ANNA KARENINA

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had
discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who
had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that
she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs
had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but
all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it.
Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living
together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had
more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and
household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband
had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house;
the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend
asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off
the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had
given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva,
as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that
is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but
on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout,
well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long
sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his
face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his
eyes.

“Yes, yes, how was it now?” he thought, going over his dream.
“Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt;
no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in
America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang,
Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something
better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they
were women, too,” he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile.
“Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was
delightful, only there’s no putting it into words, or even expressing it
in one’s thoughts awake.” And noticing a gleam of light peeping in
beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge
of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last
birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had
done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without
getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his
bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his
wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face,
he knitted his brows.

“Ah, ah, ah! Oo!…” he muttered, recalling everything that had
happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to
his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his
own fault.

“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the
most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault,
though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the whole
situation,” he reflected. “Oh, oh, oh!” he kept repeating in
despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this
quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and
good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he
had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her
in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter
that revealed everything in her hand.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and
limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the
letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and
indignation.

“What’s this? this?” she asked, pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not
so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his
wife’s words.

There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are
unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in
adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by
the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself,
begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would
have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily
(reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of
physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and
therefore idiotic smile.

This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile,
Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic
heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she
had refused to see her husband.

“It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,”
thought Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to
himself in despair, and found no answer.

Chapter 2

Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was
incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his
conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome,
susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of
five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he
repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife.
But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his
children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins
better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would
have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject,
but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of
being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed
that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way
remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness
to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.

“Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!” Stepan
Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be
done. “And how well things were going up till now! how well we got on!
She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in
anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked.
It’s true it’s bad her having been a governess in our house.
That’s bad! There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting with
one’s governess. But what a governess!” (He vividly recalled the
roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) “But after all, while
she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that
she’s already … it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But
what, what is to be done?”

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live
in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in
sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to
the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of
daily life.

“Then we shall see,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and
getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the
tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare
chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his
feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the
bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old friend, his
valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was
followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.

“Are there any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

“On the table,” replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at
his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile,
“They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the
looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it
was clear that they understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes
asked: “Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?”

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed
silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

“I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or
themselves for nothing,” he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence
beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract attention to
himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words,
misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face brightened.

“Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said,
checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path
through his long, curly whiskers.

“Thank God!” said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like
his master, realized the significance of this arrival—that is, that Anna
Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation
between husband and wife.

“Alone, or with her husband?” inquired Matvey.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his upper
lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.

“Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?”

“Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.”

“Darya Alexandrovna?” Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.

“Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do
what she tells you.”

“You want to try it on,” Matvey understood, but he only said,
“Yes, sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be dressed, when
Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room with
the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.

“Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let him
do—that is you—as he likes,” he said, laughing only with his
eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head
on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-humored and
rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face.

“Eh, Matvey?” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s all right, sir; she will come round,” said Matvey.

“Come round?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think so? Who’s there?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress at the door.

“It’s I,” said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the
stern, pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the
doorway.

“Well, what is it, Matrona?” queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going up
to her at the door.

Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards his wife,
and was conscious of this himself, almost everyone in the house (even the
nurse, Darya Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.

“Well, what now?” he asked disconsolately.

“Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is
suffering so, it’s sad to see her; and besides, everything in the house
is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her forgiveness,
sir. There’s no help for it! One must take the consequences….”

“But she won’t see me.”

“You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God.”

“Come, that’ll do, you can go,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
blushing suddenly. “Well now, do dress me.” He turned to Matvey and
threw off his dressing-gown decisively.

Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s collar, and,
blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure over the
well-groomed body of his master.

Chapter 3

When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on himself,
pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his cigarettes,
pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out
his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at
ease, in spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg
into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the
coffee, letters and papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was buying a
forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was absolutely
essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject
could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary
interests should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with
his wife. And the idea that he might be led on by his interests, that he might
seek a reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the
forest—that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the office-papers
close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of business, made a few notes
with a big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee. As he
sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but
one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that
science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held
those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his
paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more
strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these
political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not
choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being
worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need,
ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental
activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If
there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were
held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism
more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life.
The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan
Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party
said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs
reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little
gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive
to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood,
that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the
people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service
without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the
object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when
life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that
if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown
the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become
a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did
his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read
the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in
our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all
conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush
the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, “in our opinion the
danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of
traditionalism clogging progress,” etc., etc. He read another article,
too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some
innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness
he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on
what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain
satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona
Philimonovna’s advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He
read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that
one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a
young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give
him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a
second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of
the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously:
not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the
joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew
thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of Grisha, his
youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They
were carrying something, and dropped it.

“I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,” said the little
girl in English; “there, pick them up!”

“Everything’s in confusion,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch;
“there are the children running about by themselves.” And going to
the door, he called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train,
and came in to their father.

The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and
hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of scent that
came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was
flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her
hands, and was about to run away again; but her father held her back.

“How is mamma?” he asked, passing his hand over his
daughter’s smooth, soft little neck. “Good morning,” he said,
smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him. He was conscious that he
loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did
not respond with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.

“Mamma? She is up,” answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. “That means that she’s not slept again
all night,” he thought.

“Well, is she cheerful?”

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and mother,
and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must be aware of
this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she
blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed too.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She did not say we must do
our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to
grandmamma’s.”

“Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,” he said,
still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of
sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.

“For Grisha?” said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

“Yes, yes.” And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her
on the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

“The carriage is ready,” said Matvey; “but there’s
someone to see you with a petition.”

“Been here long?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Half an hour.”

“How many times have I told you to tell me at once?”

“One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,” said
Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be
angry.

“Well, show the person up at once,” said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a request
impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he generally did, made
her sit down, heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her, and
gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in
his large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent little note
to a personage who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff
captain’s widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to
recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten
nothing except what he wanted to forget—his wife.

“Ah, yes!” He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a
harassed expression. “To go, or not to go!” he said to himself; and
an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but
falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it
was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to
make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing
could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.

“It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,” he
said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a
cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and
with rapid steps walked through the drawing-room, and opened the other door
into his wife’s bedroom.

Chapter 4

Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once
luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck,
with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from
the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things
scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which she was taking
something. Hearing her husband’s steps, she stopped, looking towards the
door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous
expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview.
She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in
these last three days—to sort out the children’s things and her
own, so as to take them to her mother’s—and again she could not
bring herself to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying
to herself, “that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some
step” to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at
least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself
that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was impossible; it
was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as
her husband and loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even here in her
own house she could hardly manage to look after her five children properly,
they would be still worse off where she was going with them all. As it was,
even in the course of these three days, the youngest was unwell from being
given unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the
day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating
herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was
going.

Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau as
though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he had come
quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute
expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

“Dolly!” he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head
towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he
was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure
that beamed with health and freshness. “Yes, he is happy and
content!” she thought; “while I…. And that disgusting good
nature, which everyone likes him for and praises—I hate that good nature
of his,” she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek
contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

“What do you want?” she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

“Dolly!” he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. “Anna is
coming today.”

“Well, what is that to me? I can’t see her!” she cried.

“But you must, really, Dolly….”

“Go away, go away, go away!” she shrieked, not looking at him, as
though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope
that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go
on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured,
suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of
despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes
began to shine with tears.

“My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God’s sake!… You
know….” He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

“Dolly, what can I say?… One thing: forgive…. Remember, cannot nine
years of my life atone for an instant….”

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it were
beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.

“—instant of passion?” he said, and would have gone on, but
at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and
again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

“Go away, go out of the room!” she shrieked still more shrilly,
“and don’t talk to me of your passion and your
loathsomeness.”

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to support
herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were swimming with tears.

“Dolly!” he said, sobbing now; “for mercy’s sake, think
of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me
expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame,
no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!”

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably
sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not. He
waited.

“You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember
them, and know that this means their ruin,” she said—obviously one
of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the
last few days.

She had called him “Stiva,” and he glanced at her with gratitude,
and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

“I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the
world to save them, but I don’t myself know how to save them. By taking
them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious
father—yes, a vicious father…. Tell me, after what … has happened,
can we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?” she
repeated, raising her voice, “after my husband, the father of my
children, enters into a love affair with his own children’s
governess?”

“But what could I do? what could I do?” he kept saying in a pitiful
voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.

“You are loathsome to me, repulsive!” she shrieked, getting more
and more heated. “Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you
have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a
stranger—yes, a complete stranger!” With pain and wrath she uttered
the word so terrible to herself—stranger.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He
did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him
sympathy for her, but not love. “No, she hates me. She will not forgive
me,” he thought.

“It is awful! awful!” he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had fallen
down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly softened.

She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she did
not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up rapidly, she
moved towards the door.

“Well, she loves my child,” he thought, noticing the change of her
face at the child’s cry, “my child: how can she hate me?”

“Dolly, one word more,” he said, following her.

“If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They may
all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may live here
with your mistress!”

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread walked out
of the room. “Matvey says she will come round; but how? I don’t see
the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how vulgarly she
shouted,” he said to himself, remembering her shriek and the
words—“scoundrel” and “mistress.” “And very
likely the maids were listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible!” Stepan
Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and
walked out of the room.

It was Friday, and in the dining-room the German watchmaker was winding up the
clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this punctual, bald
watchmaker, “that the German was wound up for a whole lifetime himself,
to wind up watches,” and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a
joke: “And maybe she will come round! That’s a good expression,
‘come round,’” he thought. “I must repeat
that.”

“Matvey!” he shouted. “Arrange everything with Darya in the
sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna,” he said to Matvey when he came in.

“Yes, sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps.

“You won’t dine at home?” said Matvey, seeing him off.

“That’s as it happens. But here’s for the
housekeeping,” he said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook.
“That’ll be enough.”

“Enough or not enough, we must make it do,” said Matvey, slamming
the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing from the
sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to her bedroom. It
was her solitary refuge from the household cares which crowded upon her
directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the
nursery, the English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in
putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay, and which only
she could answer: “What were the children to put on for their walk?
Should they have any milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?”

“Ah, let me alone, let me alone!” she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to her
husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that slipped down on
her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the conversation.
“He has gone! But has he broken it off with her?” she thought.
“Can it be he sees her? Why didn’t I ask him! No, no,
reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we are
strangers—strangers forever!” She repeated again with special
significance the word so dreadful to her. “And how I loved him! my God,
how I loved him!… How I loved him! And now don’t I love him?
Don’t I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is,” she
began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her
head in at the door.

“Let us send for my brother,” she said; “he can get a dinner
anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again,
like yesterday.”

“Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for
some new milk?”

And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned her
grief in them for a time.

Chapter 5

Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his excellent
abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and therefore was one of the
lowest in his class. But in spite of his habitually dissipated mode of life,
his inferior grade in the service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the
honorable and lucrative position of president of one of the government boards
at Moscow. This post he had received through his sister Anna’s husband,
Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in
the ministry to whose department the Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had
not got his brother-in-law this berth, then through a hundred other
personages—brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts—Stiva
Oblonsky would have received this post, or some other similar one, together
with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as his affairs, in
spite of his wife’s considerable property, were in an embarrassed
condition.

Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
He was born in the midst of those who had been and are the powerful ones of
this world. One-third of the men in the government, the older men, had been
friends of his father’s, and had known him in petticoats; another third
were his intimate chums, and the remainder were friendly acquaintances.
Consequently the distributors of earthly blessings in the shape of places,
rents, shares, and such, were all his friends, and could not overlook one of
their own set; and Oblonsky had no need to make any special exertion to get a
lucrative post. He had only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to
be quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his characteristic good
nature he never did. It would have struck him as absurd if he had been told
that he would not get a position with the salary he required, especially as he
expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what the men of his own age and
standing did get, and he was no worse qualified for performing duties of the
kind than any other man.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his good
humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him,
in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows,
and the white and red of his face, there was something which produced a
physical effect of kindliness and good humor on the people who met him.
“Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is!” was almost always said with a
smile of delight on meeting him. Even though it happened at times that after a
conversation with him it seemed that nothing particularly delightful had
happened, the next day, and the next, everyone was just as delighted at meeting
him again.

After filling for three years the post of president of one of the government
boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the respect, as well as the
liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and superiors, and all who had
had business with him. The principal qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had
gained him this universal respect in the service consisted, in the first place,
of his extreme indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own
shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism—not the liberalism he
read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of
which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the same, whatever their
fortune or calling might be; and thirdly—the most important
point—his complete indifference to the business in which he was engaged,
in consequence of which he was never carried away, and never made mistakes.

On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by a
deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private room, put on
his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and copyists all rose,
greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as
ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat down. He made a
joke or two, and talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and
began work. No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact
line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the
agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference
common to everyone in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with papers,
and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced by
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“We have succeeded in getting the information from the government
department of Penza. Here, would you care?…”

“You’ve got them at last?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying
his finger on the paper. “Now, gentlemen….”

And the sitting of the board began.

“If they knew,” he thought, bending his head with a significant air
as he listened to the report, “what a guilty little boy their president
was half an hour ago.” And his eyes were laughing during the reading of
the report. Till two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break, and
at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon.

It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom suddenly opened
and someone came in.

All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the Tsar
and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the
doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and closed the
glass door after him.

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and stretched,
and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took out a cigarette in
the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the members of the board,
the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and the Kammerjunker
Grinevitch, went in with him.

“We shall have time to finish after lunch,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

“To be sure we shall!” said Nikitin.

“A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,” said Grinevitch of one
of the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words, giving him thereby to
understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and made him no
reply.

“Who was that came in?” he asked the doorkeeper.

“Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back
was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come out,
then….”

“Where is he?”

“Maybe he’s gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That
is he,” said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built,
broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin
cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone staircase.
One of the members going down—a lean official with a
portfolio—stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of
the stranger, then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His good-naturedly
beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform beamed more than ever
when he recognized the man coming up.

“Why, it’s actually you, Levin, at last!” he said with a
friendly mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. “How is it you
have deigned to look me up in this den?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and
not content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. “Have you been here
long?”

“I have just come, and very much wanted to see you,” said Levin,
looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.

“Well, let’s go into my room,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who
knew his friend’s sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm,
he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances,
and called almost all of them by their Christian names: old men of sixty, boys
of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of
his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder,
and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had, through the
medium of Oblonsky, something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone
with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with
everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he
used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates,
he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish the disagreeable
impression made on them. Levin was not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with
his ready tact, felt that Levin fancied he might not care to show his intimacy
with him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his
room.

Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest
merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early
youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their
characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been
together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often
the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in
discussion he would even justify the other’s career, in his heart
despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the
only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky
could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he
had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something,
but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed
he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and
in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for
the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan
Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart
despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he
laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as
he was doing the same as everyone did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly,
while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.

“We have long been expecting you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going
into his room and letting Levin’s hand go as though to show that here all
danger was over. “I am very, very glad to see you,” he went on.
“Well, how are you? Eh? When did you come?”

Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky’s two
companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which had
such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and such huge
shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they absorbed all his
attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought. Oblonsky noticed this at
once, and smiled.

“Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you,” he said. “My
colleagues: Philip Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch
Grinevitch”—and turning to Levin—“a district councilor,
a modern district councilman, a gymnast who lifts thirteen stone with one hand,
a cattle-breeder and sportsman, and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin,
the brother of Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev.”

“Delighted,” said the veteran.

“I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,” said
Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky. Though he
had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well known to all Russia,
he could not endure it when people treated him not as Konstantin Levin, but as
the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.

“No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them all,
and don’t go to the meetings any more,” he said, turning to
Oblonsky.

“You’ve been quick about it!” said Oblonsky with a smile.
“But how? why?”

“It’s a long story. I will tell you some time,” said Levin,
but he began telling him at once. “Well, to put it shortly, I was
convinced that nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could
be,” he began, as though someone had just insulted him. “On one
side it’s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I’m
neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the
other side” (he stammered) “it’s a means for the coterie of
the district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now
they have the district council—not in the form of bribes, but in the form
of unearned salary,” he said, as hotly as though someone of those present
had opposed his opinion.

“Aha! You’re in a new phase again, I see—a
conservative,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “However, we can go into
that later.”

“Yes, later. But I wanted to see you,” said Levin, looking with
hatred at Grinevitch’s hand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

“How was it you used to say you would never wear European dress
again?” he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor.
“Ah! I see: a new phase.”

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being
themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous
through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing still more,
almost to the point of tears. And it was so strange to see this sensible, manly
face in such a childish plight, that Oblonsky left off looking at him.

“Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to
you,” said Levin.

Oblonsky seemed to ponder.

“I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and
there we can talk. I am free till three.”

“No,” answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, “I
have got to go on somewhere else.”

“All right, then, let’s dine together.”

“Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to
say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk
afterwards.”

“Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll gossip after
dinner.”

“Well, it’s this,” said Levin; “but it’s of no
importance, though.”

His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making
to surmount his shyness.

“What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?”
he said.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his
sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled
merrily.

“You said a few words, but I can’t answer in a few words,
because…. Excuse me a minute….”

A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest consciousness,
characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his chief in the knowledge
of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began, under
pretense of asking a question, to explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch,
without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the secretary’s
sleeve.

“No, you do as I told you,” he said, softening his words with a
smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away
from the papers, and said: “So do it that way, if you please, Zahar
Nikititch.”

The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the secretary
Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with his
elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a look of ironical
attention.

“I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,” he
said.

“What don’t you understand?” said Oblonsky, smiling as
brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst
from Levin.

“I don’t understand what you are doing,” said Levin,
shrugging his shoulders. “How can you do it seriously?”

“Why not?”

“Why, because there’s nothing in it.”

“You think so, but we’re overwhelmed with work.”

“On paper. But, there, you’ve a gift for it,” added Levin.

“That’s to say, you think there’s a lack of something in
me?”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin. “But all the same I admire your
grandeur, and am proud that I’ve a friend in such a great person.
You’ve not answered my question, though,” he went on, with a
desperate effort looking Oblonsky straight in the face.

“Oh, that’s all very well. You wait a bit, and you’ll come to
this yourself. It’s very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in
the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of
twelve; still you’ll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question,
there is no change, but it’s a pity you’ve been away so
long.”

“Oh, why so?” Levin queried, panic-stricken.

“Oh, nothing,” responded Oblonsky. “We’ll talk it over.
But what’s brought you up to town?”

“Oh, we’ll talk about that, too, later on,” said Levin,
reddening again up to his ears.

“All right. I see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I should ask
you to come to us, you know, but my wife’s not quite the thing. But I
tell you what; if you want to see them, they’re sure now to be at the
Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and
I’ll come and fetch you, and we’ll go and dine somewhere
together.”

“Capital. So good-bye till then.”

“Now mind, you’ll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the
country!” Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing.

“No, truly!”

And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway remembering
that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky’s colleagues.

“That gentleman must be a man of great energy,” said Grinevitch,
when Levin had gone away.

“Yes, my dear boy,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head,
“he’s a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky
district; everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of
us.”

“You have a great deal to complain of, haven’t you, Stepan
Arkadyevitch?”

“Ah, yes, I’m in a poor way, a bad way,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch with a heavy sigh.

Chapter 6

When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed, and was
furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer, “I have
come to make your sister-in-law an offer,” though that was precisely what
he had come for.

The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble Moscow
families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had
grown still closer during Levin’s student days. He had both prepared for
the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and
Dolly, and had entered at the same time with him. In those days Levin used
often to be in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the
Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household,
the family, that Konstantin Levin was in love, especially with the feminine
half of the household. Levin did not remember his own mother, and his only
sister was older than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys’ house
that he saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble, cultivated,
and honorable family of which he had been deprived by the death of his father
and mother. All the members of that family, especially the feminine half, were
pictured by him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and
he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil
that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and
every possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one day to
speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain hours they
played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their
brother’s room above, where the students used to work; why they were
visited by those professors of French literature, of music, of drawing, of
dancing; why at certain hours all the three young ladies, with Mademoiselle
Linon, drove in the coach to the Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin
cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so
short that her shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to all
beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by
a footman with a gold cockade in his hat—all this and much more that was
done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that
everything that was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with
the mystery of the proceedings.

In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Dolly, but she
was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in love with the second. He
felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of the sisters, only he
could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too, had hardly made her
appearance in the world when she married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a
child when Levin left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy,
was drowned in the Baltic, and Levin’s relations with the Shtcherbatskys,
in spite of his friendship with Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early
in the winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country,
and saw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was
indeed destined to love.

One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a man of
good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old, to make the young
Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all likelihood he would at
once have been looked upon as a good match. But Levin was in love, and so it
seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a
creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so
earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself
could regard him as worthy of her.

After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing Kitty
almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet her, he abruptly
decided that it could not be, and went back to the country.

Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in
the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for the
charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. In her
family’s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in
society, while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two, were
already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another director of a bank and
railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he (he knew very well how
he must appear to others) was a country gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle,
shooting game, and building barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who
had not turned out well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of
the world, is done by people fit for nothing else.

The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly person as
he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary, in no way
striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the past—the attitude
of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his friendship with her
brother—seemed to him yet another obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured
man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to
be loved with such a love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to
be a handsome and, still more, a distinguished man.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did
not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved
any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.

But after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced that this
was not one of those passions of which he had had experience in his early
youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant’s rest; that he could
not live without deciding the question, would she or would she not be his wife,
and that his despair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had no
sort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a
firm determination to make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or
… he could not conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.

Chapter 7

On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the house of his
elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he went down to his
brother’s study, intending to talk to him at once about the object of his
visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother was not alone. With him there was
a well-known professor of philosophy, who had come from Harkov expressly to
clear up a difference that had arisen between them on a very important
philosophical question. The professor was carrying on a hot crusade against
materialists. Sergey Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest,
and after reading the professor’s last article, he had written him a
letter stating his objections. He accused the professor of making too great
concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to
argue the matter out. The point in discussion was the question then in vogue:
Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological phenomena
in man? and if so, where?

Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly friendliness he
always had for everyone, and introducing him to the professor, went on with the
conversation.

A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself from the
discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and then went on talking without
paying any further attention to him. Levin sat down to wait till the professor
should go, but he soon began to get interested in the subject under discussion.

Levin had come across the magazine articles about which they were disputing,
and had read them, interested in them as a development of the first principles
of science, familiar to him as a natural science student at the university. But
he had never connected these scientific deductions as to the origin of man as
an animal, as to reflex action, biology, and sociology, with those questions as
to the meaning of life and death to himself, which had of late been more and
more often in his mind.

As he listened to his brother’s argument with the professor, he noticed
that they connected these scientific questions with those spiritual problems,
that at times they almost touched on the latter; but every time they were close
upon what seemed to him the chief point, they promptly beat a hasty retreat,
and plunged again into a sea of subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations,
allusions, and appeals to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he
understood what they were talking about.

“I cannot admit it,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual
clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. “I cannot in
any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has
been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of
existence, has not been received by me through sensation; indeed, there is no
special sense-organ for the transmission of such an idea.”

“Yes, but they—Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov—would answer
that your consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all
your sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your
sensations. Wurt, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no sensations,
it follows that there is no idea of existence.”

“I maintain the contrary,” began Sergey Ivanovitch.

But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close upon the real point of
the matter, they were again retreating, and he made up his mind to put a
question to the professor.

“According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is dead, I
can have no existence of any sort?” he queried.

The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the
interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a bargeman than a
philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovitch, as though to ask:
What’s one to say to him? But Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been talking
with far less heat and one-sidedness than the professor, and who had sufficient
breadth of mind to answer the professor, and at the same time to comprehend the
simple and natural point of view from which the question was put, smiled and
said:

“That question we have no right to answer as yet.”

“We have not the requisite data,” chimed in the professor, and he
went back to his argument. “No,” he said; “I would point out
the fact that if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based on
sensation, then we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two
conceptions.”

Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go.

Chapter 8

When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother.

“Delighted that you’ve come. For some time, is it? How’s your
farming getting on?”

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming, and only put
the question in deference to him, and so he only told him about the sale of his
wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get married, and to
ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do so. But after seeing his
brother, listening to his conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards
the unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother questioned him about
agricultural matters (their mother’s property had not been divided, and
Levin took charge of both their shares), Levin felt that he could not for some
reason begin to talk to him of his intention of marrying. He felt that his
brother would not look at it as he would have wished him to.

“Well, how is your district council doing?” asked Sergey
Ivanovitch, who was greatly interested in these local boards and attached great
importance to them.

“I really don’t know.”

“What! Why, surely you’re a member of the board?”

“No, I’m not a member now; I’ve resigned,” answered
Levin, “and I no longer attend the meetings.”

“What a pity!” commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.

Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place in the meetings in his
district.

“That’s how it always is!” Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
“We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it’s our strong point,
really, the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we
comfort ourselves with irony which we always have on the tip of our tongues.
All I say is, give such rights as our local self-government to any other
European people—why, the Germans or the English would have worked their
way to freedom from them, while we simply turn them into ridicule.”

“But how can it be helped?” said Levin penitently. “It was my
last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can’t. I’m no good
at it.”

“It’s not that you’re no good at it,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch; “it is that you don’t look at it as you should.”

“Perhaps not,” Levin answered dejectedly.

“Oh! do you know brother Nikolay’s turned up again?”

This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Konstantin Levin, and
half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who had dissipated the
greater part of his fortune, was living in the strangest and lowest company,
and had quarreled with his brothers.

“What did you say?” Levin cried with horror. “How do you
know?”

“Prokofy saw him in the street.”

“Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?” Levin got up from his
chair, as though on the point of starting off at once.

“I am sorry I told you,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head
at his younger brother’s excitement. “I sent to find out where he
is living, and sent him his IOU to Trubin, which I paid. This is the answer he
sent me.”

And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a paper-weight and handed it to
his brother.

Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: “I humbly beg you to leave
me in peace. That’s the only favor I ask of my gracious
brothers.—Nikolay Levin.”

Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with the note in his hands
opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.

There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his unhappy
brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be base to do so.

“He obviously wants to offend me,” pursued Sergey Ivanovitch;
“but he cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my heart to
assist him, but I know it’s impossible to do that.”

“Yes, yes,” repeated Levin. “I understand and appreciate your
attitude to him; but I shall go and see him.”

“If you want to, do; but I shouldn’t advise it,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch. “As regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so; he will
not make you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I should say you would do
better not to go. You can’t do him any good; still, do as you
please.”

“Very likely I can’t do any good, but I feel—especially at
such a moment—but that’s another thing—I feel I could not be
at peace.”

“Well, that I don’t understand,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“One thing I do understand,” he added; “it’s a lesson
in humility. I have come to look very differently and more charitably on what
is called infamous since brother Nikolay has become what he is … you know
what he did….”

“Oh, it’s awful, awful!” repeated Levin.

After obtaining his brother’s address from Sergey Ivanovitch’s
footman, Levin was on the point of setting off at once to see him, but on
second thought he decided to put off his visit till the evening. The first
thing to do to set his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had come to
Moscow for. From his brother’s Levin went to Oblonsky’s office, and
on getting news of the Shtcherbatskys from him, he drove to the place where he
had been told he might find Kitty.

Chapter 9

At four o’clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out of a
hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along the path to the frozen
mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he would certainly find her there,
as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys’ carriage at the entrance.

It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and policemen
were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed people, with hats bright
in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the well-swept little paths
between the little houses adorned with carving in the Russian style. The old
curly birches of the gardens, all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though
freshly decked in sacred vestments.

He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to
himself—“You mustn’t be excited, you must be calm.
What’s the matter with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid,” he
conjured his heart. And the more he tried to compose himself, the more
breathless he found himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by his
name, but Levin did not even recognize him. He went towards the mounds, whence
came the clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged
up, the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He
walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes, and at
once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her.

He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart.
She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was
apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin
she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was
made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her.
“Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?” he
thought. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable,
and there was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he
with terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself
that people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might come
there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at
the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

On that day of the week and at that time of day people of one set, all
acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice. There were crack skaters
there, showing off their skill, and learners clinging to chairs with timid,
awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating with hygienic motives. They
seemed to Levin an elect band of blissful beings because they were here, near
her. All the skaters, it seemed, with perfect self-possession, skated towards
her, skated by her, even spoke to her, and were happy, quite apart from her,
enjoying the capital ice and the fine weather.

Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in a short jacket and tight
trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on. Seeing Levin, he
shouted to him:

“Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice—do
put your skates on.”

“I haven’t got my skates,” Levin answered, marveling at this
boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her,
though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him.
She was in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in their high boots with
obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A boy in Russian dress, desperately
waving his arms and bowed down to the ground, overtook her. She skated a little
uncertainly; taking her hands out of the little muff that hung on a cord, she
held them ready for emergency, and looking towards Levin, whom she had
recognized, she smiled at him, and at her own fears. When she had got round the
turn, she gave herself a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to
Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to Levin. She was more
splendid than he had imagined her.

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to himself,
especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set on the shapely
girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness and good humor. The
childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her
figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realized. But what always
struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the expression of her eyes,
soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which always transported
Levin to an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he
remembered himself in some days of his early childhood.

“Have you been here long?” she said, giving him her hand.
“Thank you,” she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had
fallen out of her muff.

“I? I’ve not long … yesterday … I mean today … I
arrived,” answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding her
question. “I was meaning to come and see you,” he said; and then,
recollecting with what intention he was trying to see her, he was promptly
overcome with confusion and blushed.

“I didn’t know you could skate, and skate so well.”

She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the cause of his
confusion.

“Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that you are
the best of skaters,” she said, with her little black-gloved hand
brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her muff.

“Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach
perfection.”

“You do everything with passion, I think,” she said smiling.
“I should so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us skate
together.”

“Skate together! Can that be possible?” thought Levin, gazing at
her.

“I’ll put them on directly,” he said.

And he went off to get skates.

“It’s a long while since we’ve seen you here, sir,”
said the attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate.
“Except you, there’s none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will
that be all right?” said he, tightening the strap.

“Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,” answered Levin, with difficulty
restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face.
“Yes,” he thought, “this now is life, this is happiness!
Together, she said; let us skate together! Speak to her now? But
that’s just why I’m afraid to speak—because I’m happy
now, happy in hope, anyway…. And then?… But I must! I must! I must! Away
with weakness!”

Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the rough ice
round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and skated without effort, as it
were, by simple exercise of will, increasing and slackening speed and turning
his course. He approached with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.

She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and faster,
and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped his hand.

“With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,”
she said to him.

“And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,” he
said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And
indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun
going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin detected
the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a
crease showed on her smooth brow.

“Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right to ask
such a question,” he added hurriedly.

“Oh, why so?… No, I have nothing to trouble me,” she responded
coldly; and she added immediately: “You haven’t seen Mlle. Linon,
have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.”

“What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!” thought
Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was
sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an
old friend.

“Yes, you see we’re growing up,” she said to him, glancing
towards Kitty, “and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big
now!” pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke
about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the
English nursery tale. “Do you remember that’s what you used to call
them?”

He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten
years now, and was fond of it.

“Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely,
hasn’t she?”

When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes looked at
him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but Levin fancied that in her
friendliness there was a certain note of deliberate composure. And he felt
depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and her peculiarities,
she questioned him about his life.

“Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren’t
you?” she said.

“No, I’m not dull, I am very busy,” he said, feeling that she
was holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not have the
force to break through, just as it had been at the beginning of the winter.

“Are you going to stay in town long?” Kitty questioned him.

“I don’t know,” he answered, not thinking of what he was
saying. The thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet
friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything came
into his mind, and he resolved to make a struggle against it.

“How is it you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. It depends upon you,” he said, and was
immediately horror-stricken at his own words.

Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not want to hear
them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away
from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards
the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.

“My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me,” said
Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent
exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles.

At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the day, came
out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a
run, he dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down.
He flew down, and without even changing the position of his hands, skated away
over the ice.

“Ah, that’s a new trick!” said Levin, and he promptly ran up
to the top to do this new trick.

“Don’t break your neck! it needs practice!” Nikolay
Shtcherbatsky shouted after him.

Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and dashed
down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his hands. On the
last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with a
violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing.

“How splendid, how nice he is!” Kitty was thinking at that time, as
she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with a
smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favorite brother. “And can
it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know
it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he’s so
jolly. Only, why did he say that?…” she mused.

Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps,
Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He
took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of
the gardens.

“Delighted to see you,” said Princess Shtcherbatskaya. “On
Thursdays we are home, as always.”

“Today, then?”

“We shall be pleased to see you,” the princess said stiffly.

This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over
her mother’s coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said:

“Good-bye till this evening.”

At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with beaming
face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero. But as he
approached his mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone
to her inquiries about Dolly’s health. After a little subdued and
dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out his chest again, and
put his arm in Levin’s.

“Well, shall we set off?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking
about you all this time, and I’m very, very glad you’ve
come,” he said, looking him in the face with a significant air.

“Yes, come along,” answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly
the sound of that voice saying, “Good-bye till this evening,” and
seeing the smile with which it was said.

“To the England or the Hermitage?”

“I don’t mind which.”

“All right, then, the England,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, selecting
that restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and
consequently considered it mean to avoid it. “Have you got a sledge?
That’s first-rate, for I sent my carriage home.”

The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that change in
Kitty’s expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there
was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane,
and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he
had been before her smile and those words, “Good-bye till this
evening.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu of the
dinner.

“You like turbot, don’t you?” he said to Levin as they were
arriving.

“Eh?” responded Levin. “Turbot? Yes, I’m awfully
fond of turbot.”

Chapter 10

When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not help noticing a
certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a restrained radiance, about the
face and whole figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. Oblonsky took off his overcoat,
and with his hat over one ear walked into the dining-room, giving directions to
the Tatar waiters, who were clustered about him in evening coats, bearing
napkins. Bowing to right and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere
joyously greeting acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary
appetizer of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in
ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing that even
that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for his part refrained
from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a loathing of that
Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of false hair, poudre de riz, and
vinaigre de toilette. He made haste to move away from her, as from a
dirty place. His whole soul was filled with memories of Kitty, and there was a
smile of triumph and happiness shining in his eyes.

“This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won’t be
disturbed here,” said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar
with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. “Walk in, your
excellency,” he said to Levin; by way of showing his respect to Stepan
Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well.

Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze
chandelier, though it already had a table cloth on it, he pushed up velvet
chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevitch with a napkin and a
bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.

“If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free directly;
Prince Golistin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.”

“Ah! oysters.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.

“How if we were to change our program, Levin?” he said, keeping his
finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation.
“Are the oysters good? Mind now.”

“They’re Flensburg, your excellency. We’ve no Ostend.”

“Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?”

“Only arrived yesterday.”

“Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the
whole program? Eh?”

“It’s all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge
better than anything; but of course there’s nothing like that
here.”

“Porridge à la Russe, your honor would like?” said the
Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.

“No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I’ve
been skating, and I’m hungry. And don’t imagine,” he added,
detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky’s face, “that I
shan’t appreciate your choice. I am fond of good things.”

“I should hope so! After all, it’s one of the pleasures of
life,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well, then, my friend, you give
us two—or better say three—dozen oysters, clear soup with
vegetables….”

“Printanière,” prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch
apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French
names of the dishes.

“With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then …
roast beef; and mind it’s good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then
sweets.”

The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevitch’s way not to call
the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat them after
him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole menu to himself according to the
bill:—“Soupe printanière, turbot, sauce Beaumarchais, poulard à
l’estragon, macédoine de fruits … etc.,” and then instantly,
as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up
another, the list of wines, and submitted it to Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“What shall we drink?”

“What you like, only not too much. Champagne,” said Levin.

“What! to start with? You’re right though, I dare say. Do you like
the white seal?”

“Cachet blanc,” prompted the Tatar.

“Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then
we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir. And what table wine?”

“You can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis.”

“Yes, sir. And your cheese, your excellency?”

“Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?”

“No, it’s all the same to me,” said Levin, unable to suppress
a smile.

And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes darted in
with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and a bottle between
his fingers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat,
and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.

“Not bad,” he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell
with a silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. “Not
bad,” he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to the
Tatar.

Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have pleased
him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar, uncorking the bottle
and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate glasses, glanced at Stepan
Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat with a perceptible smile of
satisfaction.

“You don’t care much for oysters, do you?” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, emptying his wine-glass, “or you’re worried about
something. Eh?”

He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was not in
good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he felt sore
and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private rooms where men
were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of
bronzes, looking-glasses, gas, and waiters—all of it was offensive to
him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of.

“I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,” he said.
“You can’t conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like
me, as queer as that gentleman’s nails I saw at your place….”

“Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch’s
nails,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing.

“It’s too much for me,” responded Levin. “Do try, now,
and put yourself in my place, take the point of view of a country person. We in
the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most convenient
for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up our sleeves. And
here people purposely let their nails grow as long as they will, and link on
small saucers by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their
hands.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.

“Oh, yes, that’s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work.
His work is with the mind….”

“Maybe. But still it’s queer to me, just as at this moment it seems
queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as we can,
so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to drag out our meal
as long as possible, and with that object eating oysters….”

“Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But
that’s just the aim of civilization—to make everything a source of
enjoyment.”

“Well, if that’s its aim, I’d rather be a savage.”

“And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages.”

Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and sore, and
he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject which at once drew his
attention.

“Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the
Shtcherbatskys’, I mean?” he said, his eyes sparkling significantly
as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him.

“Yes, I shall certainly go,” replied Levin; “though I fancied
the princess was not very warm in her invitation.”

“What nonsense! That’s her manner…. Come, boy, the soup!…
That’s her manner—grande dame,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. “I’m coming, too, but I have to go to the Countess
Bonina’s rehearsal. Come, isn’t it true that you’re a savage?
How do you explain the sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The
Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know.
The only thing I know is that you always do what no one else does.”

“Yes,” said Levin, slowly and with emotion, “you’re
right. I am a savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in
coming now. Now I have come….”

“Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch,
looking into Levin’s eyes.

“Why?”

“‘I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,’”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Everything is before you.”

“Why, is it over for you already?”

“No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine,
and the present—well, it’s not all that it might be.”

“How so?”

“Oh, things go wrong. But I don’t want to talk of myself, and
besides I can’t explain it all,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Well, why have you come to Moscow, then?… Hi! take away!” he
called to the Tatar.

“You guess?” responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light
fixed on Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it. You can see by
that whether I guess right or wrong,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing at
Levin with a subtle smile.

“Well, and what have you to say to me?” said Levin in a quivering
voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too. “How
do you look at the question?”

Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes
off Levin.

“I?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “there’s nothing I
desire so much as that—nothing! It would be the best thing that could
be.”

“But you’re not making a mistake? You know what we’re
speaking of?” said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. “You think
it’s possible?”

“I think it’s possible. Why not possible?”

“No! do you really think it’s possible? No, tell me all you think!
Oh, but if … if refusal’s in store for me!… Indeed I feel
sure….”

“Why should you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at
his excitement.

“It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her
too.”

“Oh, well, anyway there’s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every
girl’s proud of an offer.”

“Yes, every girl, but not she.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that
for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one
class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all
sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she
alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.

“Stay, take some sauce,” he said, holding back Levin’s hand
as it pushed away the sauce.

Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan Arkadyevitch
go on with his dinner.

“No, stop a minute, stop a minute,” he said. “You must
understand that it’s a question of life and death for me. I have never
spoken to anyone of this. And there’s no one I could speak of it to,
except you. You know we’re utterly unlike each other, different tastes
and views and everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me,
and that’s why I like you awfully. But for God’s sake, be quite
straightforward with me.”

“I tell you what I think,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
“But I’ll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman….” Stepan
Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and, after a
moment’s silence, resumed—“She has a gift of foreseeing
things. She sees right through people; but that’s not all; she knows what
will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for
instance, that Princess Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe
it, but it came to pass. And she’s on your side.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is
certain to be your wife.”

At these words Levin’s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not
far from tears of emotion.

“She says that!” cried Levin. “I always said she was
exquisite, your wife. There, that’s enough, enough said about it,”
he said, getting up from his seat.

“All right, but do sit down.”

But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up and down
the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears might not fall,
and only then sat down to the table.

“You must understand,” said he, “it’s not love.
I’ve been in love, but it’s not that. It’s not my feeling,
but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you
see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a
happiness that does not come on earth; but I’ve struggled with myself, I
see there’s no living without it. And it must be settled.”

“What did you go away for?”

“Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The
questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can’t imagine what
you’ve done for me by what you said. I’m so happy that I’ve
become positively hateful; I’ve forgotten everything. I heard today that
my brother Nikolay … you know, he’s here … I had even forgotten him.
It seems to me that he’s happy too. It’s a sort of madness. But one
thing’s awful…. Here, you’ve been married, you know the feeling
… it’s awful that we—old—with a past … not of love, but
of sins … are brought all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent;
it’s loathsome, and that’s why one can’t help feeling oneself
unworthy.”

“Oh, well, you’ve not many sins on your conscience.”

“Alas! all the same,” said Levin, “when with loathing I go
over my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it…. Yes.”

“What would you have? The world’s made so,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

“The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked:
‘Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy
loving-kindness.’ That’s the only way she can forgive me.”

Chapter 11

Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

“There’s one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know
Vronsky?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Levin.

“No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Give us another bottle,” Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar,
who was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was not
wanted.

“Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he’s one of your
rivals.”

“Who’s Vronsky?” said Levin, and his face was suddenly
transformed from the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been
admiring to an angry and unpleasant expression.

“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one
of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his
acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came there
for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an
aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow. But
he’s more than simply a good-natured fellow, as I’ve found out
here—he’s a cultivated man, too, and very intelligent; he’s a
man who’ll make his mark.”

Levin scowled and was dumb.

“Well, he turned up here soon after you’d gone, and as I can see,
he’s over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her
mother….”

“Excuse me, but I know nothing,” said Levin, frowning gloomily. And
immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to have
been able to forget him.

“You wait a bit, wait a bit,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and
touching his hand. “I’ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in
this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the
chances are in your favor.”

Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.

“But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,”
pursued Oblonsky, filling up his glass.

“No, thanks, I can’t drink any more,” said Levin, pushing
away his glass. “I shall be drunk…. Come, tell me how are you getting
on?” he went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.

“One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon.
Tonight I don’t advise you to speak,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Go round tomorrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless
you….”

“Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next
spring, do,” said Levin.

Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with
Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry
of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.

“I’ll come some day,” he said. “But women, my boy,
they’re the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me,
very bad. And it’s all through women. Tell me frankly now,” he
pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; “give me
your advice.”

“Why, what is it?”

“I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife,
but you’re fascinated by another woman….”

“Excuse me, but I’m absolutely unable to comprehend how … just as
I can’t comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a
baker’s shop and steal a roll.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.

“Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist
it.”

“Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen
    Meine irdische Begier;
Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen
    Hatt’ ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!”

As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could not help
smiling.

“Yes, but joking apart,” resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you
must understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and
lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing’s done,
don’t you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts
from her, so as not to break up one’s family life, still, can one help
feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?”

“Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided
into two classes … at least no … truer to say: there are women and there
are … I’ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see
them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the
ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.”

“But the Magdalen?”

“Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known
how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones
remembered. However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as what I feel.
I have a loathing for fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and I of
these vermin. Most likely you’ve not made a study of spiders and
don’t know their character; and so it is with me.”

“It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much
like that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over
his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be
done—you tell me that, what’s to be done? Your wife gets older,
while you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look round, you
feel that you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem
her. And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done
for,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.

Levin half smiled.

“Yes, you’re done for,” resumed Oblonsky. “But
what’s to be done?”

“Don’t steal rolls.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.

“Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists
only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can’t give
her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing. What are
you to do? How are you to act? There’s a fearful tragedy in it.”

“If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I’ll tell
you that I don’t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why.
To my mind, love … both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines
in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort,
and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no
need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.
‘I’m much obliged for the gratification, my humble
respects’—that’s all the tragedy. And in platonic love there
can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure,
because….”

At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had
lived through. And he added unexpectedly:

“But perhaps you are right. Very likely … I don’t know, I
don’t know.”

“It’s this, don’t you see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
“you’re very much all of a piece. That’s your strong point
and your failing. You have a character that’s all of a piece, and you
want the whole of life to be of a piece too—but that’s not how it
is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be
invariably corresponding all the while with the aim—and that’s not
how it is. You want a man’s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and
love and family life always to be undivided—and that’s not how it
is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light
and shadow.”

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and did not
hear Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had
been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them closer, yet
each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing to do with one
another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of
aloofness, instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do
in such cases.

“Bill!” he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly
came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into conversation
with him about an actress and her protector. And at once in the conversation
with the aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after the
conversation with Levin, which always put him to too great a mental and
spiritual strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd kopecks,
besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have been horrified,
like anyone from the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice
it, paid, and set off homewards to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys’
there to decide his fate.

Chapter 12

The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was the first winter
that she had been out in the world. Her success in society had been greater
than that of either of her elder sisters, and greater even than her mother had
anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who danced at the Moscow balls
being almost all in love with Kitty, two serious suitors had already this first
winter made their appearance: Levin, and immediately after his departure, Count
Vronsky.

Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits,
and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious conversations between
Kitty’s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them. The
prince was on Levin’s side; he said he wished for nothing better for
Kitty. The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner
peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done
nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great
attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state the principal
point, which was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and that
Levin was not to her liking, and she did not understand him. When Levin had
abruptly departed, the princess was delighted, and said to her husband
triumphantly: “You see I was right.” When Vronsky appeared on the
scene, she was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to
make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.

In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and
Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and his
shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his queer sort
of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants. She did not
very much like it that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming
to the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something,
inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too great an honor
by making an offer, and did not realize that a man, who continually visits at a
house where there is a young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions
clear. And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. “It’s as
well he’s not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with
him,” thought the mother.

Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires. Very wealthy, clever, of
aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army and at
court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished for.

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came
continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the
seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother had spent the
whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and agitation.

Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years ago, her aunt
arranging the match. Her husband, about whom everything was well known
beforehand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked at. The
matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual impression.
That impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day fixed beforehand, the
expected offer was made to her parents, and accepted. All had passed very
simply and easily. So it seemed, at least, to the princess. But over her own
daughters she had felt how far from simple and easy is the business, apparently
so commonplace, of marrying off one’s daughters. The panics that had been
lived through, the thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had been
wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two elder girls,
Darya and Natalia! Now, since the youngest had come out, she was going through
the same terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with her
husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince, like all fathers
indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor and reputation of
his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over
Kitty, who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for
compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this already
with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the
prince’s touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in the
manners of society, that a mother’s duties had become still more
difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed some sort of clubs,
went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men’s society; drove about
the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what was the most
important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their
husbands was their own affair, and not their parents’. “Marriages
aren’t made nowadays as they used to be,” was thought and said by
all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made
now, the princess could not learn from anyone. The French fashion—of the
parents arranging their children’s future—was not accepted; it was
condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also
not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of
matchmaking by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason
considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by everyone, and by the princess herself.
But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one
knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said
the same thing: “Mercy on us, it’s high time in our day to cast off
all that old-fashioned business. It’s the young people have to marry; and
not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as
they choose.” It was very easy for anyone to say that who had no
daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to know
each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who
did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband. And,
however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people
ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just
as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most
suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And
so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her elder
sisters.

Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself to simply flirting with
her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with him, but tried to
comfort herself with the thought that he was an honorable man, and would not do
this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is, with the freedom of manners
of today, to turn a girl’s head, and how lightly men generally regard
such a crime. The week before, Kitty had told her mother of a conversation she
had with Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the
princess; but perfectly at ease she could not be. Vronsky had told Kitty that
both he and his brother were so used to obeying their mother that they never
made up their minds to any important undertaking without consulting her.
“And just now, I am impatiently awaiting my mother’s arrival from
Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate,” he told her.

Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the words. But
her mother saw them in a different light. She knew that the old lady was
expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at her son’s choice,
and she felt it strange that he should not make his offer through fear of
vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the marriage itself, and
still more for relief from her fears, that she believed it was so. Bitter as it
was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on
the point of leaving her husband, her anxiety over the decision of her youngest
daughter’s fate engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin’s
reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her
daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from
extreme sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin’s arrival might
generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.

“Why, has he been here long?” the princess asked about Levin, as
they returned home.

“He came today, mamma.”

“There’s one thing I want to say….” began the princess, and
from her serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.

“Mamma,” she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her,
“please, please don’t say anything about that. I know, I know all
about it.”

She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her
mother’s wishes wounded her.

“I only want to say that to raise hopes….”

“Mamma, darling, for goodness’ sake, don’t talk about it.
It’s so horrible to talk about it.”

“I won’t,” said her mother, seeing the tears in her
daughter’s eyes; “but one thing, my love; you promised me you would
have no secrets from me. You won’t?”

“Never, mamma, none,” answered Kitty, flushing a little, and
looking her mother straight in the face, “but there’s no use in my
telling you anything, and I … I … if I wanted to, I don’t know what
to say or how…. I don’t know….”

“No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes,” thought the
mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what
was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so immense and
so important.

Chapter 13

After dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was feeling a
sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her heart
throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything.

She felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the first time, would
be a turning point in her life. And she was continually picturing them to
herself, at one moment each separately, and then both together. When she mused
on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her
relations with Levin. The memories of childhood and of Levin’s friendship
with her dead brother gave a special poetic charm to her relations with him.
His love for her, of which she felt certain, was flattering and delightful to
her; and it was pleasant for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky
there always entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he was in the
highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were some false
note—not in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while
with Levin she felt perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other hand,
directly she thought of the future with Vronsky, there arose before her a
perspective of brilliant happiness; with Levin the future seemed misty.

When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking-glass, she noticed
with joy that it was one of her good days, and that she was in complete
possession of all her forces,—she needed this so for what lay before her:
she was conscious of external composure and free grace in her movements.

At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing-room, when the
footman announced, “Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin.” The princess
was still in her room, and the prince had not come in. “So it is to
be,” thought Kitty, and all the blood seemed to rush to her heart. She
was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into the looking-glass. At that
moment she knew beyond doubt that he had come early on purpose to find her
alone and to make her an offer. And only then for the first time the whole
thing presented itself in a new, different aspect; only then she realized that
the question did not affect her only—with whom she would be happy, and
whom she loved—but that she would have that moment to wound a man whom
she liked. And to wound him cruelly. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved
her, was in love with her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it
would have to be.

“My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?” she thought.
“Can I tell him I don’t love him? That will be a lie. What am I to
say to him? That I love someone else? No, that’s impossible. I’m
going away, I’m going away.”

She had reached the door, when she heard his step. “No! it’s not
honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong. What is to be,
will be! I’ll tell the truth. And with him one can’t be ill at
ease. Here he is,” she said to herself, seeing his powerful, shy figure,
with his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into his face, as
though imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.

“It’s not time yet; I think I’m too early,” he said
glancing round the empty drawing-room. When he saw that his expectations were
realized, that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became
gloomy.

“Oh, no,” said Kitty, and sat down at the table.

“But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone,” he began, not
sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.

“Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired….
Yesterday….”

She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking her
supplicating and caressing eyes off him.

He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.

“I told you I did not know whether I should be here long … that it
depended on you….”

She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what answer she
should make to what was coming.

“That it depended on you,” he repeated. “I meant to say … I
meant to say … I came for this … to be my wife!” he brought out, not
knowing what he was saying; but feeling that the most terrible thing was said,
he stopped short and looked at her….

She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her
soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the utterance
of love would produce such a powerful effect on her. But it lasted only an
instant. She remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear, truthful eyes, and
seeing his desperate face, she answered hastily:

“That cannot be … forgive me.”

A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what importance in his
life! And how aloof and remote from him she had become now!

“It was bound to be so,” he said, not looking at her.

He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.

Chapter 14

But at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look of horror on her
face when she saw them alone, and their disturbed faces. Levin bowed to her,
and said nothing. Kitty did not speak nor lift her eyes. “Thank God, she
has refused him,” thought the mother, and her face lighted up with the
habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and
began questioning Levin about his life in the country. He sat down again,
waiting for other visitors to arrive, in order to retreat unnoticed.

Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty’s, married the
preceding winter, Countess Nordston.

She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant black eyes.
She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her showed itself, as the
affection of married women for girls always does, in the desire to make a match
for Kitty after her own ideal of married happiness; she wanted her to marry
Vronsky. Levin she had often met at the Shtcherbatskys’ early in the
winter, and she had always disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit,
when they met, consisted in making fun of him.

“I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur,
or breaks off his learned conversation with me because I’m a fool, or is
condescending to me. I like that so; to see him condescending! I am so glad he
can’t bear me,” she used to say of him.

She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and despised her for what
she was proud of and regarded as a fine characteristic—her nervousness,
her delicate contempt and indifference for everything coarse and earthly.

The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one another not
seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain externally on friendly
terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot even take each
other seriously, and cannot even be offended by each other.

The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.

“Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you’ve come back to our corrupt
Babylon,” she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and recalling what
he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon.
“Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?” she added,
glancing with a simper at Kitty.

“It’s very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my words
so well,” responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering his composure,
and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the
Countess Nordston. “They must certainly make a great impression on
you.”

“Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well, Kitty, have
you been skating again?…”

And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to withdraw now, it
would still have been easier for him to perpetrate this awkwardness than to
remain all the evening and see Kitty, who glanced at him now and then and
avoided his eyes. He was on the point of getting up, when the princess,
noticing that he was silent, addressed him.

“Shall you be long in Moscow? You’re busy with the district
council, though, aren’t you, and can’t be away for long?”

“No, princess, I’m no longer a member of the council,” he
said. “I have come up for a few days.”

“There’s something the matter with him,” thought Countess
Nordston, glancing at his stern, serious face. “He isn’t in his old
argumentative mood. But I’ll draw him out. I do love making a fool of him
before Kitty, and I’ll do it.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” she said to him, “do explain to
me, please, what’s the meaning of it. You know all about such things. At
home in our village of Kaluga all the peasants and all the women have drunk up
all they possessed, and now they can’t pay us any rent. What’s the
meaning of that? You always praise the peasants so.”

At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got up.

“Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and can’t
tell you anything,” he said, and looked round at the officer who came in
behind the lady.

“That must be Vronsky,” thought Levin, and, to be sure of it,
glanced at Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky, and looked round
at Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously
brighter, Levin knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if she had
told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he? Now, whether for good or
for ill, Levin could not choose but remain; he must find out what the man was
like whom she loved.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at
once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only
what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find
in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek
with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good. Levin belonged to the second
class. But he had no difficulty in finding what was good and attractive in
Vronsky. It was apparent at the first glance. Vronsky was a squarely built,
dark man, not very tall, with a good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm
and resolute face. Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped
black hair and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting, brand-new
uniform, was simple and at the same time elegant. Making way for the lady who
had come in, Vronsky went up to the princess and then to Kitty.

As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially tender light,
and with a faint, happy, and modestly triumphant smile (so it seemed to Levin),
bowing carefully and respectfully over her, he held out his small broad hand to
her.

Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without once glancing
at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.

“Let me introduce you,” said the princess, indicating Levin.
“Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, Count Alexey Kirillovitch Vronsky.”

Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with him.

“I believe I was to have dined with you this winter,” he said,
smiling his simple and open smile; “but you had unexpectedly left for the
country.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and us
townspeople,” said Countess Nordston.

“My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember them so
well,” said Levin, and, suddenly conscious that he had said just the same
thing before, he reddened.

Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and smiled.

“Are you always in the country?” he inquired. “I should think
it must be dull in the winter.”

“It’s not dull if one has work to do; besides, one’s not dull
by oneself,” Levin replied abruptly.

“I am fond of the country,” said Vronsky, noticing, and affecting
not to notice, Levin’s tone.

“But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country
always,” said Countess Nordston.

“I don’t know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer
feeling once,” he went on. “I never longed so for the country,
Russian country, with bast shoes and peasants, as when I was spending a winter
with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And indeed,
Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short time. And it’s just
there that Russia comes back to me most vividly, and especially the country.
It’s as though….”

He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning his serene, friendly
eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously just what came into his head.

Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped short
without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to her.

The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the princess, who always
kept in reserve, in case a subject should be lacking, two heavy guns—the
relative advantages of classical and of modern education, and universal
military service—had not to move out either of them, while Countess
Nordston had not a chance of chaffing Levin.

Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general conversation; saying
to himself every instant, “Now go,” he still did not go, as though
waiting for something.

The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess Nordston,
who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels she had seen.

“Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity’s sake do take me
to see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though I am always on
the lookout for it everywhere,” said Vronsky, smiling.

“Very well, next Saturday,” answered Countess Nordston. “But
you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?” she asked Levin.

“Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say.”

“But I want to hear your opinion.”

“My opinion,” answered Levin, “is only that this
table-turning simply proves that educated society—so called—is no
higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and
omens, while we….”

“Oh, then you don’t believe in it?”

“I can’t believe in it, countess.”

“But if I’ve seen it myself?”

“The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.”

“Then you think I tell a lie?”

And she laughed a mirthless laugh.

“Oh, no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievitch said he could not believe in
it,” said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this, and, still more
exasperated, would have answered, but Vronsky with his bright frank smile
rushed to the support of the conversation, which was threatening to become
disagreeable.

“You do not admit the conceivability at all?” he queried.
“But why not? We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know
nothing. Why should there not be some new force, still unknown to us,
which….”

“When electricity was discovered,” Levin interrupted hurriedly,
“it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from
what it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its
applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with tables
writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only later started
saying that it is an unknown force.”

Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen, obviously
interested in his words.

“Yes, but the spiritualists say we don’t know at present what this
force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which it acts.
Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in. No, I don’t
see why there should not be a new force, if it….”

“Why, because with electricity,” Levin interrupted again,
“every time you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is
manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows
it is not a natural phenomenon.”

Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious for a
drawing-room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to change the
conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.

“Do let us try at once, countess,” he said; but Levin would finish
saying what he thought.

“I think,” he went on, “that this attempt of the
spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is
most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to
material experiment.”

Everyone was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.

“And I think you would be a first-rate medium,” said Countess
Nordston; “there’s something enthusiastic in you.”

Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said nothing.

“Do let us try table-turning at once, please,” said Vronsky.
“Princess, will you allow it?”

And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table.

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Levin’s.
She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for
suffering of which she was herself the cause. “If you can forgive me,
forgive me,” said her eyes, “I am so happy.”

“I hate them all, and you, and myself,” his eyes responded, and he
took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging
themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old
prince came in, and after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin.

“Ah!” he began joyously. “Been here long, my boy? I
didn’t even know you were in town. Very glad to see you.” The old
prince embraced Levin, and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had
risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him.

Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth was to Levin after what
had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to
Vronsky’s bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her
father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone could be
hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.

“Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Countess
Nordston; “we want to try an experiment.”

“What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and
gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,” said
the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his
suggestion. “There’s some sense in that, anyway.”

Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a
faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball
that was to come off next week.

“I hope you will be there?” he said to Kitty. As soon as the old
prince turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression
he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty
answering Vronsky’s inquiry about the ball.

Chapter 15

At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin,
and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at the thought
that she had received an offer. She had no doubt that she had acted
rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep.
One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face, with his
scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as
he stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she
felt so sorry for him that tears came into her eyes. But immediately she
thought of the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his
manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the good nature
conspicuous in everything towards everyone. She remembered the love for her of
the man she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on
the pillow, smiling with happiness. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry;
but what could I do? It’s not my fault,” she said to herself; but
an inner voice told her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won
Levin’s love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her
happiness was poisoned by doubts. “Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity
on us; Lord, have pity on us!” she repeated to herself, till she fell
asleep.

Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little library, one of
the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their favorite
daughter.

“What? I’ll tell you what!” shouted the prince, waving his
arms, and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again.
“That you’ve no pride, no dignity; that you’re disgracing,
ruining your daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!”

“But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I done?”
said the princess, almost crying.

She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had gone to
the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no intention of
telling him of Levin’s offer and Kitty’s refusal, still she hinted
to her husband that she fancied things were practically settled with Vronsky,
and that he would declare himself so soon as his mother arrived. And thereupon,
at those words, the prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began to
use unseemly language.

“What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all, you’re
trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it,
and with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don’t
pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano
player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good
matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you’ve gone on till
you’ve turned the poor wench’s head. Levin’s a thousand times
the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they’re turned out
by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish. But if he were a
prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone.”

“But what have I done?”

“Why, you’ve….” The prince was crying wrathfully.

“I know if one were to listen to you,” interrupted the princess,
“we should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be so, we’d
better go into the country.”

“Well, and we had better.”

“But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don’t try to
catch them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love
with her, and she, I fancy….”

“Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he’s no
more thinking of marriage than I am!… Oh, that I should live to see it! Ah!
spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!” And the prince, imagining that he
was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word. “And this is
how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she’s really got
the notion into her head….”

“But what makes you suppose so?”

“I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though
women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s
Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who’s only amusing
himself.”

“Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!…”

“Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as with
Dolly.”

“Well, well, we won’t talk of it,” the princess stopped him,
recollecting her unlucky Dolly.

“By all means, and good-night!”

And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with a kiss,
feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.

The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had settled
Kitty’s future, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s
intentions, but her husband’s words had disturbed her. And returning to
her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like Kitty,
repeated several times in her heart, “Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity;
Lord, have pity.”

Chapter 16

Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her youth a
brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life, and still more
afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole fashionable world. His
father he scarcely remembered, and he had been educated in the Corps of Pages.

Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once got into
the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go more or less into
Petersburg society, his love affairs had always hitherto been outside it.

In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse life
at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and innocent girl of his
own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered his head that there could be
any harm in his relations with Kitty. At balls he danced principally with her.
He was a constant visitor at their house. He talked to her as people commonly
do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could
not help attaching a special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to
her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming
more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he
liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know that his
mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that it is
courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is
one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It
seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he
was enjoying his discovery.

If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he could
have put himself at the point of view of the family and have heard that Kitty
would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been greatly
astonished, and would not have believed it. He could not believe that what gave
such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong.
Still less could he have believed that he ought to marry.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only
disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in accordance
with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived, conceived as
something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridiculous.

But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were saying, he
felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ that the secret spiritual
bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much stronger that
evening that some step must be taken. But what step could and ought to be taken
he could not imagine.

“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious
feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he had not
been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of tenderness at
her love for him—“what is so exquisite is that not a word has been
said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen
language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told
me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I
feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a
great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said:
‘Indeed I do….’

“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for
her.” And he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review of the places he might go to. “Club? a game of
bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. Château des
Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick
of it. That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m
growing better. I’ll go home.” He went straight to his room at
Dussots’ Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his
head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.

Chapter 17

Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station of
the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he came across
on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the
same train.

“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you
meeting?”

“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps.
“She is to be here from Petersburg today.”

“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did
you go after the Shtcherbatskys’?”

“Home,” answered Vronsky. “I must own I felt so well content
yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go
anywhere.”

“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it, but he
promptly changed the subject.

“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.

“I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.

“You don’t say so!”

“Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.”

“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.

“You know her, no doubt?”

“I think I do. Or perhaps not … I really am not sure,” Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious
evoked by the name Karenina.

“But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely must
know. All the world knows him.”

“I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he’s clever,
learned, religious somewhat…. But you know that’s not … not in my
line,” said Vronsky in English.

“Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a
splendid man,” observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “a splendid
man.”

“Oh, well, so much the better for him,” said Vronsky smiling.
“Oh, you’ve come,” he said, addressing a tall old footman of
his mother’s, standing at the door; “come here.”

Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky had felt of
late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination he was
associated with Kitty.

“Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the
diva?” he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.

“Of course. I’m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the
acquaintance of my friend Levin?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Yes; but he left rather early.”

“He’s a capital fellow,” pursued Oblonsky. “Isn’t
he?”

“I don’t know why it is,” responded Vronsky, “in all
Moscow people—present company of course excepted,” he put in
jestingly, “there’s something uncompromising. They are all on the
defensive, lose their tempers, as though they all want to make one feel
something….”

“Yes, that’s true, it is so,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
laughing good-humoredly.

“Will the train soon be in?” Vronsky asked a railway official.

“The train’s signaled,” answered the man.

The approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory bustle
in the station, the rush of porters, the movement of policemen and attendants,
and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapor could be seen workmen in
short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing the rails of the curving line.
The hiss of the boiler could be heard on the distant rails, and the rumble of
something heavy.

“No,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to
tell Vronsky of Levin’s intentions in regard to Kitty. “No,
you’ve not got a true impression of Levin. He’s a very nervous man,
and is sometimes out of humor, it’s true, but then he is often very nice.
He’s such a true, honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there
were special reasons,” pursued Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a meaning smile,
totally oblivious of the genuine sympathy he had felt the day before for his
friend, and feeling the same sympathy now, only for Vronsky. “Yes, there
were reasons why he could not help being either particularly happy or
particularly unhappy.”

Vronsky stood still and asked directly: “How so? Do you mean he made your
belle-sœur an offer yesterday?”

“Maybe,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I fancied something of
the sort yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor too, it
must mean it…. He’s been so long in love, and I’m very sorry for
him.”

“So that’s it! I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a
better match,” said Vronsky, drawing himself up and walking about again,
“though I don’t know him, of course,” he added. “Yes,
that is a hateful position! That’s why most fellows prefer to have to do
with Klaras. If you don’t succeed with them it only proves that
you’ve not enough cash, but in this case one’s dignity’s at
stake. But here’s the train.”

The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants later the
platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging low in the air from the
frost, the engine rolled up, with the lever of the middle wheel rhythmically
moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the engine-driver covered with
frost. Behind the tender, setting the platform more and more slowly swaying,
came the luggage van with a dog whining in it. At last the passenger carriages
rolled in, oscillating before coming to a standstill.

A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by one the
impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of the guards, holding
himself erect, and looking severely about him; a nimble little merchant with a
satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his shoulder.

Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the passengers,
totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard about Kitty excited and
delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt
himself a conqueror.

“Countess Vronskaya is in that compartment,” said the smart guard,
going up to Vronsky.

The guard’s words roused him, and forced him to think of his mother and
his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his heart respect his mother,
and without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her, though in
accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived, and with his own
education, he could not have conceived of any behavior to his mother not in the
highest degree respectful and obedient, and the more externally obedient and
respectful his behavior, the less in his heart he respected and loved her.

Chapter 18

Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of the compartment
he stopped short to make room for a lady who was getting out.

With the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady’s
appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the best society. He begged
pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at her once
more; not that she was very beautiful, not on account of the elegance and
modest grace which were apparent in her whole figure, but because in the
expression of her charming face, as she passed close by him, there was
something peculiarly caressing and soft. As he looked round, she too turned her
head. Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested
with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and
then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In
that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which
played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and the faint
smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming
over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of
her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her
eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.

Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady with black
eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and smiled slightly
with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing her maid a bag, she
gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her
hand, kissed him on the cheek.

“You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.”

“You had a good journey?” said her son, sitting down beside her,
and involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice outside the door. He knew
it was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.

“All the same I don’t agree with you,” said the lady’s
voice.

“It’s the Petersburg view, madame.”

“Not Petersburg, but simply feminine,” she responded.

“Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand.”

“Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my brother is here, and
send him to me?” said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back again
into the compartment.

“Well, have you found your brother?” said Countess Vronskaya,
addressing the lady.

Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenina.

“Your brother is here,” he said, standing up. “Excuse me, I
did not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight,” said
Vronsky, bowing, “that no doubt you do not remember me.”

“Oh, no,” said she, “I should have known you because your
mother and I have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way.”
As she spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself
in her smile. “And still no sign of my brother.”

“Do call him, Alexey,” said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out
onto the platform and shouted:

“Oblonsky! Here!”

Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching sight of
him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother
had reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by its decision and its
grace, she flung her left arm around his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and
kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled,
he could not have said why. But recollecting that his mother was waiting for
him, he went back again into the carriage.

“She’s very sweet, isn’t she?” said the countess of
Madame Karenina. “Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to
have her. We’ve been talking all the way. And so you, I hear … vous
filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.”

“I don’t know what you are referring to, maman,” he answered
coldly. “Come, maman, let us go.”

Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the countess.

“Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother,” she
said. “And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell
you.”

“Oh, no,” said the countess, taking her hand. “I could go all
around the world with you and never be dull. You are one of those delightful
women in whose company it’s sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now
please don’t fret over your son; you can’t expect never to be
parted.”

Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and her eyes
were smiling.

“Anna Arkadyevna,” the countess said in explanation to her son,
“has a little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never been
parted from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving him.”

“Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son and
she of hers,” said Madame Karenina, and again a smile lighted up her
face, a caressing smile intended for him.

“I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored,” he said,
promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But apparently she
did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain, and she turned to the
old countess.

“Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye,
countess.”

“Good-bye, my love,” answered the countess. “Let me have a
kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply
that I’ve lost my heart to you.”

Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it and was
delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her cheek to the
countess’s lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile
fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Vronsky. He
pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as though at something
special, by the energetic squeeze with which she freely and vigorously shook
his hand. She went out with the rapid step which bore her rather
fully-developed figure with such strange lightness.

“Very charming,” said the countess.

That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her
graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile remained on his face. He
saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and
began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do
with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.

“Well, maman, are you perfectly well?” he repeated, turning to his
mother.

“Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been very good, and Marie
has grown very pretty. She’s very interesting.”

And she began telling him again of what interested her most—the
christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in Petersburg, and
the special favor shown her elder son by the Tsar.

“Here’s Lavrenty,” said Vronsky, looking out of the window;
“now we can go, if you like.”

The old butler, who had traveled with the countess, came to the carriage to
announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to go.

“Come; there’s not such a crowd now,” said Vronsky.

The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the other
baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as they were getting out of
the carriage several men ran suddenly by with panic-stricken faces. The
station-master, too, ran by in his extraordinary colored cap. Obviously
something unusual had happened. The crowd who had left the train were running
back again.

“What?… What?… Where?… Flung himself!… Crushed!…” was
heard among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm, turned
back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid the
crowd.

The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed the crowd to
find out details of the disaster.

A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had not heard
the train moving back, and had been crushed.

Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts from the
butler.

Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse. Oblonsky was evidently
upset. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.

“Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!” he
said.

Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but perfectly composed.

“Oh, if you had seen it, countess,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“And his wife was there…. It was awful to see her!… She flung
herself on the body. They say he was the only support of an immense family. How
awful!”

“Couldn’t one do anything for her?” said Madame Karenina in
an agitated whisper.

Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.

“I’ll be back directly, maman,” he remarked, turning round in
the doorway.

When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyevitch was already in
conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the countess was
impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.

“Now let us be off,” said Vronsky, coming in. They went out
together. Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind walked Madame Karenina
with her brother. Just as they were going out of the station the station-master
overtook Vronsky.

“You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain for
whose benefit you intend them?”

“For the widow,” said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. “I
should have thought there was no need to ask.”

“You gave that?” cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing his
sister’s hand, he added: “Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a
splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess.”

And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.

When they went out the Vronsky’s carriage had already driven away. People
coming in were still talking of what happened.

“What a horrible death!” said a gentleman, passing by. “They
say he was cut in two pieces.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s the
easiest—instantaneous,” observed another.

“How is it they don’t take proper precautions?” said a third.

Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw
with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she was with difficulty
restraining her tears.

“What is it, Anna?” he asked, when they had driven a few hundred
yards.

“It’s an omen of evil,” she said.

“What nonsense!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “You’ve
come, that’s the chief thing. You can’t conceive how I’m
resting my hopes on you.”

“Have you known Vronsky long?” she asked.

“Yes. You know we’re hoping he will marry Kitty.”

“Yes?” said Anna softly. “Come now, let us talk of
you,” she added, tossing her head, as though she would physically shake
off something superfluous oppressing her. “Let us talk of your affairs. I
got your letter, and here I am.”

“Yes, all my hopes are in you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Well, tell me all about it.”

And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.

On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and
set off to his office.

Chapter 19

When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little drawing-room with
a white-headed fat little boy, already like his father, giving him a lesson in
French reading. As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to tear off a
button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his
hand from it, but the fat little hand went back to the button again. His mother
pulled the button off and put it in her pocket.

“Keep your hands still, Grisha,” she said, and she took up her
work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at
depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers
and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day before to her
husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister came or not, she had made
everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting her sister-in-law with
emotion.

Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still she did not
forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the most important
personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg grande dame. And, thanks
to this circumstance, she did not carry out her threat to her
husband—that is to say, she remembered that her sister-in-law was coming.
“And, after all, Anna is in no wise to blame,” thought Dolly.
“I know nothing of her except the very best, and I have seen nothing but
kindness and affection from her towards myself.” It was true that as far
as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at the Karenins’, she
did not like their household itself; there was something artificial in the
whole framework of their family life. “But why should I not receive her?
If only she doesn’t take it into her head to console me!” thought
Dolly. “All consolation and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I
have thought over a thousand times, and it’s all no use.”

All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not want to talk
of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside
matters. She knew that in one way or another she would tell Anna everything,
and she was alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at
the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with her, his sister, and of
hearing her ready-made phrases of good advice and comfort. She had been on the
lookout for her, glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens,
let slip just that minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear
the bell.

Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked round, and
her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but wonder. She got up
and embraced her sister-in-law.

“What, here already!” she said as she kissed her.

“Dolly, how glad I am to see you!”

“I am glad, too,” said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the
expression of Anna’s face to find out whether she knew. “Most
likely she knows,” she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna’s
face. “Well, come along, I’ll take you to your room,” she
went on, trying to defer as long as possible the moment of confidences.

“Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!” said Anna; and
kissing him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed a
little. “No, please, let us stay here.”

She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her black
hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook her hair down.

“You are radiant with health and happiness!” said Dolly, almost
with envy.

“I?… Yes,” said Anna. “Merciful heavens, Tanya!
You’re the same age as my Seryozha,” she added, addressing the
little girl as she ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed her.
“Delightful child, delightful! Show me them all.”

She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years, months,
characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not but appreciate
that.

“Very well, we will go to them,” she said. “It’s a pity
Vassya’s asleep.”

After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the drawing-room, to
coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away from her.

“Dolly,” she said, “he has told me.”

Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of conventional
sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

“Dolly, dear,” she said, “I don’t want to speak for him
to you, nor to try to comfort you; that’s impossible. But, darling,
I’m simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!”

Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered. She moved
nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous little hand.
Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its frigid expression. She
said:

“To comfort me’s impossible. Everything’s lost after what has
happened, everything’s over!”

And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted the
wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:

“But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done? How is it
best to act in this awful position—that’s what you must think
of.”

“All’s over, and there’s nothing more,” said Dolly.
“And the worst of all is, you see, that I can’t cast him off: there
are the children, I am tied. And I can’t live with him! it’s a
torture to me to see him.”

“Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you:
tell me about it.”

Dolly looked at her inquiringly.

Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna’s face.

“Very well,” she said all at once. “But I will tell you it
from the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave
us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say men
tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva”—she corrected
herself—“Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You’ll hardly
believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So
I lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from suspecting
infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then—try to imagine
it—with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all the
loathsomeness…. You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced of
one’s happiness, and all at once….” continued Dolly, holding back
her sobs, “to get a letter … his letter to his mistress, my governess.
No, it’s too awful!” She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and
hid her face in it. “I can understand being carried away by
feeling,” she went on after a brief silence, “but deliberately,
slyly deceiving me … and with whom?… To go on being my husband together
with her … it’s awful! You can’t understand….”

“Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do
understand,” said Anna, pressing her hand.

“And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?”
Dolly resumed. “Not the slightest! He’s happy and contented.”

“Oh, no!” Anna interposed quickly. “He’s to be pitied,
he’s weighed down by remorse….”

“Is he capable of remorse?” Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into
her sister-in-law’s face.

“Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him.
We both know him. He’s good-hearted, but he’s proud, and now
he’s so humiliated. What touched me most….” (and here Anna guessed
what would touch Dolly most) “he’s tortured by two things: that
he’s ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving
you—yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,” she hurriedly
interrupted Dolly, who would have answered—“he has hurt you,
pierced you to the heart. ‘No, no, she cannot forgive me,’ he keeps
saying.”

Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to her
words.

“Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for the
guilty than the innocent,” she said, “if he feels that all the
misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his
wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just
because I love my past love for him….”

And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time she was
softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.

“She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on.
“Do you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By
him and his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his
service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him.
No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent. Do you
understand?”

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

“And after that he will tell me…. What! can I believe him? Never! No,
everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of my
work, and my sufferings…. Would you believe it, I was teaching Grisha just
now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture. What have I to strive and
toil for? Why are the children here? What’s so awful is that all at once
my heart’s turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but
hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.”

“Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself. You are
so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.”

Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.

“What’s to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought
over everything, and I see nothing.”

Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each word, to
each change of expression of her sister-in-law.

“One thing I would say,” began Anna. “I am his sister, I know
his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything” (she
waved her hand before her forehead), “that faculty for being completely
carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he cannot
comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.”

“No; he understands, he understood!” Dolly broke in. “But I
… you are forgetting me … does it make it easier for me?”

“Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the
awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was
broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a
woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell you how
sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your sufferings, only
there is one thing I don’t know; I don’t know … I don’t
know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you
know—whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there
is, forgive him!”

“No,” Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand
once more.

“I know more of the world than you do,” she said. “I know how
men like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never
happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred to them.
Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by them, and do
not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that
can’t be crossed between them and their families. I don’t
understand it, but it is so.”

“Yes, but he has kissed her….”

“Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I
remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the
poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has
lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have
sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: ‘Dolly’s a
marvelous woman.’ You have always been a divinity for him, and you are
that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart….”

“But if it is repeated?”

“It cannot be, as I understand it….”

“Yes, but could you forgive it?”

“I don’t know, I can’t judge…. Yes, I can,” said
Anna, thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing
it in her inner balance, she added: “Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I
could forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and
forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all….”

“Oh, of course,” Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what
she had more than once thought, “else it would not be forgiveness. If one
forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I’ll take
you to your room,” she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced
Anna. “My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better, ever
so much better.”

Chapter 20

The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that’s to say at the
Oblonskys’, and received no one, though some of her acquaintances had
already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day. Anna spent the
whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely sent a brief note to her
brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at home. “Come, God is
merciful,” she wrote.

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife, speaking
to him, addressed him as “Stiva,” as she had not done before. In
the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still remained, but
there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the
possibility of explanation and reconciliation.

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only very
slightly, and she came now to her sister’s with some trepidation, at the
prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so
highly of. But she made a favorable impression on Anna Arkadyevna—she saw
that at once. Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth:
before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s
sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and
married women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of
eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the
unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in her smile
and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of twenty, had it not
been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes, which struck and
attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing
nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to
her, complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose quickly and went
up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.

“Stiva,” she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing
towards the door, “go, and God help you.”

He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the sofa where she
had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because the children saw
that their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in
her themselves, the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as
children so often do, had clung about their new aunt since before dinner, and
would not leave her side. And it had become a sort of game among them to sit as
close as possible to their aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it,
play with her ring, or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

“Come, come, as we were sitting before,” said Anna Arkadyevna,
sitting down in her place.

And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with his head
on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.

“And when is your next ball?” she asked Kitty.

“Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always
enjoys oneself.”

“Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?” Anna said,
with tender irony.

“It’s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs’ one
always enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins’ too, while at the
Mezhkovs’ it’s always dull. Haven’t you noticed it?”

“No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys
oneself,” said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that mysterious world
which was not open to her. “For me there are some less dull and
tiresome.”

“How can you be dull at a ball?”

“Why should not I be dull at a ball?” inquired Anna.

Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.

“Because you always look nicer than anyone.”

Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:

“In the first place it’s never so; and secondly, if it were, what
difference would it make to me?”

“Are you coming to this ball?” asked Kitty.

“I imagine it won’t be possible to avoid going. Here, take
it,” she said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her
white, slender-tipped finger.

“I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a
ball.”

“Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that
it’s a pleasure to you … Grisha, don’t pull my hair. It’s
untidy enough without that,” she said, putting up a straying lock, which
Grisha had been playing with.

“I imagine you at the ball in lilac.”

“And why in lilac precisely?” asked Anna, smiling. “Now,
children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to
tea,” she said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to
the dining-room.

“I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of
this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.”

“How do you know? Yes.”

“Oh! what a happy time you are at,” pursued Anna. “I
remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in
Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when
childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is
a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to
enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is…. Who has not been through
it?”

Kitty smiled without speaking. “But how did she go through it? How I
should like to know all her love story!” thought Kitty, recalling the
unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.

“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so
much,” Anna continued. “I met Vronsky at the railway
station.”

“Oh, was he there?” asked Kitty, blushing. “What was it Stiva
told you?”

“Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad … I traveled
yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,” she went on; “and his
mother talked without a pause of him, he’s her favorite. I know mothers
are partial, but….”

“What did his mother tell you?”

“Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can
see how chivalrous he is…. Well, for instance, she told me that he had wanted
to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done something
extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the water.
He’s a hero, in fact,” said Anna, smiling and recollecting the two
hundred roubles he had given at the station.

But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some reason it
was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was something that
had to do with her in it, and something that ought not to have been.

“She pressed me very much to go and see her,” Anna went on;
“and I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long
while in Dolly’s room, thank God,” Anna added, changing the
subject, and getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.

“No, I’m first! No, I!” screamed the children, who had
finished tea, running up to their Aunt Anna.

“All together,” said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and
embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking with
delight.

Chapter 21

Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan
Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife’s room by the
other door.

“I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” observed Dolly,
addressing Anna; “I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be
nearer.”

“Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,” answered Anna, looking
intently into Dolly’s face, trying to make out whether there had been a
reconciliation or not.

“It will be lighter for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.

“I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.”

“What’s the question?” inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming
out of his room and addressing his wife.

From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken place.

“I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one knows
how to do it; I must see to it myself,” answered Dolly addressing him.

“God knows whether they are fully reconciled,” thought Anna,
hearing her tone, cold and composed.

“Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,” answered her
husband. “Come, I’ll do it all, if you like….”

“Yes, they must be reconciled,” thought Anna.

“I know how you do everything,” answered Dolly. “You tell
Matvey to do what can’t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to
make a muddle of everything,” and her habitual, mocking smile curved the
corners of Dolly’s lips as she spoke.

“Full, full reconciliation, full,” thought Anna; “thank
God!” and rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly
and kissed her.

“Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.

The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to her
husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not so as to
seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his offense.

At half-past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family
conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys’ was broken up by an
apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason struck
everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in Petersburg, Anna got
up quickly.

“She is in my album,” she said; “and, by the way, I’ll
show you my Seryozha,” she added, with a mother’s smile of pride.

Towards ten o’clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and
often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed at
being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept coming back
in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look at his photograph
and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got up, and with her light,
resolute step went for her album. The stairs up to her room came out on the
landing of the great warm main staircase.

Just as she was leaving the drawing-room, a ring was heard in the hall.

“Who can that be?” said Dolly.

“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s
late,” observed Kitty.

“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch. When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was
running up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing
under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange
feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something stirred in her
heart. He was standing still, not taking off his coat, pulling something out of
his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his
eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression of his face there passed a
shade of embarrassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she
passed, hearing behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him
to come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.

When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan Arkadyevitch
was telling them that he had called to inquire about the dinner they were
giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived. “And nothing would
induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!” added Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he had
come, and why he would not come up. “He has been at home,” she
thought, “and didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he
did not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.”

All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at
Anna’s album.

There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling at
half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party and
not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed
strange and not right to Anna.

Chapter 22

The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the great
staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and
red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the
rustle of movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last
touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the
ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning
the first waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls
before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on
the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A
beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky
called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open waistcoat,
straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after running by,
came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been
given to Vronsky, she had to promise this youth the second. An officer,
buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and stroking his mustache,
admired rosy Kitty.

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had
cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the
ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as
though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not
cost her or her family a moment’s attention, as though she had been born
in that tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and
two leaves on the top of it.

When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother, tried to
turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn back a little.
She felt that everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and nothing
could need setting straight.

It was one of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable
anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not crushed
nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch,
but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head
as if they were her own hair. All the three buttons buttoned up without tearing
on the long glove that covered her hand without concealing its lines. The black
velvet of her locket nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet
was delicious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Kitty had
felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt,
but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball, when she
glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of
chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy
lips could not keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own
attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the throng of
ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to
dance—Kitty was never one of that throng—when she was asked for a
waltz, and asked by the best partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the
ballroom, a renowned director of dances, a married man, handsome and
well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Bonina,
with whom he had danced the first half of the waltz, and, scanning his
kingdom—that is to say, a few couples who had started dancing—he
caught sight of Kitty, entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy
amble which is confined to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she
cared to dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked
round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to her, took
it.

“How nice you’ve come in good time,” he said to her,
embracing her waist; “such a bad habit to be late.” Bending her
left hand, she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink
slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery
floor in time to the music.

“It’s a rest to waltz with you,” he said to her, as they fell
into the first slow steps of the waltz. “It’s exquisite—such
lightness, precision.” He said to her the same thing he said to almost
all his partners whom he knew well.

She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his
shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the
ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone
the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and
tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she was excited,
and at the same time she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe.
In the left corner of the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered
together. There—incredibly naked—was the beauty Lidi,
Korsunsky’s wife; there was the lady of the house; there shone the bald
head of Krivin, always to be found where the best people were. In that
direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There, too, she
descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a
black velvet gown. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him since the
evening she refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once,
and was even aware that he was looking at her.

“Another turn, eh? You’re not tired?” said Korsunsky, a
little out of breath.

“No, thank you!”

“Where shall I take you?”

“Madame Karenina’s here, I think … take me to her.”

“Wherever you command.”

And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the group in
the left corner, continually saying, “Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon,
mesdames”; and steering his course through the sea of lace, tulle, and
ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his partner sharply round, so
that her slim ankles, in light transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and
her train floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin’s knees. Korsunsky
bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her
to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin’s knees,
and, a little giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as
Kitty had so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her
full throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her
rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was trimmed with
Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair—her own, with no
false additions—was a little wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the same
in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not
striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of her curly
hair that would always break free about her neck and temples. Round her
well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.

Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured her
invariably in lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she had not
fully seen her charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and surprising to
her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her
charm was just that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress
could never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous lace,
was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame, and all that was seen was
she—simple, natural, elegant, and at the same time gay and eager.

She was standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when Kitty drew
near the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her head slightly
turned towards him.

“No, I don’t throw stones,” she was saying, in answer to
something, “though I can’t understand it,” she went on,
shrugging her shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection
towards Kitty. With a flying, feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made
a movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty, signifying
approval of her dress and her looks. “You came into the room
dancing,” she added.

“This is one of my most faithful supporters,” said Korsunsky,
bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. “The princess helps
to make balls happy and successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?” he said,
bending down to her.

“Why, have you met?” inquired their host.

“Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white
wolves—everyone knows us,” answered Korsunsky. “A waltz, Anna
Arkadyevna?”

“I don’t dance when it’s possible not to dance,” she
said.

“But tonight it’s impossible,” answered Korsunsky.

At that instant Vronsky came up.

“Well, since it’s impossible tonight, let us start,” she
said, not noticing Vronsky’s bow, and she hastily put her hand on
Korsunsky’s shoulder.

“What is she vexed with him about?” thought Kitty, discerning that
Anna had intentionally not responded to Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky went up to
Kitty reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret that he
had not seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at Anna waltzing, and
listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and
she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly asked her to
waltz, but he had only just put his arm round her waist and taken the first
step when the music suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so
close to her own, and long afterwards—for several years after—that
look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an
agony of shame.

“Pardon! pardon! Waltz! waltz!” shouted Korsunsky from the
other side of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he
began dancing himself.

Chapter 23

Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first waltz
Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to
Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille. During
the quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was disjointed talk
between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very
amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future town theater; and
only once the conversation touched her to the quick, when he asked her about
Levin, whether he was here, and added that he liked him so much. But Kitty did
not expect much from the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her
heart to the mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything must be
decided. The fact that he did not during the quadrille ask her for the mazurka
did not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance the mazurka with him as she
had done at former balls, and refused five young men, saying she was engaged
for the mazurka. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty an
enchanted vision of delightful colors, sounds, and motions. She only sat down
when she felt too tired and begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last
quadrille with one of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she
chanced to be vis-à-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near
Anna again since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw her
suddenly quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of that excitement
of success she knew so well in herself; she saw that she was intoxicated with
the delighted admiration she was exciting. She knew that feeling and knew its
signs, and saw them in Anna; saw the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and
the smile of happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on her lips, and
the deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of her movements.

“Who?” she asked herself. “All or one?” And not
assisting the harassed young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the
thread of which he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with
external liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into
the grand rond, and then into the chaîne, and at the same time
she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart. “No, it’s not the
admiration of the crowd has intoxicated her, but the adoration of one. And that
one? can it be he?” Every time he spoke to Anna the joyous light flashed
into her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red lips. She seemed to
make an effort to control herself, to try not to show these signs of delight,
but they came out on her face of themselves. “But what of him?”
Kitty looked at him and was filled with terror. What was pictured so clearly to
Kitty in the mirror of Anna’s face she saw in him. What had become of his
always self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly serene expression of
his face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would
have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble
submission and dread. “I would not offend you,” his eyes seemed
every time to be saying, “but I want to save myself, and I don’t
know how.” On his face was a look such as Kitty had never seen before.

They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial
conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was determining
their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were actually talking of how
absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have
made a better match, yet these words had all the while consequence for them,
and they were feeling just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world,
everything seemed lost in fog in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern
discipline of her bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was
expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to
smile. But before the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs
and a few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of
despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused five partners, and now she
was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a hope of being asked for it,
because she was so successful in society that the idea would never occur to
anyone that she had remained disengaged till now. She would have to tell her
mother she felt ill and go home, but she had not the strength to do this. She
felt crushed. She went to the furthest end of the little drawing-room and sank
into a low chair. Her light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her
slender waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost
in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid,
short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly,
clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for
fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.

“But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?” And again she
recalled all she had seen.

“Kitty, what is it?” said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly
over the carpet towards her. “I don’t understand it.”

Kitty’s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.

“Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?”

“No, no,” said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.

“He asked her for the mazurka before me,” said Countess Nordston,
knowing Kitty would understand who were “he” and “her.”
“She said: ‘Why, aren’t you going to dance it with Princess
Shtcherbatskaya?’”

“Oh, I don’t care!” answered Kitty.

No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just
refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her
faith in another.

Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and
told him to ask Kitty.

Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to talk,
because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the figure. Vronsky
and Anna sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and
saw them, too, close by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of
them the more convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that
they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And on Vronsky’s face,
always so firm and independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of
bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent
dog when it has done wrong.

Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he
became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s
face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round
arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of
pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the
graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that
lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her
fascination.

Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her suffering.
Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky saw her, coming
across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize her, she was so
changed.

“Delightful ball!” he said to her, for the sake of saying
something.

“Yes,” she answered.

In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly invented by
Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of the circle, chose two
gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty. Kitty gazed at her in dismay as she
went up. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her
hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of despair
and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily talking to the other
lady.

“Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,”
Kitty said to herself.

Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to press
her to do so.

“Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm
under the sleeve of his dress coat, “I’ve such an idea for a
cotillion! Un bijou!”

And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host smiled
approvingly.

“No, I am not going to stay,” answered Anna, smiling, but in spite
of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her resolute
tone that she would not stay.

“No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I have
all the winter in Petersburg,” said Anna, looking round at Vronsky, who
stood near her. “I must rest a little before my journey.”

“Are you certainly going tomorrow then?” asked Vronsky.

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Anna, as it were wondering at the
boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her
eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.

Chapter 24

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,” thought Levin,
as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of
his brother’s lodgings. “And I don’t get on with other
people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not
have put myself in such a position.” And he pictured to himself Vronsky,
happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the
awful position in which he had been that evening. “Yes, she was bound to
choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am
myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to
mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to
anybody.” And he recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on
the thought of him. “Isn’t he right that everything in the world is
base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of
course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and
tipsy, he’s a despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his
soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out,
went out to dinner, and came here.” Levin walked up to a lamppost, read
his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge.
All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all the facts
familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life. He remembered how his
brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of
the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all
religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure,
especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had
associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless
debauchery. He remembered later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from
the country to bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that
proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he recalled
the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory
note, and against whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had
cheated him. (This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he
remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the
street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against
his brother Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of
his mother’s fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western
province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for assaulting
a village elder…. It was all horribly disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared
not at all in the same disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did
not know Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the period of
fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in religion a support
and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone, far from encouraging him,
had jeered at him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called
him Noah, and monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but
everyone had turned away from him with horror and disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolay,
in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the
people who despised him. He was not to blame for having been born with his
unbridled temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always
wanted to be good. “I will tell him everything, without reserve, and I
will make him speak without reserve, too, and I’ll show him that I love
him, and so understand him,” Levin resolved to himself, as, towards
eleven o’clock, he reached the hotel of which he had the address.

“At the top, 12 and 13,” the porter answered Levin’s inquiry.

“At home?”

“Sure to be at home.”

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of light
thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice, unknown to Levin;
but he knew at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

“It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing’s
done.”

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a young
man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and that a
pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was sitting on the
sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart
at the thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his life. No
one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his galoshes, listened to what
the gentleman in the jerkin was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

“Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,” his
brother’s voice responded, with a cough. “Masha! get us some supper
and some wine if there’s any left; or else go and get some.”

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.

“There’s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” she said.

“Whom do you want?” said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

“It’s I,” answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the
light.

“Who’s I?” Nikolay’s voice said again, still
more angrily. He could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against
something, and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and
the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet
astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had seen him
last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger
than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his
lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naïvely at his visitor.

“Ah, Kostya!” he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and
his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young man,
and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as
if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression, wild, suffering,
and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

“I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t know you
and don’t want to know you. What is it you want?”

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The worst and
most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations with him so
difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he thought of him, and
now, when he saw his face, and especially that nervous twitching of his head,
he remembered it all.

“I didn’t want to see you for anything,” he answered timidly.
“I’ve simply come to see you.”

His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.

“Oh, so that’s it?” he said. “Well, come in; sit down.
Like some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know
who this is?” he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the
gentleman in the jerkin: “This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a
very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course, because
he’s not a scoundrel.”

And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room. Seeing
that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her,
“Wait a minute, I said.” And with the inability to express himself,
the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began, with another look round
at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky’s story: how he had been
expelled from the university for starting a benefit society for the poor
students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards been a teacher in a
peasant school, and how he had been driven out of that too, and had afterwards
been condemned for something.

“You’re of the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to
Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.

“Yes, I was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

“And this woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
“is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad
house,” and he jerked his neck saying this; “but I love her and
respect her, and anyone who wants to know me,” he added, raising his
voice and knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and respect her.
She’s just the same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom
you’ve to do with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well,
here’s the floor, there’s the door.”

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

“Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”

“Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and
wine…. No, wait a minute…. No, it doesn’t matter…. Go along.”

Chapter 25

“So you see,” pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully wrinkling his
forehead and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

“Here, do you see?”… He pointed to some sort of iron bars,
fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the room. “Do you
see that? That’s the beginning of a new thing we’re going into.
It’s a productive association….”

Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive face, and
he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force himself to listen to
what his brother was telling him about the association. He saw that this
association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt. Nikolay Levin
went on talking:

“You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the
peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much
they work they can’t escape from their position of beasts of burden. All
the profits of labor, on which they might improve their position, and gain
leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are
taken from them by the capitalists. And society’s so constituted that the
harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while
they stay beasts of burden to the end. And that state of things must be
changed,” he finished up, and he looked questioningly at his brother.

“Yes, of course,” said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that
had come out on his brother’s projecting cheekbones.

“And so we’re founding a locksmiths’ association, where all
the production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in
common.”

“Where is the association to be?” asked Konstantin Levin.

“In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.”

“But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work
as it is. Why a locksmiths’ association in a village?”

“Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and
that’s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don’t like people to try and
get them out of their slavery,” said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the
objection.

Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room.
This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more.

“I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch’s aristocratic views. I know
that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing
evils.”

“No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?” said Levin,
smiling.

“Sergey Ivanovitch? I’ll tell you what for!” Nikolay Levin
shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. “I’ll tell you
what for…. But what’s the use of talking? There’s only one
thing…. What did you come to me for? You look down on this, and you’re
welcome to,—and go away, in God’s name go away!” he shrieked,
getting up from his chair. “And go away, and go away!”

“I don’t look down on it at all,” said Konstantin Levin
timidly. “I don’t even dispute it.”

At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin looked round angrily
at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.

“I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,” said Nikolay
Levin, getting calmer and breathing painfully; “and then you talk to me
of Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such rubbish, such lying, such
self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have
you read his article?” he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the table,
and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a
space.

“I’ve not read it,” Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not
desiring to enter into the conversation.

“Why not?” said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon
Kritsky.

“Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over it.”

“Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time? That
article’s too deep for many people—that’s to say it’s
over their heads. But with me, it’s another thing; I see through his
ideas, and I know where its weakness lies.”

Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.

“Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow
with the locksmith.”

Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked.

“He’s no good either,” he said. “I see, of
course….”

But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him….

“What do you want now?” he said, and went out to him in the
passage. Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

“Have you been long with my brother?” he said to her.

“Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health has become
very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,” she said.

“That is … how does he drink?”

“Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.”

“And a great deal?” whispered Levin.

“Yes,” she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay
Levin had reappeared.

“What were you talking about?” he said, knitting his brows, and
turning his scared eyes from one to the other. “What was it?”

“Oh, nothing,” Konstantin answered in confusion.

“Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good
your talking to her. She’s a wench, and you’re a gentleman,”
he said with a jerk of the neck. “You understand everything, I see, and
have taken stock of everything, and look with commiseration on my
shortcomings,” he began again, raising his voice.

“Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” whispered Marya
Nikolaevna, again going up to him.

“Oh, very well, very well!… But where’s the supper? Ah, here it
is,” he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. “Here, set it
here,” he added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a
glassful and drank it greedily. “Like a drink?” he turned to his
brother, and at once became better humored.

“Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see you, anyway.
After all’s said and done, we’re not strangers. Come, have a drink.
Tell me what you’re doing,” he went on, greedily munching a piece
of bread, and pouring out another glassful. “How are you living?”

“I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy looking after
the land,” answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with
which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed it.

“Why don’t you get married?”

“It hasn’t happened so,” Konstantin answered, reddening a
little.

“Why not? For me now … everything’s at an end! I’ve made a
mess of my life. But this I’ve said, and I say still, that if my share
had been given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been
different.”

Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.

“Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in the
countinghouse at Pokrovskoe.”

Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.

“Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing
still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the gardener, is he
living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don’t alter
anything in the house, but make haste and get married, and make everything as
it used to be again. Then I’ll come and see you, if your wife is
nice.”

“But come to me now,” said Levin. “How nicely we would
arrange it!”

“I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey
Ivanovitch.”

“You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite independently of
him.”

“Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and
him,” he said, looking timidly into his brother’s face.

This timidity touched Konstantin.

“If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you
that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You’re
both wrong. You’re more wrong externally, and he inwardly.”

“Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!” Nikolay shouted joyfully.

“But I personally value friendly relations with you more
because….”

“Why, why?”

Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was unhappy,
and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what he meant to say,
and scowling he took up the vodka again.

“Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!” said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching
out her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.

“Let it be! Don’t insist! I’ll beat you!” he shouted.

Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at once
reflected on Nikolay’s face, and she took the bottle.

“And do you suppose she understands nothing?” said Nikolay.
“She understands it all better than any of us. Isn’t it true
there’s something good and sweet in her?”

“Were you never before in Moscow?” Konstantin said to her, for the
sake of saying something.

“Only you mustn’t be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her.
No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her for
trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the senselessness in the
world!” he cried suddenly. “These new institutions, these justices
of the peace, rural councils, what hideousness it all is!”

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.

Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all public
institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was distasteful to
him now from his brother’s lips.

“In another world we shall understand it all,” he said lightly.

“In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I don’t
like it,” he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother’s
eyes. “Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness and the
mess, one’s own and other people’s, would be a good thing, and yet
I’m afraid of death, awfully afraid of death.” He shuddered.
“But do drink something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go
somewhere? Let’s go to the Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the
Gypsies and Russian songs.”

His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject to
another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go out
anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade Nikolay
Levin to go and stay with his brother.

Chapter 26

In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he reached
home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors about politics and
the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of
confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other.
But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman,
Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected
by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails
tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman
Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor
had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little by little the
confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing
away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had
put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge,
and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in the village,
and staring at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime
now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to
him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone
else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he
resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary
happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not
so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give
way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been
making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he
resolved to himself that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he
would follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when
things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his
brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the time,
now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense.
But he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the
poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the
right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he
would now work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all
this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole
drive in the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,
better life, he reached home before nine o’clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in the
bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties of
housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came
sidling sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost
upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round about Levin’s knees, jumping
up and longing, but not daring, to put her forepaws on his chest.

“You’re soon back again, sir,” said Agafea Mihalovna.

“I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at
home, one is better,” he answered, and went into his study.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details
came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove
with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father’s sofa, a
large table, on the table an open book, a broken ashtray, a manuscript book
with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a
doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been
dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to
say to him: “No, you’re not going to get away from us, and
you’re not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same
as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with
yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a
happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible for
you.”

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him
that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything
with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the corner where stood his
two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to
restore his confident temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He
hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well; but
informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been a little
scorched. This piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying machine had been
constructed and partly invented by Levin. The bailiff had always been against
the drying machine, and now it was with suppressed triumph that he announced
that the buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the
buckwheat had been scorched, it was only because the precautions had not been
taken, for which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and
reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful event:
Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had calved.

“Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern.
I’ll come and look at her,” he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house. Walking
across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into the
cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the frozen door was
opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern,
stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and
piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying down with his ring in
his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought better of it, and only gave
two snorts as they passed by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a
hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as
she sniffed her all over.

Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and spotted calf
onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing, but when Levin put
the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing heavily, began licking her
with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her
mother’s udder, and stiffened her tail out straight.

“Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,” said Levin, examining
the calf. “Like the mother! though the color takes after the father; but
that’s nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily
Fedorovitch, isn’t she splendid?” he said to the bailiff, quite
forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in the calf.

“How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after
you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said the
bailiff. “I did inform you about the machine.”

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his work on
the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He went straight from
the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a little conversation with the
bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight
upstairs to the drawing-room.

Chapter 27

The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived alone, had the
whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he knew that it was
positively not right, and contrary to his present new plans, but this house was
a whole world to Levin. It was the world in which his father and mother had
lived and died. They had lived just the life that to Levin seemed the ideal of
perfection, and that he had dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him a
sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination a
repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he
positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman
who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite
unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting
married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the
chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to
give up that.

When he had gone into the little drawing-room, where he always had tea, and had
settled himself in his armchair with a book, and Agafea Mihalovna had brought
him tea, and with her usual, “Well, I’ll stay a while, sir,”
had taken a chair in the window, he felt that, however strange it might be, he
had not parted from his daydreams, and that he could not live without them.
Whether with her, or with another, still it would be. He was reading a book,
and thinking of what he was reading, and stopping to listen to Agafea
Mihalovna, who gossiped away without flagging, and yet with all that, all sorts
of pictures of family life and work in the future rose disconnectedly before
his imagination. He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put
in its place, settled down, and laid to rest.

He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his duty to God,
and with the money Levin had given him to buy a horse, had been drinking
without stopping, and had beaten his wife till he’d half killed her. He
listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole train of ideas suggested by
his reading. It was Tyndall’s Treatise on Heat. He recalled his
own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the cleverness of
his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic insight. And suddenly there
floated into his mind the joyful thought: “In two years’ time I
shall have two Dutch cows; Pava herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen
young daughters of Berkoot and the three others—how lovely!”

He took up his book again. “Very good, electricity and heat are the same
thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the other in the
equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then what of it? The
connection between all the forces of nature is felt instinctively….
It’s particulary nice if Pava’s daughter should be a red-spotted
cow, and all the herd will take after her, and the other three, too! Splendid!
To go out with my wife and visitors to meet the herd…. My wife says,
‘Kostya and I looked after that calf like a child.’ ‘How can
it interest you so much?’ says a visitor. ‘Everything that
interests him, interests me.’ But who will she be?” And he
remembered what had happened at Moscow…. “Well, there’s nothing
to be done…. It’s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new
way. It’s nonsense to pretend that life won’t let one, that the
past won’t let one. One must struggle to live better, much
better.”… He raised his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had
not yet fully digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard
to bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent
of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined plaintively, asking to be
stroked.

“There, who’d have thought it?” said Agafea Mihalovna.
“The dog now … why, she understands that her master’s come home,
and that he’s low-spirited.”

“Why low-spirited?”

“Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I should
know the gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little thing with them.
It’s nothing, sir, so long as there’s health and a clear
conscience.”

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his thought.

“Shall I fetch you another cup?” said she, and taking his cup she
went out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she promptly
curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And in token of all now
being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a little, smacked her lips,
and settling her sticky lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank
into blissful repose. Levin watched all her movements attentively.

“That’s what I’ll do,” he said to himself;
“that’s what I’ll do! Nothing’s amiss…. All’s
well.”

Chapter 28

After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband a telegram
that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

“No, I must go, I must go”; she explained to her sister-in-law the
change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember so many
things that there was no enumerating them: “no, it had really better be
today!”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to come and see his
sister off at seven o’clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly and
Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess. Whether it was
that the children were fickle, or that they had acute senses, and felt that
Anna was quite different that day from what she had been when they had taken
such a fancy to her, that she was not now interested in them,—but they
had abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and
were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna was absorbed the whole
morning in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow
acquaintances, put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she
was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly knew
well with herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part
covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up to her room to
dress, and Dolly followed her.

“How queer you are today!” Dolly said to her.

“I? Do you think so? I’m not queer, but I’m nasty. I am like
that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It’s very stupid, but
it’ll pass off,” said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face
over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric
handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually swimming
with tears. “In the same way I didn’t want to leave Petersburg, and
now I don’t want to go away from here.”

“You came here and did a good deed,” said Dolly, looking intently
at her.

Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.

“Don’t say that, Dolly. I’ve done nothing, and could do
nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I
done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to
forgive….”

“If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How
happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear and good in
your heart.”

“Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.”

“You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in
you.”

“I have!” said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a
sly, ironical smile curved her lips.

“Come, he’s amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not
depressing,” said Dolly, smiling.

“No, he’s depressing. Do you know why I’m going today instead
of tomorrow? It’s a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to
you,” said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and
looking straight into Dolly’s face.

And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up to the
curly black ringlets on her neck.

“Yes,” Anna went on. “Do you know why Kitty didn’t come
to dinner? She’s jealous of me. I have spoiled … I’ve been the
cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly,
truly, it’s not my fault, or only my fault a little bit,” she said,
daintily drawling the words “a little bit.”

“Oh, how like Stiva you said that!” said Dolly, laughing.

Anna was hurt.

“Oh no, oh no! I’m not Stiva,” she said, knitting her brows.
“That’s why I’m telling you, just because I could never let
myself doubt myself for an instant,” said Anna.

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they were not
true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt emotion at the thought of
Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant, simply to avoid meeting
him.

“Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that
he….”

“You can’t imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to
be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possibly
against my own will….”

She crimsoned and stopped.

“Oh, they feel it directly?” said Dolly.

“But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on his
side,” Anna interrupted her. “And I am certain it will all be
forgotten, and Kitty will leave off hating me.”

“All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I’m not very anxious
for this marriage for Kitty. And it’s better it should come to nothing,
if he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day.”

“Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!” said Anna, and again a deep
flush of pleasure came out on her face, when she heard the idea, that absorbed
her, put into words. “And so here I am going away, having made an enemy
of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But you’ll make it
right, Dolly? Eh?”

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed seeing
that she too had her weaknesses.

“An enemy? That can’t be.”

“I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care
for you more than ever,” said Anna, with tears in her eyes. “Ah,
how silly I am today!”

She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.

At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch arrived, late, rosy and
good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.

Anna’s emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her
sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered: “Remember, Anna, what
you’ve done for me—I shall never forget. And remember that I love
you, and shall always love you as my dearest friend!”

“I don’t know why,” said Anna, kissing her and hiding her
tears.

“You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!”

Chapter 29

“Come, it’s all over, and thank God!” was the first thought
that came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to
her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the
third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about
her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. “Thank God! tomorrow I
shall see Seryozha and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old
way, all nice and as usual.”

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Anna
took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care. With her
little deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion,
laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself
comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies
began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made
observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered a few words, but not
foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a
lamp, hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper-knife
and an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and
bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started, she could not help
listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking
to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard passing by, covered with snow
on one side, and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside,
distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the same again and
again: the same shaking and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same
rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same
passing glimpses of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and
Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was already
dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of
which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful
to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s
lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine
of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps
about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a
speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary
had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had
surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But
there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in
her little hands, she forced herself to read.

The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a
baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to the
estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed, and that
she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of?
“What have I to be ashamed of?” she asked herself in injured
surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back of the chair,
tightly gripping the paper-cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went
over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the
ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her
conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same
point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some
inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her,
“Warm, very warm, hot.” “Well, what is it?” she said to
herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. “What does it mean?
Am I afraid to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that
between me and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations
than such as are common with every acquaintance?” She laughed
contemptuously and took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to
follow what she read. She passed the paper-knife over the window pane, then
laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the
feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as
though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort
of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and
toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all
shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with
unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when
she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were
standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger.
“What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast?
And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?” She was afraid of
giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could
yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself, and slipped off
her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her
self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had come in wearing a
long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the stoveheater, that he was
looking at the thermometer, that it was the wind and snow bursting in after him
at the door; but then everything grew blurred again…. That peasant with the
long waist seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began
stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and filling it with a
black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as though someone
were being torn to pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire before
her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and hide everything. Anna felt as though
she were sinking down. But it was not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a
man muffled up and covered with snow shouted something in her ear. She got up
and pulled herself together; she realized that they had reached a station and
that this was the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken
off and her shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.

“Do you wish to get out?” asked Annushka.

“Yes, I want a little air. It’s very hot in here.” And she
opened the door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled
with her over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle.

She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in wait for
her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear her off, but she
clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the platform
and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the
steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull.
With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and standing
near the carriage looked about the platform and the lighted station.

Chapter 30

The raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the carriages, about
the scaffolding, and round the corner of the station. The carriages, posts,
people, everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on one side, and
was getting more and more thickly covered. For a moment there would come a lull
in the storm, but then it would swoop down again with such onslaughts that it
seemed impossible to stand against it. Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking
merrily together, their steps crackling on the platform as they continually
opened and closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at her
feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. “Hand over that
telegram!” came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on the other
side. “This way! No. 28!” several different voices shouted again,
and muffled figures ran by covered with snow. Two gentlemen with lighted
cigarettes passed by her. She drew one more deep breath of the fresh air, and
had just put her hand out of her muff to take hold of the door post and get
back into the carriage, when another man in a military overcoat, quite close
beside her, stepped between her and the flickering light of the lamp post. She
looked round, and the same instant recognized Vronsky’s face. Putting his
hand to the peak of his cap, he bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she
wanted? Could he be of any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him
without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she
saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes. It was
again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the
day before. More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and
again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the
hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that
she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now at the
first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She
had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her
that he was here to be where she was.

“I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?” she
said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And
irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.

“What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her
eyes. “You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said;
“I can’t help it.”

At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the snow
flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off,
while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively and
gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He
had said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her reason.
She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.

“Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,” he said humbly.

He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly, that
for a long while she could make no answer.

“It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good
man, to forget what you’ve said, as I forget it,” she said at last.

“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget….”

“Enough, enough!” she cried trying assiduously to give a stern
expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching at the
cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got rapidly into the corridor of
the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused, going over in her
imagination what had happened. Though she could not recall her own words or
his, she realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had brought
them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it. After
standing still a few seconds, she went into the carriage and sat down in her
place. The overstrained condition which had tormented her before did not only
come back, but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid
every minute that something would snap within her from the excessive tension.
She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions
that filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the
contrary there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards
morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she waked it was
daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of
husband and of son, and the details of that day and the following came upon
her.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person
that attracted her attention was her husband. “Oh, mercy! why do his ears
look like that?” she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure,
and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim
of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling
into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight
at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate
and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was
especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she
experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling,
like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with
her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was
clearly and painfully aware of it.

“Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after
marriage, burned with impatience to see you,” he said in his deliberate,
high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a
tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.

“Is Seryozha quite well?” she asked.

“And is this all the reward,” said he, “for my ardor?
He’s quite well….”

Chapter 31

Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his armchair,
looking straight before him or scanning the people who got in and out. If he
had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed people who did not know
him by his air of unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and
self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous
young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that
look. The young man asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with
him, and even pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but
a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the lamp, and the young
man made a wry face, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the
oppression of this refusal to recognize him as a person.

Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he believed
that he had made an impression on Anna—he did not yet believe
that,—but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness
and pride.

What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He felt that
all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing, and
bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He knew
only that he had told her the truth, that he had come where she was, that all
the happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing
and hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at Bologova to get some
seltzer water, and caught sight of Anna, involuntarily his first word had told
her just what he thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it
now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in the
carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had seen
her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his heart faint
with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.

When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night
as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his compartment, waiting
for her to get out. “Once more,” he said to himself, smiling
unconsciously, “once more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say
something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.” But before he caught
sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the station-master was deferentially
escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes! The husband.” Only now for
the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person
attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a husband, but had hardly
believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head
and shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this
husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.

Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely
self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he
believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might
feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep,
or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s manner of walking, with a swing of the hips and flat
feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize in no one but himself an
indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same, and the sight of her
affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling
his soul with rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the
second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He
saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a
lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her
husband. “No, she does not love him and cannot love him,” he
decided to himself.

At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed too with joy
that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing him,
turned again to her husband.

“Have you passed a good night?” he asked, bowing to her and her
husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow
on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.

“Thank you, very good,” she answered.

Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it, peeping
out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she glanced at him,
there was a flash of something in her eyes, and although the flash died away at
once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her husband to find out
whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with
displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was. Vronsky’s composure and
self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against a stone, upon the cold
self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“Count Vronsky,” said Anna.

“Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch
indifferently, giving his hand.

“You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said,
articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was
bestowing.

“You’re back from leave, I suppose?” he said, and without
waiting for a reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: “Well,
were a great many tears shed at Moscow at parting?”

By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he wished
to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched his hat; but
Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.

“I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,” he said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.

“Delighted,” he said coldly. “On Mondays we’re at home.
Most fortunate,” he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether,
“that I should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my
devotion,” he went on in the same jesting tone.

“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,”
she responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of
Vronsky’s steps behind them. “But what has it to do with me?”
she said to herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha had got on
without her.

“Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And … I must
disappoint you … but he has not missed you as your husband has. But once more
merci, my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will be
delighted.” (He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known in
society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with excitement.)
“She has been continually asking after you. And, do you know, if I may
venture to advise you, you should go and see her today. You know how she takes
everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she’s anxious
about the Oblonskys being brought together.”

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and the center
of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Anna was,
through her husband, in the closest relations.

“But you know I wrote to her?”

“Still she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you’re
not too tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I
go to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. “You
wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed….” And with a long pressure
of her hand and a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.

Chapter 32

The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the stairs to
her, in spite of the governess’s call, and with desperate joy shrieked:
“Mother! mother!” Running up to her, he hung on her neck.

“I told you it was mother!” he shouted to the governess. “I
knew!”

And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to
disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to
let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But even as
he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump,
graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced almost
physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral
soothing, when she met his simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his
naïve questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent
him, and told her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how
Tanya could read, and even taught the other children.

“Why, am I not so nice as she?” asked Seryozha.

“To me you’re nicer than anyone in the world.”

“I know that,” said Seryozha, smiling.

Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia Ivanovna was
announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman, with an
unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but
today she seemed to be seeing her for the first time with all her defects.

“Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?” inquired Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.

“Yes, it’s all over, but it was all much less serious than we had
supposed,” answered Anna. “My belle-sœur is in general too
hasty.”

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything that did
not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she
interrupted Anna:

“Yes, there’s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so
worried today.”

“Oh, why?” asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.

“I’m beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth,
and sometimes I’m quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little
Sisters” (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution)
“was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it’s impossible to
do anything,” added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical
submission to destiny. “They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then
work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among
them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it
down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me….”

Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna
described the purport of his letter.

Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work
of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day
to be at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee.

“It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn’t
notice it before?” Anna asked herself. “Or has she been very much
irritated today? It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a
Christian, yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always
enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.”

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief
secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock she
too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the
ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her
son’s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things
in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had
accumulated on her table.

The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her
excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her
life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. “What was
it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to,
and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be
unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach
importance to what has no importance.” She remembered how she had told
her husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young
man, one of her husband’s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had
answered that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents,
but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her
and himself by jealousy. “So then there’s no reason to speak of it?
And indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,” she told
herself.

Chapter 33

Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers at four
o’clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her. He
went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to
sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner time (there were
always a few people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a
cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and his
wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the
service. Anna went into the drawing-room to receive these guests. Precisely at
five o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the
fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening
coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied. And to make
time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the
strictest punctuality. “Unhasting and unresting,” was his motto. He
came into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to
his wife.

“Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how
uncomfortable” (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable)
“it is to dine alone.”

At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with a
sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was
for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news.
After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile,
pressed his wife’s hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Anna did
not go out that evening either to the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, who, hearing of
her return, had invited her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that
evening. She did not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon
was not ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests,
to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a
mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before leaving
Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform. The dresses had
to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and they ought to have been
ready three days before. It appeared that two dresses had not been done at all,
while the other one had not been altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker
came to explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it, and Anna
was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards. To
regain her serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent the whole
evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross, and
tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the
evening so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw so clearly that
all that had seemed to her so important on her railway journey was only one of
the common trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to
feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down at the hearth
with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past nine she
heard his ring, and he came into the room.

“Here you are at last!” she observed, holding out her hand to him.

He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

“Altogether then, I see your visit was a success,” he said to her.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and she began telling him about everything
from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaya, her arrival, the
accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first for
her brother, and afterwards for Dolly.

“I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is your
brother,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.

Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family
considerations could not prevent him from expressing his genuine opinion. She
knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.

“I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back
again,” he went on. “Come, what do they say about the new act I
have got passed in the council?”

Anna had heard nothing of this act, and she felt conscience-stricken at having
been able so readily to forget what was to him of such importance.

“Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,” he said,
with a complacent smile.

She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something pleasant to him
about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With the same
complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had received in consequence of
the act he had passed.

“I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady
view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.”

Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch
got up, and was going towards his study.

“And you’ve not been anywhere this evening? You’ve been dull,
I expect?” he said.

“Oh, no!” she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him
across the room to his study. “What are you reading now?” she
asked.

“Just now I’m reading Duc de Lille, Poésie des
Enfers,” he answered. “A very remarkable book.”

Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and, putting
her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study. She knew his
habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew,
too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole
of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that
appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really
interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art
was utterly foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in
consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the
world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in
politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts,
and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of
music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most
distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare,
Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all
of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.

“Well, God be with you,” she said at the door of the study, where a
shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair.
“And I’ll write to Moscow.”

He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.

“All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and
remarkable in his own line,” Anna said to herself going back to her room,
as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that
one could not love him. “But why is it his ears stick out so strangely?
Or has he had his hair cut?”

Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting at her
writing-table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured
steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a
book under his arm, came in to her.

“It’s time, it’s time,” said he, with a meaning smile,
and he went into their bedroom.

“And what right had he to look at him like that?” thought Anna,
recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the eagerness
which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her
smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere
far away.

Chapter 34

When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set of rooms
in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and not
merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was
always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and
disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his
superior officers. On arriving at twelve o’clock from the station at his
flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While
still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp
of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s voice. “If that’s one of
the villains, don’t let him in!” Vronsky told the servant not to
announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a
friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair,
resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary,
with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in
his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably
just come from duty, were sitting each side of her.

“Bravo! Vronsky!” shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his
chair. “Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new
coffee pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with
the ornament of your study,” he said, indicating the baroness. “You
know each other, of course?”

“I should think so,” said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing
the baroness’s little hand. “What next! I’m an old
friend.”

“You’re home after a journey,” said the baroness, “so
I’m flying. Oh, I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the
way.”

“You’re home, wherever you are, baroness,” said Vronsky.
“How do you do, Kamerovsky?” he added, coldly shaking hands with
Kamerovsky.

“There, you never know how to say such pretty things,” said the
baroness, turning to Petritsky.

“No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as
good.”

“After dinner there’s no credit in them? Well, then, I’ll
make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,” said the baroness,
sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot.
“Pierre, give me the coffee,” she said, addressing Petritsky, whom
she called Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her
relations with him. “I’ll put it in.”

“You’ll spoil it!”

“No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?” said the
baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade.
“We’ve been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?”

“No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.”

“So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.”

And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many jokes, about
her last new plans of life, asking his advice.

“He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to
do?” (He was her husband.) “Now I want to begin a suit
against him. What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s
boiling over. You see, I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit,
because I must have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the
pretext of my being unfaithful to him,” she said contemptuously,
“he wants to get the benefit of my fortune.”

Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman,
agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once
into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Petersburg world
all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class,
vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl
should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and
strong; that one ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s
bread, and pay one’s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the
class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of
people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great
thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a
blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impression of a quite
different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But immediately as
though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped back into the
light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.

The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over everyone, and boiled
away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing much cause
for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness’s
gown.

“Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and I shall have
on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a
knife to his throat?”

“To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his lips.
He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,” answered
Vronsky.

“So at the Français!” and, with a rustle of her skirts, she
vanished.

Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook hands and
went off to his dressing-room.

While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his
position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg. No money
at all. His father said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his debts. His
tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was
threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced
that if these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the
baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she’d taken to
offering continually to lend him money. But he had found a
girl—he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the
strict Oriental style, “genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you
know.” He’d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send
seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything
was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into
further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the
interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s familiar stories in the
familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky
felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he
was used to.

“Impossible!” he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin
in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. “Impossible!” he
cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to
Mileev. “And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how’s
Buzulukov?”

“Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!” cried
Petritsky. “You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single
court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new
helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he’s standing…. No, I say, do
listen.”

“I am listening,” answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough
towel.

“Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as
ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets. The
Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the ambassador. They
see our friend standing there.” (Petritsky mimicked how he was standing
with the helmet.) “The Grand Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he
doesn’t give it to her. What do you think of that? Well, everyone’s
winking at him, nodding, frowning—give it to her, do! He doesn’t
give it to her. He’s mute as a fish. Only picture it!… Well, the …
what’s his name, whatever he was … tries to take the helmet from him
… he won’t give it up!… He pulls it from him, and hands it to the
Grand Duchess. ‘Here, your Highness,’ says he, ‘is the new
helmet.’ She turned the helmet the other side up, And—just picture
it!—plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two pounds of
sweetmeats!… He’d been storing them up, the darling!”

Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was talking
of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing his strong, close
rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.

Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet, got into
his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when he had done
that, to drive to his brother’s and to Betsy’s and to pay several
visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where he might meet
Madame Karenina. As he always did in Petersburg, he left home not meaning to
return till late at night.

PART TWO

Chapter 1

At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, a consultation
was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty’s health and
the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and
as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod liver oil,
then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the
third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring came was to go
abroad, a celebrated physician was called in. The celebrated physician, a very
handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with
peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of
barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish
to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every
day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it and
consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of
barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.

There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had
studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same
science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor,
in the princess’s household and circle it was for some reason accepted
that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone
could save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered
patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed
his hands, was standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince
frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something
of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in
his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was perhaps the only
one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty’s illness. “Conceited
blockhead!” he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor’s
chatter about his daughter’s symptoms. The doctor was meantime with
difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman,
and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He
perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal
person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his
pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing-room with the family
doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the
whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do.
She felt she had sinned against Kitty.

“Well, doctor, decide our fate,” said the princess. “Tell me
everything.”

“Is there hope?” she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she
could not utter the question. “Well, doctor?”

“Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then I
will have the honor of laying my opinion before you.”

“So we had better leave you?”

“As you please.”

The princess went out with a sigh.

When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly explaining
his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous trouble, but … and
so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and in the middle of his sentence
looked at his big gold watch.

“Yes,” said he. “But….”

The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his observations.

“The commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are
aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing definite. But
we may suspect it. And there are indications; malnutrition, nervous
excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications
of tuberculous process, what is to be done to maintain nutrition?”

“But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the back in
these cases,” the family doctor permitted himself to interpolate with a
subtle smile.

“Yes, that’s an understood thing,” responded the celebrated
physician, again glancing at his watch. “Beg pardon, is the Yausky bridge
done yet, or shall I have to drive around?” he asked. “Ah! it is.
Oh, well, then I can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may
be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is
in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at once.”

“And how about a tour abroad?” asked the family doctor.

“I’ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an
early stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign
tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means of improving nutrition, and not
for lowering it.” And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of
treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the
ground that they could do no harm.

The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.

“But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the
removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother wishes
it,” he added.

“Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German
quacks are mischievous…. They ought to be persuaded…. Well, let them go
then.”

He glanced once more at his watch.

“Oh! time’s up already,” And he went to the door. The
celebrated doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him
dictated his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more.

“What! another examination!” cried the mother, with horror.

“Oh, no, only a few details, princess.”

“Come this way.”

And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room to Kitty.
Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the
agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room.
When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears.
All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even!
Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a
broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills
and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother
considered herself to blame.

“May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor
said to her.

He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking
her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up, furious.

“Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the
third time you’ve asked me the same thing.”

The celebrated doctor did not take offense.

“Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had
left the room. “However, I had finished….”

And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an
exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and
concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly
harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep
meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was
pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and
to apply to him in any need.

It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the
doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her
daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost
always, to be pretending now.

“Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad,
let’s go!” she said, and trying to appear interested in the
proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey.

Chapter 2

Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a
consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement
(she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though
she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a
sick child, to come and hear Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that
day.

“Well, well?” she said, coming into the drawing-room, without
taking off her hat. “You’re all in good spirits. Good news,
then?”

They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though
the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly
impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it
was settled they should go abroad.

Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away.
And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch
after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented
turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down
again at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming,
and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried
to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The
first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again,
and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the
first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and
she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself, for the
weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to
her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had
gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.

“Well, how are all of you?” asked her mother.

“Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and
I’m afraid it’s scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about
Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if—God forbid—it
should be scarlatina.”

The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor’s
departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words to
her, he turned to his wife:

“How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and what do you mean
to do with me?”

“I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,” said his wife.

“That’s as you like.”

“Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?” said Kitty.
“It would be nicer for him and for us too.”

The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She lifted her head and
looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood
her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say much about her.
Being the youngest, she was her father’s favorite, and she fancied that
his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking
intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and understood
all that was not good that was passing within her. Reddening, she stretched out
towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said:

“These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real daughter.
One simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,” he turned
to his elder daughter, “what’s your young buck about, hey?”

“Nothing, father,” answered Dolly, understanding that her husband
was meant. “He’s always out; I scarcely ever see him,” she
could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.

“Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet—to see about
selling that forest?”

“No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.”

“Oh, that’s it!” said the prince. “And so am I to be
getting ready for a journey too? At your service,” he said to his wife,
sitting down. “And I tell you what, Katia,” he went on to his
younger daughter, “you must wake up one fine day and say to yourself:
Why, I’m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an
early morning walk in the frost. Hey?”

What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty became
confused and overcome like a detected criminal. “Yes, he sees it all, he
understands it all, and in these words he’s telling me that though
I’m ashamed, I must get over my shame.” She could not pluck up
spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into
tears, and rushed out of the room.

“See what comes of your jokes!” the princess pounced down on her
husband. “You’re always….” she began a string of reproaches.

The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a long while
without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.

“She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and
you don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the
cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!” said the princess, and by
the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of
Vronsky. “I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such
base, dishonorable people.”

“Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!” said the prince gloomily,
getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in
the doorway. “There are laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me
to it, I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you
and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and
there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been,
old as I am, I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy.
Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks.”

The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess heard
his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on
serious occasions.

“Alexander, Alexander,” she whispered, moving to him and beginning
to weep.

As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.

“There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched
too, I know. It can’t be helped. There’s no great harm done. God is
merciful … thanks….” he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he
responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the
prince went out of the room.

Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her
motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman’s
work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and,
morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her
mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as
filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s outburst she was
silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so
quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what
was the chief thing needful—to go to Kitty and console her.

“I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma:
did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last
time? He told Stiva so.”

“Well, what then? I don’t understand….”

“So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?… She didn’t tell you so?”

“No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s
too proud. But I know it’s all on account of the other.”

“Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have
refused him if it hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has
deceived her so horribly.”

It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her
daughter, and she broke out angrily.

“Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own
way, and mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then….”

“Mamma, I’ll go up to her.”

“Well, do. Did I tell you not to?” said her mother.

Chapter 3

When she went into Kitty’s little room, a pretty, pink little room, full
of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as
Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated
the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned
cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed
immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold,
rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not change.

“I’m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you
won’t be able to come to see me,” said Dolly, sitting down beside
her. “I want to talk to you.”

“What about?” Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.

“What should it be, but your trouble?”

“I have no trouble.”

“Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all about
it. And believe me, it’s of so little consequence…. We’ve all
been through it.”

Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.

“He’s not worth your grieving over him,” pursued Darya
Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.

“No, because he has treated me with contempt,” said Kitty, in a
breaking voice. “Don’t talk of it! Please, don’t talk of
it!”

“But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I’m certain he
was in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it
hadn’t….”

“Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!”
shrieked Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair,
flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her belt
first with one hand and then with the other. Dolly knew this trick her sister
had of clenching her hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in
moments of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying a
great deal too much, and Dolly would have soothed her, but it was too late.

“What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?” said Kitty
quickly. “That I’ve been in love with a man who didn’t care a
straw for me, and that I’m dying of love for him? And this is said to me
by my own sister, who imagines that … that … that she’s sympathizing
with me!… I don’t want these condolences and humbug!”

“Kitty, you’re unjust.”

“Why are you tormenting me?”

“But I … quite the contrary … I see you’re unhappy….”

But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.

“I’ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud
ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me.”

“Yes, I don’t say so either…. Only one thing. Tell me the
truth,” said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: “tell me,
did Levin speak to you?…”

The mention of Levin’s name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige
of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the
ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:

“Why bring Levin in too? I can’t understand what you want to
torment me for. I’ve told you, and I say it again, that I have some
pride, and never, never would I do as you’re doing—go back
to a man who’s deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I
can’t understand it! You may, but I can’t!”

And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly sat
silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of the room as
she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her
handkerchief.

The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That
humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar
bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such
cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the
rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing,
and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.

“Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!” she whispered penitently. And the
sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirt.

As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of
mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters
after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though
they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the
words she had uttered in anger about her husband’s infidelity and her
humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had
forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt
certain that her surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her
inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an
offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was
fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of
that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.

“I have nothing to make me miserable,” she said, getting calmer;
“but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome,
coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can’t imagine what loathsome
thoughts I have about everything.”

“Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?” asked Dolly,
smiling.

“The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell you.
It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though
everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but
the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?” she went on, seeing the
puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. “Father began saying something
to me just now…. It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother
takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as
soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I
can’t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call
them—I can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re taking
stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a
simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then!
The doctor…. Then….” Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that
ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become
insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without the
grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her imagination.

“Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most
loathsome light,” she went on. “That’s my illness. Perhaps it
will pass off.”

“But you mustn’t think about it.”

“I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the children at
your house.”

“What a pity you can’t be with me!”

“Oh, yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll
persuade mamma to let me.”

Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister’s and
nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to
be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but
Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.

Chapter 4

The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows
everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set has its
subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three
different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband’s
government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought
together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different
social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost
awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons.
Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew
their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She
knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities, knew who
was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and where they agreed
and disagreed. But the circle of political, masculine interests had never
interested her, in spite of countess Lidia Ivanovna’s influence, and she
avoided it.

Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the one by means
of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of this circle
was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made up of elderly, ugly,
benevolent, and godly women, and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the
clever people belonging to the set had called it “the conscience of
Petersburg society.” Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for
this circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with everyone, had
in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also.
Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable.
It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so
bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna as little as possible.

The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the fashionable
world—the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world
that hung on to the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level of
the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of that fashionable world
believed that they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but
in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up through Princess
Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin’s wife, who had an income of a hundred and
twenty thousand roubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she
first came out, showed her much attention, and drew her into her set, making
fun of Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s coterie.

“When I’m old and ugly I’ll be the same,” Betsy used to
say; “but for a pretty young woman like you it’s early days for
that house of charity.”

Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskaya’s world,
because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her
heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had
done quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out
into the fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and experienced an agitating
joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky specially often at Betsy’s for
Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he
had any chance of meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his
love. She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up
in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that
day in the railway carriage when she saw him for the first time. She was
conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips
into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of this delight.

At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for daring to
pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on arriving at a soirée
where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him there, she realized
distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she had been deceiving herself,
and that this pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it made
the whole interest of her life.

The celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the fashionable
world was in the theater. Vronsky, seeing his cousin from his stall in the
front row, did not wait till the entr’acte, but went to her box.

“Why didn’t you come to dinner?” she said to him. “I
marvel at the second sight of lovers,” she added with a smile, so that no
one but he could hear; “she wasn’t there. But come after the
opera.”

Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a smile, and
sat down beside her.

“But how I remember your jeers!” continued Princess Betsy, who took
a peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a successful issue.
“What’s become of all that? You’re caught, my dear
boy.”

“That’s my one desire, to be caught,” answered Vronsky, with
his serene, good-humored smile. “If I complain of anything it’s
only that I’m not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose
hope.”

“Why, whatever hope can you have?” said Betsy, offended on behalf
of her friend. “Entendons nous….” But in her eyes there
were gleams of light that betrayed that she understood perfectly and precisely
as he did what hope he might have.

“None whatever,” said Vronsky, laughing and showing his even rows
of teeth. “Excuse me,” he added, taking an opera-glass out of her
hand, and proceeding to scrutinize, over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes
facing them. “I’m afraid I’m becoming ridiculous.”

He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of
Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their
eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to
marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman,
and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery,
has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it
was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the
opera-glass and looked at his cousin.

“But why was it you didn’t come to dinner?” she said,
admiring him.

“I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do
you suppose? I’ll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand … you’d
never guess. I’ve been reconciling a husband with a man who’d
insulted his wife. Yes, really!”

“Well, did you succeed?”

“Almost.”

“You really must tell me about it,” she said, getting up.
“Come to me in the next entr’acte.”

“I can’t; I’m going to the French theater.”

“From Nilsson?” Betsy queried in horror, though she could not
herself have distinguished Nilsson’s voice from any chorus girl’s.

“Can’t help it. I’ve an appointment there, all to do with my
mission of peace.”

“‘Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of
heaven,’” said Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard some
similar saying from someone. “Very well, then, sit down, and tell me what
it’s all about.”

And she sat down again.

Chapter 5

“This is rather indiscreet, but it’s so good it’s an awful
temptation to tell the story,” said Vronsky, looking at her with his
laughing eyes. “I’m not going to mention any names.”

“But I shall guess, so much the better.”

“Well, listen: two festive young men were driving—”

“Officers of your regiment, of course?”

“I didn’t say they were officers,—two young men who had been
lunching.”

“In other words, drinking.”

“Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the
most festive state of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge;
she overtakes them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to
them and laughs. They, of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To
their amazement, the fair one alights at the entrance of the very house to
which they were going. The fair one darts upstairs to the top story. They get a
glimpse of red lips under a short veil, and exquisite little feet.”

“You describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one of the
two.”

“And after what you said, just now! Well, the young men go in to their
comrade’s; he was giving a farewell dinner. There they certainly did
drink a little too much, as one always does at farewell dinners. And at dinner
they inquire who lives at the top in that house. No one knows; only their
host’s valet, in answer to their inquiry whether any ‘young
ladies’ are living on the top floor, answered that there were a great
many of them about there. After dinner the two young men go into their
host’s study, and write a letter to the unknown fair one. They compose an
ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the letter upstairs
themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might appear not perfectly intelligible
in the letter.”

“Why are you telling me these horrible stories? Well?”

“They ring. A maid-servant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and
assure the maid that they’re both so in love that they’ll die on
the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at
once a gentleman appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as a lobster,
announces that there is no one living in the flat except his wife, and sends
them both about their business.”

“How do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you say?”

“Ah, you shall hear. I’ve just been to make peace between
them.”

“Well, and what then?”

“That’s the most interesting part of the story. It appears that
it’s a happy couple, a government clerk and his lady. The government
clerk lodges a complaint, and I became a mediator, and such a mediator!… I
assure you Talleyrand couldn’t hold a candle to me.”

“Why, where was the difficulty?”

“Ah, you shall hear…. We apologize in due form: we are in despair, we
entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate misunderstanding. The government clerk
with the sausages begins to melt, but he, too, desires to express his
sentiments, and as soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot
and say nasty things, and again I’m obliged to trot out all my diplomatic
talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I urged him to take into
consideration their heedlessness, their youth; then, too, the young men had
only just been lunching together. ‘You understand. They regret it deeply,
and beg you to overlook their misbehavior.’ The government clerk was
softened once more. ‘I consent, count, and am ready to overlook it; but
you perceive that my wife—my wife’s a respectable woman—has
been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and effrontery of young upstarts,
scoundrels….’ And you must understand, the young upstarts are present
all the while, and I have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out all
my diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end, our friend
the government clerk gets hot and red, and his sausages stand on end with
wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic wiles.”

“Ah, he must tell you this story!” said Betsy, laughing, to a lady
who came into her box. “He has been making me laugh so.”

“Well, bonne chance!” she added, giving Vronsky one finger
of the hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she
twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so as to be duly naked
as she moved forward towards the footlights into the light of the gas, and the
sight of all eyes.

Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see the colonel of
his regiment, who never missed a single performance there. He wanted to see
him, to report on the result of his mediation, which had occupied and amused
him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the
affair, and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate comrade, who
had lately joined the regiment, the young Prince Kedrov. And what was most
important, the interests of the regiment were involved in it too.

Both the young men were in Vronsky’s company. The colonel of the regiment
was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a complaint against his
officers, who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so Venden told the
story—he had been married half a year—was at church with her
mother, and suddenly overcome by indisposition, arising from her interesting
condition, she could not remain standing, she drove home in the first sledge, a
smart-looking one, she came across. On the spot the officers set off in pursuit
of her; she was alarmed, and feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase
home. Venden himself, on returning from his office, heard a ring at their bell
and voices, went out, and seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter, he had
turned them out. He asked for exemplary punishment.

“Yes, it’s all very well,” said the colonel to Vronsky, whom
he had invited to come and see him. “Petritsky’s becoming
impossible. Not a week goes by without some scandal. This government clerk
won’t let it drop, he’ll go on with the thing.”

Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there could be no
question of a duel in it, that everything must be done to soften the government
clerk, and hush the matter up. The colonel had called in Vronsky just because
he knew him to be an honorable and intelligent man, and, more than all, a man
who cared for the honor of the regiment. They talked it over, and decided that
Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Vronsky to Venden’s to apologize. The
colonel and Vronsky were both fully aware that Vronsky’s name and rank
would be sure to contribute greatly to the softening of the injured
husband’s feelings.

And these two influences were not in fact without effect; though the result
remained, as Vronsky had described, uncertain.

On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the foyer with the colonel,
and reported to him his success, or non-success. The colonel, thinking it all
over, made up his mind not to pursue the matter further, but then for his own
satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Vronsky about his interview; and it was
a long while before he could restrain his laughter, as Vronsky described how
the government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up
again, as he recalled the details, and how Vronsky, at the last half word of
conciliation, skillfully manœuvered a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before
him.

“It’s a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can’t
fight the gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?” he commented, laughing.
“But what do you say to Claire today? She’s marvelous,” he
went on, speaking of a new French actress. “However often you see her,
every day she’s different. It’s only the French who can do
that.”

Chapter 6

Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for the end of the
last act. She had only just time to go into her dressing-room, sprinkle her
long, pale face with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea in
the big drawing-room, when one after another carriages drove up to her huge
house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance, and
the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the mornings behind the
glass door, to the edification of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the
immense door, letting the visitors pass by him into the house.

Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure and
freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other door of the
drawing-room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted
table, gleaming with the light of candles, white cloth, silver samovar, and
transparent china tea-things.

The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves. Chairs were set with
the aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly about the room; the party
settled itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar near the
hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing-room, round the handsome
wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined black eyebrows. In
both groups conversation wavered, as it always does, for the first few minutes,
broken up by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about
for something to rest upon.

“She’s exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she’s
studied Kaulbach,” said a diplomatic attaché in the group round the
ambassador’s wife. “Did you notice how she fell down?…”

“Oh, please, don’t let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly
say anything new about her,” said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady,
without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess
Myakaya, noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and
nicknamed enfant terrible. Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle
between the two groups, and listening to both, took part in the conversation
first of one and then of the other. “Three people have used that very
phrase about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made a
compact about it. And I can’t see why they liked that remark so.”

The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new subject had to be
thought of again.

“Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful,” said the
ambassador’s wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant
conversation called by the English small talk. She addressed the
attaché, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.

“They say that that’s a difficult task, that nothing’s
amusing that isn’t spiteful,” he began with a smile. “But
I’ll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a
subject’s given me, it’s easy to spin something round it. I often
think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale….”

“That has been said long ago,” the ambassador’s wife
interrupted him, laughing.

The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it came to
a stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing
topic—gossip.

“Don’t you think there’s something Louis Quinze about
Tushkevitch?” he said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired young
man, standing at the table.

“Oh, yes! He’s in the same style as the drawing-room and
that’s why it is he’s so often here.”

This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what could
not be talked of in that room—that is to say, of the relations of
Tushkevitch with their hostess.

Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile
vacillating in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest
piece of public news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest
on the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.

“Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman—the mother, not the
daughter—has ordered a costume in diable rose color?”

“Nonsense! No, that’s too lovely!”

“I wonder that with her sense—for she’s not a fool, you
know—that she doesn’t see how funny she is.”

Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame
Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a burning
faggot-stack.

The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent collector of
engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the drawing-room
before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up
to Princess Myakaya.

“How did you like Nilsson?” he asked.

“Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!”
she responded. “Please don’t talk to me about the opera; you know
nothing about music. I’d better meet you on your own ground, and talk
about your majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have you been
buying lately at the old curiosity shops?”

“Would you like me to show you? But you don’t understand such
things.”

“Oh, do show me! I’ve been learning about them at
those—what’s their names?… the bankers … they’ve some
splendid engravings. They showed them to us.”

“Why, have you been at the Schützburgs?” asked the hostess from the
samovar.

“Yes, ma chère. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told
us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds,” Princess Myakaya
said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was listening; “and very
nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce
for eighteen pence, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can’t
run to hundred-pound sauces.”

“She’s unique!” said the lady of the house.

“Marvelous!” said someone.

The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches was always unique,
and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though she
spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some sense
in them. In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the
effect of the wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had
that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.

As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so the
conversation around the ambassador’s wife had dropped, Princess Betsy
tried to bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador’s
wife.

“Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us.”

“No, we’re very happy here,” the ambassador’s wife
responded with a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been
begun.

It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Karenins,
husband and wife.

“Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s something
strange about her,” said her friend.

“The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey
Vronsky,” said the ambassador’s wife.

“Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man
without a shadow, a man who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his
punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But
a woman must dislike being without a shadow.”

“Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said
Anna’s friend.

“Bad luck to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly.
“Madame Karenina’s a splendid woman. I don’t like her
husband, but I like her very much.”

“Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable
man,” said the ambassador’s wife. “My husband says there are
few statesmen like him in Europe.”

“And my husband tells me just the same, but I don’t believe
it,” said Princess Myakaya. “If our husbands didn’t talk to
us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking,
is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper … but doesn’t it really make
everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept
looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but
directly I said, he’s a fool, though only in a whisper,
everything’s explained, isn’t it?”

“How spiteful you are today!”

“Not a bit. I’d no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a
fool. And, well, you know one can’t say that of oneself.”

“‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied
with his wit.’” The attaché repeated the French saying.

“That’s just it, just it,” Princess Myakaya turned to him.
“But the point is that I won’t abandon Anna to your mercies.
She’s so nice, so charming. How can she help it if they’re all in
love with her, and follow her about like shadows?”

“Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,” Anna’s friend said
in self-defense.

“If no one follows us about like a shadow, that’s no proof that
we’ve any right to blame her.”

And having duly disposed of Anna’s friend, the Princess Myakaya got up,
and together with the ambassador’s wife, joined the group at the table,
where the conversation was dealing with the king of Prussia.

“What wicked gossip were you talking over there?” asked Betsy.

“About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey
Alexandrovitch,” said the ambassador’s wife with a smile, as she
sat down at the table.

“Pity we didn’t hear it!” said Princess Betsy, glancing
towards the door. “Ah, here you are at last!” she said, turning
with a smile to Vronsky, as he came in.

Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting
here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with
which one enters a room full of people from whom one has only just parted.

“Where do I come from?” he said, in answer to a question from the
ambassador’s wife. “Well, there’s no help for it, I must
confess. From the opera bouffe. I do believe I’ve seen it a
hundred times, and always with fresh enjoyment. It’s exquisite! I know
it’s disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, and I sit out the
opera bouffe to the last minute, and enjoy it. This evening….”

He mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something about her; but
the ambassador’s wife, with playful horror, cut him short.

“Please don’t tell us about that horror.”

“All right, I won’t especially as everyone knows those
horrors.”

“And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct
thing, like the opera,” chimed in Princess Myakaya.

Chapter 7

Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was Madame
Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking towards the door, and his face
wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same time
timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet.
Anna walked into the drawing-room. Holding herself extremely erect, as always,
looking straight before her, and moving with her swift, resolute, and light
step, that distinguished her from all other society women, she crossed the
short space to her hostess, shook hands with her, smiled, and with the same
smile looked around at Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and pushed a chair up for
her.

She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed a little, and frowned. But
immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and shaking the hands
proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:

“I have been at Countess Lidia’s, and meant to have come here
earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there. He’s very
interesting.”

“Oh, that’s this missionary?”

“Yes; he told us about the life in India, most interesting things.”

The conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up again like the
light of a lamp being blown out.

“Sir John! Yes, Sir John; I’ve seen him. He speaks well. The
Vlassieva girl’s quite in love with him.”

“And is it true the younger Vlassieva girl’s to marry Topov?”

“Yes, they say it’s quite a settled thing.”

“I wonder at the parents! They say it’s a marriage for love.”

“For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in
these days?” said the ambassador’s wife.

“What’s to be done? It’s a foolish old fashion that’s
kept up still,” said Vronsky.

“So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only happy
marriages I know are marriages of prudence.”

“Yes, but then how often the happiness of these prudent marriages flies
away like dust just because that passion turns up that they have refused to
recognize,” said Vronsky.

“But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have
sown their wild oats already. That’s like scarlatina—one has to go
through it and get it over.”

“Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like
smallpox.”

“I was in love in my young days with a deacon,” said the Princess
Myakaya. “I don’t know that it did me any good.”

“No; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes
and then correct them,” said Princess Betsy.

“Even after marriage?” said the ambassador’s wife playfully.

“‘It’s never too late to mend.’” The attaché
repeated the English proverb.

“Just so,” Betsy agreed; “one must make mistakes and correct
them. What do you think about it?” she turned to Anna, who, with a
faintly perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening in silence to the
conversation.

“I think,” said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off,
“I think … of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so
many kinds of love.”

Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for what she
would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she uttered these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

“Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya’s very ill.”

“Really?” said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

“That doesn’t interest you?”

“On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they told you,
if I may know?” he questioned.

Anna got up and went to Betsy.

“Give me a cup of tea,” she said, standing at her table.

While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up to Anna.

“What is it they write to you?” he repeated.

“I often think men have no understanding of what’s not honorable
though they’re always talking of it,” said Anna, without answering
him. “I’ve wanted to tell you so a long while,” she added,
and moving a few steps away, she sat down at a table in a corner covered with
albums.

“I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,” he
said, handing her the cup.

She glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat down.

“Yes, I have been wanting to tell you,” she said, not looking at
him. “You behaved wrongly, very wrongly.”

“Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve acted wrongly? But who
was the cause of my doing so?”

“What do you say that to me for?” she said, glancing severely at
him.

“You know what for,” he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her
glance and not dropping his eyes.

Not he, but she, was confused.

“That only shows you have no heart,” she said. But her eyes said
that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him.

“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love.”

“Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful
word,” said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by that very
word “forbidden” she had shown that she acknowledged certain rights
over him, and by that very fact was encouraging him to speak of love. “I
have long meant to tell you this,” she went on, looking resolutely into
his eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her cheeks.
“I’ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I
have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone,
and you force me to feel to blame for something.”

He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face.

“What do you wish of me?” he said simply and seriously.

“I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s forgiveness,”
she said.

“You don’t wish that?” he said.

He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to
say.

“If you love me, as you say,” she whispered, “do so that I
may be at peace.”

His face grew radiant.

“Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I know no
peace, and I can’t give it to you; all myself—and love … yes. I
can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see
no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of
wretchedness … or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!… Can it be
there’s no chance of it?” he murmured with his lips; but she heard.

She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead
of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer.

“It’s come!” he thought in ecstasy. “When I was
beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no end—it’s
come! She loves me! She owns it!”

“Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be
friends,” she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be
the happiest or the wretchedest of people—that’s in your
hands.”

She would have said something, but he interrupted her.

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do.
But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall
not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

“I don’t want to drive you away.”

“Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,” he
said in a shaky voice. “Here’s your husband.”

At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the room with his
calm, awkward gait.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the house, and
sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible
voice, in his habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.

“Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,” he said, looking round at
all the party; “the graces and the muses.”

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of
his—“sneering,” as she called it, using the English word, and
like a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious conversation on
the subject of universal conscription. Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately
interested in the subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial
decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.

“This is getting indecorous,” whispered one lady, with an
expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.

“What did I tell you?” said Anna’s friend.

But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the Princess
Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direction of the two who
had withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only person who did not once look in that
direction, and was not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered
upon.

Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone, Princess
Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch,
and went up to Anna.

“I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your
husband’s language,” she said. “The most transcendental ideas
seem to be within my grasp when he’s speaking.”

“Oh, yes!” said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the big table
and took part in the general conversation.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and
suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at
him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and
withdrew.

The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina’s coachman, was with difficulty
holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the cold and rearing at the
entrance. A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall-porter stood
holding open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her quick
little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her
fur cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Vronsky murmured as he
escorted her down.

“You’ve said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing,” he was
saying; “but you know that friendship’s not what I want: that
there’s only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so
… yes, love!…”

“Love,” she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at
the very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, “Why I don’t
like the word is that it means too much to me, far more than you can
understand,” and she glanced into his face. “Au
revoir!”

She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed by the
porter and vanished into the carriage.

Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his
hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had
got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening than during the last two
months.

Chapter 8

Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that
his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager conversation with
him about something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this appeared
something striking and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be
improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife.

On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he usually did,
seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the Papacy at the place where
he had laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one o’clock, just as he
usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his high forehead and shook his
head, as though to drive away something. At his usual time he got up and made
his toilet for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book
under his arm he went upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts
and meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife
and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual habit, he
did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down the rooms with his hands
clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely
needful for him first to think thoroughly over the position that had just
arisen.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk to his wife
about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But now, when he began
to think over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed to him
very complicated and difficult.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an
insult to one’s wife, and one ought to have confidence in one’s
wife. Why one ought to have confidence—that is to say, complete
conviction that his young wife would always love him—he did not ask
himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had
confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his
conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel
confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with
something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility
of his wife’s loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him
very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life
Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do
with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself
he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man
who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover
that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life
itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had
lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the
possibility of his wife’s loving someone else, and he was horrified at
it.

He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread over the
resounding parquet of the dining-room, where one lamp was burning, over the
carpet of the dark drawing-room, in which the light was reflected on the big
new portrait of himself hanging over the sofa, and across her boudoir, where
two candles burned, lighting up the portraits of her parents and woman friends,
and the pretty knick-knacks of her writing-table, that he knew so well. He
walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door, and turned back again. At each
turn in his walk, especially at the parquet of the lighted dining-room, he
halted and said to himself, “Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I
must express my view of it and my decision.” And he turned back again.
“But express what—what decision?” he said to himself in the
drawing-room, and he found no reply. “But after all,” he asked
himself before turning into the boudoir, “what has occurred? Nothing. She
was talking a long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in society
can talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and
her,” he told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which
had always had such weight with him before, had now no weight and no meaning at
all. And from the bedroom door he turned back again; but as he entered the dark
drawing-room some inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others
noticed it that showed that there was something. And he said to himself again
in the dining-room, “Yes, I must decide and put a stop to it, and express
my view of it….” And again at the turn in the drawing-room he asked
himself, “Decide how?” And again he asked himself, “What had
occurred?” and answered, “Nothing,” and recollected that
jealousy was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again in the drawing-room he
was convinced that something had happened. His thoughts, like his body, went
round a complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He noticed this,
rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her boudoir.

There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at the top
and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly changed. He began to think of
her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured
vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that
she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming
that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep
into. To put himself in thought and feeling in another person’s place was
a spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this
spiritual exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

“And the worst of it all,” thought he, “is that just now, at
the very moment when my great work is approaching completion” (he was
thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time), “when I
stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid
worry should fall foul of me. But what’s to be done? I’m not one of
those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of
character to face them.

“I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my
mind,” he said aloud.

“The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in
her soul, that’s not my affair; that’s the affair of her
conscience, and falls under the head of religion,” he said to himself,
feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of
regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred.

“And so,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, “questions
as to her feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I
can have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the family,
I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in part the person
responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I perceive, to warn her, even
to use my authority. I ought to speak plainly to her.” And everything
that he would say tonight to his wife took clear shape in Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s head. Thinking over what he would say, he somewhat
regretted that he should have to use his time and mental powers for domestic
consumption, with so little to show for it, but, in spite of that, the form and
contents of the speech before him shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in
his head as a ministerial report.

“I must say and express fully the following points: first, exposition of
the value to be attached to public opinion and to decorum; secondly, exposition
of religious significance of marriage; thirdly, if need be, reference to the
calamity possibly ensuing to our son; fourthly, reference to the unhappiness
likely to result to herself.” And, interlacing his fingers, Alexey
Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the joints of the fingers cracked. This
trick, a bad habit, the cracking of his fingers, always soothed him, and gave
precision to his thoughts, so needful to him at this juncture.

There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexey
Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room.

A woman’s step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey Alexandrovitch,
ready for his speech, stood compressing his crossed fingers, waiting to see if
the crack would not come again. One joint cracked.

Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware that she was
close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt frightened of the
explanation confronting him….

Chapter 9

Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face
was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it
suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On
seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as though she had just
waked up.

“You’re not in bed? What a wonder!” she said, letting fall
her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing-room.
“It’s late, Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, when she had
gone through the doorway.

“Anna, it’s necessary for me to have a talk with you.”

“With me?” she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door
of the dressing-room, and looked at him. “Why, what is it? What
about?” she asked, sitting down. “Well, let’s talk, if
it’s so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep.”

Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own
capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that
she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of
falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was
supporting her.

“Anna, I must warn you,” he began.

“Warn me?” she said. “Of what?”

She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as
her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the
sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever
he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the
reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt
she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to
notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself,
meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had
always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that,
he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were
said straight out to him: “Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be,
and will be in future.” Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might
have, returning home and finding his own house locked up. “But perhaps
the key may yet be found,” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“I want to warn you,” he said in a low voice, “that through
thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about
in society. Your too animated conversation this evening with Count
Vronsky” (he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis)
“attracted attention.”

He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him now with their
impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all the uselessness and idleness
of his words.

“You’re always like that,” she answered, as though completely
misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the last phrase.
“One time you don’t like my being dull, and another time you
don’t like my being lively. I wasn’t dull. Does that offend
you?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to make the joints crack.

“Oh, please, don’t do that, I do so dislike it,” she said.

“Anna, is this you?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making an
effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his fingers.

“But what is it all about?” she said, with such genuine and droll
wonder. “What do you want of me?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his eyes. He saw that
instead of doing as he had intended—that is to say, warning his wife
against a mistake in the eyes of the world—he had unconsciously become
agitated over what was the affair of her conscience, and was struggling against
the barrier he fancied between them.

“This is what I meant to say to you,” he went on coldly and
composedly, “and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you
know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be
influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be
disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I observed it, but judging
by the impression made on the company, everyone observed that your conduct and
deportment were not altogether what could be desired.”

“I positively don’t understand,” said Anna, shrugging her
shoulders—“He doesn’t care,” she thought. “But
other people noticed it, and that’s what upsets
him.”—“You’re not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch,”
she added, and she got up, and would have gone towards the door; but he moved
forward as though he would stop her.

His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never seen him. She stopped, and
bending her head back and on one side, began with her rapid hand taking out her
hairpins.

“Well, I’m listening to what’s to come,” she said,
calmly and ironically; “and indeed I listen with interest, for I should
like to understand what’s the matter.”

She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in which she
was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.

“To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right, and
besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful,” began Alexey
Alexandrovitch. “Ferreting in one’s soul, one often ferrets out
something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an affair of
your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself, and to God, to
point out to you your duties. Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God.
That union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings
its own chastisement.”

“I don’t understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am,
unluckily,” she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling
for the remaining hairpins.

“Anna, for God’s sake don’t speak like that!” he said
gently. “Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much
for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.”

For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died away; but
the word love threw her into revolt again. She thought: “Love? Can
he love? If he hadn’t heard there was such a thing as love, he would
never have used the word. He doesn’t even know what love is.”

“Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don’t understand,” she said.
“Define what it is you find….”

“Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not speaking
of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our son and yourself.
It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to you utterly unnecessary
and out of place; it may be that they are called forth by my mistaken
impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious
yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you to think a
little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to me….”

Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly unlike what he
had prepared.

“I have nothing to say. And besides,” she said hurriedly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, “it’s really time to be in
bed.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into the bedroom.

When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were sternly
compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into her bed, and lay
expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her again. She both
feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was silent. She waited for a long
while without moving, and had forgotten about him. She thought of that other;
she pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty
delight at the thought of him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For
the first instant Alexey Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled at his own
snoring, and ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded
again, with a new tranquil rhythm.

“It’s late, it’s late,” she whispered with a smile. A
long while she lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost
fancied she could herself see in the darkness.

Chapter 10

From that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his wife.
Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had always done,
was particularly often at Princess Betsy’s, and met Vronsky everywhere.
Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but could do nothing. All his efforts to draw
her into open discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could not
penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the
same, but their inner relations were completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch,
a man of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this.
Like an ox with head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was
lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must
try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was still
hope of saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he made
ready to talk to her. But every time he began talking to her, he felt that the
spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her, had possession of
him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant
to talk. Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at
anyone who should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to
say what needed to be said to her.

Chapter 11

That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one absorbing desire of
his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Anna had been an
impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more entrancing dream of bliss,
that desire had been fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw
quivering, and besought her to be calm, not knowing how or why.

“Anna! Anna!” he said with a choking voice, “Anna, for
pity’s sake!…”

But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay, now
shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was
sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if
he had not held her.

“My God! Forgive me!” she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her
bosom.

She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to humiliate
herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in her life but him,
to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a
physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what
a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body,
robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was
something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this
fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and
infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body
of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has
gained by his murder.

And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body, and
drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She
held his hand, and did not stir. “Yes, these kisses—that is what
has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will always be
mine—the hand of my accomplice.” She lifted up that hand and kissed
it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said
nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and
pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more
pitiful for that.

“All is over,” she said; “I have nothing but you. Remember
that.”

“I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this
happiness….”

“Happiness!” she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. “For pity’s sake, not a word, not a
word more.”

She rose quickly and moved away from him.

“Not a word more,” she repeated, and with a look of chill despair,
incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that moment she
could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this
stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize
this feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day and the
third day, she still found no words in which she could express the complexity
of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could
clearly think out all that was in her soul.

She said to herself: “No, just now I can’t think of it, later on,
when I am calmer.” But this calm for thought never came; every time the
thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and what she
ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those thoughts away.

“Later, later,” she said—“when I am calmer.”

But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her position
presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One dream haunted her
almost every night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at once, that both
were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her
hands, and saying, “How happy we are now!” And Alexey Vronsky was
there too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it had once
seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them, laughing, that this was ever
so much simpler, and that now both of them were happy and contented. But this
dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.

Chapter 12

In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin shuddered and
grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection, he said to himself:
“This was just how I used to shudder and blush, thinking myself utterly
lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not get my remove; and how I
thought myself utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that affair of my
sister’s that was entrusted to me. And yet, now that years have passed, I
recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same
thing too with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this
either.”

But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it; and it
was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first days. He could
not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family life, and feeling
himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and was further than ever
from marriage. He was painfully conscious himself, as were all about him, that
at his years it is not well for man to be alone. He remembered how before
starting for Moscow he had once said to his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted
peasant, whom he liked talking to: “Well, Nikolay! I mean to get
married,” and how Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter on which
there could be no possible doubt: “And high time too, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch.” But marriage had now become further off than ever. The
place was taken, and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in
that place, he felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection
of the rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with
shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in it,
that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar kind, made
him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in every man’s,
actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have
tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so
much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences. These wounds
never healed. And with these memories was now ranged his rejection and the
pitiful position in which he must have appeared to others that evening. But
time and work did their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by
the incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his
country life. Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently
looking forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married,
hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.

Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays and
treacheries of spring,—one of those rare springs in which plants, beasts,
and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Levin still more, and
strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his past and building up
his lonely life firmly and independently. Though many of the plans with which
he had returned to the country had not been carried out, still his most
important resolution—that of purity—had been kept by him. He was
free from that shame, which had usually harassed him after a fall; and he could
look everyone straight in the face. In February he had received a letter from
Marya Nikolaevna telling him that his brother Nikolay’s health was
getting worse, but that he would not take advice, and in consequence of this
letter Levin went to Moscow to his brother’s and succeeded in persuading
him to see a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well
in persuading his brother, and in lending him money for the journey without
irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in that matter. In addition
to his farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in addition
to reading, Levin had begun that winter a work on agriculture, the plan of
which turned on taking into account the character of the laborer on the land as
one of the unalterable data of the question, like the climate and the soil, and
consequently deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from
the data of soil and climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a certain
unalterable character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in
consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely he
suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray ideas to someone
besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infrequently fell into
discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and especially philosophy;
philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna’s favorite subject.

Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been steadily fine
frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were
even seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the snow that
they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all
of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped
down, and for three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in
streams. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the
land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being
wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking
and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the
following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up
into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had
come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin
layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with
the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener,
and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and
of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an
exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow.
Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered
stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the
pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring
calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed
in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers.
Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare
feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond,
and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and
harrows. The real spring had come.

Chapter 13

Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth jacket, instead of
his fur cloak, and went out to look after his farm, stepping over streams of
water that flashed in the sunshine and dazzled his eyes, and treading one
minute on ice and the next into sticky mud.

Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the
farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be taken
by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly knew what
undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm work that was so dear
to him. But he felt that he was full of the most splendid plans and projects.
First of all he went to the cattle. The cows had been let out into their
paddock, and their smooth sides were already shining with their new, sleek,
spring coats; they basked in the sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin
gazed admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of
their condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the meadow, and
the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get ready for
the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their petticoats, ran splashing
through the mud with bare legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving
brush wood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in the mirth of
spring.

After admiring the young ones of that year, who were particularly
fine—the early calves were the size of a peasant’s cow, and
Pava’s daughter, at three months old, was as big as a
yearling—Levin gave orders for a trough to be brought out and for them to
be fed in the paddock. But it appeared that as the paddock had not been used
during the winter, the hurdles made in the autumn for it were broken. He sent
for the carpenter, who, according to his orders, ought to have been at work at
the thrashing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing the
harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent. This was very annoying
to Levin. It was annoying to come upon that everlasting slovenliness in the
farm work against which he had been striving with all his might for so many
years. The hurdles, as he ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been
carried to the cart-horses’ stable; and there broken, as they were of
light construction, only meant for feeding calves. Moreover, it was apparent
also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements, which he had
directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter, for which very purpose
he had hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and the harrows
were being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing the field. Levin
sent for his bailiff, but immediately went off himself to look for him. The
bailiff, beaming all over, like everyone that day, in a sheepskin bordered with
astrachan, came out of the barn, twisting a bit of straw in his hands.

“Why isn’t the carpenter at the thrashing machine?”

“Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing. Here
it’s time they got to work in the fields.”

“But what were they doing in the winter, then?”

“But what did you want the carpenter for?”

“Where are the hurdles for the calves’ paddock?”

“I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those
peasants!” said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.

“It’s not those peasants but this bailiff!” said Levin,
getting angry. “Why, what do I keep you for?” he cried. But,
bethinking himself that this would not help matters, he stopped short in the
middle of a sentence, and merely sighed. “Well, what do you say? Can
sowing begin?” he asked, after a pause.

“Behind Turkin tomorrow or the next day they might begin.”

“And the clover?”

“I’ve sent Vassily and Mishka; they’re sowing. Only I
don’t know if they’ll manage to get through; it’s so
slushy.”

“How many acres?”

“About fifteen.”

“Why not sow all?” cried Levin.

That they were only sowing the clover on fifteen acres, not on all the
forty-five, was still more annoying to him. Clover, as he knew, both from books
and from his own experience, never did well except when it was sown as early as
possible, almost in the snow. And yet Levin could never get this done.

“There’s no one to send. What would you have with such a set of
peasants? Three haven’t turned up. And there’s Semyon….”

“Well, you should have taken some men from the thatching.”

“And so I have, as it is.”

“Where are the peasants, then?”

“Five are making compôte” (which meant compost), “four are
shifting the oats for fear of a touch of mildew, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch.”

Levin knew very well that “a touch of mildew” meant that his
English seed oats were already ruined. Again they had not done as he had
ordered.

“Why, but I told you during Lent to put in pipes,” he cried.

“Don’t put yourself out; we shall get it all done in time.”

Levin waved his hand angrily, went into the granary to glance at the oats, and
then to the stable. The oats were not yet spoiled. But the peasants were
carrying the oats in spades when they might simply let them slide down into the
lower granary; and arranging for this to be done, and taking two workmen from
there for sowing clover, Levin got over his vexation with the bailiff. Indeed,
it was such a lovely day that one could not be angry.

“Ignat!” he called to the coachman, who, with his sleeves tucked
up, was washing the carriage wheels, “saddle me….”

“Which, sir?”

“Well, let it be Kolpik.”

“Yes, sir.”

While they were saddling his horse, Levin again called up the bailiff, who was
hanging about in sight, to make it up with him, and began talking to him about
the spring operations before them, and his plans for the farm.

The wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as to get all done before
the early mowing. And the ploughing of the further land to go on without a
break so as to let it ripen lying fallow. And the mowing to be all done by
hired labor, not on half-profits. The bailiff listened attentively, and
obviously made an effort to approve of his employer’s projects. But still
he had that look Levin knew so well that always irritated him, a look of
hopelessness and despondency. That look said: “That’s all very
well, but as God wills.”

Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was the tone common to all
the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all taken up that attitude to his plans,
and so now he was not angered by it, but mortified, and felt all the more
roused to struggle against this, as it seemed, elemental force continually
ranged against him, for which he could find no other expression than “as
God wills.”

“If we can manage it, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said the bailiff.

“Why ever shouldn’t you manage it?”

“We positively must have another fifteen laborers. And they don’t
turn up. There were some here today asking seventy roubles for the
summer.”

Levin was silent. Again he was brought face to face with that opposing force.
He knew that however much they tried, they could not hire more than
forty—thirty-seven perhaps or thirty-eight—laborers for a
reasonable sum. Some forty had been taken on, and there were no more. But still
he could not help struggling against it.

“Send to Sury, to Tchefirovka; if they don’t come we must look for
them.”

“Oh, I’ll send, to be sure,” said Vassily Fedorovitch
despondently. “But there are the horses, too, they’re not good for
much.”

“We’ll get some more. I know, of course,” Levin added
laughing, “you always want to do with as little and as poor quality as
possible; but this year I’m not going to let you have things your own
way. I’ll see to everything myself.”

“Why, I don’t think you take much rest as it is. It cheers us up to
work under the master’s eye….”

“So they’re sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I’ll go and
have a look at them,” he said, getting on to the little bay cob, Kolpik,
who was led up by the coachman.

“You can’t get across the streams, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,”
the coachman shouted.

“All right, I’ll go by the forest.”

And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to the gate and out into the
open country, his good little horse, after his long inactivity, stepping out
gallantly, snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were, for guidance. If
Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens and farmyard, he felt happier
yet in the open country. Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his
good little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow and the air,
as he rode through his forest over the crumbling, wasted snow, still left in
parts, and covered with dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with
the moss reviving on its bark and the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came
out of the forest, in the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched
in an unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only spotted
here and there in the hollows with patches of melting snow. He was not put out
of temper even by the sight of the peasants’ horses and colts trampling
down his young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the
sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and
asked, “Well, Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?” “We must get
the ploughing done first, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” answered Ipat. The
further he rode, the happier he became, and plans for the land rose to his mind
each better than the last; to plant all his fields with hedges along the
southern borders, so that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up
into six fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard
at the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct movable
pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred
acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and not
one acre exhausted.

Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges, so as not
to trample his young crops, he rode up to the laborers who had been sent to sow
clover. A cart with the seed in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the
middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been torn up by the wheels and
trampled by the horse. Both the laborers were sitting in the hedge, probably
smoking a pipe together. The earth in the cart, with which the seed was mixed,
was not crushed to powder, but crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing
the master, the laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to
work sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the laborers Levin seldom
lost his temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told him to lead the horse to the
hedge.

“It’s all right, sir, it’ll spring up again,” responded
Vassily.

“Please don’t argue,” said Levin, “but do as
you’re told.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Vassily, and he took the horse’s head.
“What a sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” he said, hesitating;
“first rate. Only it’s a work to get about! You drag a ton of earth
on your shoes.”

“Why is it you have earth that’s not sifted?” said Levin.

“Well, we crumble it up,” answered Vassily, taking up some seed and
rolling the earth in his palms.

Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with unsifted
earth, but still it was annoying.

Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling his anger,
and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that way now. He
watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to
each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the sieve from Vassily and
started sowing himself.

“Where did you stop?”

Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward as best he
could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as difficult as on a bog,
and by the time Levin had ended the row he was in a great heat, and he stopped
and gave up the sieve to Vassily.

“Well, master, when summer’s here, mind you don’t scold me
for these rows,” said Vassily.

“Eh?” said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his
method.

“Why, you’ll see in the summer time. It’ll look different.
Look you where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my best,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, d’ye see, as I would for my own father. I
don’t like bad work myself, nor would I let another man do it.
What’s good for the master’s good for us too. To look out yonder
now,” said Vassily, pointing, “it does one’s heart
good.”

“It’s a lovely spring, Vassily.”

“Why, it’s a spring such as the old men don’t remember the
like of. I was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about an acre
of it. He was saying you wouldn’t know it from rye.”

“Have you been sowing wheat long?”

“Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave me two
measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood.”

“Well, mind you crumble up the clods,” said Levin, going towards
his horse, “and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there’s a good crop
you shall have half a rouble for every acre.”

“Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is.”

Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last year’s
clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring corn.

The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It had survived
everything, and stood up vividly green through the broken stalks of last
year’s wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and he drew each hoof
with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed ground. Over the ploughland riding
was utterly impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where there was
ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in at each step. The ploughland
was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing
and sowing. Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode back
across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact
get across, and startled two ducks. “There must be snipe too,” he
thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper,
who confirmed his theory about the snipe.

Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and get his gun
ready for the evening.

Chapter 14

As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the bell
ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.

“Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,” he thought,
“just the time to be here from the Moscow train … Who could it be? What
if it’s brother Nikolay? He did say: ‘Maybe I’ll go to the
waters, or maybe I’ll come down to you.’” He felt dismayed
and vexed for the first minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence
should come to disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the
feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a
softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that
it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the
acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a
gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. “Oh, if it were only
some nice person one could talk to a little!” he thought.

“Ah,” cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands.
“Here’s a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!”
he shouted, recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or when
she’s going to be married,” he thought. And on that delicious
spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.

“Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his
cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits.
“I’ve come to see you in the first place,” he said, embracing
and kissing him, “to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the
forest at Ergushovo third.”

“Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did you get along
in a sledge?”

“In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,” answered the driver, who knew him.

“Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,” said Levin, with a
genuine smile of childlike delight.

Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also—a bag, a gun in a case, a
satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin
went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea
Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall
with inquiries about dinner.

“Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,” he said,
and went to the bailiff.

When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out of his room
with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.

“Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand
what the mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here. No,
really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so
cheerful!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always
spring and fine weather like that day. “And your nurse is simply
charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps; but
for your severe monastic style it does very well.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news; especially
interesting to Levin was the news that his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, was
intending to pay him a visit in the summer.

Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty and the
Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful
to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As always happened
with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had been
accumulating within him, which he could not communicate to those about him. And
now he poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in the spring, and
his failures and plans for the land, and his thoughts and criticisms on the
books he had been reading, and the idea of his own book, the basis of which
really was, though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old
books on agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding
everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming on this visit,
and Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as it were, and a new tone of
respect that flattered him.

The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner should be
particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends attacking the
preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter, salt goose and
salted mushrooms, and in Levin’s finally ordering the soup to be served
without the accompaniment of little pies, with which the cook had particularly
meant to impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was accustomed
to very different dinners, he thought everything excellent: the herb brandy,
and the bread, and the butter, and above all the salt goose and the mushrooms,
and the nettle soup, and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean
wine—everything was superb and delicious.

“Splendid, splendid!” he said, lighting a fat cigar after the
roast. “I feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore
after the noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the laborer
himself is an element to be studied and to regulate the choice of methods in
agriculture. Of course, I’m an ignorant outsider; but I should fancy
theory and its application will have its influence on the laborer too.”

“Yes, but wait a bit. I’m not talking of political economy,
I’m talking of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the
natural sciences, and to observe given phenomena and the laborer in his
economic, ethnographical….”

At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.

“Oh, Agafea Mihalovna,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips
of his plump fingers, “what salt goose, what herb brandy!… What do you
think, isn’t it time to start, Kostya?” he added.

Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare tree-tops of
the forest.

“Yes, it’s time,” he said. “Kouzma, get ready the
trap,” and he ran downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his
varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get ready his
expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big tip, never left
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s side, and put on him both his stockings and boots,
a task which Stepan Arkadyevitch readily left him.

“Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes … I told him
to come today, he’s to be brought in and to wait for me….”

“Why, do you mean to say you’re selling the forest to
Ryabinin?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, ‘positively
and conclusively.’”

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. “Positively and conclusively” were the
merchant’s favorite words.

“Yes, it’s wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her
master’s going!” he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin,
whining and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.

The trap was already at the steps when they went out.

“I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?”

“No, we’d better drive,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting
into the trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a
cigar. “How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not
exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is
life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!”

“Why, who prevents you?” said Levin, smiling.

“No, you’re a lucky man! You’ve got everything you like. You
like horses—and you have them; dogs—you have them;
shooting—you have it; farming—you have it.”

“Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don’t fret for what
I haven’t,” said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that
he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about
them. But now Levin was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he
had not the courage to begin.

“Come, tell me how things are going with you,” said Levin,
bethinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled merrily.

“You don’t admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when
one has had one’s rations of bread—to your mind it’s a crime;
but I don’t count life as life without love,” he said, taking
Levin’s question his own way. “What am I to do? I’m made that
way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much
pleasure….”

“What! is there something new, then?” queried Levin.

“Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of
Ossian’s women…. Women, such as one sees in dreams…. Well, these
women are sometimes to be met in reality … and these women are terrible.
Woman, don’t you know, is such a subject that however much you study it,
it’s always perfectly new.”

“Well, then, it would be better not to study it.”

“No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for
truth, not in the finding it.”

Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he could
not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his
sentiments and the charm of studying such women.

Chapter 15

The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a
little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led
Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He
went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun
on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his
belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free.

Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and pricked
up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of
sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with
their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting.

From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained, came the
faint sound of narrow winding threads of water running away. Tiny birds
twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree.

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year’s
leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass.

“Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!” Levin said to
himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade of
young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down at the wet mossy
ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert, sometimes at the sea of bare
tree tops that stretched on the slope below him, sometimes at the darkening
sky, covered with white streaks of cloud.

A hawk flew high over a forest far away with slow sweep of its wings; another
flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The birds
twittered more and more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far
off, and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and putting
her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the
cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo call, and then gave a hoarse,
hurried call and broke down.

“Imagine! the cuckoo already!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out
from behind a bush.

“Yes, I hear it,” answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the
stillness with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. “Now
it’s coming!”

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s figure again went behind the bush, and Levin saw
nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and blue
smoke of a cigarette.

“Tchk! tchk!” came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch
cocking his gun.

“What’s that cry?” asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin’s
attention to a prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice,
in play.

“Oh, don’t you know it? That’s the hare. But enough talking!
Listen, it’s flying!” almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.

They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact time, so well
known to the sportsman, two seconds later—another, a third, and after the
third whistle the hoarse, guttural cry could be heard.

Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him against
the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of the aspens, he
saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like
the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak
and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was
taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red
lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came
the red flash and the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though
trying to keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and
fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground.

“Can I have missed it?” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could not
see for the smoke.

“Here it is!” said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear
raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she
would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to
her master. “Well, I’m glad you were successful,” said Levin,
who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in
shooting the snipe.

“It was a bad shot from the right barrel,” responded Stepan
Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. “Sh… it’s flying!”

The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe,
playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying, flew straight
at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and
like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from
sight.

The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two more birds and
Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and
silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west behind the birch trees,
and high up in the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head
Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again. The snipe had
ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he
saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the stars of the Great
Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear
of the Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark
blue sky, yet still he waited.

“Isn’t it time to go home?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

“Let’s stay a little while,” answered Levin.

“As you like.”

They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.

“Stiva!” said Levin unexpectedly; “how is it you don’t
tell me whether your sister-in-law’s married yet, or when she’s
going to be?”

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him.
But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyevitch replied.

“She’s never thought of being married, and isn’t thinking of
it; but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad.
They’re positively afraid she may not live.”

“What!” cried Levin. “Very ill? What is wrong with her? How
has she…?”

While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking upwards
at the sky, and reproachfully at them.

“They have chosen a time to talk,” she was thinking.
“It’s on the wing…. Here it is, yes, it is. They’ll miss
it,” thought Laska.

But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it
were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes
gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same instant. The snipe flying high
above instantly folded its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the
delicate shoots.

“Splendid! Together!” cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the
thicket to look for the snipe.

“Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?” he wondered.
“Yes, Kitty’s ill…. Well, it can’t be helped; I’m
very sorry,” he thought.

“She’s found it! Isn’t she a clever thing?” he said,
taking the warm bird from Laska’s mouth and packing it into the almost
full game bag. “I’ve got it, Stiva!” he shouted.

Chapter 16

On the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty’s illness and the
Shtcherbatskys’ plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it,
he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still hope, and
still more pleased that she should be suffering who had made him suffer so
much. But when Stepan Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of
Kitty’s illness, and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin cut him short.

“I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the truth,
no interest in them either.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous
change he knew so well in Levin’s face, which had become as gloomy as it
had been bright a minute before.

“Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?” asked
Levin.

“Yes, it’s settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight
thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I’ve been
bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give more.”

“Then you’ve as good as given away your forest for nothing,”
said Levin gloomily.

“How do you mean for nothing?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin’s eyes
now.

“Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the
acre,” answered Levin.

“Oh, these farmers!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully.
“Your tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk!… But when it comes to
business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all
out,” he said, “and the forest is fetching a very good
price—so much so that I’m afraid of this fellow’s crying off,
in fact. You know it’s not ‘timber,’” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Levin completely of the
unfairness of his doubts. “And it won’t run to more than
twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he’s giving me at the rate of
seventy roubles the acre.”

Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that
fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten
years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and
out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. ‘Timber,
run to so many yards the acre.’ He says those words without
understanding them himself.”

“I wouldn’t attempt to teach you what you write about in your
office,” said he, “and if need arose, I should come to you to ask
about it. But you’re so positive you know all the lore of the forest.
It’s difficult. Have you counted the trees?”

“How count the trees?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still
trying to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. “Count the sands of the
sea, number the stars. Some higher power might do it.”

“Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever
buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them for
nothing, as you’re doing now. I know your forest. I go there every year
shooting, and your forest’s worth a hundred and fifty roubles an acre
paid down, while he’s giving you sixty by installments. So that in fact
you’re making him a present of thirty thousand.”

“Come, don’t let your imagination run away with you,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch piteously. “Why was it none would give it,
then?”

“Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he’s
bought them off. I’ve had to do with all of them; I know them.
They’re not merchants, you know: they’re speculators. He
wouldn’t look at a bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent. profit,
but holds back to buy a rouble’s worth for twenty kopecks.”

“Well, enough of it! You’re out of temper.”

“Not the least,” said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the
house.

At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and leather, with a
sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar-straps. In the trap sat the
chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself
was already in the house, and met the friends in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall,
thinnish, middle-aged man, with mustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin,
and prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat,
with buttons below the waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the
ankles and straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He rubbed
his face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his coat, which sat
extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a smile, holding out his hand to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though he wanted to catch something.

“So here you are,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, giving him his hand.
“That’s capital.”

“I did not venture to disregard your excellency’s commands, though
the road was extremely bad. I positively walked the whole way, but I am here at
my time. Konstantin Dmitrievitch, my respects”; he turned to Levin,
trying to seize his hand too. But Levin, scowling, made as though he did not
notice his hand, and took out the snipe. “Your honors have been diverting
yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?” added
Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: “a great delicacy, I
suppose.” And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave
doubts whether this game were worth the candle.

“Would you like to go into my study?” Levin said in French to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely. “Go into my study; you can talk
there.”

“Quite so, where you please,” said Ryabinin with contemptuous
dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in difficulties
as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about
anything.

On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though
seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross himself.
He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the same dubious air with
which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled contemptuously and shook his head
disapprovingly, as though by no means willing to allow that this game were
worth the candle.

“Well, have you brought the money?” asked Oblonsky. “Sit
down.”

“Oh, don’t trouble about the money. I’ve come to see you to
talk it over.”

“What is there to talk over? But do sit down.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” said Ryabinin, sitting down and
leaning his elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the intensest
discomfort to himself. “You must knock it down a bit, prince. It would be
too bad. The money is ready conclusively to the last farthing. As to paying the
money down, there’ll be no hitch there.”

Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was just
going out of the door, but catching the merchant’s words, he stopped.

“Why, you’ve got the forest for nothing as it is,” he said.
“He came to me too late, or I’d have fixed the price for
him.”

Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin down and up.

“Very close about money is Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” he said with a
smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyevitch; “there’s positively no
dealing with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I
offered too.”

“Why should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn’t pick it up on
the ground, nor steal it either.”

“Mercy on us! nowadays there’s no chance at all of stealing. With
the open courts and everything done in style, nowadays there’s no
question of stealing. We are just talking things over like gentlemen. His
excellency’s asking too much for the forest. I can’t make both ends
meet over it. I must ask for a little concession.”

“But is the thing settled between you or not? If it’s settled,
it’s useless haggling; but if it’s not,” said Levin,
“I’ll buy the forest.”

The smile vanished at once from Ryabinin’s face. A hawklike, greedy,
cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he unbuttoned his
coat, revealing a shirt, bronze waistcoat buttons, and a watch chain, and
quickly pulled out a fat old pocketbook.

“Here you are, the forest is mine,” he said, crossing himself
quickly, and holding out his hand. “Take the money; it’s my forest.
That’s Ryabinin’s way of doing business; he doesn’t haggle
over every half-penny,” he added, scowling and waving the pocketbook.

“I wouldn’t be in a hurry if I were you,” said Levin.

“Come, really,” said Oblonsky in surprise. “I’ve given
my word, you know.”

Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards the door
and shook his head with a smile.

“It’s all youthfulness—positively nothing but boyishness.
Why, I’m buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory of
it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Oblonsky.
And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God’s name. If
you would kindly sign the title-deed….”

Within an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly down, and hooking
up his jacket, with the agreement in his pocket, seated himself in his tightly
covered trap, and drove homewards.

“Ugh, these gentlefolks!” he said to the clerk.
“They—they’re a nice lot!”

“That’s so,” responded the clerk, handing him the reins and
buttoning the leather apron. “But I can congratulate you on the purchase,
Mihail Ignatitch?”

“Well, well….”

Chapter 17

Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes, which the
merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business of the forest
was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially
anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon Levin. He wanted to
finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been begun.

Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be
affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his
mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had gradually
begun to work upon him.

Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted
her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and
she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise
Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He
vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not
angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything that
presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud practiced upon
Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated him.

“Well, finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs.
“Would you like supper?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the
country! Wonderful! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something?”

“Oh, damn him!”

“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You
didn’t even shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?”

“Because I don’t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter’s a
hundred times better than he is.”

“What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of
classes?” said Oblonsky.

“Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens
me.”

“You’re a regular reactionist, I see.”

“Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and
nothing else.”

“And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.

“Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because—excuse
me—of your stupid sale….”

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself teased
and attacked for no fault of his own.

“Come, enough about it!” he said. “When did anybody ever sell
anything without being told immediately after the sale, ‘It was worth
much more’? But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything…. No,
I see you’ve a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.”

“Maybe I have. And do you know why? You’ll say again that I’m
a reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy and
anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to which I
belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I’m glad to belong.
And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance—that would be
nothing; living in good style—that’s the proper thing for noblemen;
it’s only the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy
land, and I don’t mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the
peasant works and supplants the idle man. That’s as it ought to be. And
I’m very glad for the peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of
impoverishment from a sort of—I don’t know what to call
it—innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for half its value a
magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice. And there a merchant
will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles, as security for the loan of
one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you’ve made that rascal a
present of thirty thousand roubles.”

“Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?”

“Of course, they must be counted. You didn’t count them, but
Ryabinin did. Ryabinin’s children will have means of livelihood and
education, while yours maybe will not!”

“Well, you must excuse me, but there’s something mean in this
counting. We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their
profit. Anyway, the thing’s done, and there’s an end of it. And
here come some poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give
us that marvelous herb-brandy….”

Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea
Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a dinner and
such a supper.

“Well, you do praise it, anyway,” said Agafea Mihalovna, “but
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, give him what you will—a crust of
bread—he’ll eat it and walk away.”

Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He wanted to
put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not bring himself to the
point, and could not find the words or the moment in which to put it. Stepan
Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room, undressed, again washed, and attired in
a nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed, but Levin still
lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to
ask what he wanted to know.

“How wonderfully they make this soap,” he said gazing at a piece of
soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the visitor but
Oblonsky had not used. “Only look; why, it’s a work of art.”

“Yes, everything’s brought to such a pitch of perfection
nowadays,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn.
“The theater, for instance, and the entertainments …
a—a—a!” he yawned. “The electric light everywhere …
a—a—a!”

“Yes, the electric light,” said Levin. “Yes. Oh, and
where’s Vronsky now?” he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.

“Vronsky?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn;
“he’s in Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he’s not
once been in Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I’ll tell you the
truth,” he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping on his
hand his handsome ruddy face, in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes
shone like stars. “It’s your own fault. You took fright at the
sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn’t say which
had the better chance. Why didn’t you fight it out? I told you at the
time that….” He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.

“Does he know, or doesn’t he, that I did make an offer?”
Levin wondered, gazing at him. “Yes, there’s something humbugging,
diplomatic in his face,” and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan
Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking.

“If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a
superficial attraction,” pursued Oblonsky. “His being such a
perfect aristocrat, don’t you know, and his future position in society,
had an influence not with her, but with her mother.”

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as
though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and
the walls of home are a support.

“Stay, stay,” he began, interrupting Oblonsky. “You talk of
his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that
aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down
upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose father
crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother—God knows
whom she wasn’t mixed up with…. No, excuse me, but I consider myself
aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or
four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding
(talent and intellect, of course that’s another matter), and have never
curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my
father and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to
count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty
thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don’t know what, while
I don’t and so I prize what’s come to me from my ancestors or been
won by hard work…. We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by
favor of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence
halfpenny.”

“Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class of
those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was reckoning him too.
Levin’s warmth gave him genuine pleasure. “Whom are you attacking?
Though a good deal is not true that you say about Vronsky, but I won’t
talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back with
me to Moscow, and….”

“No; I don’t know whether you know it or not, but I don’t
care. And I tell you—I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina
Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating
reminiscence.”

“What ever for? What nonsense!”

“But we won’t talk about it. Please forgive me, if I’ve been
nasty,” said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had
been in the morning. “You’re not angry with me, Stiva? Please
don’t be angry,” he said, and smiling, he took his hand.

“Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I’m glad
we’ve spoken openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is
unusually good—why not go? I couldn’t sleep the night anyway, but I
might go straight from shooting to the station.”

“Capital.”

Chapter 18

Although all Vronsky’s inner life was absorbed in his passion, his
external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the old accustomed
lines of his social and regimental ties and interests. The interests of his
regiment took an important place in Vronsky’s life, both because he was
fond of the regiment, and because the regiment was fond of him. They were not
only fond of Vronsky in his regiment, they respected him too, and were proud of
him; proud that this man, with his immense wealth, his brilliant education and
abilities, and the path open before him to every kind of success, distinction,
and ambition, had disregarded all that, and of all the interests of life had
the interests of his regiment and his comrades nearest to his heart. Vronsky
was aware of his comrades’ view of him, and in addition to his liking for
the life, he felt bound to keep up that reputation.

It need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of his comrades,
nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest drinking bouts (though indeed
he was never so drunk as to lose all control of himself). And he shut up any of
his thoughtless comrades who attempted to allude to his connection. But in
spite of that, his love was known to all the town; everyone guessed with more
or less confidence at his relations with Madame Karenina. The majority of the
younger men envied him for just what was the most irksome factor in his
love—the exalted position of Karenin, and the consequent publicity of
their connection in society.

The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been weary
of hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their
predictions, and were only waiting for a decisive turn in public opinion to
fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were already making
ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived. The
greater number of the middle-aged people and certain great personages were
displeased at the prospect of the impending scandal in society.

Vronsky’s mother, on hearing of his connection, was at first pleased at
it, because nothing to her mind gave such a finishing touch to a brilliant
young man as a liaison in the highest society; she was pleased, too,
that Madame Karenina, who had so taken her fancy, and had talked so much of her
son, was, after all, just like all other pretty and well-bred women,—at
least according to the Countess Vronskaya’s ideas. But she had heard of
late that her son had refused a position offered him of great importance to his
career, simply in order to remain in the regiment, where he could be constantly
seeing Madame Karenina. She learned that great personages were displeased with
him on this account, and she changed her opinion. She was vexed, too, that from
all she could learn of this connection it was not that brilliant, graceful,
worldly liaison which she would have welcomed, but a sort of Wertherish,
desperate passion, so she was told, which might well lead him into imprudence.
She had not seen him since his abrupt departure from Moscow, and she sent her
elder son to bid him come to see her.

This elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He did not
distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little, passionate or
passionless, lasting or passing (he kept a ballet girl himself, though he was
the father of a family, so he was lenient in these matters), but he knew that
this love affair was viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to
please, and therefore he did not approve of his brother’s conduct.

Besides the service and society, Vronsky had another great
interest—horses; he was passionately fond of horses.

That year races and a steeplechase had been arranged for the officers. Vronsky
had put his name down, bought a thoroughbred English mare, and in spite of his
love affair, he was looking forward to the races with intense, though reserved,
excitement….

These two passions did not interfere with one another. On the contrary, he
needed occupation and distraction quite apart from his love, so as to recruit
and rest himself from the violent emotions that agitated him.

Chapter 19

On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come earlier than usual to
eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the regiment. He had no need to be
strict with himself, as he had very quickly been brought down to the required
light weight; but still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and so he eschewed
farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat unbuttoned over a white
waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and while waiting for the steak he
had ordered he looked at a French novel that lay open on his plate. He was only
looking at the book to avoid conversation with the officers coming in and out;
he was thinking.

He was thinking of Anna’s promise to see him that day after the races.
But he had not seen her for three days, and as her husband had just returned
from abroad, he did not know whether she would be able to meet him today or
not, and he did not know how to find out. He had had his last interview with
her at his cousin Betsy’s summer villa. He visited the Karenins’
summer villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he pondered
the question how to do it.

“Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she’s
coming to the races. Of course, I’ll go,” he decided, lifting his
head from the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness of seeing her, his
face lighted up.

“Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and three
horses as quick as they can,” he said to the servant, who handed him the
steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up he began eating.

From the billiard room next door came the sound of balls knocking, of talk and
laughter. Two officers appeared at the entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with
a feeble, delicate face, who had lately joined the regiment from the Corps of
Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a bracelet on his wrist, and
little eyes, lost in fat.

Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as though he had
not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at the same time.

“What? Fortifying yourself for your work?” said the plump officer,
sitting down beside him.

“As you see,” responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his
mouth, and not looking at the officer.

“So you’re not afraid of getting fat?” said the latter,
turning a chair round for the young officer.

“What?” said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and
showing his even teeth.

“You’re not afraid of getting fat?”

“Waiter, sherry!” said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the
book to the other side of him, he went on reading.

The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the young officer.

“You choose what we’re to drink,” he said, handing him the
card, and looking at him.

“Rhine wine, please,” said the young officer, stealing a timid
glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible mustache. Seeing
that Vronsky did not turn round, the young officer got up.

“Let’s go into the billiard room,” he said.

The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the door.

At that moment there walked into the room the tall and well-built Captain
Yashvin. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the two officers, he went up
to Vronsky.

“Ah! here he is!” he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on
his epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted up immediately
with his characteristic expression of genial and manly serenity.

“That’s it, Alexey,” said the captain, in his loud baritone.
“You must just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny glass.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry.”

“There go the inseparables,” Yashvin dropped, glancing
sarcastically at the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room.
And he bent his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat down in
the chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp angle.

“Why didn’t you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova
wasn’t at all bad. Where were you?”

“I was late at the Tverskoys’,” said Vronsky.

“Ah!” responded Yashvin.

Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but
of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky’s greatest friend in the
regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his exceptional physical strength, which
he showed for the most part by being able to drink like a fish, and do without
sleep without being in the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great
strength of character, which he showed in his relations with his comrades and
superior officers, commanding both fear and respect, and also at cards, when he
would play for tens of thousands and however much he might have drunk, always
with such skill and decision that he was reckoned the best player in the
English Club. Vronsky respected and liked Yashvin particularly because he felt
Yashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but for himself. And of all
men he was the only one with whom Vronsky would have liked to speak of his
love. He felt that Yashvin, in spite of his apparent contempt for every sort of
feeling, was the only man who could, so he fancied, comprehend the intense
passion which now filled his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that
Yashvin, as it was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his
feeling rightly, that is to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a
jest, not a pastime, but something more serious and important.

Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware that he knew
all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on it, and he was glad
to see that in his eyes.

“Ah! yes,” he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at
the Tverskoys’; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left
mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit he had.

“Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?” asked Vronsky.

“Eight thousand. But three don’t count; he won’t pay
up.”

“Oh, then you can afford to lose over me,” said Vronsky, laughing.
(Yashvin had bet heavily on Vronsky in the races.)

“No chance of my losing. Mahotin’s the only one that’s
risky.”

And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the only thing
Vronsky could think of just now.

“Come along, I’ve finished,” said Vronsky, and getting up he
went to the door. Yashvin got up too, stretching his long legs and his long
back.

“It’s too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I’ll
come along directly. Hi, wine!” he shouted, in his rich voice, that
always rang out so loudly at drill, and set the windows shaking now.

“No, all right,” he shouted again immediately after.
“You’re going home, so I’ll go with you.”

And he walked out with Vronsky.

Chapter 20

Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into two by a
partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too. Petritsky was asleep when
Vronsky and Yashvin came into the hut.

“Get up, don’t go on sleeping,” said Yashvin, going behind
the partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair and with
his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.

Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.

“Your brother’s been here,” he said to Vronsky. “He
waked me up, damn him, and said he’d look in again.” And pulling up
the rug he flung himself back on the pillow. “Oh, do shut up,
Yashvin!” he said, getting furious with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug
off him. “Shut up!” He turned over and opened his eyes.
“You’d better tell me what to drink; such a nasty taste in my
mouth, that….”

“Brandy’s better than anything,” boomed Yashvin.
“Tereshtchenko! brandy for your master and cucumbers,” he shouted,
obviously taking pleasure in the sound of his own voice.

“Brandy, do you think? Eh?” queried Petritsky, blinking and rubbing
his eyes. “And you’ll drink something? All right then, we’ll
have a drink together! Vronsky, have a drink?” said Petritsky, getting up
and wrapping the tiger-skin rug round him. He went to the door of the partition
wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French, “There was a king in
Thule.” “Vronsky, will you have a drink?”

“Go along,” said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet handed to
him.

“Where are you off to?” asked Yashvin. “Oh, here are your
three horses,” he added, seeing the carriage drive up.

“To the stables, and I’ve got to see Bryansky, too, about the
horses,” said Vronsky.

Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky’s, some eight miles
from Peterhof, and to bring him some money owing for some horses; and he hoped
to have time to get that in too. But his comrades were at once aware that he
was not only going there.

Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips, as though he
would say: “Oh, yes, we know your Bryansky.”

“Mind you’re not late!” was Yashvin’s only comment; and
to change the conversation: “How’s my roan? is he doing all
right?” he inquired, looking out of the window at the middle one of the
three horses, which he had sold Vronsky.

“Stop!” cried Petritsky to Vronsky as he was just going out.
“Your brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit; where are
they?”

Vronsky stopped.

“Well, where are they?”

“Where are they? That’s just the question!” said Petritsky
solemnly, moving his forefinger upwards from his nose.

“Come, tell me; this is silly!” said Vronsky smiling.

“I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about.”

“Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?”

“No, I’ve forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a
bit! But what’s the use of getting in a rage. If you’d drunk four
bottles yesterday as I did you’d forget where you were lying. Wait a bit,
I’ll remember!”

Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.

“Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was standing.
Yes—yes—yes…. Here it is!”—and Petritsky pulled a
letter out from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.

Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was the letter he was
expecting—from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to see
her—and the note was from his brother to say that he must have a little
talk with him. Vronsky knew that it was all about the same thing. “What
business is it of theirs!” thought Vronsky, and crumpling up the letters
he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to read them carefully on
the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two officers; one of his
regiment and one of another.

Vronsky’s quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.

“Where are you off to?”

“I must go to Peterhof.”

“Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?”

“Yes, but I’ve not seen her yet.”

“They say Mahotin’s Gladiator’s lame.”

“Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?” said the
other.

“Here are my saviors!” cried Petritsky, seeing them come in. Before
him stood the orderly with a tray of brandy and salted cucumbers.
“Here’s Yashvin ordering me to drink a pick-me-up.”

“Well, you did give it to us yesterday,” said one of those who had
come in; “you didn’t let us get a wink of sleep all night.”

“Oh, didn’t we make a pretty finish!” said Petritsky.
“Volkov climbed onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I
said: ‘Let’s have music, the funeral march!’ He fairly
dropped asleep on the roof over the funeral march.”

“Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then seltzer
water and a lot of lemon,” said Yashvin, standing over Petritsky like a
mother making a child take medicine, “and then a little
champagne—just a small bottle.”

“Come, there’s some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We’ll
all have a drink.”

“No; good-bye all of you. I’m not going to drink today.”

“Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone. Give
us the seltzer water and lemon.”

“Vronsky!” shouted someone when he was already outside.

“Well?”

“You’d better get your hair cut, it’ll weigh you down,
especially at the top.”

Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald. He laughed
gaily, showing his even teeth, and pulling his cap over the thin place, went
out and got into his carriage.

“To the stables!” he said, and was just pulling out the letters to
read them through, but he thought better of it, and put off reading them so as
not to distract his attention before looking at the mare. “Later!”

Chapter 21

The temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up close to the race course,
and there his mare was to have been taken the previous day. He had not yet seen
her there.

During the last few days he had not ridden her out for exercise himself, but
had put her in the charge of the trainer, and so now he positively did not know
in what condition his mare had arrived yesterday and was today. He had scarcely
got out of his carriage when his groom, the so-called “stable boy,”
recognizing the carriage some way off, called the trainer. A dry-looking
Englishman, in high boots and a short jacket, clean-shaven, except for a tuft
below his chin, came to meet him, walking with the uncouth gait of jockey,
turning his elbows out and swaying from side to side.

“Well, how’s Frou-Frou?” Vronsky asked in English.

“All right, sir,” the Englishman’s voice responded somewhere
in the inside of his throat. “Better not go in,” he added, touching
his hat. “I’ve put a muzzle on her, and the mare’s fidgety.
Better not go in, it’ll excite the mare.”

“No, I’m going in. I want to look at her.”

“Come along, then,” said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking
with his mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in front with his
disjointed gait.

They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy, spruce and
smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his hand, and followed
them. In the shed there were five horses in their separate stalls, and Vronsky
knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been
brought there, and must be standing among them. Even more than his mare,
Vronsky longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen. But he knew that by
the etiquette of the race course it was not merely impossible for him to see
the horse, but improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing
along the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on the
left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white legs. He
knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away from
the sight of another man’s open letter, he turned round and went into
Frou-Frou’s stall.

“The horse is here belonging to Mak… Mak… I never can say the
name,” said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger
and dirty nail towards Gladiator’s stall.

“Mahotin? Yes, he’s my most serious rival,” said Vronsky.

“If you were riding him,” said the Englishman, “I’d bet
on you.”

“Frou-Frou’s more nervous; he’s stronger,” said
Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding.

“In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck,” said the
Englishman.

Of pluck—that is, energy and courage—Vronsky did not merely feel
that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was firmly convinced
that no one in the world could have more of this “pluck” than he
had.

“Don’t you think I want more thinning down?”

“Oh, no,” answered the Englishman. “Please, don’t speak
loud. The mare’s fidgety,” he added, nodding towards the horse-box,
before which they were standing, and from which came the sound of restless
stamping in the straw.

He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse-box, dimly lighted by one
little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay mare, with a muzzle on,
picking at the fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking round him in the twilight of
the horse-box, Vronsky unconsciously took in once more in a comprehensive
glance all the points of his favorite mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of medium
size, not altogether free from reproach, from a breeder’s point of view.
She was small-boned all over; though her chest was extremely prominent in
front, it was narrow. Her hind-quarters were a little drooping, and in her
fore-legs, and still more in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable curvature.
The muscles of both hind- and fore-legs were not very thick; but across her
shoulders the mare was exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking
now that she was lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees
looked no thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick
seen from the side. She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as it
were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But she had in the
highest degree the quality that makes all defects forgotten: that quality was
blood, the blood that tells, as the English expression has it.
The muscles stood up sharply under the network of sinews, covered with the
delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were hard as bone. Her clean-cut
head, with prominent, bright, spirited eyes, broadened out at the open
nostrils, that showed the red blood in the cartilage within. About all her
figure, and especially her head, there was a certain expression of energy, and,
at the same time, of softness. She was one of those creatures which seem only
not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.

To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at that
moment, looking at her.

Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep breath, and, turning back
her prominent eye till the white looked bloodshot, she started at the
approaching figures from the opposite side, shaking her muzzle, and shifting
lightly from one leg to the other.

“There, you see how fidgety she is,” said the Englishman.

“There, darling! There!” said Vronsky, going up to the mare and
speaking soothingly to her.

But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he stood by her
head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quivered under her soft,
delicate coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck, straightened over her sharp
withers a stray lock of her mane that had fallen on the other side, and moved
his face near her dilated nostrils, transparent as a bat’s wing. She drew
a loud breath and snorted out through her tense nostrils, started, pricked up
her sharp ear, and put out her strong, black lip towards Vronsky, as though she
would nip hold of his sleeve. But remembering the muzzle, she shook it and
again began restlessly stamping one after the other her shapely legs.

“Quiet, darling, quiet!” he said, patting her again over her
hind-quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was in the best possible
condition, he went out of the horse-box.

The mare’s excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt that his heart was
throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to move, to bite; it was
both dreadful and delicious.

“Well, I rely on you, then,” he said to the Englishman;
“half-past six on the ground.”

“All right,” said the Englishman. “Oh, where are you going,
my lord?” he asked suddenly, using the title “my lord,” which
he had scarcely ever used before.

Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how to stare, not
into the Englishman’s eyes, but at his forehead, astounded at the
impertinence of his question. But realizing that in asking this the Englishman
had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a jockey, he answered:

“I’ve got to go to Bryansky’s; I shall be home within an
hour.”

“How often I’m asked that question today!” he said to
himself, and he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman
looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky was going, he
added:

“The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,” said he;
“don’t get out of temper or upset about anything.”

“All right,” answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his
carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.

Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been threatening
rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of rain.

“What a pity!” thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the
carriage. “It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp.” As
he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother’s
letter and his brother’s note, and read them through.

Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his mother, his
brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This
interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred—a feeling he had
rarely known before. “What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody
feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just
because they see that this is something they can’t understand. If it were
a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel
that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime, that this
woman is dearer to me than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that’s
why it annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it
ourselves, and we do not complain of it,” he said, in the word we
linking himself with Anna. “No, they must needs teach us how to live.
They haven’t an idea of what happiness is; they don’t know that
without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no
life at all,” he thought.

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in
his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that the love that
bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly
intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either but pleasant
or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position,
all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of
all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying,
deceiving, feigning, and continually thinking of others, when the passion that
united them was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but
their love.

He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of inevitable
necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his natural bent. He
recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more than once detected in her
at this necessity for lying and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling
that had sometimes come upon him since his secret love for Anna. This was a
feeling of loathing for something—whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or
for himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said. But he always
drove away this strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the
thread of his thoughts.

“Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she cannot
be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not show it. Yes,
we must put an end to it,” he decided.

And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was essential
to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the better. “Throw
up everything, she and I, and hide ourselves somewhere alone with our
love,” he said to himself.

Chapter 22

The rain did not last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived, his shaft-horse
trotting at full speed and dragging the trace-horses galloping through the mud,
with their reins hanging loose, the sun had peeped out again, the roofs of the
summer villas and the old limetrees in the gardens on both sides of the
principal streets sparkled with wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a
pleasant drip and from the roofs rushing streams of water. He thought no more
of the shower spoiling the race course, but was rejoicing now that—thanks
to the rain—he would be sure to find her at home and alone, as he knew
that Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from a foreign watering
place, had not moved from Petersburg.

Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to avoid
attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked to the house. He
did not go up the steps to the street door, but went into the court.

“Has your master come?” he asked a gardener.

“No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the front
door; there are servants there,” the gardener answered.
“They’ll open the door.”

“No, I’ll go in from the garden.”

And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by surprise,
since he had not promised to be there today, and she would certainly not expect
him to come before the races, he walked, holding his sword and stepping
cautiously over the sandy path, bordered with flowers, to the terrace that
looked out upon the garden. Vronsky forgot now all that he had thought on the
way of the hardships and difficulties of their position. He thought of nothing
but that he would see her directly, not in imagination, but living, all of her,
as she was in reality. He was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as
not to creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly remembered
what he always forgot, and what caused the most torturing side of his relations
with her, her son with his questioning—hostile, as he fancied—eyes.

This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom. When he
was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid speaking of anything
that they could not have repeated before everyone; they did not even allow
themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did not understand. They had
made no agreement about this, it had settled itself. They would have felt it
wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence they talked like
acquaintances. But in spite of this caution, Vronsky often saw the
child’s intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and a strange shyness,
uncertainty, at one time friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the
boy’s manner to him; as though the child felt that between this man and
his mother there existed some important bond, the significance of which he
could not understand.

As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation, and he
tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what feeling he
ought to have for this man. With a child’s keen instinct for every
manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his governess, his
nurse,—all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on him with horror
and aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his mother
looked on him as her greatest friend.

“What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don’t
know, it’s my fault; either I’m stupid or a naughty boy,”
thought the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes
hostile, expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so
irksome. This child’s presence always and infallibly called up in Vronsky
that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of late.
This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling
akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in
which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his
motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and
further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right
direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.

This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed
them the point to which they had departed from what they knew, but did not want
to know.

This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely alone. She was
sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had gone out for
his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a manservant and a maid out
to look for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting
in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending
her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that
stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so
well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her
hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood
still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made a step to
come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed away the watering
pot, and turned her flushed face towards him.

“What’s the matter? You are ill?” he said to her in French,
going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be
spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little, as
he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.

“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his
outstretched hand tightly. “I did not expect … thee.”

“Mercy! what cold hands!” he said.

“You startled me,” she said. “I’m alone, and expecting
Seryozha; he’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this
side.”

But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing
you,” he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the
stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the
dangerously intimate singular.

“Forgive you? I’m so glad!”

“But you’re ill or worried,” he went on, not letting go her
hands and bending over her. “What were you thinking of?”

“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was
thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness
and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why
was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret
connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture?
Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations.
She asked him about the races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she
was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the
details of his preparations for the races.

“Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet,
affectionate eyes. “He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he
won’t understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity
of this fact to us.”

“But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came
in,” he said, interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!”

She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at
him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her hand
shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face
expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much
to win her.

“I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing
you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God’s sake,” he
repeated imploringly.

“Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all
the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?” she
thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held
the leaf was trembling more and more.

“For God’s sake!” he repeated, taking her hand.

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes, yes, yes….”

“I’m with child,” she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf
in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him,
watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have said something, but
stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. “Yes, he
realizes all the gravity of it,” she thought, and gratefully she pressed
his hand.

But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as she, a
woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity
that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he felt that
the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible
to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way
or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But,
besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at
her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in
silence, paced up and down the terrace.

“Yes,” he said, going up to her resolutely. “Neither you nor
I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is
sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end”—he looked round
as he spoke—“to the deception in which we are living.”

“Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?” she said softly.

She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.

“Leave your husband and make our life one.”

“It is one as it is,” she answered, scarcely audibly.

“Yes, but altogether; altogether.”

“But how, Alexey, tell me how?” she said in melancholy mockery at
the hopelessness of her own position. “Is there any way out of such a
position? Am I not the wife of my husband?”

“There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,” he
said. “Anything’s better than the position in which you’re
living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything—the
world and your son and your husband.”

“Oh, not over my husband,” she said, with a quiet smile. “I
don’t know him, I don’t think of him. He doesn’t
exist.”

“You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him
too.”

“Oh, he doesn’t even know,” she said, and suddenly a hot
flush came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears
of shame came into her eyes. “But we won’t talk of him.”

Chapter 23

Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to
bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by
the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It
was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not
face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna,
retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman
came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition
to him. But today he was resolved to have it out.

“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and
resolute tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot … you
cannot stay like this, especially now.”

“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the
same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too
lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking
some step.

“Tell him everything, and leave him.”

“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know
what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and
a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before.
“‘Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal
intrigues with him?’” (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis
on the word “criminal,” as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.)
“‘I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the
domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace
my name,—’” “and my son,” she had meant to say,
but about her son she could not jest,—“‘disgrace my name,
and’—and more in the same style,” she added. “In
general terms, he’ll say in his official manner, and with all
distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all
measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act
in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen. He’s not a
man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,” she
added, recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities
of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning against him every defect
she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself was
doing him.

“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying
to soothe her, “we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided
by the line he takes.”

“What, run away?”

“And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep on like this.
And not for my sake—I see that you suffer.”

“Yes, run away, and become your mistress,” she said angrily.

“Anna,” he said, with reproachful tenderness.

“Yes,” she went on, “become your mistress, and complete the
ruin of….”

Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that
word.

Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful nature,
could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did
not suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—son, which she
could not bring herself to pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his
future attitude to his mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such
terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman,
could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would
remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful
question of how it would be with her son.

“I beg you, I entreat you,” she said suddenly, taking his hand, and
speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, “never speak to
me of that!”

“But, Anna….”

“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my
position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to
me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me?… No, no,
promise!…”

“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after
what you have told me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at
peace….”

“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that
will pass, if you will never talk about this. When you talk about
it—it’s only then it worries me.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“I know,” she interrupted him, “how hard it is for your
truthful nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have
ruined your whole life for me.”

“I was just thinking the very same thing,” he said; “how
could you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can’t forgive myself that
you’re unhappy!”

“I unhappy?” she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him
with an ecstatic smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been
given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not
unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness….”

She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming towards them, and
glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed
with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely
hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long look into his face,
and, putting up her face with smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth
and both eyes, and pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her back.

“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.

“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy
sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.

Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and his nurse
had taken shelter in an arbor.

“Well, au revoir,” she said to Vronsky. “I must soon
be getting ready for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me.”

Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.

Chapter 24

When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’ balcony, he was so
greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures on the
watch’s face, but could not take in what time it was. He came out on to
the highroad and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to his
carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling for Anna, that he did
not even think what o’clock it was, and whether he had time to go to
Bryansky’s. He had left him, as often happens, only the external faculty
of memory, that points out each step one has to take, one after the other. He
went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the box in the shadow, already
lengthening, of a thick limetree; he admired the shifting clouds of midges
circling over the hot horses, and, waking the coachman, he jumped into the
carriage, and told him to drive to Bryansky’s. It was only after driving
nearly five miles that he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his
watch, and realize that it was half-past five, and he was late.

There were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards’ race,
then the officers’ mile-and-a-half race, then the three-mile race, and
then the race for which he was entered. He could still be in time for his race,
but if he went to Bryansky’s he could only just be in time, and he would
arrive when the whole of the court would be in their places. That would be a
pity. But he had promised Bryansky to come, and so he decided to drive on,
telling the coachman not to spare the horses.

He reached Bryansky’s, spent five minutes there, and galloped back. This
rapid drive calmed him. All that was painful in his relations with Anna, all
the feeling of indefiniteness left by their conversation, had slipped out of
his mind. He was thinking now with pleasure and excitement of the race, of his
being anyhow, in time, and now and then the thought of the blissful interview
awaiting him that night flashed across his imagination like a flaming light.

The excitement of the approaching race gained upon him as he drove further and
further into the atmosphere of the races, overtaking carriages driving up from
the summer villas or out of Petersburg.

At his quarters no one was left at home; all were at the races, and his valet
was looking out for him at the gate. While he was changing his clothes, his
valet told him that the second race had begun already, that a lot of gentlemen
had been to ask for him, and a boy had twice run up from the stables. Dressing
without hurry (he never hurried himself, and never lost his self-possession),
Vronsky drove to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of
carriages, and people on foot, soldiers surrounding the race course, and
pavilions swarming with people. The second race was apparently going on, for
just as he went into the sheds he heard a bell ringing. Going towards the
stable, he met the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin’s Gladiator, being led
to the race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with what looked like huge ears
edged with blue.

“Where’s Cord?” he asked the stable-boy.

“In the stable, putting on the saddle.”

In the open horse-box stood Frou-Frou, saddled ready. They were just going to
lead her out.

“I’m not too late?”

“All right! All right!” said the Englishman; “don’t
upset yourself!”

Vronsky once more took in in one glance the exquisite lines of his favorite
mare; who was quivering all over, and with an effort he tore himself from the
sight of her, and went out of the stable. He went towards the pavilions at the
most favorable moment for escaping attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just
finishing, and all eyes were fixed on the horse-guard in front and the light
hussar behind, urging their horses on with a last effort close to the winning
post. From the center and outside of the ring all were crowding to the winning
post, and a group of soldiers and officers of the horse-guards were shouting
loudly their delight at the expected triumph of their officer and comrade.
Vronsky moved into the middle of the crowd unnoticed, almost at the very moment
when the bell rang at the finish of the race, and the tall, mudspattered
horse-guard who came in first, bending over the saddle, let go the reins of his
panting gray horse that looked dark with sweat.

The horse, stiffening out its legs, with an effort stopped its rapid course,
and the officer of the horse-guards looked round him like a man waking up from
a heavy sleep, and just managed to smile. A crowd of friends and outsiders
pressed round him.

Vronsky intentionally avoided that select crowd of the upper world, which was
moving and talking with discreet freedom before the pavilions. He knew that
Madame Karenina was there, and Betsy, and his brother’s wife, and he
purposely did not go near them for fear of something distracting his attention.
But he was continually met and stopped by acquaintances, who told him about the
previous races, and kept asking him why he was so late.

At the time when the racers had to go to the pavilion to receive the prizes,
and all attention was directed to that point, Vronsky’s elder brother,
Alexander, a colonel with heavy fringed epaulets, came up to him. He was not
tall, though as broadly built as Alexey, and handsomer and rosier than he; he
had a red nose, and an open, drunken-looking face.

“Did you get my note?” he said. “There’s never any
finding you.”

Alexander Vronsky, in spite of the dissolute life, and in especial the drunken
habits, for which he was notorious, was quite one of the court circle.

Now, as he talked to his brother of a matter bound to be exceedingly
disagreeable to him, knowing that the eyes of many people might be fixed upon
him, he kept a smiling countenance, as though he were jesting with his brother
about something of little moment.

“I got it, and I really can’t make out what you are worrying
yourself about,” said Alexey.

“I’m worrying myself because the remark has just been made to me
that you weren’t here, and that you were seen in Peterhof on
Monday.”

“There are matters which only concern those directly interested in them,
and the matter you are so worried about is….”

“Yes, but if so, you may as well cut the service….”

“I beg you not to meddle, and that’s all I have to say.”

Alexey Vronsky’s frowning face turned white, and his prominent lower jaw
quivered, which happened rarely with him. Being a man of very warm heart, he
was seldom angry; but when he was angry, and when his chin quivered, then, as
Alexander Vronsky knew, he was dangerous. Alexander Vronsky smiled gaily.

“I only wanted to give you Mother’s letter. Answer it, and
don’t worry about anything just before the race. Bonne
chance,” he added, smiling and he moved away from him. But after him
another friendly greeting brought Vronsky to a standstill.

“So you won’t recognize your friends! How are you, mon
cher?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, as conspicuously brilliant in the
midst of all the Petersburg brilliance as he was in Moscow, his face rosy, and
his whiskers sleek and glossy. “I came up yesterday, and I’m
delighted that I shall see your triumph. When shall we meet?”

“Come tomorrow to the messroom,” said Vronsky, and squeezing him by
the sleeve of his coat, with apologies, he moved away to the center of the race
course, where the horses were being led for the great steeplechase.

The horses who had run in the last race were being led home, steaming and
exhausted, by the stable-boys, and one after another the fresh horses for the
coming race made their appearance, for the most part English racers, wearing
horsecloths, and looking with their drawn-up bellies like strange, huge birds.
On the right was led in Frou-Frou, lean and beautiful, lifting up her elastic,
rather long pasterns, as though moved by springs. Not far from her they were
taking the rug off the lop-eared Gladiator. The strong, exquisite, perfectly
correct lines of the stallion, with his superb hind-quarters and excessively
short pasterns almost over his hoofs, attracted Vronsky’s attention in
spite of himself. He would have gone up to his mare, but he was again detained
by an acquaintance.

“Oh, there’s Karenin!” said the acquaintance with whom he was
chatting. “He’s looking for his wife, and she’s in the middle
of the pavilion. Didn’t you see her?”

“No,” answered Vronsky, and without even glancing round towards the
pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Karenina, he went up to his
mare.

Vronsky had not had time to look at the saddle, about which he had to give some
direction, when the competitors were summoned to the pavilion to receive their
numbers and places in the row at starting. Seventeen officers, looking serious
and severe, many with pale faces, met together in the pavilion and drew the
numbers. Vronsky drew the number seven. The cry was heard: “Mount!”

Feeling that with the others riding in the race, he was the center upon which
all eyes were fastened, Vronsky walked up to his mare in that state of nervous
tension in which he usually became deliberate and composed in his movements.
Cord, in honor of the races, had put on his best clothes, a black coat buttoned
up, a stiffly starched collar, which propped up his cheeks, a round black hat,
and top boots. He was calm and dignified as ever, and was with his own hands
holding Frou-Frou by both reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou
was still trembling as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced
sideways at Vronsky. Vronsky slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The
mare glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her ear. The
Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate a smile that anyone
should verify his saddling.

“Get up; you won’t feel so excited.”

Vronsky looked round for the last time at his rivals. He knew that he would not
see them during the race. Two were already riding forward to the point from
which they were to start. Galtsin, a friend of Vronsky’s and one of his
more formidable rivals, was moving round a bay horse that would not let him
mount. A little light hussar in tight riding breeches rode off at a gallop,
crouched up like a cat on the saddle, in imitation of English jockeys. Prince
Kuzovlev sat with a white face on his thoroughbred mare from the Grabovsky
stud, while an English groom led her by the bridle. Vronsky and all his
comrades knew Kuzovlev and his peculiarity of “weak nerves” and
terrible vanity. They knew that he was afraid of everything, afraid of riding a
spirited horse. But now, just because it was terrible, because people broke
their necks, and there was a doctor standing at each obstacle, and an ambulance
with a cross on it, and a sister of mercy, he had made up his mind to take part
in the race. Their eyes met, and Vronsky gave him a friendly and encouraging
nod. Only one he did not see, his chief rival, Mahotin on Gladiator.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” said Cord to Vronsky, “and
remember one thing: don’t hold her in at the fences, and don’t urge
her on; let her go as she likes.”

“All right, all right,” said Vronsky, taking the reins.

“If you can, lead the race; but don’t lose heart till the last
minute, even if you’re behind.”

Before the mare had time to move, Vronsky stepped with an agile, vigorous
movement into the steel-toothed stirrup, and lightly and firmly seated himself
on the creaking leather of the saddle. Getting his right foot in the stirrup,
he smoothed the double reins, as he always did, between his fingers, and Cord
let go.

As though she did not know which foot to put first, Frou-Frou started, dragging
at the reins with her long neck, and as though she were on springs, shaking her
rider from side to side. Cord quickened his step, following him. The excited
mare, trying to shake off her rider first on one side and then the other,
pulled at the reins, and Vronsky tried in vain with voice and hand to soothe
her.

They were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the starting
point. Several of the riders were in front and several behind, when suddenly
Vronsky heard the sound of a horse galloping in the mud behind him, and he was
overtaken by Mahotin on his white-legged, lop-eared Gladiator. Mahotin smiled,
showing his long teeth, but Vronsky looked angrily at him. He did not like him,
and regarded him now as his most formidable rival. He was angry with him for
galloping past and exciting his mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left
foot forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed into
a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord, too, scowled, and followed
Vronsky almost at a trot.

Chapter 25

There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race course was a
large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of the pavilion. On
this course nine obstacles had been arranged: the stream, a big and solid
barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of
water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult
obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a
ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse had to clear both
obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled with water, and one
dry one; and the end of the race was just facing the pavilion. But the race
began not in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of
the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth,
which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred.

Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse thrust
itself out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire who was starting
them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for the
fourth time he shouted “Away!” and the racers started.

Every eye, every opera-glass, was turned on the brightly colored group of
riders at the moment they were in line to start.

“They’re off! They’re starting!” was heard on all sides
after the hush of expectation.

And little groups and solitary figures among the public began running from
place to place to get a better view. In the very first minute the close group
of horsemen drew out, and it could be seen that they were approaching the
stream in twos and threes and one behind another. To the spectators it seemed
as though they had all started simultaneously, but to the racers there were
seconds of difference that had great value to them.

Frou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment, and several
horses had started before her, but before reaching the stream, Vronsky, who was
holding in the mare with all his force as she tugged at the bridle, easily
overtook three, and there were left in front of him Mahotin’s chestnut
Gladiator, whose hind-quarters were moving lightly and rhythmically up and down
exactly in front of Vronsky, and in front of all, the dainty mare Diana bearing
Kuzovlev more dead than alive.

For the first instant Vronsky was not master either of himself or his mare. Up
to the first obstacle, the stream, he could not guide the motions of his mare.

Gladiator and Diana came up to it together and almost at the same instant;
simultaneously they rose above the stream and flew across to the other side;
Frou-Frou darted after them, as if flying; but at the very moment when Vronsky
felt himself in the air, he suddenly saw almost under his mare’s hoofs
Kuzovlev, who was floundering with Diana on the further side of the stream.
(Kuzovlev had let go the reins as he took the leap, and the mare had sent him
flying over her head.) Those details Vronsky learned later; at the moment all
he saw was that just under him, where Frou-Frou must alight, Diana’s legs
or head might be in the way. But Frou-Frou drew up her legs and back in the
very act of leaping, like a falling cat, and, clearing the other mare, alighted
beyond her.

“O the darling!” thought Vronsky.

After crossing the stream Vronsky had complete control of his mare, and began
holding her in, intending to cross the great barrier behind Mahotin, and to try
to overtake him in the clear ground of about five hundred yards that followed
it.

The great barrier stood just in front of the imperial pavilion. The Tsar and
the whole court and crowds of people were all gazing at them—at him, and
Mahotin a length ahead of him, as they drew near the “devil,” as
the solid barrier was called. Vronsky was aware of those eyes fastened upon him
from all sides, but he saw nothing except the ears and neck of his own mare,
the ground racing to meet him, and the back and white legs of Gladiator beating
time swiftly before him, and keeping always the same distance ahead. Gladiator
rose, with no sound of knocking against anything. With a wave of his short tail
he disappeared from Vronsky’s sight.

“Bravo!” cried a voice.

At the same instant, under Vronsky’s eyes, right before him flashed the
palings of the barrier. Without the slightest change in her action his mare
flew over it; the palings vanished, and he heard only a crash behind him. The
mare, excited by Gladiator’s keeping ahead, had risen too soon before the
barrier, and grazed it with her hind hoofs. But her pace never changed, and
Vronsky, feeling a spatter of mud in his face, realized that he was once more
the same distance from Gladiator. Once more he perceived in front of him the
same back and short tail, and again the same swiftly moving white legs that got
no further away.

At the very moment when Vronsky thought that now was the time to overtake
Mahotin, Frou-Frou herself, understanding his thoughts, without any incitement
on his part, gained ground considerably, and began getting alongside of Mahotin
on the most favorable side, close to the inner cord. Mahotin would not let her
pass that side. Vronsky had hardly formed the thought that he could perhaps
pass on the outer side, when Frou-Frou shifted her pace and began overtaking
him on the other side. Frou-Frou’s shoulder, beginning by now to be dark
with sweat, was even with Gladiator’s back. For a few lengths they moved
evenly. But before the obstacle they were approaching, Vronsky began working at
the reins, anxious to avoid having to take the outer circle, and swiftly passed
Mahotin just upon the declivity. He caught a glimpse of his mud-stained face as
he flashed by. He even fancied that he smiled. Vronsky passed Mahotin, but he
was immediately aware of him close upon him, and he never ceased hearing the
even-thudding hoofs and the rapid and still quite fresh breathing of Gladiator.

The next two obstacles, the water course and the barrier, were easily crossed,
but Vronsky began to hear the snorting and thud of Gladiator closer upon him.
He urged on his mare, and to his delight felt that she easily quickened her
pace, and the thud of Gladiator’s hoofs was again heard at the same
distance away.

Vronsky was at the head of the race, just as he wanted to be and as Cord had
advised, and now he felt sure of being the winner. His excitement, his delight,
and his tenderness for Frou-Frou grew keener and keener. He longed to look
round again, but he did not dare do this, and tried to be cool and not to urge
on his mare so to keep the same reserve of force in her as he felt that
Gladiator still kept. There remained only one obstacle, the most difficult; if
he could cross it ahead of the others he would come in first. He was flying
towards the Irish barricade, Frou-Frou and he both together saw the barricade
in the distance, and both the man and the mare had a moment’s hesitation.
He saw the uncertainty in the mare’s ears and lifted the whip, but at the
same time felt that his fears were groundless; the mare knew what was wanted.
She quickened her pace and rose smoothly, just as he had fancied she would, and
as she left the ground gave herself up to the force of her rush, which carried
her far beyond the ditch; and with the same rhythm, without effort, with the
same leg forward, Frou-Frou fell back into her pace again.

“Bravo, Vronsky!” he heard shouts from a knot of men—he knew
they were his friends in the regiment—who were standing at the obstacle.
He could not fail to recognize Yashvin’s voice though he did not see him.

“O my sweet!” he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for
what was happening behind. “He’s cleared it!” he thought,
catching the thud of Gladiator’s hoofs behind him. There remained only
the last ditch, filled with water and five feet wide. Vronsky did not even look
at it, but anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the reins,
lifting the mare’s head and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt
that the mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and
shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on her mane, her
head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. But he knew
that she had strength left more than enough for the remaining five hundred
yards. It was only from feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar
smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew how greatly the mare had quickened
her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it
like a bird; but at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had
failed to keep up with the mare’s pace, that he had, he did not know how,
made a fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All
at once his position had shifted and he knew that something awful had happened.
He could not yet make out what had happened, when the white legs of a chestnut
horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Vronsky
was touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on that foot.
He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one side, gasping painfully,
and, making vain efforts to rise with her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered
on the ground at his feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky
had broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At that moment he knew
only that Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the
muddy, motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her
head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize
what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare’s reins. Again she
struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle heaving,
she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over
and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw
trembling, and his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the
stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting
her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking
eyes.

“A—a—a!” groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head.
“Ah! what have I done!” he cried. “The race lost! And my
fault! shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have
I done!”

A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his regiment, ran
up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole and unhurt. The mare had
broken her back, and it was decided to shoot her. Vronsky could not answer
questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap
that had fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where he was
going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in his life he knew the
bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, and caused by his own
fault.

Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an hour later
Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the memory of that race remained
for long in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory of his life.

Chapter 26

The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had remained
unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more busily occupied
than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone to a
foreign watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged by the
winter’s work that every year grew heavier. And just as always he
returned in July and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As
usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town, while he
remained in Petersburg. From the date of their conversation after the party at
Princess Tverskaya’s he had never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions
and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the
most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a
little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her
for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude
to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. “You would not be
open with me,” he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; “so much
the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I won’t be open
with you. So much the worse for you!” he said mentally, like a man who,
after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his
vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for
this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize
all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not realize it,
because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position, and he shut
down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his
feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He who had been such a
careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly frigid to his
son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone he used with his wife.
“Aha, young man!” was the greeting with which he met him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any previous
year had so much official business as that year. But he was not aware that he
sought work for himself that year, that this was one of the means for keeping
shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and
his thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they lay there.
If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his
wife’s behavior, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have
made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should
question him on that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone
inquired after his wife’s health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to
think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he actually succeeded in not
thinking about it at all.

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close to
Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna declined to
settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna Arkadyevna’s, and in
conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of
Anna’s close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion, and
from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to see,
and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his wife;
he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife had so
particularly insisted on staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not
far from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow himself to
think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same though he never
admitted it to himself, and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the
bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was a deceived husband,
and he was profoundly miserable about it.

How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey
Alexandrovitch had looked at other men’s faithless wives and other
deceived husbands and asked himself: “How can people descend to that? how
is it they don’t put an end to such a hideous position?” But now,
when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking of
putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all, would not
recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.

Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at their
country villa. Once he dined there, another time he spent the evening there
with a party of friends, but he had not once stayed the night there, as it had
been his habit to do in previous years.

The day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey Alexandrovitch; but
when mentally sketching out the day in the morning, he made up his mind to go
to their country house to see his wife immediately after dinner, and from there
to the races, which all the Court were to witness, and at which he was bound to
be present. He was going to see his wife, because he had determined to see her
once a week to keep up appearances. And besides, on that day, as it was the
fifteenth, he had to give his wife some money for her expenses, according to
their usual arrangement.

With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought all this about
his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray further in regard to her.

That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The evening before,
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated traveler in
China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she enclosed a note begging
him to see the traveler himself, as he was an extremely interesting person from
various points of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not
had time to read the pamphlet through in the evening, and finished it in the
morning. Then people began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports,
interviews, appointments, dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions,
grants, notes, the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that
always took up so much time. Then there was private business of his own, a
visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his property. The steward did
not take up much time. He simply gave Alexey Alexandrovitch the money he needed
together with a brief statement of the position of his affairs, which was not
altogether satisfactory, as it had happened that during that year, owing to
increased expenses, more had been paid out than usual, and there was a deficit.
But the doctor, a celebrated Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate
acquaintance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey
Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was surprised at his visit,
and still more so when the doctor questioned him very carefully about his
health, listened to his breathing, and tapped at his liver. Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia Ivanovna, noticing that he
was not as well as usual that year, had begged the doctor to go and examine
him. “Do this for my sake,” the Countess Lidia Ivanovna had said to
him.

“I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,” replied the
doctor.

“A priceless man!” said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He found the
liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers weakened, while the
course of mineral waters had been quite without effect. He prescribed more
physical exercise as far as possible, and as far as possible less mental
strain, and above all no worry—in other words, just what was as much out
of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s power as abstaining from breathing. Then he
withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense that something
was wrong with him, and that there was no chance of curing it.

As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an
acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
department. They had been comrades at the university, and though they rarely
met, they thought highly of each other and were excellent friends, and so there
was no one to whom the doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so
freely as to Sludin.

“How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!” said Sludin.
“He’s not well, and I fancy…. Well, what do you think of
him?”

“I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, beckoning over
Sludin’s head to his coachman to bring the carriage round.
“It’s just this,” said the doctor, taking a finger of his kid
glove in his white hands and pulling it, “if you don’t strain the
strings, and then try to break them, you’ll find it a difficult job; but
strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on the
strained string will snap it. And with his close assiduity, his conscientious
devotion to his work, he’s strained to the utmost; and there’s some
outside burden weighing on him, and not a light one,” concluded the
doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. “Will you be at the
races?” he added, as he sank into his seat in the carriage.

“Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,” the doctor
responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin’s he had not caught.

Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the celebrated
traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet he had only just
finished reading and his previous acquaintance with the subject, impressed the
traveler by the depth of his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and
enlightenment of his view of it.

At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial marshal of
nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have
some conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily routine of
business with his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a
certain great personage on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey
Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by five o’clock, his
dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he invited him to drive with
him to his country villa and to the races.

Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch always tried
nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his interviews with his
wife.

Chapter 27

Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking-glass, and, with
Annushka’s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard
carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.

“It’s too early for Betsy,” she thought, and glancing out of
the window she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it.
“How unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?” she wondered, and
the thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and
terrible that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him
with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of
falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she
abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she was
saying.

“Ah, how nice of you!” she said, giving her husband her hand, and
greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile.
“You’re staying the night, I hope?” was the first word the
spirit of falsehood prompted her to utter; “and now we’ll go
together. Only it’s a pity I’ve promised Betsy. She’s coming
for me.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy’s name.

“Oh, I’m not going to separate the inseparables,” he said in
his usual bantering tone. “I’m going with Mihail Vassilievitch.
I’m ordered exercise by the doctors too. I’ll walk, and fancy
myself at the springs again.”

“There’s no hurry,” said Anna. “Would you like
tea?”

She rang.

“Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here.
Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you’ve not been
to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,” she said,
turning first to one and then to the other.

She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was the
more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch
turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her.

Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.

She sat down beside her husband.

“You don’t look quite well,” she said.

“Yes,” he said; “the doctor’s been with me today and
wasted an hour of my time. I feel that someone of our friends must have sent
him: my health’s so precious, it seems.”

“No; what did he say?”

She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and tried to
persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.

All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in her
eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special significance to
this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them only the direct sense
they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly. There was nothing
remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Anna recall this
brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.

Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch had
allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and bewildered eyes
with which Seryozha glanced first at his father and then at his mother. But he
would not see anything, and he did not see it.

“Ah, the young man! He’s grown. Really, he’s getting quite a
man. How are you, young man?”

And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy of his father
before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to calling him
young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to him whether
Vronsky were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He looked round towards
his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only with his mother that he was
at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was holding his son by the shoulder
while he was speaking to the governess, and Seryozha was so miserably
uncomfortable that Anna saw he was on the point of tears.

Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing that
Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s hand from her son’s shoulder, and kissing the boy,
led him out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.

“It’s time to start, though,” said she, glancing at her
watch. “How is it Betsy doesn’t come?…”

“Yes,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his
hands and cracked his fingers. “I’ve come to bring you some money,
too, for nightingales, we know, can’t live on fairy tales,” he
said. “You want it, I expect?”

“No, I don’t … yes, I do,” she said, not looking at him,
and crimsoning to the roots of her hair. “But you’ll come back here
after the races, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes!” answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. “And here’s
the glory of Peterhof, Princess Tverskaya,” he added, looking out of the
window at the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed extremely
high. “What elegance! Charming! Well, let us be starting too,
then.”

Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in high
boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the entrance.

“I’m going; good-bye!” said Anna, and kissing her son, she
went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. “It was
ever so nice of you to come.”