty when they were present, and when
he put himself on their plane of observation, now lost all significance. He began to examine
his work with his artist's eye, and soon regained his full conviction of its perfection and
significance, so that he could shut out all other interests and make the effort necessary
for his best work.
The foreshortening in the leg of the Christ was not quite correct. He seized his palette
and set himself to work, and, while he was correcting it, looked long at the figure of
John, which seemed to him to show the highest degree of perfection — and yet his visitors
had not even noticed it! Having corrected the leg of the Christ, he tried to give this
also a few touches, but he felt too excited to do it. However, he could not work when
he was cool any better than he could when he was too near the melting point or when
he was too clairvoyant. It was only one step of transition from indifference to inspiration,
and only when he reached this was work possible. But to-day he was too excited. He started
to cover the canvas. Then he stopped, and, lifting the drapery with one hand, he smiled
ecstatically, and looked for a long time at his St. John. At last, tearing himself from
his contemplation, he let the curtain fall, and went home, weary but happy.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishchef, returning to the palazzo, were very lively and gay.
They talked about Mikhailof and his paintings. The word talent was often heard as they talked;
they meant by it an innate gift, almost physical, independent of intellect and heart, and they
tried to express by it all that had been experienced by the artist. It seemed as if they needed
to have a term which should express something of which they had not the slightest comprehension,
but yet wanted to talk about.
"There is no denying his talent," they said, "but his talent is not sufficiently developed,
because he lacks intellectual culture, a fault common to all Russian artists."
But the painting of the two boys appealed to their tastes, and again and again they
recurred to it. "How charming! How natural and how simple! And he did not realize how
good it was. Certainly, I must not fail to buy it," said Vronsky.
CHAPTER XIII
MiKHAiLOF sold Vronsky the little picture, and also agreed to paint Anna's portrait.
He came on the appointed day and began his work.
Even on the fifth sitting the portrait struck every one, and especially Vronsky, by its
resemblance, and by its peculiar beauty. It was remarkable how Mikhallof was able to hit
upon her peculiar beauty.
"One must know her and love her as I love her to get her gentle and spiritual expression,"
thought Vronsky; and yet he found in Mikhailof's portrait exactly that very expression. But
this expression was so faithful that it seemed to him and to others that they had always
known it.
"I have spent so much time, and never get ahead," said Vronsky, referring to his own
portrait of Anna, "and he has only to look at her to paint her.
That is what I call technique."
"That will come," said Golenishchef, to console him; for in his eyes Vronsky had talent, and,
moreover, had a training which ought to give him a lofty view of art. But Golenishchef's
belief in Vronsky's talent was sustained by the fact that he needed Vronsky's praise and
sympathy with him in his own work, and he felt that the praise and support ought to
be reciprocal; it was a fair exchange.
In a stranger's house, and especially in Vronsky's palazzo Mikhailof was an entirely different
man from what he was in his own studio. He showed himself almost venomously respectful,
as if he were anxious to avoid all intimacy with people whom at heart he did not respect.
He always called Vronsky "your excellency"; and, in spite of Vronsky's and Anna's repeated
invitations, he never would stay to dinner, or come except at the hours for the sitting.
Anna was even more genial to him than to the others, and grateful for her portrait; Vronsky
was more than polite to him, and was anxious for his criticism on his paintings; Golenishchef
never lost an opportunity of inculcating sound theories of art: still Mikhaflof remained
just as cool as ever to them all. But Anna felt that he liked to look at her, even though
he avoided all conversation with her. When Vronsky wanted to talk about his own work
he remained obstinately silent, and he was just as obstinately silent when he was shown
Vronsky's painting and pictures, and he took no pains to conceal the weariness which Golenishchef's
sermons caused him.
On the whole Mikhallof, by his distant and disagreeable, as it were hostile, behavior,
was very unpopular with them, even after they came to see him closer; and they were glad
when the sittings were over, and the painter, having completed an admirable portrait, ceased
to come. Golenishchef was the first to express a thought which all had been thinking: that
Mikhatlof was envious of Vronsky.
"We will agree that he is not envious because he has talent; but he is vexed to see a wealthy
man, of high position, a count, — and apparently they are all vexed at that, — reaching without
especial trouble the skill to paint as well, if not better, than he, though he has devoted
his life to painting; but, above all, at your mental culture, which he has not."
Vronsky took Mikhaylof's part, but he felt at heart that his friend was right; for it
seemed to him extremely natural that a man in an inferior position should envy him.
The two portraits of Anna, painted from the life by him and Mikhaflof, might have shown
Vronsky the difference between him and Mikhailof, but he did not see it. Only after Mikhaiflof
had finished his portrait he ceased to work at his, having decided that it was a superfluity;
but he still devoted himself to his painting of medieval life. He himself, and Golenishchef,
and Anna especially, felt that it was very good, because it resembled the works of the
old masters far more than Mikhailof's painting did.
Mikhailof, meantime, in spite of the pleasure which he took in doing Anna's portrait, was
even more glad than the others were when the sittings came to an end, and he no longer
had to hear Golenishchef's discourses about art, and was allowed to forget Vronsky's paintings.
He knew that it was impossible to prevent Vronsky from amusing himself with painting;
he knew that he, and all other dilettanti, had the right to paint as much as they pleased;
but it was disagreeable to him. No one can prevent a man from making for himself a big
wax doll, and kissing it; but if this man takes his doll and sits in the presence of
a lover, and begins to caress his doll as the lover caresses the woman he loves, then
it becomes unpleasant to the lover. Vronsky's painting produced on him a similar feeling;
it was ridiculous and vexatious, pitiable and disgusting.
Vronsky's enthusiasm for painting and the Middle ages was, however, of short duration;
his art instinct was strong enough to prevent him from finishing his painting. His work
came to a standstill. He had a dim consciousness that his faults, at first apparently trifling,
would grow more and more grievous if he went on. The same thing happened to him that happened
to Golenishchef, who was conscious that he had nothing to say, and kept deceiving himself
with the notion that his thought was not yet ripe, that he was training it, and collecting
materials. But this made Golenishchef bitter and irritable, while Vronsky could not deceive
himself, or torture himself, and, least of all, grow irritable. With his habitual decision
of character, without seeking to justify himself or to offer explanations, he simply gave up
his painting.
But, without this occupation, his life in this little Italian city quickly became intolerable;
the falaazo suddenly appeared old and filthy; the spots on the curtains assumed a sordid
aspect; the cracks in the mosaics, the broken stucco of the cornices, the eternal Golenishchef,
the Itahan professor, and the German tourist, all became so unspeakably wearisome that it
was necessary to make a change. Accordingly he and Anna, who was surprised by this abrupt
disenchantment, decided to return to Russia to live in the country. Vronsky wanted to
pass through Petersburg to make business arrangements with his brother, and Anna was anxious to
see her son. They decided to spend the summer on Vronsky's large patrimonial estate.
CHAPTER XIV
Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but in a different way from what he
had anticipated. At every step he had found that his former expectations were illusory,
and that his joy lay in what he had not anticipated. He was happy, but as he went on in his married
existence he discovered at each step that it was utterly different from what he had
imagined it would be. At each step he experienced what a man would experience who had been charmed
with the graceful and joyful motion of a boat on the sea, and afterwards should find himself
in the boat. He saw that it was not enough to sit still and not rock; it was necessary
to be on the lookout, never for a moment forgetful of the course, to think of the water under
his feet, to row, — and rowing for unaccustomed arms is hard; easy enough it is to look on,
but it is hard, very hard, to work, even though it be very agreeable.
When still a bachelor, looking at the conjugal life of others, at their little miseries,
quarrels, jealousies, he had often laughed scornfully in his heart of hearts. In his
future married life never should any such thing happen; even all the external forms
of his private life should be in every respect absolutely different from that of others.
And lo, and behold, instead of that, his life with his wife not only refused to arrange
itself peculiarly, but, on the contrary, was wholly made up of those very same insignificant
trifles which he had formerly so despised, but which now, in spite of him, assumed an
extraordinary and irrefutable importance. And Levin saw that the regulation of all these
trifles was not nearly so easy as he had supposed it would be. Notwithstanding the fact that
Levin supposed he had the most delicate comprehension of family life, he, like all men, had imagined
that it was only meant as the gratification of his love, and that nothing should prevent
it and that no petty details ought to interfere with it. According to his idea, he was to
do his work, and rest from it in the delights of love. His wife was to be his love, and
that was all.
But, like all men, he forgot that she, too, had to work. his surprise was great to find
how this charming and poetic Kitty, in the first weeks, even in the first days, of their
married life, could be thinking, planning, taking charge of the table-cloths, the furniture,
the mattresses, the table service, the kitchen. Even during their engagement he was dumfounded
at the decided way in which she refused to travel abroad and at her determination to
go immediately to their country home, as if she knew what was needful, and could think
of other things besides her love. It vexed him then, and now many times he still felt
vexed, to find that she took upon herself these petty cares and labors.
But he saw that it was unavoidable; and, as he loved her, although he could not see why
she did such things, and although he laughed at her for doing them, he could not help admiring.
He laughed to see how she disposed the new furniture which came from Moscow, how she
rearranged everything in her room and his, how she hung the curtains, provided for the
guest-rooms and the rooms that Dolly would have, directed her new chambermaid, how she
ordered the old cook to provide for dinner, how she discussed with Agafya Mikhaflovna,
whom she removed from the charge of the provisions.
He saw how the old cook smiled gently as he received fantastic orders, impossible to execute;
he saw how Agafya Mikhaflovna shook her head pensively at the new measures introduced by
her young mistress into the larder, he saw how wonderfully charming she was when she
came to him, half laughing, half crying, to complain because her maid, Masha, insisted
on treating her like a child, and no one would heed her orders. It all seemed to him charming,
but strange, and he thought it would be better if it were otherwise.
He could not comprehend the sense of metamorphosis which she felt at finding herself the mistress,
permitted to see to the preparation of cauliflower and kvas, or confections, to spend all the
money she wanted, and to command whatever pastry she pleased, after having always had
her parents to restrain her fancies.
She was now making joyful preparations for the arrival of Dolly and the children, and
was thinking of the pies which she would have made for them, and how she would surprise
Dolly with all her new arrangements. She herself could not have given any reasons for it, but
it was a fact that the details of housekeeping had an irresistible attraction for her. She
foresaw evil days to come, instinctively feeling the approach of spring; and knowing that unhappy
days would also surely come, she prepared her little nest as well as she could, and
made haste both to build it and to learn how to build it.
This zeal for trifles, so entirely opposed to Levin's lofty ideal of happiness, seemed
to him one thing that disillusioned him; while this same activity, the meaning of which escaped
him, but which he could not help loving, was one of the things that gave him new delight.
The quarrels were also a disenchantment and a charm! never had it entered into Levin's
head that between him and his wife there could be any relations other than those of gentleness,
respect, tenderness; and here, even in their honeymoon, they were disputing, so that Kitty
declared that he did not love her, that he was selfish, and burst into tears and wrung
her hands.
The first of these little differences arose in consequence of a ride which Levin took
to see a new farm; he stayed half an hour longer than he had said, having missed his
way in trying to come home by a shorter road. He rode homeward, thinking only of her, of
her love, of her happiness; and the nearer he came to the house the more his heart glowed
with affection for his wife. He hurried to her room with the same feeling, only much
intensified, as he had experienced on the day when he went to the Shcherbatskys' to
offer himself. An angry expression, such as he had never seen in her face, received him.
He was going to kiss her; she pushed him away,
"What is the matter?"
"You've been enjoying...." she began, wishing to show herself cold and bitter.
But hardly had she opened her mouth when the ridiculous jealousy, which had been tormenting
her for half an hour while she had been waiting for him, sitting on the window-seat, broke
out in a torrent of angry words.
He then began for the first time to understand clearly what before he had seen only confusedly,
when after the crowning they went out of the church. He saw that she was not only near
to him, but that he did not know at all where his own personality began or her personality
ended. He felt this by the painful sensation of internal division which he experienced
at that instant. At first he was offended, but at the same moment he realized that he
had no right to be offended, because she and he were one and the same! At that first instant
he experienced a feeling such as a man might have when, having suddenly received a sharp
blow from behind, turns around with an angry desire to revenge himself on the culprit,
and discovers that he has accidentally inflicted the blow on himself, that there is no one
to be angry with, and that he must bear the pain and appease it.
Never again did he experience this feeling with such force, but this first time it was
long before he could give an account of it. A natural impulse impelled him to exonerate
himself, and show Kitty how wrong she was; but that would have irritated her still more
and increased the rupture which was the cause of all their unhappiness. A natural impulse
tempted him to disavow the blame and cast it at her; but a second and stronger impulse
came to close the breach as quickly as possible and not let it grow wider. For him to remain
under the shadow of an injustice was cruel; but, under the pretext of a justification,
to cause her pain was still worse. Like a man half asleep, wearied with pain, he wished
to free himself from it, to throw off the painful place; but, on fully waking, he found
that the painful place was himself. Patience only was necessary to give relief to the pain,
and he tried to apply this remedy'.
Reconciliation followed. Kitty felt herself in the wrong, and, though she did not confess
it, was more than ever tender to him, and they felt a new and doubled happiness of love.
But this did not prevent these differences from coming up, and coming up very frequently,
from the most unexpected and insignificant causes. These collisions often arose from
the fact that they were still ignorant of what was indispensable for each, and from
the fact that during all this first period they both were often in a bad frame of mind.
When one was happy and the other depressed, then peace was disturbed, but when they both
happened to be in low spirits, then such childish things were sufficient to provoke misunderstandings,
that they could not even remember afterward what they were quarreling about. It is true,
when they were both in good spirits, their joy of life was doubled. But nevertheless
this first period was a trying time for them both. All those early days, they felt with
especial vividness the strain, just as if both of them were pulling in contrary ways
on the chain that bound them. Especially the honeymoon, from which Levin expected so much,
was far from honey-sweet, but remained in the memories of them both the most trying
and humiliating period of their lives. Both of them afterwards tried to blot from their
memories all the ugly, shameful incidents of this unhealthy period, during which they
so rarely found themselves in a normal state of mind, were so rarely themselves.
Life became better regulated only after their return from Moscow, where they made a short
visit in the third month after the wedding.
CHAPTER XV
They were just back from Moscow, and enjoying their solitude. Levin was sitting at his library
table, writing; kitty, dressed in a dark violet dress, which she had worn in the first days
of their marriage, and which Levin had always liked, was making broderie Anglaise, as she
sat on the divan, — on the great leather divan which ever since the days of Levin's
father and grandfather had stood in the library.
Levin enjoyed her presence while he was writing and thinking. He had not abandoned his occupations,
— his farming, and the treatise in which the principles of his new method of conducting
his estate were to be evolved. But, as before, these occupations and thoughts seemed to him
small and useless in comparison with the gloom that overshadowed his life; so now they seemed
just as petty and unimportant in comparison with the life before him, irradiated as it
was with the full light of joy. He kept up his occupations, but felt now that the center
of gravity of his interests had shifted, and that consequently he looked otherwise and
more clearly than formerly at the matter.
In former days this occupation seemed like the salvation of his life; in former days
he felt that without it life would be altogether gloomy; now these occupations were necessary
in order that his life might not be too monotonously bright. As he took up his manuscript again,
reading over what he had written, he felt with satisfaction that the work was worth
his attention. Many of his former thoughts seemed to him exaggerated and extravagant,
but many of the gaps became clearly evident to him as he reviewed the whole subject. He
was now writing a new chapter, in which he treated of the causes for the unfavorable
condition of Russian agriculture. He argued that the poverty of the country was caused
not entirely by the unequal distribution of the land property and false economical tendencies,
but that this cooperated with the abnormal introduction of a veneer of civilization,
especially the means of communication, the railways, which produced an exaggerated centralization
in the cities, the development of luxury, and consequently the creation of new industries
at the expense of agriculture, an extraordinary extension of the credit system and its concomitant
— stock speculation. It seemed to him that with a normal development of riches in the
empire all these signs of exterior civilization would appear only when the cultivation of
the land should have attained a proportional development, when it should have at least
been established on correct, determining conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase
at a regular ratio, and in such a way that agriculture should not be outstripped by other
branches of wealth; that the means of intercommunication ought to be developed in conformity with the
natural development of agriculture, and that in view of our improper use of the land, the
railways, constructed not by reason of actual necessity, but from political motives, were
premature, and instead of the cooperation which they were expected to give to agriculture,
they arrested it by encouraging the spread of manufacturing and the credit system; and
that, therefore, just as a one-sided and premature development of one organ in the body would
prevent its general development, so for the general development of wealth in Russia, the
credit system, the means of intercommunication, the recrudescence of manufacturing industries,
however indispensable they may have been in Europe, where they are opportune, have in
Russia done nothing but harm by keeping from sight the most important question as to the
organization of agriculture.
While Levin was writing, Kitty was thinking how her husband, on the evening before they
left Moscow, had watched unnaturally the young Prince Charsky, who, with remarkable lack
of tact, had made love to her. "He is jealous," she said to herself. "Bozhe
mof! how good and stupid he is! To be jealous of me! If he only knew that for me they are
all like Piotr the cook!" and she glanced with a strange feeling of proprietorship at
the back of her husband's head and his sunburnt neck.
"It is a shame to interrupt him, but he has plenty of time. I must see his face; will
he feel how I am looking at him? I will will for him to turn round. There, I will make
him."
And she opened her eyes as wide as she could, as if to concentrate more strength into her
gaze.
"Yes, they attract all the best sap and give a false appearance of wealth," murmured Levin,
ceasing to write, and conscious that she was looking at him and smiling. He turned around.
"What is it?" he asked, smiling, and getting up.
"He did turn round," she thought. "Nothing; I only willed to make you turn around," and
she looked at him as if to fathom whether he was vexed or not because she had disturbed
him.
"Well, how good it is to be alone together! For me, at least," said he, radiant with joy,
going to where she sat.
"I am so happy here! I never, never, want to go away again, especially not to Moscow."
"But what were you thinking about?"
"I." I was thinking. ...no, no; go on with your writing! don't let your mind be distracted,"
she replied, pouting. "I must cut all these eyelet-holes now; do you see?"
And she took her scissors and began to snip.
"No; tell me what you were thinking about!" he insisted, sitting down near her, and following
all the movements of her little scissors.
"Oh! What was I thinking about? About Moscow and — the nape of your neck!"
"What have I done to deserve this great happiness? it is supernatural. It is too good," said
he, kissing her hand.
"To me, on the contrary, the happier I am the more natural I find it!"
"You have a little stray curl," he said, turning her head around carefully.
"A stray curl? let it be. We must think about serious things."
But their conference was interrupted; and, when Kuzma came to announce tea, they separated
as if they were guilty.
"Are they returned from town?" asked Levin of Kuzma.
"They're just back, — they're unpacking the things now."
"Come as quickly as you can," said Kitty, going from the library.
Levin, left alone, shut up his books and papers in a new portfolio, bought by his wife, washed
his hands in a new wash-basin supplied with elegant new appurtenances, also bought by
her, and, smiling at his thoughts, nodded his head disapprovingly; he was tormented
by a feeling which resembled remorse. His life had become too indolent, too spoiled.
It was a life of a Capuan, and he felt ashamed of it. "To live so is not good," he thought.
"Here, for three months, I have scarcely done a thing! To-day, almost for the first time,
I have set about anything seriously, and what was the result? I have hardly begun before
I give it up. I even neglect my ordinary occupations. I don't watch the men. I don't go anywhere.
Sometimes I am sorry to leave her; sometimes I see that she is out of spirits; I who believed
that existence before marriage counted for nothing, and that life only began after marriage!
and here, for three months, I have been spending my time in absolute idleness. This must not
go on. I must do something. Of course, she is not to blame, and one could not lay the
least blame on her. But I ought to have shown more firmness, and have preserved my manly
independence; otherwise, I shall get into confirmed bad habits.... of course, she is
not to blame.... "
A discontented man finds it hard not to blame some one or other for his discontent, and
generally the very person who is nearest. And so Levin felt vaguely that while the fault
was not his wife's — and he could not lay it to her charge — it was owing to her bringing
up; it was too superficial and frivolous. "That fool of a Charsky, for example I know
she wanted to get rid of him; but she did not know how."
Then he went on again: —
"Yes! Besides the petty interests of housekeeping .... she looks out for those and enjoys them;
besides her toilet and her broderie Anglaise, she has no serious interests, no sympathy
in my labors, in my schemes, or for the muzhiks, no taste for reading or music; and yet she
is a good musician. She does absolutely nothing, and yet she is perfectly content."
Levin in his heart judged her thus, and did not comprehend that his wife was making ready
for the time of activity which was ere long to come to her, when she would be at once
wife, mistress of the house,^ mother, nurse, teacher. He did not understand that she knew
this by intuition, and in preparing for this terrible task could not blame herself for
these indolent moments, and the enjoyment of love, which made her so happy, while she
was cheerily building her nest for the future.
CHAPTER XVI
When Levin came up-stairs again his wife was sitting in front of the new silver samovar,
behind the new teaset, reading a letter from Dolly, with whom she kept up a brisk correspondence.
Old Agafya Mikhailovna, with a cup of tea, was cozily sitting at a small table beside
her.
"You see your lady has asked me to sit here," said the old woman, looking affectionately
at Kitty.
These last words showed Levin that the domestic drama which had been going on between Kitty
and Agafya Mikhailovna was at an end. He saw that, notwithstanding the chagrin which Agafya
Mikhailovna felt at resigning the reins of government to the new mistress, Kitty was
victorious, and had just made peace with her.
"Here I have been looking over your letters," said kitty, handing her husband an illiterate-looking
envelop. "I think it is from that woman .... you know ... of your brother's I have not read
it, but this is from
Dolly .... imagine it; she has been to take Grisha and tania to a children's ball at the
Sarmatskys'. Tania was dressed like a little marchioness."
But Levin was not listening. With a flushed face he took the letter from Marya Nikolayevna,
his brother Nikolai's discarded mistress, and began to read it. This was already the
second time that she had written him. in her first letter she told him that Nikolai' had
sent her away without reason, and she added, with touching simplicity, that she asked no
assistance and wanted nothing, though she was reduced to penury, but that the thought
of what Nikolai Dmitritch would do without her in his feeble condition was killing her.
She begged his brother to look out for him.
Her second letter was in a different tone. She said that she had found Nikolai Dmitrievitch
and was living with him again in Moscow, that she had gone with him to a provincial city,
where he had received an appointment. There he had quarreled with the chief, and immediately
started for Moscow; but on the way he had been taken so violently ill that he would
probably never leave his bed again. "He constantly calls for you, and, besides, we have no money,"
she wrote.
*' Read what Dolly writes about you," Kitty began; but, when she saw her husband's dejected
face, she suddenly stopped speaking. Then she said: —
"What is it — what has happened?"
"She writes me that Nikolai, my brother, is dying. I must go to him."
Kitty's face suddenly changed. The thought of Tania as a little marchioness, of Dolly,
and all, vanished.
"When shall you go?"
"To-morrow."
"May I go with you?" she asked.
"Kitty! what an idea!" he replied, reproachfully.
"Why w/iai an idea?" she exclaimed, vexed to see her proposal received with such bad
grace. "Why, pray, should I not go with you? I should not hinder you in any way. I .... "
"I am going because my brother is dying," said Levin. "Why should you go?"
"For the same reason that you do." ....
"At a time so solemn for me, she thinks only of the discomfort of being left alone," said
Levin to himself, and this excuse for taking part in such a solemn duty angered him.
"It is impossible," he replied sternly.
Agafya Mikhailovna, seeing that a quarrel was imminent, quietly put down her cup and
went out. Kitty did not even notice it. Her husband's tone wounded her all the more deeply
because he evidently did not believe what she said.
"I tell you, if you go, I am going too. I shall certainly go with you. I certainly am
going," said she, with angry determination. "Why is it impossible? Why did you say that?"
"Because God knows when or in what place I shall find him, or by what means I shall reach
him. You would only hinder me," said he, doing his best to retain his self-control.
"Not at all. I don't need anything. Where you can go, I can go too, and .... "
"Well! If it were for nothing else, it would be because of that woman, with whom you cannot
come in contact." ....
"Why not? I know nothing about all that, and don't want to know. I know that my husband's
brother is dying; that my husband is going to see him; and I am going too, because .... "
"Kitty! don't be angry! and remember that in such a serious time it is painful for me
to have you add to my grief by showing such weakness, — the fear of being alone. There,
now, if it would bore you to be alone, go to Moscow." ....
"You always ascribe to me such miserable sentiments," she cried, choking with tears of vexation
and anger. "I am not so weak.... I know that it is my duty to be with my husband when he
is in sorrow, and you want to wound me on purpose. You don't want to take me." ....
"No! this is frightful! to be such a slave!" cried Levin, rising from the table, no longer
able to hide his anger; at the same instant he perceived that he was doing himself harm.
"Why, then, did you get married .-' You might have been free. Why — if you repent already?"
— and Kitty fled into the drawing-room.
When he went to find her, she was sobbing.
He began to speak, striving to find words not to persuade her, but to calm her. She
would not listen, and did not allow one of his arguments. He bent over her, took one
of her recalcitrant hands, kissed it, kissed her hair, and then her hands again; but still
she refused to speak. But when, at length, he took her head between his two hands and
called her "Kitty," she softly wept, and the reconciliation was complete.
It was decided that they should go together on the next day. Levin told his wife he was
satisfied that she wished nothing but to be useful, and agreed that Marya Nikolayevna's
presence with his brother would not be an impropriety; but at the bottom of his heart
he was dissatisfied with himself and with her. He was dissatisfied with her because
she would not let him go alone when it was necessary. And how strange it was for him
to think that he who such a short time before had not dared to believe in the possibility
of such a joy as her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too well. And
he was dissatisfied with himself because he had yielded in such a weak way. In the depths
of his heart he was even more dissatisfied to think of the inevitable acquaintance between
his wife and his brother's mistress. The thought of seeing his wife, his Kitty, in the same
room with this woman, filled him with horror and repulsion.
CHAPTER XVII
The inn where Nikolay Levin was dying was one of those establishments which are found
in governmental cities, built on a new and improved model, with the very best regard
for neatness, comfort, and even elegance, but which the public frequenting them cause
to degenerate with extraordinary rapidity into filthy grog-shops with pretensions to
modern improvements and by reason of this very pretentiousness become far worse than
old-fashioned inns which are simply filthy. This inn had already reached this condition.
The soldier in dirty uniform, who served as Swiss, and was smoking a cigarette in the
vestibule; the perforated cast-iron staircase, gloomy and unpleasant; the impertinent waiter
in a dirty black coat; the common " hall " with its table decorated with a dusty bouquet of
wax flowers; the dirt, dust, and slovenliness everywhere and at the same time a certain
new restlessness and self-sufficiency characteristic of these railway days — everything about
this inn produced a feeling of deep depression in the Levins after their recent happiness
and especially from the fact that the wretched condition of the inn was wholly irreconcilable
with what was waiting for them.
As usual, after they had been asked what priced rooms they wanted, it proved that the best
rooms were taken, — one by the supervisor of the railroad, another by a lawyer from
Moscow, the third by Princess Astavyeva from the country. One disorderly bedroom was left
for them, with the promise that they should have the one next to it, when evening came.
Levin took his wife to it, vexed to find his prognostications so speedily realized, and
impatient because when his heart was overwhelmed with emotion at the thought of how he should
find his brother, he was obliged to get settled instead of hurrying to his brother.
"Go, go!" said Kitty, with a melancholy look of contrition.
He left her without saying a word, and just outside the door he ran against Mary a Nikolayevna,
who had just heard of his arrival but had not ventured to knock at his room. She had
not changed since he last saw her in Moscow. She wore the same woolen dress, without collar
or cuffs, and her pock-marked face expressed the same unfailing good nature.
"Well! How is he? tell me!"
"Very bad. He doesn't sit up, and he is all the time asking for you. You.... she.... Is
your wife with you?"
Levin at first did not see why she seemed confused; but she immediately explained herself.
"I am going to the kitchen," she went on to say; "he will be glad; he remembers seeing
her abroad."
Levin perceived ^ that she meant his wife, and did not know what to say.
"Come," said he, " let us go to him."
But they had not gone a step before the chamber door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin grew
red with vexation and mortification to see his wife in such a predicament; but Marya
Nikolayevna was still more confused, and crouching back against the wall ready to cry, she caught
the ends of her apron and wound it around her red hands, not knowing what to say or
to do.
For an instant Levin saw an expression of lively curiosity in the look with which Kitty
regarded this terrible creature, so incomprehensible to her; it lasted but a moment.
"Tell me! what is it? how is he?" she asked, turning to her husband, and then to the woman.
"We cannot talk in the corridor," replied Levin, looking with an expression of annoyance
at a gentleman who, with leisurely steps, as if on his own business bent, was coming
along the corridor just at this time.
"Well, come into the room, then," said Kitty, addressing the apologetic Marya Nikolayevna;
then seeing the look of alarm on her husband's face, she added, " Or rather go — go, and
send for me," and she turned back to the room.
Levin hastened to his brother.
He had never expected to see and experience what now he saw and experienced. He expected
to find him in that state of illusion so common to consumptives, and which had so struck him
during his visit the preceding autumn. He expected to find him with the physical indications
of approaching death more distinct than before — greater feebleness, greater emaciation,
but practically about the same state of things. He expected that he should have the same feeling
of pity for this well-beloved brother, and of horror at the presence of death, — only
intensified. He was quite prepared for this. But what he saw was absolutely different.
In a little, close, dirty, ill-smelling room, the paneled walls of which were covered with
red stains of expectoration, separated by a thin partition from another room, where
conversation was going on, he saw lying on a wretched bed moved out from the wall a body
covered with a counterpane. One hand huge as a rake, and holding in a strange way by
the end a sort of long and slender bobbin, was on the outside of the counterpane. The
head, resting on the pillow, showed the thin hair glued to his temples, and a strained,
almost transparent brow.
"Can it be that this horrible body is my brother Nikolai?" thought Levin; but as he came near,
he saw his face and the doubt ceased. In spite of the terrible change that had taken place,
it was enough to glance at the lively eyes turned toward him as he entered, or the motions
of his mouth under the long mustache, to recognize the frightful truth that this dead body was
indeed his living brother.
Nikolai's gleaming eyes gazed at his brother with a stern and reproachful look. His look
seemed to bring living relations between living beings. Konstantin instantly felt the reproach
in the eyes fixed on him and regret for his own happiness.
When Konstantin took his brother's hand, Nikolai smiled; but the smile was slight, almost imperceptible,
and in spite of it the stern expression of his eyes did not change.
"You did not expect to find me so," said he, with effort.
"Yes.... no," replied Levin, with confusion. "Why didn't you let me know sooner, before
my marriage?" I had inquiries made for you everywhere."
He wanted to keep on speaking, so as to avoid a painful silence; but he did not know what
to say, the more as his brother looked at him without replying, and seemed to be weighing
each one of his words. Finally he told him that his wife had come with him, and Nikolai
appeared delighted, adding, however, that he was afraid he should frighten her by his
condition. A silence followed; suddenly Nikolai began to speak, and Levin felt by the expression
of his face that he had something of importance to tell him, but he spoke only of his health.
He blamed his doctor, and regretted that he could not have consulted a celebrity in Moscow,
and Levin perceived that he was still hopeful.
Taking advantage of the first moment of silence, Levin got up, wishing to escape for a little
while at least from these cruel impressions, and said he would go and fetch his wife.
"Good! I will have things put in order here. It is dirty here and smells bad, I imagine.
Masha, you attend to this," said the sick man, with effort. "Yes! and when you have
put things to rights, go away," he added, looking at his brother questioningly.
Levin made no reply, but as soon as he had reached the corridor he paused. He had promised
to bring his wife, but now as he recalled what he himself had suffered, he made up his
mind to persuade her that she had best not make this visit. "Why torment her as I am
tormented?" he asked himself.
"Well, how is it?" asked Kitty, with frightened face.
"Oh, it is horrible, horrible! Why did you come?"
Kitty looked timidly, compassionately, at her husband for a few seconds without speaking;
then going to him, she put both hands on his arm.
"Kostia, take me to him; it will be easier for both of us. Take me and leave me with
him, please. Can't you see that it is far harder for me to see you and not to see him?
Perhaps I shall be useful to him, and to you also. I beg of you, let me go."
She besought him as if the happiness of her life depended on it.
Levin was obliged to let her go with him, but in his haste he completely forgot all
about Marya Nikolayevna.
Kitty, walking lightly and showing her husband a courageous and sympathetic face, stepped
quietly into the sick man's room and shut the door noiselessly. She went with light,
quick steps up to the bed, and sat down so that the sick man would not have to turn his
head, and with her cool, soft hand she took the dying man's enorm6us bony hand, pressed
it, and employing that tact peculiar to women, of showing sympathy without wounding, she
began to speak to him with a gentle cheerfulness.
"We saw each other at Soden without becoming acquainted; you did not think then that I
should ever become your sister."
"You would not have known me, would you?" he said; his face was lighted up with a smile
when he saw her come in.
"Oh, yes, indeed. How good it was of you to send for us! Not a day has passed without
Kostia speaking of you. He has been very anxious about you."
But the sick man's animation lasted only a short time.
Kitty had not finished speaking before his face again assumed that expression of stern,
reproachful envy which the dying feel for the living."
"I am afraid that you are not very comfortable here, said she, avoiding the look which he
gave her, and examining the room.
"We must ask for another room, and be nearer to him," she said to her husband.
End of Chapter 17