position. She pines and pines away. He doesn’t understand that she’s
one of those women who can’t trifle with their feelings. One of two
things: either let him take her away, act with energy, or give her a
divorce. This is stifling her.”
“Yes, yes ... just so....” Oblonsky said, sighing. “That’s what I’ve
come for. At least not solely for that ... I’ve been made a
_Kammerherr_; of course, one has to say thank you. But the chief thing
was having to settle this.”
“Well, God help you!” said Betsy.
After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing her
hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and murmuring
to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know whether to laugh or
be angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his sister. He found her in
tears.
Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits, Stepan
Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympathetic,
poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her mood. He asked her
how she was, and how she had spent the morning.
“Very, very miserably. Today and this morning and all past days and
days to come,” she said.
“I think you’re giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself, you
must look life in the face. I know it’s hard, but....”
“I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,” Anna
began suddenly, “but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with him.
Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical effect on me, it
makes me beside myself. I can’t, I can’t live with him. What am I to
do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn’t be more
unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could
never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good
man, a splendid man, that I’m not worth his little finger, still I hate
him. I hate him for his generosity. And there’s nothing left for me
but....”
She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not let her
finish.
“You are ill and overwrought,” he said; “believe me, you’re
exaggerating dreadfully. There’s nothing so terrible in it.”
And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
place, having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile
(the smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so
much of sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that his smile did not
wound, but softened and soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles
were as soothing and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.
“No, Stiva,” she said, “I’m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can’t say
yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m
an overstrained string that must snap. But it’s not ended yet ... and
it will have a fearful end.”
“No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little.
There’s no position from which there is no way of escape.”
“I have thought, and thought. Only one....”
Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape in
her thought was death, and he would not let her say it.
“Not at all,” he said. “Listen to me. You can’t see your own position
as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.” Again he smiled
discreetly his almond-oil smile. “I’ll begin from the beginning. You
married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without
love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s admit.”
“A fearful mistake!” said Anna.
“But I repeat, it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the
misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but
that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and
forgave it.” He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object,
but she made no answer. “That’s so. Now the question is: can you go on
living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?”
“I know nothing, nothing.”
“But you said yourself that you can’t endure him.”
“No, I didn’t say so. I deny it. I can’t tell, I don’t know anything
about it.”
“Yes, but let....”
“You can’t understand. I feel I’m lying head downwards in a sort of
pit, but I ought not to save myself. And I can’t....”
“Never mind, we’ll slip something under and pull you out. I understand
you: I understand that you can’t take it on yourself to express your
wishes, your feelings.”
“There’s nothing, nothing I wish ... except for it to be all over.”
“But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any
less than on you? You’re wretched, he’s wretched, and what good can
come of it? while divorce would solve the difficulty completely.” With
some effort Stepan Arkadyevitch brought out his central idea, and
looked significantly at her.
She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the
look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw
that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her
unattainable happiness.
“I’m awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could
arrange things!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly. “Don’t
speak, don’t say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I’m
going to him.”
Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.
Chapter 22
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression with
which he used to take his presidential chair at his board, walked into
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s room. Alexey Alexandrovitch was walking about
his room with his hands behind his back, thinking of just what Stepan
Arkadyevitch had been discussing with his wife.
“I’m not interrupting you?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, on the sight of
his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of embarrassment
unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he took out a cigarette
case he had just bought that opened in a new way, and sniffing the
leather, took a cigarette out of it.
“No. Do you want anything?” Alexey Alexandrovitch asked without
eagerness.
“Yes, I wished ... I wanted ... yes, I wanted to talk to you,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an unaccustomed timidity.
This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not believe
it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he was meaning to
do was wrong.
Stepan Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the timidity that
had come over him.
“I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere affection
and respect for you,” he said, reddening.
Alexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face struck
Stepan Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting sacrifice.
“I intended ... I wanted to have a little talk with you about my sister
and your mutual position,” he said, still struggling with an
unaccustomed constraint.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his brother-in-law,
and without answering went up to the table, took from it an unfinished
letter, and handed it to his brother-in-law.
“I think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had begun
writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that my presence
irritates her,” he said, as he gave him the letter.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous surprise
at the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and began to read.
“I see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me to
believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I don’t blame
you, and God is my witness that on seeing you at the time of your
illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all that had passed
between us and to begin a new life. I do not regret, and shall never
regret, what I have done; but I have desired one thing—your good, the
good of your soul—and now I see I have not attained that. Tell me
yourself what will give you true happiness and peace to your soul. I
put myself entirely in your hands, and trust to your feeling of what’s
right.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same surprise
continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to say. This
silence was so awkward for both of them that Stepan Arkadyevitch’s lips
began twitching nervously, while he still gazed without speaking at
Karenin’s face.
“That’s what I wanted to say to her,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
turning away.
“Yes, yes....” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for the
tears that were choking him.
“Yes, yes, I understand you,” he brought out at last.
“I want to know what she would like,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not a
judge,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. “She is crushed,
simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read this letter, she
would be incapable of saying anything, she would only hang her head
lower than ever.”
“Yes, but what’s to be done in that case? how explain, how find out her
wishes?”
“If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you
to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the
position.”
“So you consider it must be ended?” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted
him. “But how?” he added, with a gesture of his hands before his eyes
not usual with him. “I see no possible way out of it.”
“There is some way of getting out of every position,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. “There was a time
when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced now that you
cannot make each other happy....”
“Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree to
everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting out of
our position?”
“If you care to know my opinion,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with the
same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he had been
talking to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that Alexey
Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously swayed by
it, was ready to believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.
“She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one
thing she might desire,” he went on, “that is the cessation of your
relations and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in
your position what’s essential is the formation of a new attitude to
one another. And that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both
sides.”
“Divorce,” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aversion.
“Yes, I imagine that divorce—yes, divorce,” Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. “That is from every point of view the most
rational course for married people who find themselves in the position
you are in. What can be done if married people find that life is
impossible for them together? That may always happen.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.
“There’s only one point to be considered: is either of the parties
desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from constraint.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something to
himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to Stepan
Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over thousands of
times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed to him utterly
impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew by this time, seemed
to him now out of the question, because the sense of his own dignity
and respect for religion forbade his taking upon himself a fictitious
charge of adultery, and still more suffering his wife, pardoned and
beloved by him, to be caught in the fact and put to public shame.
Divorce appeared to him impossible also on other still more weighty
grounds.
What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him with
his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother would have her
own illegitimate family, in which his position as a stepson and his
education would not be good. Keep him with him? He knew that would be
an act of vengeance on his part, and that he did not want. But apart
from this, what more than all made divorce seem impossible to Alexey
Alexandrovitch was, that by consenting to a divorce he would be
completely ruining Anna. The saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow,
that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking of himself, and not
considering that by this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk
into his heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,
with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his own way.
To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant in his thoughts
to take from himself the last tie that bound him to life—the children
whom he loved; and to take from her the last prop that stayed her on
the path of right, to thrust her down to her ruin. If she were
divorced, he knew she would join her life to Vronsky’s, and their tie
would be an illegitimate and criminal one, since a wife, by the
interpretation of the ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her
husband was living. “She will join him, and in a year or two he will
throw her over, or she will form a new tie,” thought Alexey
Alexandrovitch. “And I, by agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to
blame for her ruin.” He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and
was convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as Stepan
Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible. He did not believe a
single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him; to every word he had a
thousand objections to make, but he listened to him, feeling that his
words were the expression of that mighty brutal force which controlled
his life and to which he would have to submit.
“The only question is on what terms you agree to give her a divorce.
She does not want anything, does not dare ask you for anything, she
leaves it all to your generosity.”
“My God, my God! what for?” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, remembering
the details of divorce proceedings in which the husband took the blame
on himself, and with just the same gesture with which Vronsky had done
the same, he hid his face for shame in his hands.
“You are distressed, I understand that. But if you think it over....”
“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,”
thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Yes, yes!” he cried in a shrill voice. “I will take the disgrace on
myself, I will give up even my son, but ... but wouldn’t it be better
to let it alone? Still you may do as you like....”
And turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he sat
down on a chair at the window. There was bitterness, there was shame in
his heart, but with bitterness and shame he felt joy and emotion at the
height of his own meekness.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was touched. He was silent for a space.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch, believe me, she appreciates your generosity,”
he said. “But it seems it was the will of God,” he added, and as he
said it felt how foolish a remark it was, and with difficulty repressed
a smile at his own foolishness.
Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made some reply, but tears stopped
him.
“This is an unhappy fatality, and one must accept it as such. I accept
the calamity as an accomplished fact, and am doing my best to help both
her and you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
When he went out of his brother-in-law’s room he was touched, but that
did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully brought the
matter to a conclusion, for he felt certain Alexey Alexandrovitch would
not go back on his words. To this satisfaction was added the fact that
an idea had just struck him for a riddle turning on his successful
achievement, that when the affair was over he would ask his wife and
most intimate friends. He put this riddle into two or three different
ways. “But I’ll work it out better than that,” he said to himself with
a smile.
Chapter 23
Vronsky’s wound had been a dangerous one, though it did not touch the
heart, and for several days he had lain between life and death. The
first time he was able to speak, Varya, his brother’s wife, was alone
in the room.
“Varya,” he said, looking sternly at her, “I shot myself by accident.
And please never speak of it, and tell everyone so. Or else it’s too
ridiculous.”
Without answering his words, Varya bent over him, and with a delighted
smile gazed into his face. His eyes were clear, not feverish; but their
expression was stern.
“Thank God!” she said. “You’re not in pain?”
“A little here.” He pointed to his breast.
“Then let me change your bandages.”
In silence, stiffening his broad jaws, he looked at her while she
bandaged him up. When she had finished he said:
“I’m not delirious. Please manage that there may be no talk of my
having shot myself on purpose.”
“No one does say so. Only I hope you won’t shoot yourself by accident
any more,” she said, with a questioning smile.
“Of course I won’t, but it would have been better....”
And he smiled gloomily.
In spite of these words and this smile, which so frightened Varya, when
the inflammation was over and he began to recover, he felt that he was
completely free from one part of his misery. By his action he had, as
it were, washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. He
could now think calmly of Alexey Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his
magnanimity, but he did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides,
he got back again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the
possibility of looking men in the face again without shame, and he
could live in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not
pluck out of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was
the regret, amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever. That
now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was bound to
renounce her, and never in future to stand between her with her
repentance and her husband, he had firmly decided in his heart; but he
could not tear out of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he
could not erase from his memory those moments of happiness that he had
so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.
Serpuhovskoy had planned his appointment at Tashkend, and Vronsky
agreed to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But the
nearer the time of departure came, the bitterer was the sacrifice he
was making to what he thought his duty.
His wound had healed, and he was driving about making preparations for
his departure for Tashkend.
“To see her once and then to bury myself, to die,” he thought, and as
he was paying farewell visits, he uttered this thought to Betsy.
Charged with this commission, Betsy had gone to Anna, and brought him
back a negative reply.
“So much the better,” thought Vronsky, when he received the news. “It
was a weakness, which would have shattered what strength I have left.”
Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning, and announced that
she had heard through Oblonsky as a positive fact that Alexey
Alexandrovitch had agreed to a divorce, and that therefore Vronsky
could see Anna.
Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his flat, forgetting
all his resolutions, without asking when he could see her, where her
husband was, Vronsky drove straight to the Karenins’. He ran up the
stairs seeing no one and nothing, and with a rapid step, almost
breaking into a run, he went into her room. And without considering,
without noticing whether there was anyone in the room or not, he flung
his arms round her, and began to cover her face, her hands, her neck
with kisses.
Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she
would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his
passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it
was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a
long while she could say nothing.
“Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours,” she said at last,
pressing his hands to her bosom.
“So it had to be,” he said. “So long as we live, it must be so. I know
it now.”
“That’s true,” she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing his
head. “Still there is something terrible in it after all that has
happened.”
“It will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our love, if
it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something
terrible in it,” he said, lifting his head and parting his strong teeth
in a smile.
And she could not but respond with a smile—not to his words, but to the
love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled cheeks and
cropped head with it.
“I don’t know you with this short hair. You’ve grown so pretty. A boy.
But how pale you are!”
“Yes, I’m very weak,” she said, smiling. And her lips began trembling
again.
“We’ll go to Italy; you will get strong,” he said.
“Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your
family with you?” she said, looking close into his eyes.
“It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise.”
“Stiva says that _he_ has agreed to everything, but I can’t accept
_his_ generosity,” she said, looking dreamily past Vronsky’s face. “I
don’t want a divorce; it’s all the same to me now. Only I don’t know
what he will decide about Seryozha.”
He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she could
remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all matter?
“Don’t speak of that, don’t think of it,” he said, turning her hand in
his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still she did not
look at him.
“Oh, why didn’t I die! it would have been better,” she said, and silent
tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as not to
wound him.
To decline the flattering and dangerous appointment at Tashkend would
have been, Vronsky had till then considered, disgraceful and
impossible. But now, without an instant’s consideration, he declined
it, and observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted quarters at this
step, he immediately retired from the army.
A month later Alexey Alexandrovitch was left alone with his son in his
house at Petersburg, while Anna and Vronsky had gone abroad, not having
obtained a divorce, but having absolutely declined all idea of one.
PART FIVE
Chapter 1
Princess Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for
the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not
half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could
not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting
it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky’s was seriously
ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still
longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two
parts—a larger and smaller trousseau—the princess consented to have the
wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part
of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made
later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of
giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this
arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as,
immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the
country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be
wanted.
Levin still continued in the same delirious condition in which it
seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and sole
aim of all existence, and that he need not now think or care about
anything, that everything was being done and would be done for him by
others. He had not even plans and aims for the future, he left its
arrangement to others, knowing that everything would be delightful. His
brother Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and the princess guided
him in doing what he had to do. All he did was to agree entirely with
everything suggested to him. His brother raised money for him, the
princess advised him to leave Moscow after the wedding. Stepan
Arkadyevitch advised him to go abroad. He agreed to everything. “Do
what you choose, if it amuses you. I’m happy, and my happiness can be
no greater and no less for anything you do,” he thought. When he told
Kitty of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s advice that they should go abroad, he
was much surprised that she did not agree to this, and had some
definite requirements of her own in regard to their future. She knew
Levin had work he loved in the country. She did not, as he saw,
understand this work, she did not even care to understand it. But that
did not prevent her from regarding it as a matter of great importance.
And then she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to
go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but to the place where
their home would be. This definitely expressed purpose astonished
Levin. But since he did not care either way, he immediately asked
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though it were his duty, to go down to the
country and to arrange everything there to the best of his ability with
the taste of which he had so much.
“But I say,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come
back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young
people’s arrival, “have you a certificate of having been at
confession?”
“No. But what of it?”
“You can’t be married without it.”
“_Aïe, aïe, aïe!_” cried Levin. “Why, I believe it’s nine years since
I’ve taken the sacrament! I never thought of it.”
“You’re a pretty fellow!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, “and you
call me a Nihilist! But this won’t do, you know. You must take the
sacrament.”
“When? There are four days left now.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Levin had to go to
confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of
others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part
in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of
feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was
not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now,
in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have
to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But
though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the
possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating,
Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question.
“Besides, what is it to you—two days? And he’s an awfully nice clever
old fellow. He’ll pull the tooth out for you so gently, you won’t
notice it.”
Standing at the first litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his
youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed
through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen.
But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He
attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of
meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt that he could not
do that either. Levin found himself, like the majority of his
contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe
he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it
was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the
significance of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as
an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the
sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at
doing what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice
told him, was therefore false and wrong.
During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to
attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then
feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried
not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and
memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during
this idle time of standing in church.
He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the midnight
service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and without
having tea went at eight o’clock in the morning to the church for the
morning service and the confession.
There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and
the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two
distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once
going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the
reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same
words, “Lord, have mercy on us!” which resounded with an echo, Levin
felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be
touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so
standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs,
neither listening nor examining what was said. “It’s wonderful what
expression there is in her hand,” he thought, remembering how they had
been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk
about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand
on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as
she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had
examined the lines on the pink palm. “Have mercy on us again!” thought
Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of
the deacon’s back bowing before him. “She took my hand then and
examined the lines. ‘You’ve got a splendid hand,’ she said.” And he
looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. “Yes, now it
will soon be over,” he thought. “No, it seems to be beginning again,”
he thought, listening to the prayers. “No, it’s just ending: there he
is bowing down to the ground. That’s always at the end.”
The deacon’s hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note
unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the
register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of
the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out
thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to
stir in Levin’s head, but he made haste to drive it away. “It will come
right somehow,” he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went
up the steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a
little old man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured
eyes, was standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a
missal. With a slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers
in the official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the
ground and turned, facing Levin.
“Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession,” he said,
pointing to the crucifix. “Do you believe in all the doctrines of the
Holy Apostolic Church?” the priest went on, turning his eyes away from
Levin’s face and folding his hands under his stole.
“I have doubted, I doubt everything,” said Levin in a voice that jarred
on himself, and he ceased speaking.
The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and
closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:
“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God
in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?” he added,
without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time.
“My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most
part I am in doubt.”
“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,” the priest repeated the
same words. “What do you doubt about principally?”
“I doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence
of God,” Levin could not help saying, and he was horrified at the
impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin’s words did not, it
seemed, make much impression on the priest.
“What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?” he said
hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile.
Levin did not speak.
“What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?”
the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. “Who has decked the
heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its
beauty? How explain it without the Creator?” he said, looking
inquiringly at Levin.
Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical
discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a
direct answer to the question.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?” the
priest said, with good-humored perplexity.
“I don’t understand it at all,” said Levin, blushing, and feeling that
his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid
in such a position.
“Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and
prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and
we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God,” he repeated
hurriedly.
The priest paused for some time, as though meditating.
“You’re about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son
in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?” he resumed, with a smile. “An
excellent young lady.”
“Yes,” answered Levin, blushing for the priest. “What does he want to
ask me about this at confession for?” he thought.
And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:
“You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with
offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if
you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to
infidelity?” he said, with gentle reproachfulness. “If you love your
child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor
for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual
enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make
him when the innocent babe asks you: ‘Papa! who made all that enchants
me in this world—the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the
grass?’ Can you say to him: ‘I don’t know’? You cannot but know, since
the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child
will ask you: ‘What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?’ What will
you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you
leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That’s not
right,” he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and
looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes.
Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter
upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no one had ever
asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask him those
questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them.
“You are entering upon a time of life,” pursued the priest, “when you
must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His
mercy aid you and have mercy on you!” he concluded. “Our Lord and God,
Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His loving-kindness,
forgives this child....” and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the
priest blessed him and dismissed him.
On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the
awkward position being over and having been got through without his
having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory
that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had not been at all so
stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it
that must be cleared up.
“Of course, not now,” thought Levin, “but some day later on.” Levin
felt more than ever now that there was something not clear and not
clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same
position which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for
which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.
Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly’s, and was in very
high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the state of excitement
in which he found himself, he said that he was happy like a dog being
trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea,
and done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps
up to the table and the windows in its delight.
Chapter 2
On the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the
princess and Darya Alexandrovna insisted on strictly keeping all the
customs), Levin did not see his betrothed, and dined at his hotel with
three bachelor friends, casually brought together at his rooms. These
were Sergey Ivanovitch, Katavasov, a university friend, now professor
of natural science, whom Levin had met in the street and insisted on
taking home with him, and Tchirikov, his best man, a Moscow
conciliation-board judge, Levin’s companion in his bear-hunts. The
dinner was a very merry one: Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest
mood, and was much amused by Katavasov’s originality. Katavasov,
feeling his originality was appreciated and understood, made the most
of it. Tchirikov always gave a lively and good-humored support to
conversation of any sort.
“See, now,” said Katavasov, drawling his words from a habit acquired in
the lecture-room, “what a capable fellow was our friend Konstantin
Dmitrievitch. I’m not speaking of present company, for he’s absent. At
the time he left the university he was fond of science, took an
interest in humanity; now one-half of his abilities is devoted to
deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit.”
“A more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw,” said
Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Oh, no, I’m not an enemy of matrimony. I’m in favor of division of
labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people while the
rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That’s how I look at
it. To muddle up two trades is the error of the amateur; I’m not one of
their number.”
“How happy I shall be when I hear that you’re in love!” said Levin.
“Please invite me to the wedding.”
“I’m in love now.”
“Yes, with a cuttlefish! You know,” Levin turned to his brother,
“Mihail Semyonovitch is writing a work on the digestive organs of
the....”
“Now, make a muddle of it! It doesn’t matter what about. And the fact
is, I certainly do love cuttlefish.”
“But that’s no hindrance to your loving your wife.”
“The cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance.”
“Why so?”
“Oh, you’ll see! You care about farming, hunting,—well, you’d better
look out!”
“Arhip was here today; he said there were a lot of elks in Prudno, and
two bears,” said Tchirikov.
“Well, you must go and get them without me.”
“Ah, that’s the truth,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “And you may say
good-bye to bear-hunting for the future—your wife won’t allow it!”
Levin smiled. The picture of his wife not letting him go was so
pleasant that he was ready to renounce the delights of looking upon
bears forever.
“Still, it’s a pity they should get those two bears without you. Do you
remember last time at Hapilovo? That was a delightful hunt!” said
Tchirikov.
Levin had not the heart to disillusion him of the notion that there
could be something delightful apart from her, and so said nothing.
“There’s some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor
life,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “However happy you may be, you must
regret your freedom.”
“And confess there is a feeling that you want to jump out of the
window, like Gogol’s bridegroom?”
“Of course there is, but it isn’t confessed,” said Katavasov, and he
broke into loud laughter.
“Oh, well, the window’s open. Let’s start off this instant to Tver!
There’s a big she-bear; one can go right up to the lair. Seriously,
let’s go by the five o’clock! And here let them do what they like,”
said Tchirikov, smiling.
“Well, now, on my honor,” said Levin, smiling, “I can’t find in my
heart that feeling of regret for my freedom.”
“Yes, there’s such a chaos in your heart just now that you can’t find
anything there,” said Katavasov. “Wait a bit, when you set it to rights
a little, you’ll find it!”
“No; if so, I should have felt a little, apart from my feeling” (he
could not say love before them) “and happiness, a certain regret at
losing my freedom.... On the contrary, I am glad at the very loss of my
freedom.”
“Awful! It’s a hopeless case!” said Katavasov. “Well, let’s drink to
his recovery, or wish that a hundredth part of his dreams may be
realized—and that would be happiness such as never has been seen on
earth!”
Soon after dinner the guests went away to be in time to be dressed for
the wedding.
When he was left alone, and recalled the conversation of these bachelor
friends, Levin asked himself: had he in his heart that regret for his
freedom of which they had spoken? He smiled at the question. “Freedom!
What is freedom for? Happiness is only in loving and wishing her
wishes, thinking her thoughts, that is to say, not freedom at
all—that’s happiness!”
“But do I know her ideas, her wishes, her feelings?” some voice
suddenly whispered to him. The smile died away from his face, and he
grew thoughtful. And suddenly a strange feeling came upon him. There
came over him a dread and doubt—doubt of everything.
“What if she does not love me? What if she’s marrying me simply to be
married? What if she doesn’t see herself what she’s doing?” he asked
himself. “She may come to her senses, and only when she is being
married realize that she does not and cannot love me.” And strange,
most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of
Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen
her with Vronsky had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him
everything.
He jumped up quickly. “No, this can’t go on!” he said to himself in
despair. “I’ll go to her; I’ll ask her; I’ll say for the last time: we
are free, and hadn’t we better stay so? Anything’s better than endless
misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!” With despair in his heart and bitter
anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the
hotel and drove to her house.
He found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest and
making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses
of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor.
“Ah!” she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. “Kostya!
Konstantin Dmitrievitch!” (These latter days she used these names
almost alternately.) “I didn’t expect you! I’m going through my
wardrobe to see what’s for whom....”
“Oh! that’s very nice!” he said gloomily, looking at the maid.
“You can go, Dunyasha, I’ll call you presently,” said Kitty. “Kostya,
what’s the matter?” she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name
as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face,
agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her.
“Kitty! I’m in torture. I can’t suffer alone,” he said with despair in
his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes.
He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come
of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him
herself. “I’ve come to say that there’s still time. This can all be
stopped and set right.”
“What? I don’t understand. What is the matter?”
“What I have said a thousand times over, and can’t help thinking ...
that I’m not worthy of you. You couldn’t consent to marry me. Think a
little. You’ve made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can’t love
me.... If ... better say so,” he said, not looking at her. “I shall be
wretched. Let people say what they like; anything’s better than
misery.... Far better now while there’s still time....”
“I don’t understand,” she answered, panic-stricken; “you mean you want
to give it up ... don’t want it?”
“Yes, if you don’t love me.”
“You’re out of your mind!” she cried, turning crimson with vexation.
But his face was so piteous, that she restrained her vexation, and
flinging some clothes off an armchair, she sat down beside him. “What
are you thinking? tell me all.”
“I am thinking you can’t love me. What can you love me for?”
“My God! what can I do?...” she said, and burst into tears.
“Oh! what have I done?” he cried, and kneeling before her, he fell to
kissing her hands.
When the princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them
completely reconciled. Kitty had not simply assured him that she loved
him, but had gone so far—in answer to his question, what she loved him
for—as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she
understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and
because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly
clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side
on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty’s wanting to
give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed
to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but
Dunyasha must have the blue one.
“How is it you don’t see? She’s a brunette, and it won’t suit her....
I’ve worked it all out.”
Hearing why he had come, the princess was half humorously, half
seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to hinder
Kitty’s hair-dressing, as Charles the hair-dresser was just coming.
“As it is, she’s been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks,
and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense,” she said to
him. “Get along with you, my dear!”
Levin, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his hotel. His
brother, Darya Alexandrovna, and Stepan Arkadyevitch, all in full
dress, were waiting for him to bless him with the holy picture. There
was no time to lose. Darya Alexandrovna had to drive home again to
fetch her curled and pomaded son, who was to carry the holy pictures
after the bride. Then a carriage had to be sent for the best man, and
another that would take Sergey Ivanovitch away would have to be sent
back.... Altogether there were a great many most complicated matters to
be considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that there must
be no delay, as it was already half-past six.
Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the holy
picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn pose beside
his wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin to bow down to the
ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him
three times; Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and immediately was in a
hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the
destinations of the various carriages.
“Come, I’ll tell you how we’ll manage: you drive in our carriage to
fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he’ll be so good, will drive there
and then send his carriage.”
“Of course; I shall be delighted.”
“We’ll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Yes,” answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for
him to dress.
Chapter 3
A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church
lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into
the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling,
and peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the
street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood
at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were
continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their
trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking
into the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted,
and all the candles before the holy pictures. The gilt on the red
ground of the holy picture-stand, and the gilt relief on the pictures,
and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the
floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps
of the altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and
surplices—all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm
church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms and
broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders and arms
and long gloves, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed
strangely in the high cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of
the opened door the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody
looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the
door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a
belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the
right, or a spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer,
and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests
and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of
anticipation.
At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late.
Then they began to look more and more often towards the door, and to
talk of whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began
to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look
as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in
conversation.
The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time,
coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in their frames. In
the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and
blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the
beadle and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not
come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an
embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At
last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, “It really is
strange, though!” and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly
expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom’s
best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long
ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath
of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing-room of the
Shtcherbatskys’ house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her
bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over
half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from the best man that her
bridegroom was at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat,
was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting
his head out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in
the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he
came back in despair, and frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was smoking serenely.
“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.
“Yes, it is stupid,” Stepan Arkadyevitch assented, smiling soothingly.
“But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”
“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “And these
fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!” he said, looking at the
crumpled front of his shirt. “And what if the things have been taken on
to the railway station!” he roared in desperation.
“Then you must put on mine.”
“I ought to have done so long ago, if at all.”
“It’s not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will _come
round_.”
The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his
old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that
was wanted.
“But the shirt!” cried Levin.
“You’ve got a shirt on,” Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.
Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving
instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the
Shtcherbatskys’ house, from which the young people were to set out the
same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit.
The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question
with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the
Shtcherbatskys’. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back;
everything was shut up—it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s and brought a shirt—it was impossibly wide and short.
They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys’ to unpack the things. The
bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down
his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor,
and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to
Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.
“Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,” said
Kouzma.
Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking
at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
“You won’t help matters like this,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. “It will come round,
it will come round ... I tell you.”
Chapter 4
“They’ve come!” “Here he is!” “Which one?” “Rather young, eh?” “Why, my
dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!” were the comments in the
crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her
into the church.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the
guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing
and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not
nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think
so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and
white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a
maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in
front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she
looked better than ever—not because these flowers, this veil, this gown
from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the
elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet
face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic
expression of guileless truthfulness.
“I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled
to him.
“It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he
said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who
came up to him.
“This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.
“Yes, yes!” answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking
about.
“Now, Kostya, you have to decide,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air
of mock dismay, “a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the
humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the
candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been
lighted? It’s a matter of ten roubles,” he added, relaxing his lips
into a smile. “I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.”
Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.
“Well, how’s it to be then?—unlighted or lighted candles? that’s the
question.”
“Yes, yes, unlighted.”
“Oh, I’m very glad. The question’s decided!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling. “How silly men are, though, in this position,” he said to
Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to
his bride.
“Kitty, mind you’re the first to step on the carpet,” said Countess
Nordston, coming up. “You’re a nice person!” she said to Levin.
“Aren’t you frightened, eh?” said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.
“Are you cold? You’re pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,” said Kitty’s
sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly
set straight the flowers on her head.
Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and
then laughed unnaturally.
Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.
Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the
priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart
of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did
not hear what the priest said.
“Take the bride’s hand and lead her up,” the best man said to Levin.
It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of
him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin
again—because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong
arm—till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without
changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When
at last he had taken the bride’s hand in the correct way, the priest
walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The
crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk
and a rustle of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the bride’s
train. The church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard
falling from the candles.
The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long
silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with
something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under
the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something, and
making a sign to Levin, walked back again.
The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them
sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the
bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Levin.
He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom,
sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the
bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid
the crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the
candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.
“Can it be true?” thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride.
Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely
perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of
his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped
collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that
a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long
glove shook as it held the candle.
All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and
relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position—all suddenly passed
away and he was filled with joy and dread.
The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly
locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward,
and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.
“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the solemn syllables rang out slowly
one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.
“Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be,” the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping
voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of
the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to
the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested
for an instant, and slowly died away.
They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for
salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for
the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their
troth.
“Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we
beseech Thee,” the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the
head deacon.
Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. “How did they guess that
it is help, just help that one wants?” he thought, recalling all his
fears and doubts of late. “What do I know? what can I do in this
fearful business,” he thought, “without help? Yes, it is help I want
now.”
When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the
priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: “Eternal God, that
joinest together in love them that were separate,” he read in a gentle,
piping voice: “who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot
be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their
descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants,
Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works.
For gracious and merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and ever shall be.”
“Amen!” the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.
“‘Joinest together in love them that were separate.’ What deep meaning
in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this
moment,” thought Levin. “Is she feeling the same as I?”
And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a
mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the
service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them
and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast
and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion
of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in
her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to
her. On the day when in the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street
she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him
without a word—on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart
a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new,
utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually
going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the
utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and
hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her,
to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and
repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the
while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old
life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter
insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits,
to the people she had loved, who loved her—to her mother, who was
wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then
dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this
indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this
indifference. She could not frame a thought, not a wish apart from life
with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even
picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread
and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold—anticipation and
uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life—all was
ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have
terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change had been
wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final
sanction of what had long been completed in her heart.
Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took
Kitty’s little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first
joint of his finger. “The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth
to the servant of God, Ekaterina.” And putting his big ring on Kitty’s
touchingly weak, pink little finger, the priest said the same thing.
And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to
do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in
a whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having signed
the rings with the cross, the priest handed Kitty the big ring, and
Levin the little one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings
from hand to hand, still without doing what was expected.
Dolly, Tchirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set them
right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but
the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did
not change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they
looked more grave and deeply moved than before, and the smile with
which Stepan Arkadyevitch whispered to them that now they would each
put on their own ring died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any
smile would jar on them.
“Thou who didst from the beginning create male and female,” the priest
read after the exchange of rings, “from Thee woman was given to man to
be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of children. O Lord, our
God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy
Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to
generation, bless Thy servants Konstantin and Ekaterina, and make their
troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love....”
Levin felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his dreams
of how he would order his life, were mere childishness, and that it was
something he had not understood hitherto, and now understood less than
ever, though it was being performed upon him. The lump in his throat
rose higher and higher, tears that would not be checked came into his
eyes.
Chapter 5
In the church there was all Moscow, all the friends and relations; and
during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the brilliantly lighted
church, there was an incessant flow of discreetly subdued talk in the
circle of gaily dressed women and girls, and men in white ties,
frockcoats, and uniforms. The talk was principally kept up by the men,
while the women were absorbed in watching every detail of the ceremony,
which always means so much to them.
In the little group nearest to the bride were her two sisters: Dolly,
and the other one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame Lvova, who had
just arrived from abroad.
“Why is it Marie’s in lilac, as bad as black, at a wedding?” said
Madame Korsunskaya.
“With her complexion, it’s the one salvation,” responded Madame
Trubetskaya. “I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It’s
like shop-people....”
“So much prettier. I was married in the evening too....” answered
Madame Korsunskaya, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had
been that day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how
different it all was now.
“They say if anyone’s best man more than ten times, he’ll never be
married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was taken,”
said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Tcharskaya, who had designs
on him.
Princess Tcharskaya only answered with a smile. She looked at Kitty,
thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty’s
place, and how she would remind him then of his joke today.
Shtcherbatsky told the old maid of honor, Madame Nikolaeva, that he
meant to put the crown on Kitty’s chignon for luck.
“She ought not to have worn a chignon,” answered Madame Nikolaeva, who
had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was
angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. “I
don’t like such grandeur.”
Sergey Ivanovitch was talking to Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring
her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common
because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of
themselves.
“Your brother may feel proud of himself. She’s a marvel of sweetness. I
believe you’re envious.”
“Oh, I’ve got over that, Darya Dmitrievna,” he answered, and a
melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about
divorce.
“The wreath wants setting straight,” she answered, not hearing him.
“What a pity she’s lost her looks so,” Countess Nordston said to Madame
Lvova. “Still he’s not worth her little finger, is he?”
“Oh, I like him so—not because he’s my future _beau-frère_,” answered
Madame Lvova. “And how well he’s behaving! It’s so difficult, too, to
look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he’s not
ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he’s moved.”
“You expected it, I suppose?”
“Almost. She always cared for him.”
“Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned
Kitty.”
“It will make no difference,” said Madame Lvova; “we’re all obedient
wives; it’s in our family.”
“Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Dolly?”
Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She
was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have
spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going
back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure
of Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered only her
own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her
women-friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of
their triumph, when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown,
with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and
stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came
back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose
proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as
innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? “It’s terribly
strange,” she said to herself. It was not merely the sisters, the
women-friends and female relations of the bride who were following
every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere
spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear
of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom,
and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the
callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.
“Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?”
“Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn’t he?”
“Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon
booms out, ‘And fearing her husband.’”
“Are the choristers from Tchudovo?”
“No, from the Synod.”
“I asked the footman. He says he’s going to take her home to his
country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That’s why she’s being
married to him.”
“No, they’re a well-matched pair.”
“I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away
crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress—an
ambassador’s wife they say she is—how her skirt bounces out from side
to side!”
“What a pretty dear the bride is—like a lamb decked with flowers! Well,
say what you will, we women feel for our sister.”
Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded
in slipping in at the church doors.
Chapter 6
When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before
the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff,
the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and
tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round
pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often
heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the
rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable
of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it. They did not
hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he
had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.
After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon
matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their
answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began.
Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their
meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant
happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and
deprived her of all power of attention.
They prayed: “Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and
vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and
daughters.” They alluded to God’s creation of a wife from Adam’s rib
“and for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave
unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,” and that “this is a
great mystery”; they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless
them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they
might look upon their children’s children. “That’s all splendid,”
thought Kitty, catching the words, “all that’s just as it should be,”
and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who
looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.
“Put it on quite,” voices were heard urging when the priest had put on
the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its
three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.
“Put it on!” she whispered, smiling.
Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her
face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her felt
glad and happy.
They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head
deacon’s voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the
outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm
red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest,
flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them
round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting “Glory
to God.”
Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over
the bride’s train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were
at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as
the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to
have infected everyone in the church. It seemed to Levin that the
priest and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.
Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and
congratulated the young people. Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never
before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance
of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say something to her, but he
did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his
difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, “Kiss your
wife, and you kiss your husband,” and took the candles out of their
hands.
Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and
with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did
not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when
their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he
felt that they were one.
After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.
Chapter 7
Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together in
Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived
at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time. A handsome
head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an
evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of
trinkets hanging above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the
full curve of his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his
eyelids while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped
him. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the
entry towards the staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing
the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands
out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a
courier had been, and that the business about the palazzo had been
arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.
“Ah! I’m glad to hear it,” said Vronsky. “Is madame at home or not?”
“Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now,” answered the
waiter.
Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief
over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and
was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And glancing
casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at
him, he would have gone on.
“This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you,” said the
head waiter.
With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from
acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from
the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman,
who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light
came into the eyes of both.
“Golenishtchev!”
“Vronsky!”
It really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Vronsky’s in the Corps of
Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal party; he
left the corps without entering the army, and had never taken office
under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways
on leaving the corps, and had only met once since.
At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up a
sort of lofty, intellectually liberal line, and was consequently
disposed to look down upon Vronsky’s interests and calling in life.
Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so
well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: “You may like or
dislike my way of life, that’s a matter of the most perfect
indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect if you want
to know me.” Golenishtchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the
tone taken by Vronsky. This second meeting might have been expected,
one would have supposed, to estrange them still more. But now they
beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Vronsky
would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishtchev, but
probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the
disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank
delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of
delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishtchev’s face.
“How glad I am to meet you!” said Vronsky, showing his strong white
teeth in a friendly smile.
“I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn’t know which one. I’m very, very
glad!”
“Let’s go in. Come, tell me what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been living here for two years. I’m working.”
“Ah!” said Vronsky, with sympathy; “let’s go in.” And with the habit
common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to
keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.
“Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to
see her now,” he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishtchev’s
face.
“Ah! I did not know” (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered
carelessly. “Have you been here long?” he added.
“Four days,” Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend’s face
intently.
“Yes, he’s a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,”
Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev’s
face and the change of subject. “I can introduce him to Anna, he looks
at it properly.”
During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he
had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would
look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had
met with the “proper” way of looking at it. But if he had been asked,
and those who looked at it “properly” had been asked, exactly how they
did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to
answer.
In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the “proper” view had no
sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do
behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which
life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding
allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully
comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and
even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled
for to put all this into words.
Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and
therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev’s
manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to call on her, was all
that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort
he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.
He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and still
more by the frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed
when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by
this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But
what he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on
purpose that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she
called Vronsky simply Alexey, and said they were moving into a house
they had just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev
liked this direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at
Anna’s manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey
Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he understood
her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she was utterly
unable to understand: how it was that, having made her husband
wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost her good name, she
yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and happiness.
“It’s in the guide-book,” said Golenishtchev, referring to the palazzo
Vronsky had taken. “There’s a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his
latest period.”
“I tell you what: it’s a lovely day, let’s go and have another look at
it,” said Vronsky, addressing Anna.
“I shall be very glad to; I’ll go and put on my hat. Would you say it’s
hot?” she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly
at Vronsky. And again a vivid flush overspread her face.
Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared
to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would
wish.
He looked a long, tender look at her.
“No, not very,” he said.
And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that
he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid
step out at the door.
The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into
both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would
have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right
thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so.
“Well then,” Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort; “so
you’re settled here? You’re still at the same work, then?” he went on,
recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something.
“Yes, I’m writing the second part of the _Two Elements_,” said
Golenishtchev, coloring with pleasure at the question—“that is, to be
exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials.
It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions.
We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium,” and he
launched into a long and heated explanation of his views.
Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the
first part of the _Two Elements_, of which the author spoke as
something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his
opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the
_Two Elements_, he listened to him with some interest, for
Golenishtchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the
nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject
that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and
more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary
opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried.
Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred
boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky could not make out the
reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he
particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good
set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with
whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Vronsky disliked it,
yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him.
Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile,
rather handsome face, while without even noticing Anna’s coming in, he
went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.
When Anna came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand rapidly
swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of
relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishtchev
which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love
looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness.
Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was
dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed to feel friendly with everyone
as she was at that time, soon revived his spirits by her direct and
lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got
him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to
him attentively. They walked to the house they had taken, and looked
over it.
“I am very glad of one thing,” said Anna to Golenishtchev when they
were on their way back, “Alexey will have a capital _atelier_. You must
certainly take that room,” she said to Vronsky in Russian, using the
affectionately familiar form as though she saw that Golenishtchev would
become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no
need of reserve before him.
“Do you paint?” said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to Vronsky.
“Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little,”
said Vronsky, reddening.
“He has great talent,” said Anna with a delighted smile. “I’m no judge,
of course. But good judges have said the same.”
Chapter 8
Anna, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to
health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life.
The thought of her husband’s unhappiness did not poison her happiness.
On one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other
side her husband’s unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be
regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her
reconciliation with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky’s
wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her
husband’s house, the parting from her son—all that seemed to her like a
delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky abroad.
The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling
like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has
shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an
evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better
not to brood over these fearful facts.
One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the
first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the
past, she remembered that one reflection. “I have inevitably made that
man wretched,” she thought; “but I don’t want to profit by his misery.
I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above
everything—I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and
so I don’t want happiness, I don’t want a divorce, and shall suffer
from my shame and the separation from my child.” But, however sincerely
Anna had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was not.
With the tact of which both had such a large share, they had succeeded
in avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never placed themselves
in a false position, and everywhere they had met people who pretended
that they perfectly understood their position, far better indeed than
they did themselves. Separation from the son she loved—even that did
not cause her anguish in these early days. The baby girl—_his_
child—was so sweet, and had so won Anna’s heart, since she was all that
was left her, that Anna rarely thought of her son.
The desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was so
intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Anna
felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Vronsky, the more she
loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. Her
complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her. His presence was
always sweet to her. All the traits of his character, which she learned
to know better and better, were unutterably dear to her. His
appearance, changed by his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as
though she were some young girl in love. In everything he said,
thought, and did, she saw something particularly noble and elevated.
Her adoration of him alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find
in him anything not fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own
insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he
might sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as
losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it. But she
could not help being grateful to him for his attitude to her, and
showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her opinion such a
marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been
certain to play a leading part—he had sacrificed his ambition for her
sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret. He was more lovingly
respectful to her than ever, and the constant care that she should not
feel the awkwardness of her position never deserted him for a single
instant. He, so manly a man, never opposed her, had indeed, with her,
no will of his own, and was anxious, it seemed, for nothing but to
anticipate her wishes. And she could not but appreciate this, even
though the very intensity of his solicitude for her, the atmosphere of
care with which he surrounded her, sometimes weighed upon her.
Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had
so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the
realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of
the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake
men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of
their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting
on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general of
which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,—and he
was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was
springing up in his heart a desire for desires—_ennui_. Without
conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking
it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be
occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete
freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up time in
Petersburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence, which had
provided Vronsky with entertainment on previous tours abroad, they
could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of the sort had led to
a sudden attack of depression in Anna, quite out of proportion with the
cause—a late supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society
of the place—foreign and Russian—were equally out of the question owing
to the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of
interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already,
had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense
significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.
And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get,
hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched
first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.
As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what
to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a
stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon
it the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.
He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for
imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for
an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting
to select—religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting—he set to
work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired
by anyone of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of
knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired
directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is
painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of
this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly
from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and
easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting
something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to
imitate.
More than any other style he liked the French—graceful and
effective—and in that style he began to paint Anna’s portrait in
Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who
saw it, extremely successful.
Chapter 9
The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes
on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff
curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open
fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms, hung with
pictures—this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had
moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was
not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an
enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who
had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake
of the woman he loved.
The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was
completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made
acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was
satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an
Italian professor of painting, and studied mediæval Italian life.
Mediæval Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that he even wore a hat and
flung a cloak over his shoulder in the mediæval style, which, indeed,
was extremely becoming to him.
“Here we live, and know nothing of what’s going on,” Vronsky said to
Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. “Have you seen
Mihailov’s picture?” he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had
received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist,
living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had
long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article
reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an
artist be left without encouragement and support.
“I’ve seen it,” answered Golenishtchev. “Of course, he’s not without
talent, but it’s all in a wrong direction. It’s all the
Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting.”
“What is the subject of the picture?” asked Anna.
“Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the
realism of the new school.”
And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to
one of his favorite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth into a
disquisition on it.
“I can’t understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ
always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And
therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a
sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte
Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken
for their art, and then....”
“And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?” asked Vronsky,
thinking that, as a Russian Mæcenas, it was his duty to assist the
artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.
“I should say not. He’s a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you ever
seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he doesn’t
care about painting any more portraits, and so very likely he is in
want. I maintain that....”
“Couldn’t we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?” said
Vronsky.
“Why mine?” said Anna. “After yours I don’t want another portrait.
Better have one of Annie” (so she called her baby girl). “Here she is,”
she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who
was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing
unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was
painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna’s
life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and
mediævalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid
of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly
gracious and condescending both to her and her little son. Vronsky,
too, glanced out of the window and into Anna’s eyes, and, turning at
once to Golenishtchev, he said:
“Do you know this Mihailov?”
“I have met him. But he’s a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You
know, one of those uncouth new people one’s so often coming across
nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared
_d’emblée_ in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In
former days,” said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to
observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, “in former days
the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of
religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle
came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born
free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of
morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up
directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.
Well, he’s of that class. He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow
butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the
academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to educate
himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of
culture—the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to
educate himself—a Frenchman, for instance—would have set to work to
study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians
and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in
his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of
negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of
negation, and he’s ready. And that’s not all—twenty years ago he would
have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with
the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that
there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in
which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it
is stated baldly that there is nothing else—evolution, natural
selection, struggle for existence—and that’s all. In my article
I’ve....”
“I tell you what,” said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging
wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least
interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by
the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; “I tell you
what,” she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still
talking away, “let’s go and see him!”
Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as
the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the
carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the
front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house
in the remote suburb. On learning from the porter’s wife, who came out
to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that
moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her
to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.
Chapter 10
The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count
Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had
been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew
into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the
landlady, who had been asking for money.
“I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details. You’re
fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in
Italian you’re a fool three times as foolish,” he said after a long
dispute.
“Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money....”
“Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!” Mihailov shrieked, with tears in
his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room,
the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him.
“Idiotic woman!” he said to himself, sat down to the table, and,
opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a
sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill
with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. “Oh! damn
them all!” he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for
the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before,
but he was dissatisfied with it. “No, that one was better ... where is
it?” He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her,
asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had
given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it
was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch,
laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes,
he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated
gleefully.
“That’s it! that’s it!” he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he
began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of
a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a
prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the
figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a
lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never
be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably
defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the
requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put
differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered;
the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he
was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed
the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which
hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought
out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly
come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the
figure when the cards were brought him.
“Coming, coming!”
He went in to his wife.
“Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!” he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. “You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it
all right.” And having made peace with his wife he put on an
olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards
his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was
delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence,
Russians, who had come in their carriage.
Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the
bottom of his heart one conviction—that no one had ever painted a
picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than
all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey
in that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and
had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other
people’s criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense
consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his
soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic
saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him
to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more
profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from
them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in
their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.
He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his
excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna’s figure as she
stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was
eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round
at the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them,
he seized on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the
shopkeeper who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be
brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed
beforehand by Golenishtchev’s account of the artist, were still less so
by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble
movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow
trousers—though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,—most of
all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined
expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov
made an unpleasant impression.
“Please step in,” he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into
the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.
Chapter 11
On entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors and
noted down in his imagination Vronsky’s expression too, and especially
his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work
collecting materials, although he felt a continually increasing
excitement as the moment of criticizing his work drew nearer, he
rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of
these three persons.
That fellow (Golenishtchev) was a Russian living here. Mihailov did not
remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what he had said to
him. He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had
ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it was one of the faces laid by
in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and
poor in expression. The abundant hair and very open forehead gave an
appearance of consequence to the face, which had only one expression—a
petty, childish, peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge
of the narrow nose. Vronsky and Madame Karenina must be, Mihailov
supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing about
art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as amateurs and
connoisseurs. “Most likely they’ve already looked at all the antiques,
and now they’re making the round of the studios of the new people, the
German humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow, and have
only come to me to make the point of view complete,” he thought. He was
well acquainted with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were
the worse he found them) of looking at the works of contemporary
artists with the sole object of being in a position to say that art is
a thing of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more
one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have
remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he saw it
in the careless indifference with which they talked among themselves,
stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about in leisurely
fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture. But in spite of this,
while he was turning over his studies, pulling up the blinds and taking
off the sheet, he was in intense excitement, especially as, in spite of
his conviction that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain
to be beasts and fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.
“Here, if you please,” he said, moving on one side with his nimble gait
and pointing to his picture, “it’s the exhortation to Pilate. Matthew,
chapter xxvii,” he said, feeling his lips were beginning to tremble
with emotion. He moved away and stood behind them.
For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the
picture in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent eye of
an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in anticipation that a
higher, juster criticism would be uttered by them, by those very
visitors whom he had been so despising a moment before. He forgot all
he had thought about his picture before during the three years he had
been painting it; he forgot all its qualities which had been absolutely
certain to him—he saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside
eyes, and saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate’s
irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the background the
figures of Pilate’s retinue and the face of John watching what was
happening. Every face that, with such agony, such blunders and
corrections had grown up within him with its special character, every
face that had given him such torments and such raptures, and all these
faces so many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the
whole, all the shades of color and tones that he had attained with such
labor—all of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their
eyes, the merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand
times over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of
the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to
him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their
eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even that—he distinctly saw now a
mass of defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian,
Raphael, Rubens, and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common,
poor, and stale, and positively badly painted—weak and unequal. They
would be justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the
presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they
were alone again.
The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too
intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he
made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.
“I think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you,” he said, looking
uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any shade of
their expression.
“To be sure! We met at Rossi’s, do you remember, at that _soirée_ when
that Italian lady recited—the new Rachel?” Golenishtchev answered
easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the picture
and turning to the artist.
Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the
picture, he said:
“Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and
what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of
Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an
official through and through, who does not know what it is he’s doing.
But I fancy....”
All Mihailov’s mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried
to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended
to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev’s capacity for
understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of
the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have
seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was
said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at
this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate’s figure just
what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but one of
millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain would be
true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishtchev’s
remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this remark, and from a
state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of
his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of
everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he
understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not
pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said something in that
subdued voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the artist’s feelings
and partly to avoid saying out loud something silly—so easily said when
talking of art—people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures.
Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them too.
He went up to them.
“How marvelous Christ’s expression is!” said Anna. Of all she saw she
liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the center
of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist.
“One can see that He is pitying Pilate.”
This again was one of the million true reflections that could be found
in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was
pitying Pilate. In Christ’s expression there ought to be indeed an
expression of pity, since there is an expression of love, of heavenly
peace, of readiness for death, and a sense of the vanity of words. Of
course there is the expression of an official in Pilate and of pity in
Christ, seeing that one is the incarnation of the fleshly and the other
of the spiritual life. All this and much more flashed into Mihailov’s
thoughts.
“Yes, and how that figure is done—what atmosphere! One can walk round
it,” said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he
did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure.
“Yes, there’s a wonderful mastery!” said Vronsky. “How those figures in
the background stand out! There you have technique,” he said,
addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about
Vronsky’s despair of attaining this technique.
“Yes, yes, marvelous!” Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite of the
excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had
sent a pang to Mihailov’s heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he
suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was
utterly unable to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by
this term was understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing,
entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in
actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one
could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of
attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid
injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but
there was no art of painting—no technique of any sort—about it. If to a
little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would
have been able to peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most
experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility
paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him
first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it
was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and
repainted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in
taking off the wrappings—faults he could not correct now without
spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw,
too, remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the
picture.
“One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark....”
observed Golenishtchev.
“Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you,” said Mihailov with a forced
smile.
“That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I
know that was what you meant to do.”
“I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,” said Mihailov
gloomily.
“Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think....
Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it,
and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different.
Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that
if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it
would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical
subject, fresh, untouched.”
“But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?”
“If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot
suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the
question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, ‘Is it God,
or is it not God?’ and the unity of the impression is destroyed.”
“Why so? I think that for educated people,” said Mihailov, “the
question cannot exist.”
Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his
support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being
essential to art.
Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of
his own idea.
Chapter 12
Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their
friend’s flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the
artist, walked away to another small picture.
“Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!” they
cried with one voice.
“What is it they’re so pleased with?” thought Mihailov. He had
positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He
had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through
with that picture when for several months it had been the one thought
haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the
pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had
only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted
to buy it.
“Oh, that’s only an old study,” he said.
“How fine!” said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity,
falling under the spell of the picture.
Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just
dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a
bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little
younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his
tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy
blue eyes. What was he thinking of?