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Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levinâs. The house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in her interesting condition. Moreover, Varenka, Kittyâs friend abroad, kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or relations of Levinâs wife. And though he liked them all, he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was smothered by this influx of the âShtcherbatsky element,â as he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the Levin spirit was utterly obliterated.
In the Levinsâ house, so long deserted, there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.
The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dollyâs children, with their governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch, who was looked up to by all the party for his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe, surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.
âTake me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms,â he said, looking at Varenka; âI think itâs a very nice occupation.â
âOh, we shall be delighted,â answered Varenka, coloring a little. Kitty exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned and intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with Varenka confirmed certain theories of Kittyâs with which her mind had been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he watched the door through which the children would start on the mushroom-picking expedition. Levin was sitting in the window near his brother.
Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him something.
âYou have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for the better,â said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling to Kitty, and obviously little interested in the conversation, âbut you have remained true to your passion for defending the most paradoxical theories.â
âKatya, itâs not good for you to stand,â her husband said to her, putting a chair for her and looking significantly at her.
âOh, and thereâs no time either,â added Sergey Ivanovitch, seeing the children running out.
At the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her tightly-drawn stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey Ivanovitchâs hat, she ran straight up to him.
Boldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining eyes, so like her fatherâs fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though she would put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and friendly smile.
âVarenkaâs waiting,â she said, carefully putting his hat on, seeing from Sergey Ivanovitchâs smile that she might do so.
Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown, with a white kerchief on her head.
âIâm coming, Iâm coming, Varvara Andreevna,â said Sergey Ivanovitch, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar-case.
âAnd how sweet my Varenka is! eh?â said Kitty to her husband, as soon as Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so that Sergey Ivanovitch could hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do so. âAnd how good-looking she isâsuch a refined beauty! Varenka!â Kitty shouted. âShall you be in the mill copse? Weâll come out to you.â
âYou certainly forget your condition, Kitty,â said the old princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. âYou mustnât shout like that.â
Varenka, hearing Kittyâs voice and her motherâs reprimand, went with light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this was, and had been watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely in order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as Kitty fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the wood.
âVarenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to happen,â she whispered as she kissed her.
âAnd are you coming with us?â Varenka said to Levin in confusion, pretending not to have heard what had been said.
âI am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and there I shall stop.â
âWhy, what do you want there?â said Kitty.
âI must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to check the invoice,â said Levin; âand where will you be?â
âOn the terrace.â
On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Besides the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace by a method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition of water. Kitty had introduced this new method, which had been in use in her home. Agafea Mihalovna, to whom the task of jam-making had always been intrusted, considering that what had been done in the Levin household could not be amiss, had nevertheless put water with the strawberries, maintaining that the jam could not be made without it. She had been caught in the act, and was now making jam before everyone, and it was to be proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well made without water.
Agafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning the preserving-pan over the charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that Agafea Mihalovnaâs wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the person responsible for the raspberry jam-making, tried to appear to be absorbed in other things and not interested in the jam, talked of other matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.
âI always buy my maidsâ dresses myself, of some cheap material,â the princess said, continuing the previous conversation. âIsnât it time to skim it, my dear?â she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. âThereâs not the slightest need for you to do it, and itâs hot for you,â she said, stopping Kitty.
âIâll do it,â said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully passed the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. âHow theyâll enjoy this at tea-time!â she thought of her children, remembering how she herself as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what was best of allâthe scum of the jam.
âStiva says itâs much better to give money.â Dolly took up meanwhile the weighty subject under discussion, what presents should be made to servants. âBut....â
âMoneyâs out of the question!â the princess and Kitty exclaimed with one voice. âThey appreciate a present....â
âWell, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna, not a poplin, but something of that sort,â said the princess.
âI remember she was wearing it on your nameday.â
âA charming patternâso simple and refined,âI should have liked it myself, if she hadnât had it. Something like Varenkaâs. So pretty and inexpensive.â
âWell, now I think itâs done,â said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the spoon.
âWhen it sets as it drops, itâs ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafea Mihalovna.â
âThe flies!â said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. âItâll be just the same,â she added.
âAh! how sweet it is! donât frighten it!â Kitty said suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at the center of a raspberry.
âYes, but you keep a little further from the stove,â said her mother.
â Ă propos de Varenka,â said Kitty, speaking in French, as they had been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not understand them, âyou know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!â
âBut what a famous matchmaker she is!â said Dolly. âHow carefully and cleverly she throws them together!...â
âNo; tell me, mamma, what do you think?â
âWhy, what is one to think? Heâ (he meant Sergey Ivanovitch) âmight at any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now, of course, heâs not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls would be glad to marry him even now.... Sheâs a very nice girl, but he might....â
âOh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too, nothing better could be imagined. In the first place, sheâs charming!â said Kitty, crooking one of her fingers.
âHe thinks her very attractive, thatâs certain,â assented Dolly.
âThen he occupies such a position in society that he has no need to look for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is a good, sweet wifeâa restful one.â
âWell, with her he would certainly be restful,â Dolly assented.
âThirdly, that she should love him. And so it is ... that is, it would be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of the forestâand everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes. I should be so delighted! What do you think, Dolly?â
âBut donât excite yourself. Itâs not at all the thing for you to be excited,â said her mother.
âOh, Iâm not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her an offer today.â
âAh, thatâs so strange, how and when a man makes an offer!... There is a sort of barrier, and all at once itâs broken down,â said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyevitch.
âMamma, how did papa make you an offer?â Kitty asked suddenly.
âThere was nothing out of the way, it was very simple,â answered the princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection.
âOh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to speak?â
Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a womanâs life.
âOf course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country.â
âBut how was it settled between you, mamma?â
âYou imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? Itâs always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles....â
âHow nicely you said that, mamma! Itâs just by the eyes, by smiles that itâs done,â Dolly assented.
âBut what words did he say?â
âWhat did Kostya say to you?â
âHe wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it seems!â she said.
And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky.
âThereâs one thing ... that old love affair of Varenkaâs,â she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. âI should have liked to say something to Sergey Ivanovitch, to prepare him. Theyâre allâall men, I mean,â she added, âawfully jealous over our past.â
âNot all,â said Dolly. âYou judge by your own husband. It makes him miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? thatâs true, isnât it?â
âYes,â Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.
âBut I really donât know,â the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, âwhat there was in your past that could worry him? That Vronsky paid you attentionsâthat happens to every girl.â
âOh, yes, but we didnât mean that,â Kitty said, flushing a little.
âNo, let me speak,â her mother went on, âwhy, you yourself would not let me have a talk to Vronsky. Donât you remember?â
âOh, mamma!â said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.
âThereâs no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, itâs not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.â
âIâm perfectly calm, maman.â
âHow happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,â said Dolly, âand how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,â she said, struck by her own ideas. âThen Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.â
âA nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive womanâno heart,â said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin.
âWhat do you want to talk of it for?â Kitty said with annoyance. âI never think about it, and I donât want to think of it.... And I donât want to think of it,â she said, catching the sound of her husbandâs well-known step on the steps of the terrace.
âWhatâs that you donât want to think about?â inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
âIâm sorry Iâve broken in on your feminine parliament,â he said, looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.
For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.
âWell, how are you?â he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.
âOh, very well,â said Kitty, smiling, âand how have things gone with you?â
âThe wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we going for the children? Iâve ordered the horses to be put in.â
âWhat! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?â her mother said reproachfully.
âYes, at a walking pace, princess.â
Levin never called the princess âmamanâ as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.
âCome with us, maman,â said Kitty.
âI donât like to see such imprudence.â
âWell, Iâll walk then, Iâm so well.â Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand.
âYou may be well, but everything in moderation,â said the princess.
âWell, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?â said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. âIs it all right in the new way?â
âI suppose itâs all right. For our notions itâs boiled too long.â
âItâll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it wonât mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that weâve no cool cellar to store it,â said Kitty, at once divining her husbandâs motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; âbut your pickleâs so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,â she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.
âYou neednât try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,â she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him touched Kitty.
âCome along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.â Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: âI should like to be angry with you too, but I canât.â
âDo it, please, by my receipt,â said the princess; âput some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.â
Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his faceâalways so quick to reflect every feelingâat the moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer.
When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.
âSo youâre not tired? Lean more on me,â said he.
âNo, Iâm so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own, though Iâm happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.â
âThat was good, but this is even better. Both are better,â he said, squeezing her hand.
âDo you know what we were talking about when you came in?â
âAbout jam?â
âOh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.â
âAh!â said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to the words she was saying, and all the while paying attention to the road, which passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she might make a false step.
âAnd about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. Youâve noticed?... Iâm very anxious for it,â she went on. âWhat do you think about it?â And she peeped into his face.
âI donât know what to think,â Levin answered, smiling. âSergey seems very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know....â
âYes, that he was in love with that girl who died....â
âThat was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But Iâve watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes, but one feels that to him theyâre simply people, not women.â
âYes, but now with Varenka ... I fancy thereâs something....â
âPerhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... Heâs a peculiar, wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. Heâs too pure, too exalted a nature.â
âWhy? Would this lower him, then?â
âNo, but heâs so used to a spiritual life that he canât reconcile himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact.â
Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly, without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew that his wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would understand what he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.
âYes, but thereâs not so much of that actual fact about her as about me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether spiritual.â
âOh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my people like you....â
âYes, heâs very nice to me; but....â
âItâs not as it was with poor Nikolay ... you really cared for each other,â Levin finished. âWhy not speak of him?â he added. âI sometimes blame myself for not; it ends in oneâs forgetting. Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking about?â Levin said, after a pause.
âYou think he canât fall in love,â said Kitty, translating into her own language.
âItâs not so much that he canât fall in love,â Levin said, smiling, âbut he has not the weakness necessary.... Iâve always envied him, and even now, when Iâm so happy, I still envy him.â
âYou envy him for not being able to fall in love?â
âI envy him for being better than I,â said Levin. âHe does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And thatâs why he can be calm and contented.â
âAnd you?â Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.
She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of shame at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to be betterâshe loved it in him, and so she smiled.
âAnd you? What are you dissatisfied with?â she asked, with the same smile.
Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds of her disbelief.
âI am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....â he said.
âWhy, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?â
âWell, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing whatever but that you should not stumbleâsee? Oh, but really you mustnât skip about like that!â he cried, breaking off to scold her for too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path. âBut when I think about myself, and compare myself with others, especially with my brother, I feel Iâm a poor creature.â
âBut in what way?â Kitty pursued with the same smile. âDonât you too work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work on the estate, and your book?...â
âOh, but I feel, and particularly just nowâitâs your fault,â he said, pressing her handââthat all that doesnât count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.â
âWell, what would you say about papa?â asked Kitty. âIs he a poor creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?â
âHe?âno! But then one must have the simplicity, the straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I havenât got that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. Itâs all your doing. Before there was youâand this too,â he added with a glance towards her waist that she understoodââI put all my energies into work; now I canât, and Iâm ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, Iâm pretending....â
âWell, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey Ivanovitch?â said Kitty. âWould you like to do this work for the general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing else?â
âOf course not,â said Levin. âBut Iâm so happy that I donât understand anything. So you think heâll make her an offer today?â he added after a brief silence.
âI think so, and I donât think so. Only, Iâm awfully anxious for it. Here, wait a minute.â She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at the edge of the path. âCome, count: he does propose, he doesnât,â she said, giving him the flower.
âHe does, he doesnât,â said Levin, tearing off the white petals.
âNo, no!â Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been watching his fingers with interest. âYou picked off two.â
âOh, but see, this little one shanât count to make up,â said Levin, tearing off a little half-grown petal. âHereâs the wagonette overtaking us.â
âArenât you tired, Kitty?â called the princess.
âNot in the least.â
âIf you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking.â
But it was not worth while to get in, they were quite near the place, and all walked on together.
Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long, long ago, and only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much.
âIf so,â he said to himself, âI ought to think it over and make up my mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment.â
âIâm going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my efforts will make no show,â he said, and he left the edge of the forest where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in full flower with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the childrenâs voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenkaâs contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitchâs face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch tree. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on, deliberating on his position.
âWhy not?â he thought. âIf it were only a passing fancy or a passion, if it were only this attractionâthis mutual attraction (I can call it a mutual attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with the whole bent of my lifeâif I felt that in giving way to this attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but itâs not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. Thatâs the only thing I can say against my feeling.... Thatâs a great thing,â Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others. âBut apart from that, however much I searched, I should never find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything better.â
However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society, which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitchâs conception of the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husbandâs house, as he saw now in Kittyâs case. She would owe everything to her husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family life. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one consideration against itâhis age. But he came of a long-lived family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for forty, and he remembered Varenkaâs saying that it was only in Russia that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of fifty considers himself dans la force de lâĂąge, while a man of forty is un jeune homme. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.
âVarvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I soughtâin you. I love you, and offer you my hand.â
Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.
âCome here, little ones! There are so many!â she was saying in her sweet, deep voice.
Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence and was glad of it.
âWell, did you find some?â she asked from under the white kerchief, turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.
âNot one,â said Sergey Ivanovitch. âDid you?â
She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.
âThat one too, near the twig,â she pointed out to little Masha a little fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus, breaking it into two white halves. âThis brings back my childhood,â she added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent. After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:
âSo you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer, though.â Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation in response to her last words.
âI have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at the edge of the wood, though I canât tell them apart.â
Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the children, and were quite alone. Varenkaâs heart throbbed so that she heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red again.
To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking and his not speaking.
Now or never it must be saidâthat Sergey Ivanovitch felt too. Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:
âWhat is the difference between the âbirchâ mushroom and the âwhiteâ mushroom?â
Varenkaâs lips quivered with emotion as she answered:
âIn the top part there is scarcely any difference, itâs in the stalk.â
And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense, began to subside.
âThe birch mushroomâs stalk suggests a dark manâs chin after two days without shaving,â said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.
âYes, thatâs true,â answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously the direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the children. Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had a sense of relief.
When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He could not be false to the memory of Marie.
âGently, children, gently!â Levin shouted quite angrily to the children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.
Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.
âWell?â her husband questioned her as they were going home again.
âIt doesnât bite,â said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.
âHow doesnât bite?â
âIâll show you,â she said, taking her husbandâs hand, lifting it to her mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. âLike a kiss on a priestâs hand.â
âWhich didnât it bite with?â he said, laughing.
âBoth. But it should have been like this....â
âThere are some peasants coming....â
âOh, they didnât see.â
During the time of the childrenâs tea the grown-up people sat in the balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all, especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware that there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and could notâand they felt a prick of conscience.
âMark my words, Alexander will not come,â said the old princess.
That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come down by train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.
âAnd I know why,â the princess went on; âhe says that young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.â
âBut papa has left us alone. Weâve never seen him,â said Kitty. âBesides, weâre not young people!âweâre old, married people by now.â
âOnly if he doesnât come, I shall say good-bye to you children,â said the princess, sighing mournfully.
âWhat nonsense, mamma!â both the daughters fell upon her at once.
âHow do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now....â
And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princessâs voice. Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. âMaman always finds something to be miserable about,â they said in that glance. They did not know that happy as the princess was in her daughterâs house, and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely miserable, both on her own account and her husbandâs, ever since they had married their last and favorite daughter, and the old home had been left empty.
âWhat is it, Agafea Mihalovna?â Kitty asked suddenly of Agafea Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of meaning.
âAbout supper.â
âWell, thatâs right,â said Dolly; âyou go and arrange about it, and Iâll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing done all day.â
âThatâs my lesson! No, Dolly, Iâm going,â said Levin, jumping up.
Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who had been studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on coming to the Levinsâ to go over with him, at least once a day, the most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had offered to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard Levinâs lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment and anxiety not to mortify Levin, that they must keep strictly to the book as the teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it again herself. Levin was amazed both at Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his duty, threw upon the mother the supervision of studies of which she had no comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the children so badly. But he promised his sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as she wished. And he went on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by the book, and so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour of the lesson. So it had been today.
âNo, Iâm going, Dolly, you sit still,â he said. âWeâll do it all properly, like the book. Only when Stiva comes, and we go out shooting, then we shall have to miss it.â
And Levin went to Grisha.
Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy, well-ordered household of the Levins Varenka had succeeded in making herself useful.
âIâll see to the supper, you sit still,â she said, and got up to go to Agafea Mihalovna.
âYes, yes, most likely theyâve not been able to get chickens. If so, ours....â
âAgafea Mihalovna and I will see about it,â and Varenka vanished with her.
âWhat a nice girl!â said the princess.
âNot nice, maman; sheâs an exquisite girl; thereâs no one else like her.â
âSo you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch today?â said Sergey Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about Varenka. âIt would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike than yours,â he said with a subtle smile. âOne all movement, only living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert, quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land.â
âYes, heâs very heedless,â said the princess, addressing Sergey Ivanovitch. âIâve been meaning, indeed, to ask you to tell him that itâs out of the question for herâ (she indicated Kitty) âto stay here; that she positively must come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor down....â
âMaman, heâll do everything; he has agreed to everything,â Kitty said, angry with her mother for appealing to Sergey Ivanovitch to judge in such a matter.
In the middle of their conversation they heard the snorting of horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Dolly had not time to get up to go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where Grisha was having his lesson, Levin leaped out and helped Grisha out after him.
âItâs Stiva!â Levin shouted from under the balcony. âWeâve finished, Dolly, donât be afraid!â he added, and started running like a boy to meet the carriage.
â Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus! â shouted Grisha, skipping along the avenue.
âAnd someone else too! Papa, of course!â cried Levin, stopping at the entrance of the avenue. âKitty, donât come down the steep staircase, go round.â
But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the carriage for the old prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw beside Stepan Arkadyevitch not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind. This was Vassenka Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shtcherbatskys, a brilliant young gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow society. âA capital fellow, and a keen sportsman,â as Stepan Arkadyevitch said, introducing him.
Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come in place of the old prince, Veslovsky greeted Levin gaily, claiming acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyevitch had brought with him.
Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was rather vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka Veslovsky, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on approaching the steps where the whole party, children and grown-up, were gathered together in much excitement, Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly warm and gallant air, kissing Kittyâs hand.
âYour wife and I are cousins and very old friends,â said Vassenka Veslovsky, once more shaking Levinâs hand with great warmth.
âWell, are there plenty of birds?â Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Levin, hardly leaving time for everyone to utter their greetings. âWeâve come with the most savage intentions. Why, maman, theyâve not been in Moscow since! Look, Tanya, hereâs something for you! Get it, please, itâs in the carriage, behind!â he talked in all directions. âHow pretty youâve grown, Dolly,â he said to his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding it in one of his, and patting it with the other.
Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind, now looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him.
âWho was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?â he thought, looking at Stepan Arkadyevitchâs tender demonstrations to his wife. He looked at Dolly, and he did not like her either.
âShe doesnât believe in his love. So what is she so pleased about? Revolting!â thought Levin.
He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before, and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka, with his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.
Even Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto the steps, seemed to him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Stepan Arkadyevitch, though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor respected Oblonsky.
And Varenka, even she seemed hateful, with her air sainte nitouche making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was thinking of nothing but getting married.
And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in with the tone of gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country, as though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all, unpleasant was that particular smile with which she responded to his smile.
Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were all seated, Levin turned and went out.
Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her, saying he was wanted at the counting-house. It was long since his own work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment. âItâs all holiday for them,â he thought; âbut these are no holiday matters, they wonât wait, and thereâs no living without them.â
Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna, consulting about wines for supper.
âBut why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.â
âNo, Stiva doesnât drink ... Kostya, stop, whatâs the matter?â Kitty began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the dining-room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch.
âWell, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?â said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
âPlease, do letâs go,â said Veslovsky, moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.
âI shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet this year?â said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg, but speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. âI canât answer for our finding grouse, but there are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start early. Youâre not tired? Arenât you tired, Stiva?â
âMe tired? Iâve never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night. Letâs go for a walk!â
âYes, really, letâs not go to bed at all! Capital!â Veslovsky chimed in.
âOh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,â Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always had now with her husband. âBut to my thinking, itâs time for bed now.... Iâm going, I donât want supper.â
âNo, do stay a little, Dolly,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going round to her side behind the table where they were having supper. âIâve so much still to tell you.â
âNothing really, I suppose.â
âDo you know Veslovsky has been at Annaâs, and heâs going to them again? You know theyâre hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!â
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.
âAh, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?â Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the princess and Varenka, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyevitch, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wifeâs face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.
âItâs exceedingly nice at their place,â Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky and Anna. âI canât, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but in their house you feel the real feeling of home.â
âWhat do they intend doing?â
âI believe they think of going to Moscow.â
âHow jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are you going there?â Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.
âIâm spending July there.â
âWill you go?â Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.
âIâve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,â said Dolly. âI am sorry for her, and I know her. Sheâs a splendid woman. I will go alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no oneâs way. And it will be better indeed without you.â
âTo be sure,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch. âAnd you, Kitty?â
âI? Why should I go?â Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.
âDo you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?â Veslovsky asked her. âSheâs a very fascinating woman.â
âYes,â she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.
âAre you going shooting, then, tomorrow?â she said.
His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterwards to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going shooting, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.
âYes, Iâm going,â he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.
âNo, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly wonât see anything of her husband, and set off the day after,â said Kitty.
The motive of Kittyâs words was interpreted by Levin thus: âDonât separate me from him. I donât care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.â
âOh, if you wish, weâll stay here tomorrow,â Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.
Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe. âHow dare he look at my wife like that!â was the feeling that boiled within him.
âTomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,â said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.
Levinâs jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.
Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin could not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naĂŻve bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her afterwards:
âWe donât like that fashion.â
In Levinâs eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.
âWhy, how can one want to go to bed!â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most charming and sentimental humor. âLook, Kitty,â he said, pointing to the moon, which had just risen behind the lime treesââhow exquisite! Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara Andreevna and he must sing some duets.â
When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing one of the new songs.
Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wifeâs bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the question: âWas there perhaps something you disliked about Veslovsky?ââit all burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.
He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were twitching, and his voice kept breaking.
âYou must understand that Iâm not jealous, thatâs a nasty word. I canât be jealous, and believe that.... I canât say what I feel, but this is awful.... Iâm not jealous, but Iâm wounded, humiliated that anybody dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.â
âEyes like what?â said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied in them.
At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so increase his suffering.
âAnd what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?...â
âAh!â he cried, clutching at his head, âyou shouldnât say that!... If you had been attractive then....â
âOh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!â she said, looking at him with an expression of pained commiseration. âWhy, what can you be thinking about! When for me thereâs no one in the world, no one, no one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?â
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was suffering.
âYou must understand the horror and comedy of my position,â he went on in a desperate whisper; âthat heâs in my house, that heâs done nothing improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits on his legs. He thinks itâs the best possible form, and so Iâm obliged to be civil to him.â
âBut, Kostya, youâre exaggerating,â said Kitty, at the bottom of her heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his jealousy.
âThe most awful part of it all is that youâre just as you always are, and especially now when to me youâre something sacred, and weâre so happy, so particularly happyâand all of a sudden a little wretch.... Heâs not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do with him. But why should my, and your, happiness....â
âDo you know, I understand now what itâs all come from,â Kitty was beginning.
âWell, what? what?â
âI saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.â
âWell, well!â Levin said in dismay.
She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space, then he scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his head.
âKatya, Iâve been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! Itâs madness! Katya, Iâm a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such idiocy?â
âOh, I was sorry for you.â
âFor me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? Itâs awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness.â
âItâs humiliating too, of course.â
âOh, then Iâll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him with civility,â said Levin, kissing her hands. âYou shall see. Tomorrow.... Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow.â
Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and, disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was Vassenka Veslovsky, in new high boots that reached half-way up his thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather cartridge-belt, and in his Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new English gun without a sling. Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and Stepan Arkadyevitchâs spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round and round and turning over in the air. Stepan Arkadyevitch himself followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.
âGood dog, good dog, Krak!â he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Stepan Arkadyevitch was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best quality.
Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly chic for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he would certainly adopt the same get-up.
âWell, and what about our host?â he asked.
âA young wife,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
âYes, and such a charming one!â
âHe came down dressed. No doubt heâs run up to her again.â
Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and, moreover, to beg her for Christâs sake to be more careful. The great thing was for her to keep away from the childrenâthey might any minute push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to be sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to write him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was well with her.
Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him cheerfully.
âPardon, gentlemen!â he said, running out onto the steps. âHave you put the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesnât matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!â
âPut it with the herd of oxen,â he said to the herdsman, who was waiting for him at the steps with some question. âExcuse me, here comes another villain.â
Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in his hand.
âYou didnât come to the counting house yesterday, and now youâre detaining me. Well, what is it?â
âWould your honor let me make another turning? Itâs only three steps to add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more convenient.â
âYou should have listened to me,â Levin answered with annoyance. âI said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now thereâs no setting it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase.â
The point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was put in place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to add three steps.
âIt will be much better.â
âBut whereâs your staircase coming out with its three steps?â
âWhy, upon my word, sir,â the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile. âIt comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak,â he said, with a persuasive gesture; âit comes down, and comes down, and comes out.â
âBut three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come out?â
âWhy, to be sure, itâll start from the bottom and go up and go up, and come out so,â the carpenter said obstinately and convincingly.
âItâll reach the ceiling and the wall.â
âUpon my word! Why, itâll go up, and up, and come out like this.â
Levin took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the dust.
âThere, do you see?â
âAs your honor likes,â said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in his eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. âIt seems itâll be best to make a new one.â
âWell, then, do it as youâre told,â Levin shouted, seating himself in the wagonette. âDown! Hold the dogs, Philip!â
Levin felt now at leaving behind all his family and household cares such an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was not disposed to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of concentrated excitement that every sportsman experiences as he approaches the scene of action. If he had anything on his mind at that moment, it was only the doubt whether they would start anything in the Kolpensky marsh, whether Laska would show to advantage in comparison with Krak, and whether he would shoot well that day himself. Not to disgrace himself before a new spectatorânot to be outdone by Oblonskyâthat too was a thought that crossed his brain.
Oblonsky was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative. Vassenka Veslovsky kept up alone a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter. As he listened to him now, Levin felt ashamed to think how unfair he had been to him the day before. Vassenka was really a nice fellow, simple, good-hearted, and very good-humored. If Levin had met him before he was married, he would have made friends with him. Levin rather disliked his holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and easy assumption of elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree of importance in himself that could not be disputed, because he had long nails and a stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but this could be forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good breeding. Levin liked him for his good education, for speaking French and English with such an excellent accent, and for being a man of his world.
Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. âHow fine it must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isnât it?â he said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity, particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and the grace of his movements, was very attractive. Either because his nature was sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone for his sins of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was good in him, anyway he liked his society.
After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at once felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in uncertainty.
âDo you know what, Levin, Iâll gallop home on that left trace-horse. That will be splendid. Eh?â he said, preparing to get out.
âNo, why should you?â answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. âIâll send the coachman.â
The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the remaining pair.
âWell, now whatâs our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
âOur plan is this. Now weâre driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov thereâs a grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent snipe marshes where there are grouse too. Itâs hot now, and weâll get thereâitâs fifteen miles or soâtowards evening and have some evening shooting; weâll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger moors.â
âAnd is there nothing on the way?â
âYes; but weâll reserve ourselves; besides itâs hot. There are two nice little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.â
Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only little placesâthere would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so, with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once detected reeds visible from the road.
âShanât we try that?â he said, pointing to the little marsh.
âLevin, do, please! how delightful!â Vassenka Veslovsky began begging, and Levin could but consent.
Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other into the marsh.
âKrak! Laska!...â
The dogs came back.
âThere wonât be room for three. Iâll stay here,â said Levin, hoping they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs, and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the marsh.
âNo! Come along, Levin, letâs go together!â Veslovsky called.
âReally, thereâs not room. Laska, back, Laska! You wonât want another dog, will you?â
Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little birds and peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.
âCome, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,â said Levin, âonly itâs wasting time.â
âOh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?â said Vassenka Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his peewit in his hands. âHow splendidly I shot this bird! Didnât I? Well, shall we soon be getting to the real place?â
The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against the stock of someoneâs gun, and there was the report of a shot. The gun did actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Levin. It appeared that Vassenka Veslovsky had pulled only one trigger, and had left the other hammer still cocked. The charge flew into the ground without doing harm to anyone. Stepan Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed reprovingly at Veslovsky. But Levin had not the heart to reprove him. In the first place, any reproach would have seemed to be called forth by the danger he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Levinâs forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so naĂŻvely distressed, and then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously at their general dismay, that one could not but laugh with him.
When they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and would inevitably take some time to shoot over, Levin tried to persuade them to pass it by. But Veslovsky again overpersuaded him. Again, as the marsh was narrow, Levin, like a good host, remained with the carriage.
Krak made straight for some clumps of sedge. Vassenka Veslovsky was the first to run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow up. Krak found it again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriage. âNow you go and Iâll stay with the horses,â he said.
Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsmanâs envy. He handed the reins to Veslovsky and walked into the marsh.
Laska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to a hopeful place that Levin knew well, and that Krak had not yet come upon.
âWhy donât you stop her?â shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch.
âShe wonât scare them,â answered Levin, sympathizing with his bitchâs pleasure and hurrying after her.
As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was more and more earnestness in Laskaâs exploration. A little marsh bird did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly quivered with excitement and became motionless.
âCome, come, Stiva!â shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to beat more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud, began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard the steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to himself.
Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.
âFetch it!â
Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Veslovskyâs voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.
When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.
Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud.
âDamn the fellow!â Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. âWhat did you drive in for?â he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out.
Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenkaâs protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of yesterdayâs feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back to the road, Levin had the lunch served.
â Bon appĂ©titâbonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusquâau fond de mes bottes,â Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French saying as he finished his second chicken. âWell, now our troubles are over, now everythingâs going to go well. Only, to atone for my sins, Iâm bound to sit on the box. Thatâs so? eh? No, no! Iâll be your Automedon. You shall see how Iâll get you along,â he answered, not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman drive. âNo, I must atone for my sins, and Iâm very comfortable on the box.â And he drove.
Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.
Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.
As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.
âHow shall we go? Itâs a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the reeds. âWhere there are hawks, there is sure to be game.â
âNow, gentlemen,â said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, âdo you see those reeds?â He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. âThe marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you seeâwhere it is greener? From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the pools are? Thatâs the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe. Weâll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then meet over there at the mill.â
âWell, which shall go to left and which to right?â asked Stepan Arkadyevitch. âItâs wider to the right; you two go that way and Iâll take the left,â he said with apparent carelessness.
âCapital! weâll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!â Vassenka exclaimed.
Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.
As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Levin knew Laskaâs method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected a whole covey of snipe.
âVeslovsky, beside me, walk beside me!â he said in a faint voice to his companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not help feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.
âOh, I wonât get in your way, donât trouble about me.â
But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kittyâs words at parting: âMind you donât shoot one another.â The dogs came nearer and nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation of snipe was so intense that to Levin the squelching sound of his own heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun.
âBang! bang!â sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to look round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some eight more rose one after another.
Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt wing showing white beneath.
Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed; he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he missed again.
While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky, who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes looked at Levin.
âWell, now let us separate,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog, he walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the other.
It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmenâs legs, and Levin might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitchâs shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard âKrak, Krak, apporte!â
This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.
After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached the place where the peasantsâ mowing-grass was divided into long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these strips had already been mown.
Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.
âHi, sportsmen!â shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an unharnessed cart; âcome and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of wine!â
Levin looked round.
âCome along, itâs all right!â shouted a good-humored-looking bearded peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.
â Quâest-ce quâils disent?â asked Veslovsky.
âThey invite you to have some vodka. Most likely theyâve been dividing the meadow into lots. I should have some,â said Levin, not without some guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go away to them.
âWhy do they offer it?â
âOh, theyâre merry-making. Really, you should join them. You would be interested.â
â Allons, câest curieux.â
âYou go, you go, youâll find the way to the mill!â cried Levin, and looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Veslovsky, bent and stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at armâs length, was making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
âYou come too!â the peasants shouted to Levin. âNever fear! You taste our cake!â
Levin felt a strong inclination to drink a little vodka and to eat some bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But Laska was setting. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he walked lightly through the swamp towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.ââFetch it!â Another bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find that either. He wandered all about the reeds, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really. And in the absence of Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his failure, things went no better. There were plenty of snipe still, but Levin made one miss after another.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of water weighed heavily on his leg and squeaked at every step; the sweat ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of the bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not touch the stock of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short, rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs stumbled and staggered over the hillocks and in the swamp, but still he walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he flung his gun and his hat on the ground.
âNo, I must control myself,â he said to himself. Picking up his gun and his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got on to dry ground he sat down, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked to the marsh, drank some stagnant-tasting water, moistened his burning hot gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.
He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and worse.
He had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh towards the alders where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over with the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror sniffed at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He came to meet him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the same way.
âWell? You have been popping away!â he said, smiling good-humoredly.
âHow have you got on?â queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for he had already seen the full game bag.
âOh, pretty fair.â
He had fourteen birds.
âA splendid marsh! Iâve no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. Itâs awkward too, shooting with one dog,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to soften his triumph.
When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasantâs hut where Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasantâs wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.
âIâve only just come. Ils ont Ă©tĂ© charmants. Just fancy, they gave me drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! DĂ©licieux! And the vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything. And they kept saying: âExcuse our homely ways.ââ
âWhat should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?â said the soldier, succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened stocking.
In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn swept ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for the gentlemen.
Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.
After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting party at Malthusâs, where he had stayed the previous summer.
Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevitch described what grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged up at the marsh.
âI donât understand you,â said Levin, sitting up in the hay; âhow is it such people donât disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is all very pleasant, but donât you dislike just that very sumptuousness? All these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They donât care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains to buy off the contempt they have deserved.â
âPerfectly true!â chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. âPerfectly! Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie, but other people say: âWell, Oblonsky stays with them.â...â
âNot a bit of it.â Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as he spoke. âI simply donât consider him more dishonest than any other wealthy merchant or nobleman. Theyâve all made their money alikeâby their work and their intelligence.â
âOh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and speculate with them?â
âOf course itâs work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like him, there would have been no railways.â
âBut thatâs not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession.â
âGranted, but itâs work in the sense that his activity produces a resultâthe railways. But of course you think the railways useless.â
âNo, thatâs another question; I am prepared to admit that theyâre useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.â
âBut who is to define what is proportionate?â
âMaking profit by dishonest means, by trickery,â said Levin, conscious that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty. âSuch as banking, for instance,â he went on. âItâs an evilâthe amassing of huge fortunes without labor, just the same thing as with the spirit monopolies, itâs only the form thatâs changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi. No sooner were the spirit monopolies abolished than the railways came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit without work.â
âYes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!â Stepan Arkadyevitch called to his dog, who was scratching and turning over all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the correctness of his position, and so talked serenely and without haste. âBut you have not drawn the line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a bigger salary than my chief clerk, though he knows more about the work than I doâthatâs dishonest, I suppose?â
âI canât say.â
âWell, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, letâs say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant here, however hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is just as dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is utterly baseless, and I fancy thereâs envy at the bottom of it....â
âNo, thatâs unfair,â said Veslovsky; âhow could envy come in? There is something not nice about that sort of business.â
âYou say,â Levin went on, âthat itâs unjust for me to receive five thousand, while the peasant has fifty; thatâs true. It is unfair, and I feel it, but....â
âIt really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting, doing nothing, while they are forever at work?â said Vassenka Veslovsky, obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on the question, and consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.
âYes, you feel it, but you donât give him your property,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.
There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conversation, as it began to take a personal note.
âI donât give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I wanted to, I could not give it away,â answered Levin, âand have no one to give it to.â
âGive it to this peasant, he would not refuse it.â
âYes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a deed of conveyance?â
âI donât know; but if you are convinced that you have no right....â
âIâm not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.â
âNo, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is it you donât act accordingly?...â
âWell, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to increase the difference of position existing between him and me.â
âNo, excuse me, thatâs a paradox.â
âYes, thereâs something of a sophistry about that,â Veslovsky agreed. âAh! our host; so youâre not asleep yet?â he said to the peasant who came into the barn, opening the creaking door. âHow is it youâre not asleep?â
âNo, howâs one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep, but I heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She wonât bite?â he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.
âAnd where are you going to sleep?â
âWe are going out for the night with the beasts.â
âAh, what a night!â said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the hut and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint light of the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. âBut listen, there are womenâs voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too. Whoâs that singing, my friend?â
âThatâs the maids from hard by here.â
âLetâs go, letâs have a walk! We shanât go to sleep, you know. Oblonsky, come along!â
âIf one could only do both, lie here and go,â answered Oblonsky, stretching. âItâs capital lying here.â
âWell, I shall go by myself,â said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly, and putting on his shoes and stockings. âGood-bye, gentlemen. If itâs fun, Iâll fetch you. Youâve treated me to some good sport, and I wonât forget you.â
âHe really is a capital fellow, isnât he?â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had closed the door after him.
âYes, capital,â answered Levin, still thinking of the subject of their conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly expressed his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and yet both of them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one voice that he was comforting himself with sophistries. This disconcerted him.
âItâs just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for oneâs rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.â
âNo, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and be satisfiedâat least I could not. The great thing for me is to feel that Iâm not to blame.â
âWhat do you say, why not go after all?â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, evidently weary of the strain of thought. âWe shanât go to sleep, you know. Come, letâs go!â
Levin did not answer. What they had said in the conversation, that he acted justly only in a negative sense, absorbed his thoughts. âCan it be that itâs only possible to be just negatively?â he was asking himself.
âHow strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up. âThereâs not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughing and his voice? Hadnât we better go? Come along!â
âNo, Iâm not coming,â answered Levin.
âSurely thatâs not a matter of principle too,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.
âItâs not a matter of principle, but why should I go?â
âBut do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself,â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and getting up.
âHow so?â
âDo you suppose I donât see the line youâve taken up with your wife? I heard how itâs a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not youâre to be away for a couple of daysâ shooting. Thatâs all very well as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that wonât answer. A man must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be manly,â said Oblonsky, opening the door.
âIn what way? To go running after servant girls?â said Levin.
âWhy not, if it amuses him? Ăa ne tire pas Ă consĂ©quence. It wonât do my wife any harm, and itâll amuse me. The great thing is to respect the sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But donât tie your own hands.â
âPerhaps so,â said Levin dryly, and he turned on his side. âTomorrow, early, I want to go shooting, and I wonât wake anyone, and shall set off at daybreak.â
â Messieurs, venez vite! â they heard the voice of Veslovsky coming back. â Charmante! Iâve made such a discovery. Charmante! a perfect Gretchen, and Iâve already made friends with her. Really, exceedingly pretty,â he declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been made pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing his satisfaction with the entertainment that had been provided for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting on his slippers, and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their voices were lost.
For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard the horses munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting ready for the night, and going off for the night watch with the beasts, then he heard the soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn, with his nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the boy in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about the dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking what the dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky, sleepy voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the boyâs questions, he said, âGo to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep, or youâll catch it,â and soon after he began snoring himself, and everything was still. He could only hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry of a snipe.
âIs it really only negative?â he repeated to himself. âWell, what of it? Itâs not my fault.â And he began thinking about the next day.
âTomorrow Iâll go out early, and Iâll make a point of keeping cool. There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse too. When I come back thereâll be the note from Kitty. Yes, Stiva may be right, Iâm not manly with her, Iâm tied to her apron-strings.... Well, it canât be helped! Negative again....â
Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon was up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying something of the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably said to him by a peasant: âAh, you do your best to get round her!â Levin, half asleep, said:
âGentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!â and fell asleep.
Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions. Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out, was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Oblonsky, half asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep, curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his boots and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of the barn, Levin went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping in their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still gray out-of-doors.
âWhy are you up so early, my dear?â the old woman, their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old friend.
âGoing shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the marsh?â
âStraight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp patches; thereâs a little footpath.â Stepping carefully with her sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Levin, and moved back the fence for him by the threshing floor.
âStraight on and youâll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the cattle there yesterday evening.â
Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin followed her with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all. What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Levinâs legs and his blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out. In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were audible. A bee flew by Levinâs ear with the whizzing sound of a bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third. They were all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared over the hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The path led straight to the marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another, so that the reeds and willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist. At the edge of the marsh and the road, peasant boys and men, who had been herding for the night, were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep under their coats. Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of them clanked a chain. Laska walked beside her master, pressing a little forward and looking round. Passing the sleeping peasants and reaching the first reeds, Levin examined his pistols and let his dog off. One of the horses, a sleek, dark-brown three-year-old, seeing the dog, started away, switched its tail and snorted. The other horses too were frightened, and splashing through the water with their hobbled legs, and drawing their hoofs out of the thick mud with a squelching sound, they bounded out of the marsh. Laska stopped, looking ironically at the horses and inquiringly at Levin. Levin patted Laska, and whistled as a sign that she might begin.
Laska ran joyfully and anxiously through the slush that swayed under her.
Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh plants, and slime, and the extraneous smell of horse dung, Laska detected at once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of that strong-smelling bird that always excited her more than any other. Here and there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very strong, but it was impossible to determine in which direction it grew stronger or fainter. To find the direction, she had to go farther away from the wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs, Laska bounded with a stiff gallop, so that at each bound she could stop short, to the right, away from the wind that blew from the east before sunrise, and turned facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated nostrils, she felt at once that not their tracks only but they themselves were here before her, and not one, but many. Laska slackened her speed. They were here, but where precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very spot, she began to make a circle, when suddenly her masterâs voice drew her off. âLaska! here?â he asked, pointing her to a different direction. She stopped, asking him if she had better not go on doing as she had begun. But he repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing to a spot covered with water, where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending she was looking, so as to please him, went round it, and went back to her former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and without looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over a high stump into the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she began making the circle which was to make all clear to her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and more defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was here, behind this tuft of reeds, five paces in front of her; she stopped, and her whole body was still and rigid. On her short legs she could see nothing in front of her, but by the scent she knew it was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood still, feeling more and more conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation. Her tail was stretched straight and tense, and only wagging at the extreme end. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had been turned wrong side out as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but warily, and still more warily looked round, but more with her eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face she knew so well, though the eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the stump as he came, and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily slowly. She thought he came slowly, but he was running.
Noticing Laskaâs special attitude as she crouched on the ground, as it were, scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her mouth slightly open, Levin knew she was pointing at grouse, and with an inward prayer for luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to her. Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing with her nose. In a space between two little thickets, at a couple of yardsâ distance, he could see a grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.
âFetch it, fetch it!â shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove from behind.
âBut I canât go,â thought Laska. âWhere am I to go? From here I feel them, but if I move forward I shall know nothing of where they are or who they are.â But then he shoved her with his knee, and in an excited whisper said, âFetch it, Laska.â
âWell, if thatâs what he wishes, Iâll do it, but I canât answer for myself now,â she thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs would carry her between the thick bushes. She scented nothing now; she could only see and hear, without understanding anything.
Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a guttural cry and the peculiar round sound of its wings. And immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with its white breast on the wet mire. Another bird did not linger, but rose behind Levin without the dog. When Levin turned towards it, it was already some way off. But his shot caught it. Flying twenty paces further, the second grouse rose upwards, and whirling round like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry place.
âCome, this is going to be some good!â thought Levin, packing the warm and fat grouse into his game bag. âEh, Laska, will it be good?â
When Levin, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully risen, though unseen behind the storm-clouds. The moon had lost all of its luster, and was like a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could be seen. The sedge, silvery with dew before, now shone like gold. The stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass had changed to yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed about the brook and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about the field, and a bare-legged boy was driving the horses to an old man, who had got up from under his long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the gun was white as milk over the green of the grass.
One of the boys ran up to Levin.
âUncle, there were ducks here yesterday!â he shouted to him, and he walked a little way off behind him.
And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off.
The sportsmanâs saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct.
At ten oâclock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty miles, returned to his nightâs lodging with nineteen head of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the game bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast.
âWait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,â said Levin, counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked aside, than they did when they were flying.
The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitchâs envy pleased Levin. He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Kitty with a note was already there.
âI am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can feel easier than ever. Iâve a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,ââthis was the midwife, a new and important personage in Levinâs domestic life. âShe has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please, donât be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay another day.â
These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had been unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out of sorts. The coachman said he was âOverdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles with no sense!â
The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his good humor, though later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find that of all the provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that one would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left. On his way back, tired and hungry from shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision of meat-pies that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, nor even any chicken.
âWell, this fellowâs appetite!â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing and pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. âI never suffer from loss of appetite, but heâs really marvelous!...â
âWell, it canât be helped,â said Levin, looking gloomily at Veslovsky. âWell, Philip, give me some beef, then.â
âThe beefâs been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs,â answered Philip.
Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, âYou might have left me something!â and he felt ready to cry.
âThen put away the game,â he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying not to look at Vassenka, âand cover them with some nettles. And you might at least ask for some milk for me.â
But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at having shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his hungry mortification.
In the evening they went shooting again, and Veslovsky had several successful shots, and in the night they drove home.
Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been. Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, âExcuse our homely ways,â and his nightâs adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on learning that he was not, said to him, âWell, mind you donât run after other menâs wivesâyouâd better get one of your own.â These words had particularly amused Veslovsky.
âAltogether, Iâve enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?â
âI have, very much,â Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling towards Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most friendly disposition to him.
Next day at ten oâclock Levin, who had already gone his rounds, knocked at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.
â Entrez! â Veslovsky called to him. âExcuse me, Iâve only just finished my ablutions,â he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes only.
âDonât mind me, please.â Levin sat down in the window. âHave you slept well?â
âLike the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?â
âWhat will you take, tea or coffee?â
âNeither. Iâll wait till lunch. Iâm really ashamed. I suppose the ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses.â
After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin returned to the house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing-room.
âWe had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!â said Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the samovar. âWhat a pity ladies are cut off from these delights!â
âWell, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,â Levin said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the all-conquering air with which their guest addressed Kitty....
The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and began to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kittyâs confinement, and getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of the event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on their fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles of linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance. The birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised him, but which he still could not believe inâso marvelous it seemedâpresented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of what would be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people, jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference, and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Stepan Arkadyevitch to look at a flat, and now she called Levin up.
âI know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,â he said.
âYou must decide when you will move.â
âI really donât know. I know millions of children are born away from Moscow, and doctors ... why....â
âBut if so....â
âOh, no, as Kitty wishes.â
âWe canât talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her? Why, this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doctor.â
âI will do just what you say,â he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though the conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at the samovar.
âNo, itâs impossible,â he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and at her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenkaâs attitude, in his eyes, in his smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kittyâs attitude and look. And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful to him.
âYou do just as you think best, princess,â he said again, looking round.
âHeavy is the cap of Monomach,â Stepan Arkadyevitch said playfully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the princessâs conversation, but at the cause of Levinâs agitation, which he had noticed.
âHow late you are today, Dolly!â
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose for an instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic of the modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation again, laughing at something.
âIâve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is dreadfully tiresome today,â said Dolly.
The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on the same lines as on the previous evening, discussing Anna, and whether love is to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty disliked the conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to know how to cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure afforded her by the young manâs very obvious admiration. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And, in fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the question struck Levin as an unnatural and disgusting piece of hypocrisy.
âWhat do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?â said Dolly.
âBy all means, please, and I shall come too,â said Kitty, and she blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would come, and she did not ask him. âWhere are you going, Kostya?â she asked her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
âThe mechanician came when I was away; I havenât seen him yet,â he said, not looking at her.
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard his wifeâs familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him.
âWhat do you want?â he said to her shortly. âWe are busy.â
âI beg your pardon,â she said to the German mechanician; âI want a few words with my husband.â
The German would have left the room, but Levin said to him:
âDonât disturb yourself.â
âThe train is at three?â queried the German. âI mustnât be late.â
Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.
âWell, what have you to say to me?â he said to her in French.
He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in her condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.
âI ... I want to say that we canât go on like this; that this is misery....â she said.
âThe servants are here at the sideboard,â he said angrily; âdonât make a scene.â
âWell, letâs go in here!â
They were standing in the passage. Kitty would have gone into the next room, but there the English governess was giving Tanya a lesson.
âWell, come into the garden.â
In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no longer considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his agitated face, that they looked like people fleeing from some disaster, they went on with rapid steps, feeling that they must speak out and clear up misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid of the misery they were both feeling.
âWe canât go on like this! Itâs misery! I am wretched; you are wretched. What for?â she said, when they had at last reached a solitary garden seat at a turn in the lime tree avenue.
âBut tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly, not nice, humiliatingly horrible?â he said, standing before her again in the same position with his clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood before her that night.
âYes,â she said in a shaking voice; âbut, Kostya, surely you see Iâm not to blame? All the morning Iâve been trying to take a tone ... but such people.... Why did he come? How happy we were!â she said, breathless with the sobs that shook her.
Although nothing had been pursuing them, and there was nothing to run away from, and they could not possibly have found anything very delightful on that garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment that they passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant faces.
After escorting his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dollyâs part of the house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was in great distress too that day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a little girl, who stood in the corner roaring.
âAnd you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I wonât make you a new frock,â she said, not knowing how to punish her.
âOh, she is a disgusting child!â she turned to Levin. âWhere does she get such wicked propensities?â
âWhy, what has she done?â Levin said without much interest, for he had wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an unlucky moment.
âGrisha and she went into the raspberries, and there ... I canât tell you really what she did. Itâs a thousand pities Miss Elliotâs not with us. This one sees to nothingâsheâs a machine.... Figurez-vous que la petite?...â
And Darya Alexandrovna described Mashaâs crime.
âThat proves nothing; itâs not a question of evil propensities at all, itâs simply mischief,â Levin assured her.
âBut you are upset about something? What have you come for?â asked Dolly. âWhatâs going on there?â
And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy for him to say what he had meant to say.
âIâve not been in there, Iâve been alone in the garden with Kitty. Weâve had a quarrel for the second time since ... Stiva came.â
Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes.
âCome, tell me, honor bright, has there been ... not in Kitty, but in that gentlemanâs behavior, a tone which might be unpleasantânot unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?â
âYou mean, how shall I say.... Stay, stay in the corner!â she said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her motherâs face, had been turning round. âThe opinion of the world would be that he is behaving as young men do behave. Il fait la cour Ă une jeune et jolie femme, and a husband whoâs a man of the world should only be flattered by it.â
âYes, yes,â said Levin gloomily; âbut you noticed it?â
âNot only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me in so many words, Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour Ă Kitty.â
âWell, thatâs all right then; now Iâm satisfied. Iâll send him away,â said Levin.
âWhat do you mean! Are you crazy?â Dolly cried in horror; ânonsense, Kostya, only think!â she said, laughing. âYou can go now to Fanny,â she said to Masha. âNo, if you wish it, Iâll speak to Stiva. Heâll take him away. He can say youâre expecting visitors. Altogether he doesnât fit into the house.â
âNo, no, Iâll do it myself.â
âBut youâll quarrel with him?â
âNot a bit. I shall so enjoy it,â Levin said, his eyes flashing with real enjoyment. âCome, forgive her, Dolly, she wonât do it again,â he said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was standing irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her brows to catch her motherâs eye.
The mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face on her motherâs lap, and Dolly laid her thin, tender hand on her head.
âAnd what is there in common between us and him?â thought Levin, and he went off to look for Veslovsky.
As he passed through the passage he gave orders for the carriage to be got ready to drive to the station.
âThe spring was broken yesterday,â said the footman.
âWell, the covered trap, then, and make haste. Whereâs the visitor?â
âThe gentlemanâs gone to his room.â
Levin came upon Veslovsky at the moment when the latter, having unpacked his things from his trunk, and laid out some new songs, was putting on his gaiters to go out riding.
Whether there was something exceptional in Levinâs face, or that Vassenka was himself conscious that ce petit brin de cour he was making was out of place in this family, but he was somewhat (as much as a young man in society can be) disconcerted at Levinâs entrance.
âYou ride in gaiters?â
âYes, itâs much cleaner,â said Vassenka, putting his fat leg on a chair, fastening the bottom hook, and smiling with simple-hearted good humor.
He was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Levin felt sorry for him and ashamed of himself, as his host, when he saw the shy look on Vassenkaâs face.
On the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken together that morning, trying their strength. Levin took the fragment in his hands and began smashing it up, breaking bits off the stick, not knowing how to begin.
âI wanted....â He paused, but suddenly, remembering Kitty and everything that had happened, he said, looking him resolutely in the face: âI have ordered the horses to be put-to for you.â
âHow so?â Vassenka began in surprise. âTo drive where?â
âFor you to drive to the station,â Levin said gloomily.
âAre you going away, or has something happened?â
âIt happens that I expect visitors,â said Levin, his strong fingers more and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the split stick. âAnd Iâm not expecting visitors, and nothing has happened, but I beg you to go away. You can explain my rudeness as you like.â
Vassenka drew himself up.
âI beg you to explain....â he said with dignity, understanding at last.
âI canât explain,â Levin said softly and deliberately, trying to control the trembling of his jaw; âand youâd better not ask.â
And as the split ends were all broken off, Levin clutched the thick ends in his finger, broke the stick in two, and carefully caught the end as it fell.
Probably the sight of those nervous fingers, of the muscles he had proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the soft voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any words. He bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.
âCan I not see Oblonsky?â
The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin.
âWhat else was there for him to do?â he thought.
âIâll send him to you at once.â
âWhat madness is this?â Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guestâs departure. â Mais câest ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais câest du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man....â
But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short.
âPlease donât go into it! I canât help it. I feel ashamed of how Iâm treating you and him. But it wonât be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.â
âBut itâs insulting to him! Et puis câest ridicule.â
âAnd to me itâs both insulting and distressing! And Iâm not at fault in any way, and thereâs no need for me to suffer.â
âWell, this I didnât expect of you! On peut ĂȘtre jaloux, mais Ă ce point, câest du dernier ridicule! â
Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.
âWhatâs this?â Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky, then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.
Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Levinâs action. And he himself felt not only in the highest degree ridicule, but also utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act another time, he answered that he should do just the same again.
In spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the princess, who could not pardon Levinâs action, became extraordinarily lively and good-humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening Vassenkaâs dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as though it were some remote event. And Dolly, who had inherited her fatherâs gift of humorous storytelling, made Varenka helpless with laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes for the benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing-room, heard suddenly the rumble of the trap. And who should be in the trap but Vassenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his gaiters, and all, sitting in the hay.
âIf only youâd ordered out the carriage! But no! and then I hear: âStop!â Oh, I thought theyâve relented. I look out, and behold a fat German being sat down by him and driving away.... And my new shoes all for nothing!...â
Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin disliked. She quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change in her position. That she might be independent of the Levins in this expedition, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the drive; but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.
âWhat makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my horses,â he said. âYou never told me that you were going for certain. Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me, and, whatâs of more importance, theyâll undertake the job and never get you there. I have horses. And if you donât want to wound me, youâll take mine.â
Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had ready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting them together from the farm and saddle-horsesânot at all a smart-looking set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife, it was a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number, but the duties of hospitality would not let him allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house. Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked for the journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovnaâs pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken to heart by the Levins as if they were their own.
Darya Alexandrovna, by Levinâs advice, started before daybreak. The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted along merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the counting-house clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groom for greater security. Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.
After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasantâs with whom Levin had stayed on the way to Sviazhskyâs, and chatting with the women about their children, and with the old man about Count Vronsky, whom the latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna, at ten oâclock, went on again. At home, looking after her children, she had no time to think. So now, after this journey of four hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life as she never had before, and from the most different points of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first she thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although the princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promised to look after them. âIf only Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha isnât kicked by a horse, and Lilyâs stomach isnât upset again!â she thought. But these questions of the present were succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She began thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow for the coming winter, to renew the drawing-room furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the more remote future occurred to her: how she was to place her children in the world. âThe girls are all right,â she thought; âbut the boys?â
âItâs very well that Iâm teaching Grisha, but of course thatâs only because I am free myself now, Iâm not with child. Stiva, of course, thereâs no counting on. And with the help of good-natured friends I can bring them up; but if thereâs another baby coming?...â And the thought struck her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman was that in sorrow she should bring forth children.
âThe birth itself, thatâs nothing; but the months of carrying the childâthatâs whatâs so intolerable,â she thought, picturing to herself her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. And she recalled the conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On being asked whether she had any children, the handsome young woman had answered cheerfully:
âI had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent.â
âWell, did you grieve very much for her?â asked Darya Alexandrovna.
âWhy grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. It was only a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie.â
This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as revolting in spite of the good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but now she could not help recalling these words. In those cynical words there was indeed a grain of truth.
âYes, altogether,â thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back over her whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life, âpregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything, and most of allâhideousness. Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even Kitty has lost her looks; and I when Iâm with child become hideous, I know it. The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last moment ... then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful pains....â
Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child. âThen the childrenâs illnesses, that everlasting apprehension; then bringing them up; evil propensitiesâ (she thought of little Mashaâs crime among the raspberries), âeducation, Latinâitâs all so incomprehensible and difficult. And on the top of it all, the death of these children.â And there rose again before her imagination the cruel memory, that always tore her motherâs heart, of the death of her last little baby, who had died of croup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at the little pink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her lonely anguish at the sight of the pale little brow with its projecting temples, and the open, wondering little mouth seen in the coffin at the moment when it was being covered with the little pink lid with a cross braided on it.
âAnd all this, whatâs it for? What is to come of it all? That Iâm wasting my life, never having a momentâs peace, either with child, or nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are growing up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it werenât for spending the summer at the Levinsâ, I donât know how we should be managing to live. Of course Kostya and Kitty have so much tact that we donât feel it; but it canât go on. Theyâll have children, they wonât be able to keep us; itâs a drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that I canât even bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even if we suppose the greatest good luck, that the children donât die, and I bring them up somehow. At the very best theyâll simply be decent people. Thatâs all I can hope for. And to gain simply thatâwhat agonies, what toil!... Oneâs whole life ruined!â Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, and again she was revolted at the thought; but she could not help admitting that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words.
âIs it far now, Mihail?â Darya Alexandrovna asked the counting-house clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were frightening her.
âFrom this village, they say, itâs five miles.â The carriage drove along the village street and onto a bridge. On the bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders, gaily and noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life. âTheyâre all living, theyâre all enjoying life,â Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of the old carriage, âwhile I, let out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my sister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to seeâall, but not I.
âAnd they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a husband I loveânot as I should like to love him, still I do love him, while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live. God has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same. Even to this day I donât feel sure I did right in listening to her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have been loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I donât respect him. Heâs necessary to me,â she thought about her husband, âand I put up with him. Is that any better? At that time I could still have been admired, I had beauty left me still,â Darya Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would have liked to look at herself in the looking-glass. She had a traveling looking-glass in her handbag, and she wanted to take it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swaying counting-house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if either of them were to look round, and she did not take out the glass.
But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it was not too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was always particularly attentive to her, of Stivaâs good-hearted friend, Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through the scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone else, a quite young man, whoâher husband had told her it as a jokeâthought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And the most passionate and impossible romances rose before Darya Alexandrovnaâs imagination. âAnna did quite right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes another person happy, and sheâs not broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every impression,â thought Darya Alexandrovna,âand a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she pondered on Annaâs love affair, Darya Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her smile.
In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led to Vozdvizhenskoe.
The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the right, to a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a cart. The counting-house clerk was just going to jump down, but on second thoughts he shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and came towards the carriage.
âWell, you are slow!â the counting-house clerk shouted angrily to the peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of the rough dry road. âCome along, do!â
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and his bent back dark with perspiration, came towards the carriage, quickening his steps, and took hold of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.
âVozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the countâs?â he repeated; âgo on to the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight along the avenue and youâll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The count himself?â
âWell, are they at home, my good man?â Darya Alexandrovna said vaguely, not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.
âAt home for sure,â said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to the other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the dust. âSure to be at home,â he repeated, evidently eager to talk. âOnly yesterday visitors arrived. Thereâs a sight of visitors come. What do you want?â He turned round and called to a lad, who was shouting something to him from the cart. âOh! They all rode by here not long since, to look at a reaping machine. Theyâll be home by now. And who will you be belonging to?...â
âWeâve come a long way,â said the coachman, climbing onto the box. âSo itâs not far?â
âI tell you, itâs just here. As soon as you get out....â he said, keeping hold all the while of the carriage.
A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.
âWhat, is it laborers they want for the harvest?â he asked.
âI donât know, my boy.â
âSo you keep to the left, and youâll come right on it,â said the peasant, unmistakably loth to let the travelers go, and eager to converse.
The coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off when the peasant shouted: âStop! Hi, friend! Stop!â called the two voices. The coachman stopped.
âTheyâre coming! Theyâre yonder!â shouted the peasant. âSee what a turn-out!â he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a char-Ă -banc, coming along the road.
They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky and Anna on horseback, and Princess Varvara and Sviazhsky in the char-Ă -banc. They had gone out to look at the working of a new reaping machine.
When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a walking pace. Anna was in front beside Veslovsky. Anna, quietly walking her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her high hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black riding habit, and all the ease and grace of her deportment, impressed Dolly.
For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Anna to be on horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in Darya Alexandrovnaâs mind, associated with ideas of youthful flirtation and frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Annaâs position. But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her closer, she was at once reconciled to her riding. In spite of her elegance, everything was so simple, quiet, and dignified in the attitude, the dress and the movements of Anna, that nothing could have been more natural.
Beside Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was Vassenka Veslovsky in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his stout legs stretched out in front, obviously pleased with his own appearance. Darya Alexandrovna could not suppress a good-humored smile as she recognized him. Behind rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare, obviously heated from galloping. He was holding her in, pulling at the reins.
After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviazhsky and Princess Varvara in a new char-Ă -banc with a big, raven-black trotting horse, overtook the party on horseback.
Annaâs face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when, in the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she recognized Dolly. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set her horse into a gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off without assistance, and holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Dolly.
âI thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You canât fancy how glad I am!â she said, at one moment pressing her face against Dolly and kissing her, and at the next holding her off and examining her with a smile.
âHereâs a delightful surprise, Alexey!â she said, looking round at Vronsky, who had dismounted, and was walking towards them.
Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.
âYou wouldnât believe how glad we are to see you,â he said, giving peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth in a smile.
Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took off his cap and greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his head.
âThatâs Princess Varvara,â Anna said in reply to a glance of inquiry from Dolly as the char-Ă -banc drove up.
âAh!â said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her face betrayed her dissatisfaction.
Princess Varvara was her husbandâs aunt, and she had long known her, and did not respect her. She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on account of her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed Dollyâs expression, and was disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her riding habit, and stumbled over it.
Darya Alexandrovna went up to the char-Ă -banc and coldly greeted Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky too she knew. He inquired how his queer friend with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the ill-matched horses and the carriage with its patched mud-guards, proposed to the ladies that they should get into the char-Ă -banc.
âAnd Iâll get into this vehicle,â he said. âThe horse is quiet, and the princess drives capitally.â
âNo, stay as you were,â said Anna, coming up, âand weâll go in the carriage,â and taking Dollyâs arm, she drew her away.
Darya Alexandrovnaâs eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant carriage of a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid horses, and the elegant and gorgeous people surrounding her. But what struck her most of all was the change that had taken place in Anna, whom she knew so well and loved. Any other woman, a less close observer, not knowing Anna before, or not having thought as Darya Alexandrovna had been thinking on the road, would not have noticed anything special in Anna. But now Dolly was struck by that temporary beauty, which is only found in women during the moments of love, and which she saw now in Annaâs face. Everything in her face, the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of her lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face, the brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of her movements, the fulness of the notes of her voice, even the manner in which, with a sort of angry friendliness, she answered Veslovsky when he asked permission to get on her cob, so as to teach it to gallop with the right leg foremostâit was all peculiarly fascinating, and it seemed as if she were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in it.
When both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden embarrassment came over both of them. Anna was disconcerted by the intent look of inquiry Dolly fixed upon her. Dolly was embarrassed because after Sviazhskyâs phrase about âthis vehicle,â she could not help feeling ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was sitting with her. The coachman Philip and the counting-house clerk were experiencing the same sensation. The counting-house clerk, to conceal his confusion, busied himself settling the ladies, but Philip the coachman became sullen, and was bracing himself not to be overawed in future by this external superiority. He smiled ironically, looking at the raven horse, and was already deciding in his own mind that this smart trotter in the char-Ă -banc was only good for promenage, and wouldnât do thirty miles straight off in the heat.
The peasants had all got up from the cart and were inquisitively and mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their comments on it.
âTheyâre pleased, too; havenât seen each other for a long while,â said the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.
âI say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to cart the corn, that âud be quick work!â
âLook-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?â said one of them, pointing to Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a side saddle.
âNay, a man! See how smartly heâs going it!â
âEh, lads! seems weâre not going to sleep, then?â
âWhat chance of sleep today!â said the old man, with a sidelong look at the sun. âMiddayâs past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come along!â
Anna looked at Dollyâs thin, care-worn face, with its wrinkles filled with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she was thinking, that is, that Dolly had got thinner. But, conscious that she herself had grown handsomer, and that Dollyâs eyes were telling her so, she sighed and began to speak about herself.
âYou are looking at me,â she said, âand wondering how I can be happy in my position? Well! itâs shameful to confess, but I ... Iâm inexcusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when youâre frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since weâve been here, Iâve been so happy!...â she said, with a timid smile of inquiry looking at Dolly.
âHow glad I am!â said Dolly smiling, involuntarily speaking more coldly than she wanted to. âIâm very glad for you. Why havenât you written to me?â
âWhy?... Because I hadnât the courage.... You forget my position....â
âTo me? Hadnât the courage? If you knew how I ... I look at....â
Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of the morning, but for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.
âBut of that weâll talk later. Whatâs this, what are all these buildings?â she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing to the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges of acacia and lilac. âQuite a little town.â
But Anna did not answer.
âNo, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?â she asked.
âI consider....â Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but at that instant Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob to gallop with the right leg foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and down in his short jacket on the chamois leather of the side saddle. âHeâs doing it, Anna Arkadyevna!â he shouted.
Anna did not even glance at him; but again it seemed to Darya Alexandrovna out of place to enter upon such a long conversation in the carriage, and so she cut short her thought.
âI donât think anything,â she said, âbut I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....â
Anna, taking her eyes off her friendâs face and dropping her eyelids (this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her before), pondered, trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And obviously interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at Dolly.
âIf you had any sins,â she said, âthey would all be forgiven you for your coming to see me and these words.â
And Dolly saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Annaâs hand in silence.
âWell, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!â After a momentâs silence she repeated her question.
âThese are the servantsâ houses, barns, and stables,â answered Anna. âAnd there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but Alexey had everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and, what I never expected, he has become intensely interested in looking after it. But his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does splendidly. So far from being bored by it, he works with passionate interest. Heâwith his temperament as I know itâhe has become careful and businesslike, a first-rate manager, he positively reckons every penny in his management of the land. But only in that. When itâs a question of tens of thousands, he doesnât think of money.â She spoke with that gleefully sly smile with which women often talk of the secret characteristics only known to themâof those they love. âDo you see that big building? thatâs the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a hundred thousand; thatâs his hobby just now. And do you know how it all came about? The peasants asked him for some meadowland, I think it was, at a cheaper rate, and he refused, and I accused him of being miserly. Of course it was not really because of that, but everything together, he began this hospital to prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about money. Câest une petitesse, if you like, but I love him all the more for it. And now youâll see the house in a moment. It was his grandfatherâs house, and he has had nothing changed outside.â
âHow beautiful!â said Dolly, looking with involuntary admiration at the handsome house with columns, standing out among the different-colored greens of the old trees in the garden.
âIsnât it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is wonderful.â
They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with flowers, in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of stones round the light mould of a flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.
âAh, theyâre here already!â said Anna, looking at the saddle horses, which were just being led away from the steps. âIt is a nice horse, isnât it? Itâs my cob; my favorite. Lead him here and bring me some sugar. Where is the count?â she inquired of two smart footmen who darted out. âAh, there he is!â she said, seeing Vronsky coming to meet her with Veslovsky.
âWhere are you going to put the princess?â said Vronsky in French, addressing Anna, and without waiting for a reply, he once more greeted Darya Alexandrovna, and this time he kissed her hand. âI think the big balcony room.â
âOh, no, thatâs too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see each other more. Come, letâs go up,â said Anna, as she gave her favorite horse the sugar the footman had brought her.
â Et vous oubliez votre devoir,â she said to Veslovsky, who came out too on the steps.
â Pardon, jâen ai tout plein les poches,â he answered, smiling, putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.
â Mais vous venez trop tard,â she said, rubbing her handkerchief on her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar.
Anna turned to Dolly. âYou can stay some time? For one day only? Thatâs impossible!â
âI promised to be back, and the children....â said Dolly, feeling embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage, and because she knew her face must be covered with dust.
âNo, Dolly, darling!... Well, weâll see. Come along, come along!â and Anna led Dolly to her room.
That room was not the smart guest chamber Vronsky had suggested, but the one of which Anna had said that Dolly would excuse it. And this room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best hotels abroad.
âWell, darling, how happy I am!â Anna said, sitting down in her riding habit for a moment beside Dolly. âTell me about all of you. Stiva I had only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my favorite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?â
âYes, sheâs very tall,â Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly, surprised herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. âWe are having a delightful stay at the Levinsâ,â she added.
âOh, if I had known,â said Anna, âthat you do not despise me!... You might have all come to us. Stivaâs an old friend and a great friend of Alexeyâs, you know,â she added, and suddenly she blushed.
âYes, but we are all....â Dolly answered in confusion.
âBut in my delight Iâm talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!â said Anna, kissing her again. âYou havenât told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But Iâm glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldnât like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I donât want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, havenât I? But it is a big subject, and weâll talk over everything properly later. Now Iâll go and dress and send a maid to you.â
Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewifeâs eye, scanned her room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through it, and all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth and sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which she had only read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia and in the country. Everything was new from the new French hangings on the walls to the carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring mattress, and a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases on the little pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing table, the little sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the chimney piece, the window curtains, and the portiĂšres were all new and expensive.
The smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done up high, and a gown more fashionable than Dollyâs, was as new and expensive as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would be needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen pence the yard, which was a matter of thirty shillings besides the cutting-out and making, and these thirty shillings had been saved. But before the maid she felt, if not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.
Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom she had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to go to her mistress, and Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna.
Annushka was obviously much pleased at that ladyâs arrival, and began to chatter away without a pause. Dolly observed that she was longing to express her opinion in regard to her mistressâs position, especially as to the love and devotion of the count to Anna Arkadyevna, but Dolly carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak about this.
âI grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my ladyâs dearer to me than anything. Well, itâs not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems so much love....â
âKindly pour out the water for me to wash now, please,â Darya Alexandrovna cut her short.
âCertainly. Weâve two women kept specially for washing small things, but most of the linenâs done by machinery. The count goes into everything himself. Ah, what a husband!...â
Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her entrance put a stop to Annushkaâs gossip.
Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly scrutinized that simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at which such simplicity was obtained.
âAn old friend,â said Anna of Annushka.
Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at ease. Dolly saw that she had now completely recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless tone which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which her deeper feelings and ideas were kept.
âWell, Anna, and how is your little girl?â asked Dolly.
âAnnie?â (This was what she called her little daughter Anna.) âVery well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her? Come, Iâll show her to you. We had a terrible bother,â she began telling her, âover nurses. We had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so stupid! We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her that weâve gone on keeping her still.â
âBut how have you managed?...â Dolly was beginning a question as to what name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown on Annaâs face, she changed the drift of her question.
âHow did you manage? have you weaned her yet?â
But Anna had understood.
âYou didnât mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname. Yes? That worries Alexey. She has no nameâthat is, sheâs a Karenina,â said Anna, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes meeting. âBut weâll talk about all that later,â her face suddenly brightening. âCome, Iâll show you her. Elle est trĂšs gentille. She crawls now.â
In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in the whole house struck her still more. There were little go-carts ordered from England, and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a billiard table, purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English, solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The room was large, and very light and lofty.
When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock, was sitting in a little elbow chair at the table, having her dinner of broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby was being fed, and the Russian nursery maid was evidently sharing her meal. Neither the wet-nurse nor the head-nurse were there; they were in the next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in the queer French which was their only means of communication.
Hearing Annaâs voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door, hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to defend herself though Anna had not found fault with her. At every word Anna said, the English nurse said hurriedly several times, âYes, my lady.â
The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with which she stared at the stranger. She positively envied the babyâs healthy appearance. She was delighted, too, at the babyâs crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled like that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild animal at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step forward with her little arms.
But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Annaâs that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child.
Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna saw at once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no common existence, and that the motherâs visit was something exceptional. Anna wanted to get the baby her plaything, and could not find it.
Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about the two last teeth.
âI sometimes feel sorry Iâm so superfluous here,â said Anna, going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape the plaything standing in the doorway. âIt was very different with my first child.â
âI expected it to be the other way,â said Darya Alexandrovna shyly.
âOh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?â said Anna, screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away. âBut weâll talk about that later. You wouldnât believe it, Iâm like a hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what to begin on first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have with anyone else; and I donât know which subject to begin upon first. Mais je ne vous ferai grĂące de rien. I must have everything out with you.â
âOh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,â she went on. âIâll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvaraâyou know her, and I know your opinion and Stivaâs about her. Stiva says the whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie Katerina Pavlovna: thatâs all true; but sheâs a good-natured woman, and I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But really she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my position. I see you donât understand all the difficulty of my position ... there in Petersburg,â she added. âHere Iâm perfectly at ease and happy. Well, of that later on, though. Then Sviazhskyâheâs the marshal of the district, and heâs a very good sort of a man, but he wants to get something out of Alexey. You understand, with his property, now that we are settled in the country, Alexey can exercise great influence. Then thereâs Tushkevitchâyou have seen him, you knowâBetsyâs admirer. Now heâs been thrown over and heâs come to see us. As Alexey says, heâs one of those people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to appear to be, et puis il est comme il faut, as Princess Varvara says. Then Veslovsky ... you know him. A very nice boy,â she said, and a sly smile curved her lips. âWhatâs this wild story about him and the Levins? Veslovsky told Alexey about it, and we donât believe it. Il est trĂšs gentil et naĂŻf,â she said again with the same smile. âMen need occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I value all these people. We have to have the house lively and gay, so that Alexey may not long for any novelty. Then youâll see the stewardâa German, a very good fellow, and he understands his work. Alexey has a very high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his knife ... but a very good doctor. Then the architect.... Une petite cour! â
âHereâs Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her,â said Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna onto the stone terrace where Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame, working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitchâs easy chair. âShe says she doesnât want anything before dinner, but please order some lunch for her, and Iâll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in.â
Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather patronizing reception, and began at once explaining to her that she was living with Anna because she had always cared more for her than her sister Katerina Pavlovna, the aunt that had brought Anna up, and that now, when everyone had abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help her in this most difficult period of transition.
âHer husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however difficult it may be for meânot like some other people. And how sweet it is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like the best of married couples; itâs for God to judge them, not for us. And didnât Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva ... and Sam Nikandrov, and Vassiliev and Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova.... Did no one say anything about them? And it has ended by their being received by everyone. And then, câest un intĂ©rieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-Ă -fait Ă lâanglaise. On se rĂ©unit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se sĂ©pare. Everyone does as he pleases till dinner time. Dinner at seven oâclock. Stiva did very rightly to send you. He needs their support. You know that through his mother and brother he can do anything. And then they do so much good. He didnât tell you about his hospital? Ce sera admirable âeverything from Paris.â
Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had found the men of the party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace. There was still a long time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite weather, and so several different methods of spending the next two hours were proposed. There were very many methods of passing the time at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at Pokrovskoe.
â Une partie de lawn-tennis, â Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome smile. âWeâll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna.â
âNo, itâs too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row in the boat, show Darya Alexandrovna the river banks.â Vronsky proposed.
âI agree to anything,â said Sviazhsky.
âI imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a strollâwouldnât you? And then the boat, perhaps,â said Anna.
So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevitch went off to the bathing place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for them.
They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviazhsky, and Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in the new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically, she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Annaâs conduct. As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Anna with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life among these strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Darya Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook everything for the sake of the comforts she enjoyed.
As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Annaâs action; but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She felt with him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.
Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation. Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the same tell him how much she liked his house.
âYes, itâs a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,â he said.
âI like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?â
âOh, no!â he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. âIf you could only have seen that court last spring!â
And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that, having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his home, Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person, and was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovnaâs praise.
âIf you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed, itâs not far. Shall we go?â he said, glancing into her face to convince himself that she was not bored. âAre you coming, Anna?â he turned to her.
âWe will come, wonât we?â she said, addressing Sviazhsky. â Mais il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se morfondre lĂ dans le bateau. We must send and tell them.â
âYes, this is a monument he is setting up here,â said Anna, turning to Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which she had previously talked about the hospital.
âOh, itâs a work of real importance!â said Sviazhsky. But to show he was not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he promptly added some slightly critical remarks.
âI wonder, though, count,â he said, âthat while you do so much for the health of the peasants, you take so little interest in the schools.â
â Câest devenu tellement commun les Ă©coles, â said Vronsky. âYou understand itâs not on that account, but it just happens so, my interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the hospital,â he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.
The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path. After going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine. Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.
âHow quickly work gets done with you!â said Sviazhsky. âWhen I was here last time the roof was not on.â
âBy the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is done,â said Anna.
âAnd whatâs this new building?â
âThatâs the house for the doctor and the dispensary,â answered Vronsky, seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.
Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still with the architect and began talking rather warmly.
âThe front is still too low,â he said to Anna, who had asked what was the matter.
âI said the foundation ought to be raised,â said Anna.
âYes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna,â said the architect, âbut now itâs too late.â
âYes, I take a great interest in it,â Anna answered Sviazhsky, who was expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. âThis new building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an afterthought, and was begun without a plan.â
Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the ladies, and led them inside the hospital.
Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were finished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their hair, to greet the gentry.
âThis is the reception room,â said Vronsky. âHere there will be a desk, tables, and benches, and nothing more.â
âThis way; let us go in here. Donât go near the window,â said Anna, trying the paint to see if it were dry. âAlexey, the paintâs dry already,â she added.
From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors, and many other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great satisfaction.
âYes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly fitted hospital in Russia,â said Sviazhsky.
âAnd wonât you have a lying-in ward?â asked Dolly. âThatâs so much needed in the country. I have often....â
In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.
âThis is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,â he said. âAh! look at this,â and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair that had just been ordered for the convalescents. âLook.â He sat down in the chair and began moving it. âThe patient canât walkâstill too weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air, and he moves, rolls himself along....â
Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural, simple-hearted eagerness. âYes, heâs a very nice, good man,â she thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in Annaâs place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.
âNo, I think the princess is tired, and horses donât interest her,â Vronsky said to Anna, who wanted to go on to the stables, where Sviazhsky wished to see the new stallion. âYou go on, while I escort the princess home, and weâll have a little talk,â he said, âif you would like that?â he added, turning to her.
âI know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted,â answered Darya Alexandrovna, rather astonished.
She saw by Vronskyâs face that he wanted something from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having made sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:
âYou guess that I have something I want to say to you,â he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. âI am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of Annaâs.â He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald.
Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern expression scared her.
The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to her flashed into her brain. âHe is going to beg me to come to stay with them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that will receive Anna in Moscow.... Or isnât it Vassenka Veslovsky and his relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to blame?â All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her.
âYou have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,â he said; âdo help me.â
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.
âYou have come to see us, you, the only woman of Annaâs former friendsâI donât count Princess Varvaraâbut I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?â he asked, looking round at her.
âOh, yes,â answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, âbut....â
âNo,â he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. âNo one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Annaâs position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.â
âI understand,â said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. âBut just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,â she said. âHer position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.â
âIn the world it is hell!â he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. âYou canât imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight ... and I beg you to believe it.â
âYes, but here, so long as neither Anna ... nor you miss society....â
âSociety!â he said contemptuously, âhow could I miss society?â
âSo farâand it may be so alwaysâyou are happy and at peace. I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much already,â said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really were happy.
But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.
âYes, yes,â he said, âI know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I am afraid of what is before us ... I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?â
âNo, I donât mind.â
âWell, then, let us sit here.â
Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her.
âI see that she is happy,â he repeated, and the doubt whether she were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovnaâs mind. âBut can it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,â he said, passing from Russian to French, âand we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of complications arise which she does not see and does not want to see. And that one can well understand. But I canât help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but Kareninâs. I cannot bear this falsity!â he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna.
She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:
âOne day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Karenin; he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however happy we may be in our home life and however many children we may have, there will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in her love, but I must have occupation. I have found occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former companions at court and in the army. And most certainly I would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy and contented, and we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. Ce nâest pas un pis-aller, on the contrary....â
Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna.
âWell, I will go on,â he said, collecting himself. âThe great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,âand this I have not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that his children, the children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!â
He paused, evidently much moved.
âYes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?â queried Darya Alexandrovna.
âYes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,â he said, calming himself with an effort. âAnna can, it depends on her.... Even to petition the Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorceâat that time your husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to him. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course,â he said gloomily, âit is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is agony to her. But the matter is of such importance, that one must passer par-dessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de lâexistence dâAnne et de ses enfants. I wonât speak of myself, though itâs hard for me, very hard,â he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. âAnd so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce.â
âYes, of course,â Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. âYes, of course,â she repeated with decision, thinking of Anna.
âUse your influence with her, make her write. I donât likeâIâm almost unable to speak about this to her.â
âVery well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think of it herself?â said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she suddenly at that point recalled Annaâs strange new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. âJust as though she half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything,â thought Dolly. âYes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,â Dolly said in reply to his look of gratitude.
They got up and walked to the house.
When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently in her eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.
âI believe itâs dinner time,â she said. âWeâve not seen each other at all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings.â
Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in order to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to brush her dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her head.
âThis is all I can do,â she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.
âYes, we are too formal here,â she said, as it were apologizing for her magnificence. âAlexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,â she added. âYouâre not tired?â
There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going into the drawing-room they found Princess Varvara already there, and the gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats. The architect wore a swallow-tail coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to his guest. The architect he had already introduced to her at the hospital.
A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies got up. Vronsky asked Sviazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna, and himself offered his arm to Dolly. Veslovsky was before Tushkevitch in offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevitch with the steward and the doctor walked in alone.
The dinner, the dining-room, the service, the waiting at table, the wine, and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a householdâalthough she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her own manner of livingâshe could not help scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how and by whom it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even Sviazhsky, and many other people she knew, would never have considered this question, and would have readily believed what every well-bred host tries to make his guests feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered in his house has cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well aware that even porridge for the childrenâs breakfast does not come of itself, and that therefore, where so complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone must give earnest attention to its organization. And from the glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the table, from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered Darya Alexandrovna her choice between cold soup and hot soup, she saw that it was all organized and maintained by the care of the master of the house himself. It was evident that it all rested no more upon Anna than upon Veslovsky. She, Sviazhsky, the princess, and Veslovsky, were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying what had been arranged for them.
Anna was the hostess only in conducting the conversation. The conversation was a difficult one for the lady of the house at a small table with persons present, like the steward and the architect, belonging to a completely different world, struggling not to be overawed by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to sustain a large share in the general conversation. But this difficult conversation Anna directed with her usual tact and naturalness, and indeed she did so with actual enjoyment, as Darya Alexandrovna observed. The conversation began about the row Tushkevitch and Veslovsky had taken alone together in the boat, and Tushkevitch began describing the last boat races in Petersburg at the Yacht Club. But Anna, seizing the first pause, at once turned to the architect to draw him out of his silence.
âNikolay Ivanitch was struck,â she said, meaning Sviazhsky, âat the progress the new building had made since he was here last; but I am there every day, and every day I wonder at the rate at which it grows.â
âItâs first-rate working with his excellency,â said the architect with a smile (he was respectful and composed, though with a sense of his own dignity). âItâs a very different matter to have to do with the district authorities. Where one would have to write out sheaves of papers, here I call upon the count, and in three words we settle the business.â
âThe American way of doing business,â said Sviazhsky, with a smile.
âYes, there they build in a rational fashion....â
The conversation passed to the misuse of political power in the United States, but Anna quickly brought it round to another topic, so as to draw the steward into talk.
âHave you ever seen a reaping machine?â she said, addressing Darya Alexandrovna. âWe had just ridden over to look at one when we met. Itâs the first time I ever saw one.â
âHow do they work?â asked Dolly.
âExactly like little scissors. A plank and a lot of little scissors. Like this.â
Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands covered with rings, and began showing how the machine worked. It was clear that she saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but aware that her talk was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on explaining.
âMore like little penknives,â Veslovsky said playfully, never taking his eyes off her.
Anna gave a just perceptible smile, but made no answer. âIsnât it true, Karl Fedoritch, that itâs just like little scissors?â she said to the steward.
â Oh, ja, â answered the German. âEs ist ein ganz einfaches Ding,â and he began to explain the construction of the machine.
âItâs a pity it doesnât bind too. I saw one at the Vienna exhibition, which binds with a wire,â said Sviazhsky. âThey would be more profitable in use.â
âEs kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.â And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. âDas lĂ€sst sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.â The German was just feeling in the pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronskyâs chilly glance, he checked himself. âZu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,â he concluded.
âWĂŒnscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,â said Vassenka Veslovsky, mimicking the German. âJâadore lâallemand,â he addressed Anna again with the same smile.
âCessez,â she said with playful severity.
âWe expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch,â she said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; âhave you been there?â
âI went there, but I had taken flight,â the doctor answered with gloomy jocoseness.
âThen youâve taken a good constitutional?â
âSplendid!â
âWell, and how was the old woman? I hope itâs not typhus?â
âTyphus it is not, but itâs taking a bad turn.â
âWhat a pity!â said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.
âIt would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your description, Anna Arkadyevna,â Sviazhsky said jestingly.
âOh, no, why so?â said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that had been noticed by Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.
âBut Anna Arkadyevnaâs knowledge of architecture is marvelous,â said Tushkevitch.
âTo be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths and damp-courses,â said Veslovsky. âHave I got it right?â
âThereâs nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of it,â said Anna. âBut, I dare say, you donât even know what houses are made of?â
Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will.
Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously attached no significance to Veslovskyâs chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his jests.
âCome now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?â
âBy cement, of course.â
âBravo! And what is cement?â
âOh, some sort of paste ... no, putty,â said Veslovsky, raising a general laugh.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.
âI have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,â Vronsky said, smiling, âbut most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns; or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views can anyone have on such a subject?â
âTurkish views, in general,â Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a smile.
âI canât defend his opinions,â Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; âbut I can say that heâs a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.â
âI like him extremely, and we are great friends,â Sviazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. â Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toquĂ©; he maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.â
âItâs our Russian apathy,â said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; âweâve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.â
âI know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,â said Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronskyâs tone of superiority.
âFor my part,â pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or other keenly affected by this conversation, âsuch as I am, I am, on the contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to Nikolay Ivanitchâ (he indicated Sviazhsky), âin electing me a justice of the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the session, of judging some peasantsâ quarrel about a horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if they elect me for the district council. Itâs only in that way I can pay for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they donât understand the weight that the big landowners ought to have in the state.â
It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he was of being right at his own table. She thought how Levin, who believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
âSo we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming elections?â said Sviazhsky. âBut you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me.â
âI rather agree with your beau-frĂšre,â said Anna, âthough not quite on the same ground as he,â she added with a smile. âIâm afraid that we have too many of these public duties in these latter days. Just as in old days there were so many government functionaries that one had to call in a functionary for every single thing, so now everyoneâs doing some sort of public duty. Alexey has been here now six months, and heâs a member, I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. Du train que cela va, the whole time will be wasted on it. And Iâm afraid that with such a multiplicity of these bodies, theyâll end in being a mere form. How many are you a member of, Nikolay Ivanitch?â she turned to Sviazhskyââover twenty, I fancy.â
Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone. Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronskyâs face had immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this, and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the conversation by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky had without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the country, Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was connected with some deep private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.
The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good; but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable impression on her.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch, gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a long time. Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting in each otherâs way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the ladiesâ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a childâs game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.
When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped: âAfterwards, by ourselves, weâll talk about everything. Iâve got so much I want to tell you,â she said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about. She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had been said already.
âWell, what of Kitty?â she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at Dolly. âTell me the truth, Dolly: isnât she angry with me?â
âAngry? Oh, no!â said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
âBut she hates me, despises me?â
âOh, no! But you know that sort of thing isnât forgiven.â
âYes, yes,â said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window. âBut I was not to blame. And who is to blame? Whatâs the meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didnât become the wife of Stiva?â
âReally, I donât know. But this is what I want you to tell me....â
âYes, yes, but weâve not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? Heâs a very nice man, they say.â
âHeâs much more than very nice. I donât know a better man.â
âAh, how glad I am! Iâm so glad! Much more than very nice,â she repeated.
Dolly smiled.
âBut tell me about yourself. Weâve a great deal to talk about. And Iâve had a talk with....â Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.
âWith Alexey,â said Anna, âI know what you talked about. But I wanted to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?â
âHow am I to say like that straight off? I really donât know.â
âNo, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustnât forget that youâre seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we are not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite alone, and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine me living alone without him, alone, and that will be ... I see by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be half the time away from home,â she said, getting up and sitting down close by Dolly.
âOf course,â she interrupted Dolly, who would have answered, âof course I wonât try to keep him by force. I donât keep him indeed. The races are just coming, his horses are running, he will go. Iâm very glad. But think of me, fancy my position.... But whatâs the use of talking about it?â She smiled. âWell, what did he talk about with you?â
âHe spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and itâs easy for me to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ... whether you could not....â (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) âcorrect, improve your position.... You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if possible, you should get married....â
âDivorce, you mean?â said Anna. âDo you know, the only woman who came to see me in Petersburg was Betsy Tverskaya? You know her, of course? Au fond, câest la femme la plus depravĂ©e qui existe. She had an intrigue with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was irregular. Donât imagine I would compare ... I know you, darling. But I could not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?â she repeated.
âHe said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you will say that itâs egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband, to have a legal right to you.â
âWhat wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?â she put in gloomily.
âThe chief thing he desires ... he desires that you should not suffer.â
âThatâs impossible. Well?â
âWell, and the most legitimate desireâhe wishes that your children should have a name.â
âWhat children?â Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing her eyes.
âAnnie and those to come....â
âHe need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children.â
âHow can you tell that you wonât?â
âI shall not, because I donât wish it.â And, in spite of all her emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naĂŻve expression of curiosity, wonder, and horror on Dollyâs face.
âThe doctor told me after my illness....â
âImpossible!â said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.
For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.
This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.
âNâest-ce pas immoral?â was all she said, after a brief pause.
âWhy so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my husbandâpractically my husband,â Anna said in a tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.
âYes, yes,â said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.
âFor you, for other people,â said Anna, as though divining her thoughts, âthere may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!â
She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovnaâs head. âI,â she thought, âdid not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and manners still more attractive and charming. And however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her eager face under her black curls, he will find something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does.â
Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh, indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.
âDo you say that itâs not right? But you must consider,â she went on; âyou forget my position. How can I desire children? Iâm not speaking of the suffering, Iâm not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a strangerïżœïżœs name. For the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father, their birth.â
âBut that is just why a divorce is necessary.â But Anna did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she had so many times convinced herself.
âWhat is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!â She looked at Dolly, but without waiting for a reply she went on:
âI should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,â she said. âIf they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.â
These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. âHow can one wrong creatures that donât exist?â she thought. And all at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad ideas.
âNo, I donât know; itâs not right,â was all she said, with an expression of disgust on her face.
âYes, but you mustnât forget that you and I.... And besides that,â added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dollyâs objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, âdonât forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you the question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And thatâs a great difference. You must see that I canât desire it in my position.â
Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.
âThen there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position, if possible,â said Dolly.
âYes, if possible,â said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly different tone, subdued and mournful.
âSurely you donât mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your husband had consented to it.â
âDolly, I donât want to talk about that.â
âOh, we wonât then,â Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the expression of suffering on Annaâs face. âAll I see is that you take too gloomy a view of things.â
âI? Not at all! Iâm always bright and happy. You see, je fais des passions. Veslovsky....â
âYes, to tell the truth, I donât like Veslovskyâs tone,â said Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.
âOh, thatâs nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and thatâs all; but heâs a boy, and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as I please. Itâs just as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!ââshe suddenly changed the subjectââyou say I take too gloomy a view of things. You canât understand. Itâs too awful! I try not to take any view of it at all.â
âBut I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can.â
âBut what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, and say I donât think about it. I donât think about it!â she repeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up, straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light step she began pacing up and down the room, stopping now and then. âI donât think of it? Not a day, not an hour passes that I donât think of it, and blame myself for thinking of it ... because thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!â she repeated. âWhen I think of it, I canât sleep without morphine. But never mind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first place, he wonât give me a divorce. Heâs under the influence of Countess Lidia Ivanovna now.â
Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head, following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.
âYou ought to make the attempt,â she said softly.
âSuppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?â she said, evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and learned by heart. âIt means that I, hating him, but still recognizing that I have wronged himâand I consider him magnanimousâthat I humiliate myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort; I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have received his consent, say....â Anna was at that moment at the furthest end of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the curtain at the window. âI receive his consent, but my ... my son? They wonât give him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his father, whom Iâve abandoned. Do you see, I love ... equally, I think, but both more than myselfâtwo creatures, Seryozha and Alexey.â
She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly, with her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white dressing gown her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and nightcap, shaking all over with emotion.
âIt is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the other. I canât have them together, and thatâs the only thing I want. And since I canât have that, I donât care about the rest. I donât care about anything, anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I canât, I donât like to talk of it. So donât blame me, donât judge me for anything. You canât with your pure heart understand all that Iâm suffering.â She went up, sat down beside Dolly, and with a guilty look, peeped into her face and took her hand.
âWhat are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Donât despise me. I donât deserve contempt. Iâm simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy, I am,â she articulated, and turning away, she burst into tears.
Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed. She had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.
Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine-glass and dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while, she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.
When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her. He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so long in Dollyâs room, she must have had with her. But in her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said:
âI am so glad you like Dolly. You do, donât you?â
âOh, Iâve known her a long while, you know. Sheâs very good-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-Ă -terre. Still, Iâm very glad to see her.â
He took Annaâs hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.
Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey. Levinâs coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that now, from Dollyâs departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.
As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at Vronskyâs, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked:
âRolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasnât a grain left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much as they can eat.â
âThe masterâs a screw,â put in the counting-house clerk.
âWell, did you like their horses?â asked Dolly.
âThe horses!âthereâs no two opinions about them. And the food was good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I donât know what you thought,â he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face to her.
âI thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?â
âEh, we must!â
On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.
âOne has to know Anna and VronskyâI have got to know him better nowâto see how nice they are, and how touching,â she said, speaking now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced there.
Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it.
Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.
The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her chief thought was still of herselfâhow far she was dear to Vronsky, how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to be free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to go to the town to a meeting or a race, Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his life. The rĂŽle he had taken up, the rĂŽle of a wealthy landowner, one of that class which ought to be the very heart of the Russian aristocracy, was entirely to his taste; and now, after spending six months in that character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and more, was most successful. In spite of the immense sums cost him by the hospital, by machinery, by cows ordered from Switzerland, and many other things, he was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of timber, wheat, and wool, the letting of lands, Vronsky was hard as a rock, and knew well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on this and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving no risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his original estimate always far larger than really required, and then representing to Vronsky that he might get the thing cheaper, and so make a profit, Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward, cross-examined him, and only agreed to his suggestions when the implement to be ordered or constructed was the very newest, not yet known in Russia, and likely to excite wonder. Apart from such exceptions, he resolved upon an increased outlay only where there was a surplus, and in making such an outlay he went into the minutest details, and insisted on getting the very best for his money; so that by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was clear that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance.
In October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviazhsky, Koznishev, Oblonsky, and a small part of Levinâs land.
These elections were attracting public attention from several circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to attend these. Vronsky had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them. Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove over to fetch Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a quarrel between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew that it only happened when she had determined upon something without letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in what he longed to believe inâher reasonableness.
âI hope you wonât be dull?â
âI hope not,â said Anna. âI got a box of books yesterday from Gautierâs. No, I shanât be dull.â
âSheâs trying to take that tone, and so much the better,â he thought, âor else it would be the same thing over and over again.â
And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was better so. âAt first there will be, as this time, something undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence,â he thought.
In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kittyâs confinement. He had spent a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergey Ivanovitch, who had property in the Kashinsky province, and took great interest in the question of the approaching elections, made ready to set off to the elections. He invited his brother, who had a vote in the Seleznevsky district, to come with him. Levin had, moreover, to transact in Kashin some extremely important business relating to the wardship of land and to the receiving of certain redemption money for his sister, who was abroad.
Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was bored in Moscow, and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the proper noblemanâs uniform, costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid for the uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Levin to go. He went to Kashin....
Levin had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each day, and busily engaged about his sisterâs business, which still dragged on. The district marshals of nobility were all occupied with the elections, and it was impossible to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the sums due, was met too by difficulties. After long negotiations over the legal details, the money was at last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most obliging person, could not hand over the order, because it must have the signature of the president, and the president, though he had not given over his duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these worrying negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and talking with pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the unpleasantness of the petitionerâs position, but were powerless to assist himâall these efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling of misery in Levin akin to the mortifying helplessness one experiences in dreams when one tries to use physical force. He felt this frequently as he talked to his most good-natured solicitor. This solicitor did, it seemed, everything possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of his difficulties. âI tell you what you might try,â he said more than once; âgo to so-and-so and so-and-so,â and the solicitor drew up a regular plan for getting round the fatal point that hindered everything. But he would add immediately, âItâll mean some delay, anyway, but you might try it.â And Levin did try, and did go. Everyone was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up again in the end, and again to bar the way. What was particularly trying, was that Levin could not make out with whom he was struggling, to whose interest it was that his business should not be done. That no one seemed to know; the solicitor certainly did not know. If Levin could have understood why, just as he saw why one can only approach the booking office of a railway station in single file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him. But with the hindrances that confronted him in his business, no one could explain why they existed.
But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was patient, and if he could not see why it was all arranged like this, he told himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and that most likely it must be so, and he tried not to fret.
In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried now not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully as he could the question which was so earnestly and ardently absorbing honest and excellent men whom he respected. Since his marriage there had been revealed to Levin so many new and serious aspects of life that had previously, through his frivolous attitude to them, seemed of no importance, that in the question of the elections too he assumed and tried to find some serious significance.
Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and object of the proposed revolution at the elections. The marshal of the province in whose hands the law had placed the control of so many important public functionsâthe guardianship of wards (the very department which was giving Levin so much trouble just now), the disposal of large sums subscribed by the nobility of the province, the high schools, female, male, and military, and popular instruction on the new model, and finally, the district councilâthe marshal of the province, Snetkov, was a nobleman of the old school,âdissipating an immense fortune, a good-hearted man, honest after his own fashion, but utterly without any comprehension of the needs of modern days. He always took, in every question, the side of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic to the spread of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely party character to the district council which ought by rights to be of such an immense importance. What was needed was to put in his place a fresh, capable, perfectly modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to frame their policy so as from the rights conferred upon the nobles, not as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to extract all the powers of self-government that could possibly be derived from them. In the wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of other provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia. And hence the whole question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to elect as marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still, Nevyedovsky, a former university professor, a man of remarkable intelligence and a great friend of Sergey Ivanovitch.
The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.
When he had finished with his speech, the governor walked out of the hall, and the noblemen noisily and eagerlyâsome even enthusiasticallyâfollowed him and thronged round him while he put on his fur coat and conversed amicably with the marshal of the province. Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss anything, stood there too in the crowd, and heard the governor say: âPlease tell Marya Ivanovna my wife is very sorry she couldnât come to the Home.â And thereupon the nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and all drove off to the cathedral.
In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and repeating the words of the archdeacon, swore with most terrible oaths to do all the governor had hoped they would do. Church services always affected Levin, and as he uttered the words âI kiss the cross,â and glanced round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he felt touched.
On the second and third days there was business relating to the finances of the nobility and the female high school, of no importance whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained, and Levin, busy seeing after his own affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of the marshalâs accounts took place at the high table of the marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first skirmish between the new party and the old. The committee who had been deputed to verify the accounts reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their confidence, and shed tears. The nobles gave him a loud welcome, and shook hands with him. But at that instant a nobleman of Sergey Ivanovitchâs party said that he had heard that the committee had not verified the accounts, considering such a verification an insult to the marshal of the province. One of the members of the committee incautiously admitted this. Then a small gentleman, very young-looking but very malignant, began to say that it would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the province to give an account of his expenditures of the public moneys, and that the misplaced delicacy of the members of the committee was depriving him of this moral satisfaction. Then the members of the committee tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergey Ivanovitch began to prove that they must logically admit either that they had verified the accounts or that they had not, and he developed this dilemma in detail. Sergey Ivanovitch was answered by the spokesman of the opposite party. Then Sviazhsky spoke, and then the malignant gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and ended in nothing. Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergey Ivanovitch whether he supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch answered:
âOh, no! Heâs an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of paternal family arrangements in the management of provincial affairs must be broken down.â
On the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals. It was rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Seleznevsky district Sviazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a dinner that evening.
The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the province.
The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in all sorts of uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much discussion around the governorâs table under the portrait of the Tsar.
The nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms, grouped themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances, from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a group, and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to the farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two classes: the old and the new. The old were for the most part either in old uniforms of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way with epaulets on their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and short in the waist, as though their wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore the uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black collars and with the embroidered badges of justices of the peace. To the younger men belonged the court uniforms that here and there brightened up the crowd.
But the division into young and old did not correspond with the division of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed, belonged to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the contrary, were whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent partisans of the new party.
Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and taking light refreshments, close to his own friends, and listening to what they were saying, he conscientiously exerted all his intelligence trying to understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the center round which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that moment to Sviazhsky and Hliustov, the marshal of another district, who belonged to their party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his district to ask Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to do so, and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Levin could not make out why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand whom they wanted to supersede.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.
âWe are placing our forces,â he said, pulling out his whiskers, âSergey Ivanovitch!â
And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhskyâs contention.
âOne districtâs enough, and Sviazhskyâs obviously of the opposition,â he said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.
âWhy, Kostya, you here too! I suppose youâre converted, eh?â he added, turning to Levin and drawing his arm through his. Levin would have been glad indeed to be converted, but could not make out what the point was, and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he explained to Stepan Arkadyevitch his inability to understand why the marshal of the province should be asked to stand.
âO sancta simplicitas!â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and briefly and clearly he explained it to Levin. If, as at previous elections, all the districts asked the marshal of the province to stand, then he would be elected without a ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had agreed to call upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline to stand at all; and then the old party might choose another of their party, which would throw them completely out in their reckoning. But if only one district, Sviazhskyâs, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some of them, going to vote for him, and purposely to let him get a good many votes, so that the enemy might be thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of the other side was put up, they too might give him some votes. Levin understood to some extent, but not fully, and would have put a few more questions, when suddenly everyone began talking and making a noise and they moved towards the big room.
âWhat is it? eh? whom?â âNo guarantee? whose? what?â âThey wonât pass him?â âNo guarantee?â âThey wonât let Flerov in?â âEh, because of the charge against him?â âWhy, at this rate, they wonât admit anyone. Itâs a swindle!â âThe law!â Levin heard exclamations on all sides, and he moved into the big room together with the others, all hurrying somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the crowding noblemen, he drew near the high table where the marshal of the province, Sviazhsky, and the other leaders were hotly disputing about something.
Levin was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily and hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking, prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft voice of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant gentleman, and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as far as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the act and the exact meaning of the words: âliable to be called up for trial.â
The crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch approaching the table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the malignant gentleman had finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be to refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a ballot.
Sergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its meaning, but at that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered landowner, with dyed whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut the back of his neck, interrupted him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his finger ring, he shouted loudly: âA ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more talking!â Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall nobleman with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more and more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said.
He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other side. Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was confusion, so that the marshal of the province had to call for order.
âA ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed our blood for our country!... The confidence of the monarch.... No checking the accounts of the marshal; heâs not a cashier.... But thatâs not the point.... Votes, please! Beastly!...â shouted furious and violent voices on all sides. Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their words. They expressed the most implacable hatred. Levin did not in the least understand what was the matter, and he marveled at the passion with which it was disputed whether or not the decision about Flerov should be put to the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerovâs right to vote; that to secure the recognition of Flerovâs right to vote they must decide on the interpretation to be put on the act.
âAnd one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life,â concluded Sergey Ivanovitch. But Levin forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this painful feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody except the waiters at the refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing up the crockery and setting in order their plates and wine-glasses, seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Levin felt an unexpected sense of relief as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the fresh air. He began walking up and down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly liked the way one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly. Levin was just about to enter into conversation with the old waiter, when the secretary of the court of wardship, a little old man whose specialty it was to know all the noblemen of the province by name and patronymic, drew him away.
âPlease come, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,â he said, âyour brotherâs looking for you. They are voting on the legal point.â
Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and sniffing at it. Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the ball somewhere, and making room for Levin, stopped. Levin advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, âWhere am I to put it?â He asked this softly, at a moment when there was talking going on near, so that he had hoped his question would not be overheard. But the persons speaking paused, and his improper question was overheard. Sergey Ivanovitch frowned.
âThat is a matter for each manâs own decision,â he said severely.
Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand under the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his right hand. Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have thrust his left hand too, and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the background.
âA hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight against!â sang out the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter r. Then there was a laugh; a button and two nuts were found in the box. The nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party had conquered.
But the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Levin heard that they were asking Snetkov to stand, and he saw that a crowd of noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something. Levin went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of the province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him, which he did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to the nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service. Several times he repeated the words: âI have served to the best of my powers with truth and good faith, I value your goodness and thank you,â and suddenly he stopped short from the tears that choked him, and went out of the room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from the strain of the position he was placed in, feeling himself surrounded by enemies, his emotion infected the assembly, the majority were touched, and Levin felt a tenderness for Snetkov.
In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Levin.
âBeg pardon, excuse me, please,â he said as to a stranger, but recognizing Levin, he smiled timidly. It seemed to Levin that he would have liked to say something, but could not speak for emotion. His face and his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white trousers striped with braid, as he moved hurriedly along, reminded Levin of some hunted beast who sees that he is in evil case. This expression in the marshalâs face was particularly touching to Levin, because, only the day before, he had been at his house about his trustee business and had seen him in all his grandeur, a kind-hearted, fatherly man. The big house with the old family furniture; the rather dirty, far from stylish, but respectful footmen, unmistakably old house serfs who had stuck to their master; the stout, good-natured wife in a cap with lace and a Turkish shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her daughterâs daughter; the young son, a sixth form high school boy, coming home from school, and greeting his father, kissing his big hand; the genuine, cordial words and gestures of the old manâall this had the day before roused an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in Levin. This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Levin now, and he longed to say something pleasant to him.
âSo youâre sure to be our marshal again,â he said.
âItâs not likely,â said the marshal, looking round with a scared expression. âIâm worn out, Iâm old. If there are men younger and more deserving than I, let them serve.â
And the marshal disappeared through a side door.
The most solemn moment was at hand. They were to proceed immediately to the election. The leaders of both parties were reckoning white and black on their fingers.
The discussion upon Flerov had given the new party not only Flerovâs vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they could send to fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to take part in the elections by the wiles of the other party. Two noble gentlemen, who had a weakness for strong drink, had been made drunk by the partisans of Snetkov, and a third had been robbed of his uniform.
On learning this, the new party had made haste, during the dispute about Flerov, to send some of their men in a sledge to clothe the stripped gentleman, and to bring along one of the intoxicated to the meeting.
âIâve brought one, drenched him with water,â said the landowner, who had gone on this errand, to Sviazhsky. âHeâs all right? heâll do.â
âNot too drunk, he wonât fall down?â said Sviazhsky, shaking his head.
âNo, heâs first-rate. If only they donât give him any more here.... Iâve told the waiter not to give him anything on any account.â
The narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking refreshments, was full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense, and every face betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every vote. They were the generals organizing the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long while.
Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, Sviazhsky and the rest, because Vronsky in his equerryâs uniform was standing with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him already at the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager, anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little man with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had no interest in it and nothing to do.
âHeâs such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldnât collect it in three years!â he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this gentleman sharply turned his back.
âYes, itâs a dirty business, thereâs no denying,â a small gentleman assented in a high voice.
Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general, hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a place where they could talk without being overheard.
âHow dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! Heâd better not say it, the beast!â
âBut excuse me! They take their stand on the act,â was being said in another group; âthe wife must be registered as noble.â
âOh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. Weâre all gentlemen, arenât we? Above suspicion.â
âShall we go on, your excellency, fine champagne? â
Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.
âI always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for she can never save a profit,â he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker was a country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of an old general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had met at Sviazhskyâs. He knew him at once. The landowner too stared at Levin, and they exchanged greetings.
âVery glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitchâs.â
âWell, and how is your land doing?â asked Levin.
âOh, still just the same, always at a loss,â the landowner answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and conviction that so it must be. âAnd how do you come to be in our province?â he asked. âCome to take part in our coup dâĂ©tat? â he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent. âAll Russiaâs hereâgentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the ministry.â He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a general.
âI ought to own that I donât very well understand the drift of the provincial elections,â said Levin.
The landowner looked at him.
âWhy, what is there to understand? Thereâs no meaning in it at all. Itâs a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that itâs an assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but not of noblemen.â
âThen why do you come?â asked Levin.
âFrom habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up connections. Itâs a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, thereâs oneâs own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent member; theyâre not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These gentlemen, now, what do they come for?â he said, pointing to the malignant gentleman, who was talking at the high table.
âThatâs the new generation of nobility.â
âNew it may be, but nobility it isnât. Theyâre proprietors of a sort, but weâre the landowners. As noblemen, theyâre cutting their own throats.â
âBut you say itâs an institution thatâs served its time.â
âThat it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more respectfully. Snetkov, now.... We may be of use, or we may not, but weâre the growth of a thousand years. If weâre laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there youâve a tree thatâs stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you donât cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You wonât grow him again in a year,â he said cautiously, and he immediately changed the conversation. âWell, and how is your land doing?â
âOh, not very well. I make five per cent.â
âYes, but you donât reckon your own work. Arenât you worth something too? Iâll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the land, I had a salary of three hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more work than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent. on the land, and thank God for that. But oneâs work is thrown in for nothing.â
âThen why do you do it, if itâs a clear loss?â
âOh, well, one does it! What would you have? Itâs habit, and one knows itâs how it should be. And whatâs more,â the landowner went on, leaning his elbows on the window and chatting on, âmy son, I must tell you, has no taste for it. Thereâs no doubt heâll be a scientific man. So thereâll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year Iâve planted an orchard.â
âYes, yes,â said Levin, âthatâs perfectly true. I always feel thereâs no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it.... Itâs a sort of duty one feels to the land.â
âBut I tell you what,â the landowner pursued; âa neighbor of mine, a merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden. âNo,â said he, âStepan Vassilievitch, everythingâs well looked after, but your gardenâs neglected.â But, as a fact, itâs well kept up. âTo my thinking, Iâd cut down that lime-tree. Here youâve thousands of limes, and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that barkâs worth something. Iâd cut down the lot.ââ
âAnd with what he made heâd increase his stock, or buy some land for a trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants,â Levin added, smiling. He had evidently more than once come across those commercial calculations. âAnd heâd make his fortune. But you and I must thank God if we keep what weâve got and leave it to our children.â
âYouâre married, Iâve heard?â said the landowner.
âYes,â Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. âYes, itâs rather strange,â he went on. âSo we live without making anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.â
The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
âThere are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or Count Vronsky, thatâs settled here lately, who try to carry on their husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing but making away with capital on it.â
âBut why is it we donât do like the merchants? Why donât we cut down our parks for timber?â said Levin, returning to a thought that had struck him.
âWhy, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides thatâs not work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isnât done here at the elections, but yonder, each in our corner. Thereâs a class instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtnât to do. Thereâs the peasants, too, I wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can. However bad the land is, heâll work it. Without a return too. At a simple loss.â
âJust as we do,â said Levin. âVery, very glad to have met you,â he added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.
âAnd here weâve met for the first time since we met at your place,â said the landowner to Sviazhsky, âand weâve had a good talk too.â
âWell, have you been attacking the new order of things?â said Sviazhsky with a smile.
âThat weâre bound to do.â
âYouâve relieved your feelings?â
Sviazhsky took Levinâs arm, and went with him to his own friends.
This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he drew near.
âDelighted! I believe Iâve had the pleasure of meeting you ... at Princess Shtcherbatskayaâs,â he said, giving Levin his hand.
âYes, I quite remember our meeting,â said Levin, and blushing crimson, he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.
With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with Levin. But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss over his rudeness.
âWhat are we waiting for now?â asked Levin, looking at Sviazhsky and Vronsky.
âFor Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,â answered Sviazhsky.
âWell, and what has he done, consented or not?â
âThatâs the point, that heâs done neither,â said Vronsky.
âAnd if he refuses, who will stand then?â asked Levin, looking at Vronsky.
âWhoever chooses to,â said Sviazhsky.
âShall you?â asked Levin.
âCertainly not I,â said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
âWho then? Nevyedovsky?â said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot into it.
But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two candidates.
âI certainly shall not, under any circumstances,â answered the malignant gentleman.
This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin.
âWell, you find it exciting too?â said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at Vronsky. âItâs something like a race. One might bet on it.â
âYes, it is keenly exciting,â said Vronsky. âAnd once taking the thing up, oneâs eager to see it through. Itâs a fight!â he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws.
âWhat a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.â
âOh, yes!â Vronsky assented indifferently.
A silence followed, during which Vronskyâsince he had to look at somethingâlooked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something:
âHow is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.â
âItâs because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly institution,â Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.
âI donât think so, quite the contrary,â Vronsky said, with quiet surprise.
âItâs a plaything,â Levin cut him short. âWe donât want justices of the peace. Iâve never had a single thing to do with them during eight years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.â
And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as he said it.
âOh, this is such an original fellow!â said Stepan Arkadyevitch with his most soothing, almond-oil smile. âBut come along; I think theyâre voting....â
And they separated.
âI canât understand,â said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his brotherâs clumsiness, âI canât understand how anyone can be so absolutely devoid of political tact. Thatâs where we Russians are so deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him youâre ami cochon, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now ... Iâm not making a friend of him; heâs asked me to dinner, and Iâm not going; but heâs one of our sideâwhy make an enemy of him? Then you ask Nevyedovsky if heâs going to stand. Thatâs not a thing to do.â
âOh, I donât understand it at all! And itâs all such nonsense,â Levin answered gloomily.
âYou say itâs all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do with it, you make a muddle.â
Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.
The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in the air of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not been called upon by all to stand, had still made up his mind to stand. All was silence in the room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the captain of the guards, Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov, would now be balloted for as marshal of the province.
The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls, from their tables to the high table, and the election began.
âPut it in the right side,â whispered Stepan Arkadyevitch, as with his brother Levin followed the marshal of his district to the table. But Levin had forgotten by now the calculations that had been explained to him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in saying âthe right side.â Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went up, he held the ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong, just at the box he changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left. An adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It was no good for him to use his insight.
Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard. Then a single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against. The marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was noise and eager movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the nobles thronged round him, congratulating him.
âWell, now is it over?â Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.
âItâs only just beginning,â Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey Ivanovitch with a smile. âSome other candidate may receive more votes than the marshal.â
Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember that there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored to think what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to get out of the crowd.
As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently needed him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he saw the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to have something, and Levin agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the waiters of their former masters, Levin, not wishing to go back to the hall, where it was all so distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through the galleries. The galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning over the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers. Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried the marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In one group Levin heard his brotherâs praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:
âHow glad I am I heard Koznishev! Itâs worth losing oneâs dinner. Heâs exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it! Thereâs not one of you in the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel, and heâs not so eloquent by a long way.â
Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began looking and listening.
All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers according to their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in a uniform, who shouted in a loud, high voice:
âAs a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the province we call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!â A dead silence followed, and then a weak old voice was heard: âDeclined!â
âWe call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol,â the voice began again.
âDeclined!â a high boyish voice replied.
Again it began, and again âDeclined.â And so it went on for about an hour. Levin, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and listened. At first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure that he could not make it out he began to be bored. Then recalling all the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen on all the faces, he felt sad; he made up his mind to go, and went downstairs. As he passed through the entry to the galleries he met a dejected high school boy walking up and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a coupleâa lady running quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy prosecutor.
âI told you you werenât late,â the deputy prosecutor was saying at the moment when Levin moved aside to let the lady pass.
Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in his waistcoat pocket for the number of his overcoat, when the secretary overtook him.
âThis way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievitch; they are voting.â
The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly denied all idea of standing. Levin went up to the door of the room; it was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out.
âI canât stand any more of it,â said one red-faced gentleman.
After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.
âI told you not to let anyone out!â he cried to the doorkeeper.
âI let someone in, your excellency!â
âMercy on us!â and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his legs staggering in his white trousers.
Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair, which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as they had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as they had followed Snetkov when he was elected.
The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that day with Vronsky.
Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the country and wanted to show Anna his right to independence, and also to repay Sviazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he had taken for Vronsky at the district council election, but chiefly in order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and landowner which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least expected that the election would so interest him, so keenly excite him, and that he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in the circle of the nobility of the province, but his success was unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he had already obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to his wealth and reputation, the capital house in the town lent him by his old friend Shirkov, who had a post in the department of finances and was director of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Vronsky had brought from the country, and his friendship with the governor, who was a schoolfellow of Vronskyâsâa schoolfellow he had patronized and protected indeed. But what contributed more than all to his success was his direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly made the majority of the noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed haughtiness. He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical gentleman married to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had Ă propos de bottes poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had become his adherent. He saw clearly, and other people recognized it, too, that he had done a great deal to secure the success of Nevyedovsky. And now at his own table, celebrating Nevyedovskyâs election, he was experiencing an agreeable sense of triumph over the success of his candidate. The election itself had so fascinated him that, if he could succeed in getting married during the next three years, he began to think of standing himselfâmuch as after winning a race ridden by a jockey, he had longed to ride a race himself.
Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Vronsky sat at the head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a general of high rank. To all the rest he was the chief man in the province, who had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a feeling of respect and even of awe in many people, as Vronsky saw; to Vronsky he was little Katka Maslovâthat had been his nickname in the Pagesâ Corpsâwhom he felt to be shy and tried to mettre Ă son aise. On the left hand sat Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and malignant face. With him Vronsky was simple and deferential.
Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest person, as he said, was on the side of todayâs success and was rejoicing over it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the tearful discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky, that his excellency would have to select another more complicated method of auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely described how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshalâs ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless the new marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.
Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: âour marshal,â and âyour excellency.â
This was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called âMadameâ and her husbandâs name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone.
After dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was in high good humor, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram: âNevyedovsky elected by twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people.â He dictated it aloud, saying: âWe must let them share our rejoicing.â Darya Alexandrovna, getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a weakness after dining for faire jouer le tĂ©lĂ©graphe.
Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The partyâsome twentyâhad been selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of âour amiable host.â
Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone in the provinces.
Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up.
âThereâll be a ball, and youâll see the belle of the province. Worth seeing, really.â
âNot in my line,â Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase. But he smiled, and promised to come.
Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking, Vronskyâs valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.
âFrom Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,â he said with a significant expression.
âAstonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,â said one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky, frowning, read the letter.
The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her yet.
The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him. âAnnie is very ill, the doctor says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Princess Varvara is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better of it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know what to do.â
The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter ill, and this hostile tone.
The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome love to which he had to return struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home.
Before Vronskyâs departure for the elections, Anna had reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home, might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her, and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.
In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same pointâthe sense of her own humiliation. âHe has the right to go away when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,â she thought. âThat glance shows the beginning of indifference.â
And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he ceased to love her. It is true there was still one means; not to keep himâfor that she wanted nothing more than his loveâbut to be nearer to him, to be in such a position that he would not leave her. That means was divorce and marriage. And she began to long for that, and made up her mind to agree to it the first time he or Stiva approached her on the subject.
Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five days that he was to be at the elections.
Walks, conversation with Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital, and, most of all, readingâreading of one book after anotherâfilled up her time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without him, she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of him and of what he was doing there, just at that time her little girl was taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that did not distract her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However hard she tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love was beyond her powers. Towards the evening of that day, still alone, Anna was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the town, but on second thoughts wrote him the contradictory letter that Vronsky received, and without reading it through, sent it off by a special messenger. The next morning she received his letter and regretted her own. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had flung at her at parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not dangerously ill. But still she was glad she had written to him. At this moment Anna was positively admitting to herself that she was a burden to him, that he would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to her, and in spite of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of her, but he would be here with her, so that she would see him, would know of every action he took.
She was sitting in the drawing-room near a lamp, with a new volume of Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachmanâs shout and the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Princess Varvara, playing patience, confirmed this, and Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.
âWell, how is Annie?â he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as she ran down to him.
He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm over-boot.
âOh, she is better.â
âAnd you?â he said, shaking himself.
She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never taking her eyes off him.
âWell, Iâm glad,â he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress, which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so dreaded settled upon his face.
âWell, Iâm glad. And are you well?â he said, wiping his damp beard with his handkerchief and kissing her hand.
âNever mind,â she thought, âonly let him be here, and so long as heâs here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.â
The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Princess Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking morphine in his absence.
âWhat am I to do? I couldnât sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When heâs here I never take itâhardly ever.â
He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit questions to bring him to what gave him most pleasureâhis own success. She told him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told him was of the most cheerful description.
But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:
âTell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didnât believe me?â
As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings were to her, he had not forgiven her for that.
âYes,â he said, âthe letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then you thought of coming yourself.â
âIt was all the truth.â
âOh, I donât doubt it.â
âYes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see.â
âNot for one moment. Iâm only vexed, thatâs true, that you seem somehow unwilling to admit that there are duties....â
âThe duty of going to a concert....â
âBut we wonât talk about it,â he said.
âWhy not talk about it?â she said.
âI only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Now, for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the house.... Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? Donât you know that I canât live without you?â
âIf so,â said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, âit means that you are sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men do....â
âAnna, thatâs cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life.â
But she did not hear him.
âIf you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we must separate or else live together.â
âWhy, you know, thatâs my one desire. But for that....â
âWe must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on like this.... But I will come with you to Moscow.â
âYou talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much as never to be parted from you,â said Vronsky, smiling.
But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.
She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.
âIf so, itâs a calamity!â that glance told her. It was a momentâs impression, but she never forgot it.
Anna wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and towards the end of November, taking leave of Princess Varvara, who wanted to go to Petersburg, she went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an answer from Alexey Alexandrovitch, and after that the divorce, they now established themselves together like married people.