“First of all, don’t rock your chair, please,” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch. “And secondly, it’s not the reward that’s precious, but

the work itself. And I could have wished you understood that. If you

now are going to work, to study in order to win a reward, then the work

will seem hard to you; but when you work” (Alexey Alexandrovitch, as he

spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by a sense of duty through

the wearisome labor of the morning, consisting of signing one hundred

and eighty papers), “loving your work, you will find your reward in

it.”

Seryozha’s eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and tenderness, grew

dull and dropped before his father’s gaze. This was the same

long-familiar tone his father always took with him, and Seryozha had

learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him—so

Seryozha felt—as though he were addressing some boy of his own

imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike

himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the

story-book boy.

“You understand that, I hope?” said his father.

“Yes, papa,” answered Seryozha, acting the part of the imaginary boy.

The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of the

Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old Testament. The

verses from the Gospel Seryozha knew fairly well, but at the moment

when he was saying them he became so absorbed in watching the sharply

protruding, bony knobbiness of his father’s forehead, that he lost the

thread, and he transposed the end of one verse and the beginning of

another. So it was evident to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he did not

understand what he was saying, and that irritated him.

He frowned, and began explaining what Seryozha had heard many times

before and never could remember, because he understood it too well,

just as that “suddenly” is an adverb of manner of action. Seryozha

looked with scared eyes at his father, and could think of nothing but

whether his father would make him repeat what he had said, as he

sometimes did. And this thought so alarmed Seryozha that he now

understood nothing. But his father did not make him repeat it, and

passed on to the lesson out of the Old Testament. Seryozha recounted

the events themselves well enough, but when he had to answer questions

as to what certain events prefigured, he knew nothing, though he had

already been punished over this lesson. The passage at which he was

utterly unable to say anything, and began fidgeting and cutting the

table and swinging his chair, was where he had to repeat the patriarchs

before the Flood. He did not know one of them, except Enoch, who had

been taken up alive to heaven. Last time he had remembered their names,

but now he had forgotten them utterly, chiefly because Enoch was the

personage he liked best in the whole of the Old Testament, and Enoch’s

translation to heaven was connected in his mind with a whole long train

of thought, in which he became absorbed now while he gazed with

fascinated eyes at his father’s watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned

button on his waistcoat.

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seryozha disbelieved

entirely. He did not believe that those he loved could die, above all

that he himself would die. That was to him something utterly

inconceivable and impossible. But he had been told that all men die; he

had asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they too, had confirmed

it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch

had not died, and so it followed that everyone did not die. “And why

cannot anyone else so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?” thought

Seryozha. Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might

die, but the good might all be like Enoch.

“Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?”

“Enoch, Enos—”

“But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very bad. If

you don’t try to learn what is more necessary than anything for a

Christian,” said his father, getting up, “whatever can interest you? I

am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch” (this was the most

important of his teachers) “is displeased with you.... I shall have to

punish you.”

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha, and he

certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it could not be

said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far cleverer than the

boys his teacher held up as examples to Seryozha. In his father’s

opinion, he did not want to learn what he was taught. In reality he

could not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his own soul

were more binding on him than those claims his father and his teacher

made upon him. Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct

conflict with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but

he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the

eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into

his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his

soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from

Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but

not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned

upon to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its

waters did their work in another channel.

His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka,

Lidia Ivanovna’s niece; but this punishment turned out happily for

Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch was in a good humor, and showed him how to

make windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming

how to make a windmill on which he could turn himself—clutching at the

sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha

did not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly

remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow

for his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.

“Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for tonight extra besides

the regular things?”

“That you might learn your lessons better?”

“No.”

“Toys?”

“No. You’ll never guess. A splendid thing; but it’s a secret! When it

comes to pass I’ll tell you. Can’t you guess!”

“No, I can’t guess. You tell me,” said Vassily Lukitch with a smile,

which was rare with him. “Come, lie down, I’m putting out the candle.”

“Without the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed for.

There! I was almost telling the secret!” said Seryozha, laughing gaily.

When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She

stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came

windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell

asleep.

Chapter 28

On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the best

hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with her child, its

nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s. There he found

his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and

sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay

abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop

a single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother came

the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about

her, and Alexey Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon his

connection with Madame Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a

divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as

much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother

and his wife so.

“If the world disapproves, I don’t care,” said Vronsky; “but if my

relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they will have

to be on the same terms with my wife.”

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother’s

judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till the

world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against it,

and with Alexey he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna with a

certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but

it was understood that his brother knew their real relations, and they

talked about Anna’s going to Vronsky’s estate.

In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence of

the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange

misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that

society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had

sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned

days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had

unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the

views of society had changed, and that the question whether they would

be received in society was not a foregone conclusion. “Of course,” he

thought, “she would not be received at court, but intimate friends can

and must look at it in the proper light.” One may sit for several hours

at a stretch with one’s legs crossed in the same position, if one knows

that there’s nothing to prevent one’s changing one’s position; but if a

man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps

come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to

which one would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was

experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart

he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether

the world had not changed by now and would not receive them. But he

very quickly perceived that though the world was open for him

personally, it was closed for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and

mouse, the hands raised for him were dropped to bar the way for Anna.

One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his

cousin Betsy.

“At last!” she greeted him joyfully. “And Anna? How glad I am! Where

are you stopping? I can fancy after your delightful travels you must

find our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in Rome.

How about the divorce? Is that all over?”

Vronsky noticed that Betsy’s enthusiasm waned when she learned that no

divorce had as yet taken place.

“People will throw stones at me, I know,” she said, “but I shall come

and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won’t be here long, I

suppose?”

And she did certainly come to see Anna the same day, but her tone was

not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided herself

on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the fidelity of her

friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip, and

on leaving she said:

“You’ve never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I’m ready to

fling my cap over the mill, other starchy people will give you the cold

shoulder until you’re married. And that’s so simple nowadays. _Ça se

fait_. So you’re going on Friday? Sorry we shan’t see each other

again.”

From Betsy’s tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect from

the world; but he made another effort in his own family. His mother he

did not reckon upon. He knew that his mother, who had been so

enthusiastic over Anna at their first acquaintance, would have no mercy

on her now for having ruined her son’s career. But he had more hope of

Varya, his brother’s wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, and

would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her

own house.

The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and finding her alone,

expressed his wishes directly.

“You know, Alexey,” she said after hearing him, “how fond I am of you,

and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken,

because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,” she

said, articulating the name “Anna Arkadyevna” with particular care.

“Don’t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I

should have done the same. I don’t and can’t enter into that,” she

said, glancing timidly at his gloomy face. “But one must call things by

their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to

rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that _I cannot_ do so. I

have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my

husband’s sake. Well, I’m ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she

will understand that I can’t ask her here, or I should have to do so in

such a way that she would not meet people who look at things

differently; that would offend her. I can’t raise her....”

“Oh, I don’t regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you do

receive!” Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he got up in

silence, understanding that his sister-in-law’s decision was not to be

shaken.

“Alexey! don’t be angry with me. Please understand that I’m not to

blame,” began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.

“I’m not angry with you,” he said still as gloomily; “but I’m sorry in

two ways. I’m sorry, too, that this means breaking up our friendship—if

not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will understand that for

me, too, it cannot be otherwise.”

And with that he left her.

Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had to

spend these few days in Petersburg as though in a strange town,

avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in order not to

be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations which were so intolerable

to him. One of the most unpleasant features of his position in

Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet

him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the

conversation turning on Alexey Alexandrovitch; he could not go anywhere

without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as

it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though

on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.

Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he

perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand

in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she

would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying over

something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to

notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and for her, with

her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.

Chapter 29

One of Anna’s objects in coming back to Russia had been to see her son.

From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never ceased to

agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and

importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She

did not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It seemed

to her natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same

town with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg she was suddenly made

distinctly aware of her present position in society, and she grasped

the fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter.

She had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son never

left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go

straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch, that

she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and

insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband—that it

made her miserable to think of doing; she could only be at peace when

she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out

walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for

her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she

must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha’s

old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse

was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house. In this

uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.

Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and

Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write to her

a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally

said that permission to see her son must depend on her husband’s

generosity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he

would keep up his character of magnanimity, and would not refuse her

request.

The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most

cruel and unexpected answer, that there was no answer. She had never

felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for the

commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had

waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no answer. Anna

felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view

Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering was the more poignant

that she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not share

it with Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the primary

cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a

matter of very little consequence. She knew that he would never be

capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his

cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she

dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him

everything that related to her son. Spending the whole day at home she

considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write

to her husband. She was just composing this letter when she was handed

the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The countess’s silence had subdued and

depressed her, but the letter, all that she read between the lines in

it, so exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her

passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against

other people and left off blaming herself.

“This coldness—this pretense of feeling!” she said to herself. “They

must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it!

Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don’t lie, anyway.”

And she decided on the spot that next day, Seryozha’s birthday, she

would go straight to her husband’s house, bribe or deceive the

servants, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous

deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.

She went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action.

She would go early in the morning at eight o’clock, when Alexey

Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would have money in

her hand to give the hall-porter and the footman, so that they should

let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say that she had come

from Seryozha’s godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been

charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything

but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of

it, she could never think of anything.

The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired

sledge and rang at the front entrance of her former home.

“Run and see what’s wanted. Some lady,” said Kapitonitch, who, not yet

dressed, in his overcoat and galoshes, had peeped out of the window and

seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. His assistant, a

lad Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to her than she

came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her muff put it

hurriedly into his hand.

“Seryozha—Sergey Alexeitch,” she said, and was going on. Scrutinizing

the note, the porter’s assistant stopped her at the second glass door.

“Whom do you want?” he asked.

She did not hear his words and made no answer.

Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to

her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased

to want.

“From Prince Skorodumov for Sergey Alexeitch,” she said.

“His honor’s not up yet,” said the porter, looking at her attentively.

Anna had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged hall of the

house where she had lived for nine years would so greatly affect her.

Memories sweet and painful rose one after another in her heart, and for

a moment she forgot what she was here for.

“Would you kindly wait?” said Kapitonitch, taking off her fur cloak.

As he took off the cloak, Kapitonitch glanced at her face, recognized

her, and made her a low bow in silence.

“Please walk in, your excellency,” he said to her.

She tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any sound;

with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with light,

swift steps up the stairs. Bent double, and his galoshes catching in

the steps, Kapitonitch ran after her, trying to overtake her.

“The tutor’s there; maybe he’s not dressed. I’ll let him know.”

Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the

old man was saying.

“This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy. His

honor’s in the old parlor now,” the hall-porter said, panting. “Excuse

me, wait a little, your excellency; I’ll just see,” he said, and

overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna

stood still waiting. “He’s only just awake,” said the hall-porter,

coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught

the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she

knew her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.

“Let me in; go away!” she said, and went in through the high doorway.

On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the

boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he

was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together

they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he

slowly and deliciously rolled back again.

“Seryozha!” she whispered, going noiselessly up to him.

When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had

been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he

was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was

not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from

the four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was,

how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she

left him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his soft neck and

broad little shoulders.

“Seryozha!” she repeated just in the child’s ear.

He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side

to side as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly

and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing

motionless before him, then all at once he smiled a blissful smile, and

shutting his eyes, rolled not backwards but towards her into her arms.

“Seryozha! my darling boy!” she said, breathing hard and putting her

arms round his plump little body. “Mother!” he said, wriggling about in

her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him.

Smiling sleepily still with closed eyes, he flung fat little arms round

her shoulders, rolled towards her, with the delicious sleepy warmth and

fragrance that is only found in children, and began rubbing his face

against her neck and shoulders.

“I know,” he said, opening his eyes; “it’s my birthday today. I knew

you’d come. I’ll get up directly.”

And saying that he dropped asleep.

Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in

her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now,

that were thrust out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his

neck in which she had so often kissed him. She touched all this and

could say nothing; tears choked her.

“What are you crying for, mother?” he said, waking completely up.

“Mother, what are you crying for?” he cried in a tearful voice.

“I won’t cry ... I’m crying for joy. It’s so long since I’ve seen you.

I won’t, I won’t,” she said, gulping down her tears and turning away.

“Come, it’s time for you to dress now,” she added, after a pause, and,

never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair,

where his clothes were put ready for him.

“How do you dress without me? How....” she tried to begin talking

simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.

“I don’t have a cold bath, papa didn’t order it. And you’ve not seen

Vassily Lukitch? He’ll come in soon. Why, you’re sitting on my

clothes!”

And Seryozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and

smiled.

“Mother, darling, sweet one!” he shouted, flinging himself on her again

and hugging her. It was as though only now, on seeing her smile, he

fully grasped what had happened.

“I don’t want that on,” he said, taking off her hat. And as it were,

seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again.

“But what did you think about me? You didn’t think I was dead?”

“I never believed it.”

“You didn’t believe it, my sweet?”

“I knew, I knew!” he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the

hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth

and kissed it.

Chapter 30

Meanwhile Vassily Lukitch had not at first understood who this lady

was, and had learned from their conversation that it was no other

person than the mother who had left her husband, and whom he had not

seen, as he had entered the house after her departure. He was in doubt

whether to go in or not, or whether to communicate with Alexey

Alexandrovitch. Reflecting finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up

at the hour fixed, and that it was therefore not his business to

consider who was there, the mother or anyone else, but simply to do his

duty, he finished dressing, went to the door and opened it.

But the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of their voices,

and what they were saying, made him change his mind.

He shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. “I’ll wait

another ten minutes,” he said to himself, clearing his throat and

wiping away tears.

Among the servants of the household there was intense excitement all

this time. All had heard that their mistress had come, and that

Kapitonitch had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery,

and that their master always went in person to the nursery at nine

o’clock, and everyone fully comprehended that it was impossible for the

husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent it. Korney, the

valet, going down to the hall-porter’s room, asked who had let her in,

and how it was he had done so, and ascertaining that Kapitonitch had

admitted her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to. The

hall-porter was doggedly silent, but when Korney told him he ought to

be sent away, Kapitonitch darted up to him, and waving his hands in

Korney’s face, began:

“Oh yes, to be sure you’d not have let her in! After ten years’

service, and never a word but of kindness, and there you’d up and say,

‘Be off, go along, get away with you!’ Oh yes, you’re a shrewd one at

politics, I dare say! You don’t need to be taught how to swindle the

master, and to filch fur coats!”

“Soldier!” said Korney contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse who

was coming in. “Here, what do you think, Marya Efimovna: he let her in

without a word to anyone,” Korney said addressing her. “Alexey

Alexandrovitch will be down immediately—and go into the nursery!”

“A pretty business, a pretty business!” said the nurse. “You, Korney

Vassilievitch, you’d best keep him some way or other, the master, while

I’ll run and get her away somehow. A pretty business!”

When the nurse went into the nursery, Seryozha was telling his mother

how he and Nadinka had had a fall in sledging downhill, and had turned

over three times. She was listening to the sound of his voice, watching

his face and the play of expression on it, touching his hand, but she

did not follow what he was saying. She must go, she must leave

him,—this was the only thing she was thinking and feeling. She heard

the steps of Vassily Lukitch coming up to the door and coughing; she

heard, too, the steps of the nurse as she came near; but she sat like

one turned to stone, incapable of beginning to speak or to get up.

“Mistress, darling!” began the nurse, going up to Anna and kissing her

hands and shoulders. “God has brought joy indeed to our boy on his

birthday. You aren’t changed one bit.”

“Oh, nurse dear, I didn’t know you were in the house,” said Anna,

rousing herself for a moment.

“I’m not living here, I’m living with my daughter. I came for the

birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!”

The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing her hand again.

Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one hand

and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his fat little

bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his mother

threw him into an ecstasy.

“Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes....” he was

beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying something

in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother’s face there was a

look of dread and something like shame, which was so strangely

unbecoming to her.

She went up to him.

“My sweet!” she said.

She could not say _good-bye_, but the expression on her face said it,

and he understood. “Darling, darling Kootik!” she used the name by

which she had called him when he was little, “you won’t forget me?

You....” but she could not say more.

How often afterwards she thought of words she might have said. But now

she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. But Seryozha

knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was unhappy

and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had whispered. He had

caught the words “always at nine o’clock,” and he knew that this was

said of his father, and that his father and mother could not meet. That

he understood, but one thing he could not understand—why there should

be a look of dread and shame in her face?... She was not in fault, but

she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He would have liked to

put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did not

dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for her. Silently he

pressed close to her and whispered, “Don’t go yet. He won’t come just

yet.”

The mother held him away from her to see what he was thinking, what to

say to him, and in his frightened face she read not only that he was

speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to

think about his father.

“Seryozha, my darling,” she said, “love him; he’s better and kinder

than I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will judge.”

“There’s no one better than you!...” he cried in despair through his

tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with

all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

“My sweet, my little one!” said Anna, and she cried as weakly and

childishly as he.

At that moment the door opened. Vassily Lukitch came in.

At the other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a

scared whisper said, “He’s coming,” and gave Anna her hat.

Seryozha sank onto the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.

Anna removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and with rapid

steps went to the door. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked in, meeting her.

Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.

Although she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in the

rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its

details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him and jealousy over her

son took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil,

and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.

She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of

toys she had chosen the day before in a toy shop with such love and

sorrow.

Chapter 31

As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had

been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the

least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting

back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while

understand why she was there. “Yes, it’s all over, and I am again

alone,” she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat

down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock

standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should

dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, “Presently.” A footman

offered her coffee. “Later on,” she said.

The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best, came in

with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little baby, on

seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands,

and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a

float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her

embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile,

not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to

clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a

lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all

this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed

her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this

child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her

could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha.

Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did

not go deep to her heart. On her first child, though the child of an

unloved father, had been concentrated all the love that had never found

satisfaction. Her baby girl had been born in the most painful

circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought

which had been concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little

girl everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now

almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him there was

a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he

judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes. And she was

forever—not physically only but spiritually—divided from him, and it

was impossible to set this right.

She gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and opened the locket

in which there was Seryozha’s portrait when he was almost of the same

age as the girl. She got up, and, taking off her hat, took up from a

little table an album in which there were photographs of her son at

different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began taking them out

of the album. She took them all out except one, the latest and best

photograph. In it he was in a white smock, sitting astride a chair,

with frowning eyes and smiling lips. It was his best, most

characteristic expression. With her little supple hands, her white,

delicate fingers, that moved with a peculiar intensity today, she

pulled at a corner of the photograph, but the photograph had caught

somewhere, and she could not get it out. There was no paper-knife on

the table, and so, pulling out the photograph that was next to her

son’s (it was a photograph of Vronsky taken at Rome in a round hat and

with long hair), she used it to push out her son’s photograph. “Oh,

here is he!” she said, glancing at the portrait of Vronsky, and she

suddenly recalled that he was the cause of her present misery. She had

not once thought of him all the morning. But now, coming all at once

upon that manly, noble face, so familiar and so dear to her, she felt a

sudden rush of love for him.

“But where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my misery?” she

thought all at once with a feeling of reproach, forgetting she had

herself kept from him everything concerning her son. She sent to ask

him to come to her immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited him,

rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell him all, and

the expressions of love with which he would console her. The messenger

returned with the answer that he had a visitor with him, but that he

would come immediately, and that he asked whether she would let him

bring with him Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in Petersburg.

“He’s not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday he has not seen me,”

she thought; “he’s not coming so that I could tell him everything, but

coming with Yashvin.” And all at once a strange idea came to her: what

if he had ceased to love her?

And going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that

she saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea. The fact

that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had

insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that

even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to

avoid meeting her face to face.

“But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew it,

then I know what I should do,” she said to herself, utterly unable to

picture to herself the position she would be in if she were convinced

of his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she

felt close upon despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert.

She rang for her maid and went to her dressing-room. As she dressed,

she took more care over her appearance than she had done all those

days, as though he might, if he had grown cold to her, fall in love

with her again because she had dressed and arranged her hair in the way

most becoming to her.

She heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she went into the

drawing-room it was not he, but Yashvin, who met her eyes. Vronsky was

looking through the photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on

the table, and he made no haste to look round at her.

“We have met already,” she said, putting her little hand into the huge

hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with

his immense frame and coarse face. “We met last year at the races. Give

them to me,” she said, with a rapid movement snatching from Vronsky the

photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him with flashing

eyes. “Were the races good this year? Instead of them I saw the races

in the Corso in Rome. But you don’t care for life abroad,” she said

with a cordial smile. “I know you and all your tastes, though I have

seen so little of you.”

“I’m awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly bad,” said

Yashvin, gnawing at his left mustache.

Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at the

clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying much longer in

Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.

“Not long, I think,” she said hesitatingly, glancing at Vronsky.

“So then we shan’t meet again?”

“Come and dine with me,” said Anna resolutely, angry it seemed with

herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she

defined her position before a fresh person. “The dinner here is not

good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends

in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.”

“Delighted,” said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see

that he liked Anna very much.

Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.

“Are you going too?” she said to him.

“I’m late already,” he answered. “Run along! I’ll catch you up in a

moment,” he called to Yashvin.

She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at

him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep

him.

“Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say to you,” and taking his

broad hand she pressed it on her neck. “Oh, was it right my asking him

to dinner?”

“You did quite right,” he said with a serene smile that showed his even

teeth, and he kissed her hand.

“Alexey, you have not changed to me?” she said, pressing his hand in

both of hers. “Alexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?”

“Soon, soon. You wouldn’t believe how disagreeable our way of living

here is to me too,” he said, and he drew away his hand.

“Well, go, go!” she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly

away from him.

Chapter 32

When Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet home. Soon after he had

left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had

gone out with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where she

was going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the morning she

had been going about somewhere without a word to him—all this, together

with the strange look of excitement in her face in the morning, and the

recollection of the hostile tone with which she had before Yashvin

almost snatched her son’s photographs out of his hands, made him

serious. He decided he absolutely must speak openly with her. And he

waited for her in her drawing-room. But Anna did not return alone, but

brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Princess Oblonskaya. This was

the lady who had come in the morning, and with whom Anna had gone out

shopping. Anna appeared not to notice Vronsky’s worried and inquiring

expression, and began a lively account of her morning’s shopping. He

saw that there was something working within her; in her flashing eyes,

when they rested for a moment on him, there was an intense

concentration, and in her words and movements there was that nervous

rapidity and grace which, during the early period of their intimacy,

had so fascinated him, but which now so disturbed and alarmed him.

The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about to

go into the little dining-room when Tushkevitch made his appearance

with a message from Princess Betsy. Princess Betsy begged her to excuse

her not having come to say good-bye; she had been indisposed, but

begged Anna to come to her between half-past six and nine o’clock.

Vronsky glanced at Anna at the precise limit of time, so suggestive of

steps having been taken that she should meet no one; but Anna appeared

not to notice it.

“Very sorry that I can’t come just between half-past six and nine,” she

said with a faint smile.

“The princess will be very sorry.”

“And so am I.”

“You’re going, no doubt, to hear Patti?” said Tushkevitch.

“Patti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it were possible to

get a box.”

“I can get one,” Tushkevitch offered his services.

“I should be very, very grateful to you,” said Anna. “But won’t you

dine with us?”

Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss to

understand what Anna was about. What had she brought the old Princess

Oblonskaya home for, what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for,

and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box? Could she

possibly think in her position of going to Patti’s benefit, where all

the circle of her acquaintances would be? He looked at her with serious

eyes, but she responded with that defiant, half-mirthful,

half-desperate look, the meaning of which he could not comprehend. At

dinner Anna was in aggressively high spirits—she almost flirted both

with Tushkevitch and with Yashvin. When they got up from dinner and

Tushkevitch had gone to get a box at the opera, Yashvin went to smoke,

and Vronsky went down with him to his own rooms. After sitting there

for some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a low-necked

gown of light silk and velvet that she had had made in Paris, and with

costly white lace on her head, framing her face, and particularly

becoming, showing up her dazzling beauty.

“Are you really going to the theater?” he said, trying not to look at

her.

“Why do you ask with such alarm?” she said, wounded again at his not

looking at her. “Why shouldn’t I go?”

She appeared not to understand the motive of his words.

“Oh, of course, there’s no reason whatever,” he said, frowning.

“That’s just what I say,” she said, willfully refusing to see the irony

of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.

“Anna, for God’s sake! what is the matter with you?” he said, appealing

to her exactly as once her husband had done.

“I don’t understand what you are asking.”

“You know that it’s out of the question to go.”

“Why so? I’m not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress, she

is going with me.”

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.

“But do you mean to say you don’t know?...” he began.

“But I don’t care to know!” she almost shrieked. “I don’t care to. Do I

regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from

the beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there

is only one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other

people we need not consider. Why are we living here apart and not

seeing each other? Why can’t I go? I love you, and I don’t care for

anything,” she said in Russian, glancing at him with a peculiar gleam

in her eyes that he could not understand. “If you have not changed to

me, why don’t you look at me?”

He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full dress,

always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and elegance were just

what irritated him.

“My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat you,” he

said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in his voice,

but with coldness in his eyes.

She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes, and

answered with irritation:

“And I beg you to explain why I should not go.”

“Because it might cause you....” he hesitated.

“I don’t understand. Yashvin _n’est pas compromettant_, and Princess

Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!”

Chapter 33

Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against Anna,

almost a hatred for her willfully refusing to understand her own

position. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to tell her

plainly the cause of his anger. If he had told her directly what he was

thinking, he would have said:

“In that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone, to

show yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging

your position as a fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to

society, that is to say, cutting yourself off from it forever.”

He could not say that to her. “But how can she fail to see it, and what

is going on in her?” he said to himself. He felt at the same time that

his respect for her was diminished while his sense of her beauty was

intensified.

He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside Yashvin,

who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was drinking brandy

and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same for himself.

“You were talking of Lankovsky’s Powerful. That’s a fine horse, and I

would advise you to buy him,” said Yashvin, glancing at his comrade’s

gloomy face. “His hind-quarters aren’t quite first-rate, but the legs

and head—one couldn’t wish for anything better.”

“I think I will take him,” answered Vronsky.

Their conversation about horses interested him, but he did not for an

instant forget Anna, and could not help listening to the sound of steps

in the corridor and looking at the clock on the chimney piece.

“Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has gone to the

theater.”

Yashvin, tipping another glass of brandy into the bubbling water, drank

it and got up, buttoning his coat.

“Well, let’s go,” he said, faintly smiling under his mustache, and

showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Vronsky’s gloominess,

and did not attach any significance to it.

“I’m not going,” Vronsky answered gloomily.

“Well, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you do, come to the

stalls; you can take Kruzin’s stall,” added Yashvin as he went out.

“No, I’m busy.”

“A wife is a care, but it’s worse when she’s not a wife,” thought

Yashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.

Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up and down

the room.

“And what’s today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his wife are there,

and my mother, most likely. Of course all Petersburg’s there. Now she’s

gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the light. Tushkevitch,

Yashvin, Princess Varvara,” he pictured them to himself.... “What about

me? Either that I’m frightened or have given up to Tushkevitch the

right to protect her? From every point of view—stupid, stupid!... And

why is she putting me in such a position?” he said with a gesture of

despair.

With that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there was

standing the seltzer water and the decanter of brandy, and almost upset

it. He tried to catch it, let it slip, and angrily kicked the table

over and rang.

“If you care to be in my service,” he said to the valet who came in,

“you had better remember your duties. This shouldn’t be here. You ought

to have cleared away.”

The valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have defended himself,

but glancing at his master, he saw from his face that the only thing to

do was to be silent, and hurriedly threading his way in and out,

dropped down on the carpet and began gathering up the whole and broken

glasses and bottles.

“That’s not your duty; send the waiter to clear away, and get my dress

coat out.”

Vronsky went into the theater at half-past eight. The performance was

in full swing. The little old box-keeper, recognizing Vronsky as he

helped him off with his fur coat, called him “Your Excellency,” and

suggested he should not take a number but should simply call Fyodor. In

the brightly lighted corridor there was no one but the box-opener and

two attendants with fur cloaks on their arms listening at the doors.

Through the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet _staccato_

accompaniment of the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering

distinctly a musical phrase. The door opened to let the box-opener slip

through, and the phrase drawing to the end reached Vronsky’s hearing

clearly. But the doors were closed again at once, and Vronsky did not

hear the end of the phrase and the cadence of the accompaniment, though

he knew from the thunder of applause that it was over. When he entered

the hall, brilliantly lighted with chandeliers and gas jets, the noise

was still going on. On the stage the singer, bowing and smiling, with

bare shoulders flashing with diamonds, was, with the help of the tenor

who had given her his arm, gathering up the bouquets that were flying

awkwardly over the footlights. Then she went up to a gentleman with

glossy pomaded hair parted down the center, who was stretching across

the footlights holding out something to her, and all the public in the

stalls as well as in the boxes was in excitement, craning forward,

shouting and clapping. The conductor in his high chair assisted in

passing the offering, and straightened his white tie. Vronsky walked

into the middle of the stalls, and, standing still, began looking about

him. That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the

familiar, habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the

familiar, uninteresting, particolored herd of spectators in the packed

theater.

There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of

some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women—God

knows who—and uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the

upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the boxes and in the front rows,

were some forty of the _real_ people. And to those oases Vronsky at

once directed his attention, and with them he entered at once into

relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to his

brother’s box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped at the

footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with one knee raised and

his heel on the footlights, caught sight of him in the distance and

beckoned to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in her

direction. But he knew by the direction of people’s eyes where she was.

He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the

worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey

Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.

“How little of the military man there is left in you!” Serpuhovskoy was

saying to him. “A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one

would say.”

“Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,” answered

Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera-glass.

“Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put

on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.”

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but he

liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

“What a pity you were not in time for the first act!”

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera-glass from the stalls

and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who

seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera-glass, Vronsky suddenly

caught sight of Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling

in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him.

She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to

Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and

the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face

reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But

he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for

her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it

attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of

injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she

had seen him already.

When Vronsky turned the opera-glass again in that direction, he noticed

that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing

unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan

and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and

obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box.

Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common when he was losing

at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and

further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.

In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them, and knew

that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little

woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Anna, she

was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for her. Her face

was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly. Kartasov, a fat,

bald man, was continually looking round at Anna, while he attempted to

soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a

long while, and tried to catch Anna’s eye, obviously anxious to bow to

her. But Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and

talked to Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov

went out without making his salutation, and the box was left empty.

Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the

Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna had

happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from

the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry

through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of

external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not

know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the

women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she

should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with

her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness

of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the

sensations of a man in the stocks.

Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what,

Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out

something, he went towards his brother’s box. Purposely choosing the

way round furthest from Anna’s box, he jostled as he came out against

the colonel of his old regiment talking to two acquaintances. Vronsky

heard the name of Madame Karenina, and noticed how the colonel hastened

to address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his

companions.

“Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can’t let you off

without a supper. You’re one of the old set,” said the colonel of his

regiment.

“I can’t stop, awfully sorry, another time,” said Vronsky, and he ran

upstairs towards his brother’s box.

The old countess, Vronsky’s mother, with her steel-gray curls, was in

his brother’s box. Varya with the young Princess Sorokina met him in

the corridor.

Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varya held out her hand

to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what

interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.

“I think it’s mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova had no right to do

it. Madame Karenina....” she began.

“But what is it? I don’t know.”

“What? you’ve not heard?”

“You know I should be the last person to hear of it.”

“There isn’t a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartasova!”

“But what did she do?”

“My husband told me.... She has insulted Madame Karenina. Her husband

began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene.

She said something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went away.”

“Count, your maman is asking for you,” said the young Princess

Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.

“I’ve been expecting you all the while,” said his mother, smiling

sarcastically. “You were nowhere to be seen.”

Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.

“Good evening, maman. I have come to you,” he said coldly.

“Why aren’t you going to _faire la cour à Madame Karenina?_” she went

on, when Princess Sorokina had moved away. “_Elle fait sensation. On

oublie la Patti pour elle_.”

“Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that,” he

answered, scowling.

“I’m only saying what everyone’s saying.”

Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to Princess Sorokina, he

went away. At the door he met his brother.

“Ah, Alexey!” said his brother. “How disgusting! Idiot of a woman,

nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her. Let’s go together.”

Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he felt

that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with her for

having put herself and him in such a false position, together with pity

for her suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made straight

for Anna’s box. At her box stood Stremov, talking to her.

“There are no more tenors. _Le moule en est brisé!_”

Vronsky bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.

“You came in late, I think, and have missed the best song,” Anna said

to Vronsky, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.

“I am a poor judge of music,” he said, looking sternly at her.

“Like Prince Yashvin,” she said smiling, “who considers that Patti

sings too loud.”

“Thank you,” she said, her little hand in its long glove taking the

playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that instant her lovely

face quivered. She got up and went into the interior of the box.

Noticing in the next act that her box was empty, Vronsky, rousing

indignant “hushes” in the silent audience, went out in the middle of a

solo and drove home.

Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to her, she was in the

same dress as she had worn at the theater. She was sitting in the first

armchair against the wall, looking straight before her. She looked at

him, and at once resumed her former position.

“Anna,” he said.

“You, you are to blame for everything!” she cried, with tears of

despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.

“I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant....”

“Unpleasant!” she cried—“hideous! As long as I live I shall never

forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me.”

“A silly woman’s chatter,” he said: “but why risk it, why provoke?...”

“I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had

loved me....”

“Anna! How does the question of my love come in?”

“Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am!...” she

said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his

love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and

he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her.

And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that

he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually

became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the

country.

PART SIX

Chapter 1

Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at

her sister Kitty Levin’s. The house on her own estate was quite in

ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer

with them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He

said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending

the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the

greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to

the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys,

with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came

to stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to

watch over her inexperienced daughter in her _interesting condition_.

Moreover, Varenka, Kitty’s friend abroad, kept her promise to come to

Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these

were friends or relations of Levin’s wife. And though he liked them

all, he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was

smothered by this influx of the “Shtcherbatsky element,” as he called

it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey

Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin

stamp, so that the Levin spirit was utterly obliterated.

In the Levins’ house, so long deserted, there were now so many people

that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it

happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all

over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate

table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble

to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were

needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.

The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly’s children, with their

governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for

mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch, who was looked up to by all the party for

his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe,

surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.

“Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms,” he said,

looking at Varenka; “I think it’s a very nice occupation.”

“Oh, we shall be delighted,” answered Varenka, coloring a little. Kitty

exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned

and intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with

Varenka confirmed certain theories of Kitty’s with which her mind had

been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her

mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey

Ivanovitch sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and

while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he

watched the door through which the children would start on the

mushroom-picking expedition. Levin was sitting in the window near his

brother.

Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a

conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him

something.

“You have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for the

better,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling to Kitty, and obviously little

interested in the conversation, “but you have remained true to your

passion for defending the most paradoxical theories.”

“Katya, it’s not good for you to stand,” her husband said to her,

putting a chair for her and looking significantly at her.

“Oh, and there’s no time either,” added Sergey Ivanovitch, seeing the

children running out.

At the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her tightly-drawn

stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey Ivanovitch’s hat, she ran

straight up to him.

Boldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining eyes, so like her

father’s fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though she would

put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and friendly smile.

“Varenka’s waiting,” she said, carefully putting his hat on, seeing

from Sergey Ivanovitch’s smile that she might do so.

Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown, with

a white kerchief on her head.

“I’m coming, I’m coming, Varvara Andreevna,” said Sergey Ivanovitch,

finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their separate pockets

his handkerchief and cigar-case.

“And how sweet my Varenka is! eh?” said Kitty to her husband, as soon

as Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so that Sergey Ivanovitch could

hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do so. “And how

good-looking she is—such a refined beauty! Varenka!” Kitty shouted.

“Shall you be in the mill copse? We’ll come out to you.”

“You certainly forget your condition, Kitty,” said the old princess,

hurriedly coming out at the door. “You mustn’t shout like that.”

Varenka, hearing Kitty’s voice and her mother’s reprimand, went with

light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her

flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the

common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this was, and had been

watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely in

order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as

Kitty fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the

wood.

“Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to

happen,” she whispered as she kissed her.

“And are you coming with us?” Varenka said to Levin in confusion,

pretending not to have heard what had been said.

“I am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and there I shall

stop.”

“Why, what do you want there?” said Kitty.

“I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to check the invoice,”

said Levin; “and where will you be?”

“On the terrace.”

Chapter 2

On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always

liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to do

there too. Besides the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which

all of them were busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace

by a method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition of water.

Kitty had introduced this new method, which had been in use in her

home. Agafea Mihalovna, to whom the task of jam-making had always been

intrusted, considering that what had been done in the Levin household

could not be amiss, had nevertheless put water with the strawberries,

maintaining that the jam could not be made without it. She had been

caught in the act, and was now making jam before everyone, and it was

to be proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well made

without water.

Agafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her

thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning the preserving-pan over the

charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping

they would stick and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that

Agafea Mihalovna’s wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the

person responsible for the raspberry jam-making, tried to appear to be

absorbed in other things and not interested in the jam, talked of other

matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.

“I always buy my maids’ dresses myself, of some cheap material,” the

princess said, continuing the previous conversation. “Isn’t it time to

skim it, my dear?” she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. “There’s not

the slightest need for you to do it, and it’s hot for you,” she said,

stopping Kitty.

“I’ll do it,” said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully passed the

spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the

clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered

with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. “How they’ll enjoy this

at tea-time!” she thought of her children, remembering how she herself

as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what

was best of all—the scum of the jam.

“Stiva says it’s much better to give money.” Dolly took up meanwhile

the weighty subject under discussion, what presents should be made to

servants. “But....”

“Money’s out of the question!” the princess and Kitty exclaimed with

one voice. “They appreciate a present....”

“Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna, not a

poplin, but something of that sort,” said the princess.

“I remember she was wearing it on your nameday.”

“A charming pattern—so simple and refined,—I should have liked it

myself, if she hadn’t had it. Something like Varenka’s. So pretty and

inexpensive.”

“Well, now I think it’s done,” said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the

spoon.

“When it sets as it drops, it’s ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafea

Mihalovna.”

“The flies!” said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. “It’ll be just the same,”

she added.

“Ah! how sweet it is! don’t frighten it!” Kitty said suddenly, looking

at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at the center

of a raspberry.

“Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove,” said her mother.

“_À propos de Varenka_,” said Kitty, speaking in French, as they had

been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not

understand them, “you know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be

settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!”

“But what a famous matchmaker she is!” said Dolly. “How carefully and

cleverly she throws them together!...”

“No; tell me, mamma, what do you think?”

“Why, what is one to think? He” (_he_ meant Sergey Ivanovitch) “might

at any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now, of course,

he’s not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls would be

glad to marry him even now.... She’s a very nice girl, but he

might....”

“Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too, nothing

better could be imagined. In the first place, she’s charming!” said

Kitty, crooking one of her fingers.

“He thinks her very attractive, that’s certain,” assented Dolly.

“Then he occupies such a position in society that he has no need to

look for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is a

good, sweet wife—a restful one.”

“Well, with her he would certainly be restful,” Dolly assented.

“Thirdly, that she should love him. And so it is ... that is, it would

be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of the

forest—and everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes. I

should be so delighted! What do you think, Dolly?”

“But don’t excite yourself. It’s not at all the thing for you to be

excited,” said her mother.

“Oh, I’m not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her an offer today.”

“Ah, that’s so strange, how and when a man makes an offer!... There is

a sort of barrier, and all at once it’s broken down,” said Dolly,

smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Mamma, how did papa make you an offer?” Kitty asked suddenly.

“There was nothing out of the way, it was very simple,” answered the

princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection.

“Oh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to

speak?”

Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother

on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a

woman’s life.

“Of course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country.”

“But how was it settled between you, mamma?”

“You imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? It’s

always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles....”

“How nicely you said that, mamma! It’s just by the eyes, by smiles that

it’s done,” Dolly assented.

“But what words did he say?”

“What did Kostya say to you?”

“He wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it seems!” she

said.

And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty was the

first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before

her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky.

“There’s one thing ... that old love affair of Varenka’s,” she said, a

natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. “I should have liked

to say something to Sergey Ivanovitch, to prepare him. They’re all—all

men, I mean,” she added, “awfully jealous over our past.”

“Not all,” said Dolly. “You judge by your own husband. It makes him

miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.

“But I really don’t know,” the mother put in in defense of her motherly

care of her daughter, “what there was in your past that could worry

him? That Vronsky paid you attentions—that happens to every girl.”

“Oh, yes, but we didn’t mean that,” Kitty said, flushing a little.

“No, let me speak,” her mother went on, “why, you yourself would not

let me have a talk to Vronsky. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, mamma!” said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.

“There’s no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your

friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should

myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it’s

not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm

yourself.”

“I’m perfectly calm, maman.”

“How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,” said Dolly, “and how

unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,” she said, struck by

her own ideas. “Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself

unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.”

“A nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman—no heart,” said

her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky,

but Levin.

“What do you want to talk of it for?” Kitty said with annoyance. “I

never think about it, and I don’t want to think of it.... And I don’t

want to think of it,” she said, catching the sound of her husband’s

well-known step on the steps of the terrace.

“What’s that you don’t want to think about?” inquired Levin, coming

onto the terrace.

But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.

“I’m sorry I’ve broken in on your feminine parliament,” he said,

looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had

been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.

For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea

Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether

at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up

to Kitty.

“Well, how are you?” he asked her, looking at her with the expression

with which everyone looked at her now.

“Oh, very well,” said Kitty, smiling, “and how have things gone with

you?”

“The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we

going for the children? I’ve ordered the horses to be put in.”

“What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?” her mother said

reproachfully.

“Yes, at a walking pace, princess.”

Levin never called the princess “maman” as men often do call their

mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though

he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so

without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.

“Come with us, maman,” said Kitty.

“I don’t like to see such imprudence.”

“Well, I’ll walk then, I’m so well.” Kitty got up and went to her

husband and took his hand.

“You may be well, but everything in moderation,” said the princess.

“Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?” said Levin, smiling to

Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. “Is it all right in the

new way?”

“I suppose it’s all right. For our notions it’s boiled too long.”

“It’ll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won’t mildew, even

though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we’ve no cool cellar

to store it,” said Kitty, at once divining her husband’s motive, and

addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; “but your

pickle’s so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,” she

added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.

Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.

“You needn’t try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you

with him, and I feel happy,” she said, and something in the rough

familiarity of that _with him_ touched Kitty.

“Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best

places.” Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:

“I should like to be angry with you too, but I can’t.”

“Do it, please, by my receipt,” said the princess; “put some paper over

the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it

will never go mildewy.”

Chapter 3

Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her

husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed

over his face—always so quick to reflect every feeling—at the moment

when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of,

and had got no answer.

When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of

sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels

and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and

pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary

unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought

of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his

mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in

the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet

he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had

changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes,

there was that softness and gravity which is found in people

continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.

“So you’re not tired? Lean more on me,” said he.

“No, I’m so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own,

though I’m happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.”

“That was good, but this is even better. Both are better,” he said,

squeezing her hand.

“Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?”

“About jam?”

“Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.”

“Ah!” said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to the

words she was saying, and all the while paying attention to the road,

which passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she

might make a false step.

“And about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. You’ve noticed?... I’m very

anxious for it,” she went on. “What do you think about it?” And she

peeped into his face.

“I don’t know what to think,” Levin answered, smiling. “Sergey seems

very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know....”

“Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died....”

“That was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and

tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But I’ve

watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes,

but one feels that to him they’re simply people, not women.”

“Yes, but now with Varenka ... I fancy there’s something....”

“Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He’s a peculiar,

wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. He’s too pure, too

exalted a nature.”

“Why? Would this lower him, then?”

“No, but he’s so used to a spiritual life that he can’t reconcile

himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact.”

Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly, without

taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew that his

wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would understand

what he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.

“Yes, but there’s not so much of that actual fact about her as about

me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether

spiritual.”

“Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my people

like you....”

“Yes, he’s very nice to me; but....”

“It’s not as it was with poor Nikolay ... you really cared for each

other,” Levin finished. “Why not speak of him?” he added. “I sometimes

blame myself for not; it ends in one’s forgetting. Ah, how terrible and

dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking about?” Levin said, after a

pause.

“You think he can’t fall in love,” said Kitty, translating into her own

language.

“It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love,” Levin said, smiling,

“but he has not the weakness necessary.... I’ve always envied him, and

even now, when I’m so happy, I still envy him.”

“You envy him for not being able to fall in love?”

“I envy him for being better than I,” said Levin. “He does not live for

himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that’s why he

can be calm and contented.”

“And you?” Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her

smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his

brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that

this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of

shame at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to

be better—she loved it in him, and so she smiled.

“And you? What are you dissatisfied with?” she asked, with the same

smile.

Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and

unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds

of her disbelief.

“I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....” he said.

“Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?”

“Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing

whatever but that you should not stumble—see? Oh, but really you

mustn’t skip about like that!” he cried, breaking off to scold her for

too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path.

“But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others,

especially with my brother, I feel I’m a poor creature.”

“But in what way?” Kitty pursued with the same smile. “Don’t you too

work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work

on the estate, and your book?...”

“Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said,

pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way

halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!...

Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.”

“Well, what would you say about papa?” asked Kitty. “Is he a poor

creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?”

“He?—no! But then one must have the simplicity, the

straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven’t got

that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It’s all your doing. Before

there was you—and _this_ too,” he added with a glance towards her waist

that she understood—“I put all my energies into work; now I can’t, and

I’m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I’m

pretending....”

“Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey

Ivanovitch?” said Kitty. “Would you like to do this work for the

general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing

else?”

“Of course not,” said Levin. “But I’m so happy that I don’t understand

anything. So you think he’ll make her an offer today?” he added after a

brief silence.

“I think so, and I don’t think so. Only, I’m awfully anxious for it.

Here, wait a minute.” She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at

the edge of the path. “Come, count: he does propose, he doesn’t,” she

said, giving him the flower.

“He does, he doesn’t,” said Levin, tearing off the white petals.

“No, no!” Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been

watching his fingers with interest. “You picked off two.”

“Oh, but see, this little one shan’t count to make up,” said Levin,

tearing off a little half-grown petal. “Here’s the wagonette overtaking

us.”

“Aren’t you tired, Kitty?” called the princess.

“Not in the least.”

“If you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking.”

But it was not worth while to get in, they were quite near the place,

and all walked on together.

Chapter 4

Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the

children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same

time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from

the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked

beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he

recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the

good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the

feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long,

long ago, and only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness

in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point

that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he

looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and

alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself,

and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much.

“If so,” he said to himself, “I ought to think it over and make up my

mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment.”

“I’m going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my

efforts will make no show,” he said, and he left the edge of the forest

where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees

standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where

between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark

bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch,

knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in

full flower with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round

him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like

a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the

children’s voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not

far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenka’s contralto voice,

calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch’s

face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his

own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long

while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch

tree. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and

the light went out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant

cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away

forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a

birch tree. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked

gently on, deliberating on his position.

“Why not?” he thought. “If it were only a passing fancy or a passion,

if it were only this attraction—this mutual attraction (I can call it a

_mutual_ attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with

the whole bent of my life—if I felt that in giving way to this

attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but it’s

not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie,

I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That’s the

only thing I can say against my feeling.... That’s a great thing,”

Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this

consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but

would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of

others. “But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never

find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by

considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything

better.”

However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not

think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the

qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and

freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she

loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing.

Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an

unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she

knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society,

which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch’s conception of

the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and

not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for

example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in

trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in

his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring

with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husband’s

house, as he saw now in Kitty’s case. She would owe everything to her

husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family

life. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was

a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There

was one consideration against it—his age. But he came of a long-lived

family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for

forty, and he remembered Varenka’s saying that it was only in Russia

that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of

fifty considers himself _dans la force de l’âge_, while a man of forty

is _un jeune homme_. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter

when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it

not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to

the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting

sunbeams the gracious figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her

basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when

this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with

the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the

slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked

with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart

throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he

had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a

mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away

the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.

Chapter 5

“Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the

ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have

lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I

sought—in you. I love you, and offer you my hand.”

Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces

from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard

them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.

“Come here, little ones! There are so many!” she was saying in her

sweet, deep voice.

Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not

change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence

and was glad of it.

“Well, did you find some?” she asked from under the white kerchief,

turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.

“Not one,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Did you?”

She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.

“That one too, near the twig,” she pointed out to little Masha a little

fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under

which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus,

breaking it into two white halves. “This brings back my childhood,” she

added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.

They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to

speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had

walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did

not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent.

After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they

wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own

will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:

“So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always

fewer, though.” Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was

annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her

back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after

a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an

observation in response to her last words.

“I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at

the edge of the wood, though I can’t tell them apart.”

Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the

children, and were quite alone. Varenka’s heart throbbed so that she

heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red

again.

To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame

Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was

almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would

have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking

and his not speaking.

Now or never it must be said—that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too.

Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes

of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and

felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a

slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in

support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in

which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some

utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:

“What is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom and the ‘white’

mushroom?”

Varenka’s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:

“In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it’s in the stalk.”

And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it

was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their

emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense,

began to subside.

“The birch mushroom’s stalk suggests a dark man’s chin after two days

without shaving,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.

“Yes, that’s true,” answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously the

direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the

children. Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had

a sense of relief.

When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey

Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He

could not be false to the memory of Marie.

“Gently, children, gently!” Levin shouted quite angrily to the

children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of

children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.

Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the

wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and

somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.

“Well?” her husband questioned her as they were going home again.

“It doesn’t bite,” said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking

recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.

“How doesn’t bite?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, taking her husband’s hand, lifting it to her

mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. “Like a kiss on a

priest’s hand.”

“Which didn’t it bite with?” he said, laughing.

“Both. But it should have been like this....”

“There are some peasants coming....”

“Oh, they didn’t see.”

Chapter 6

During the time of the children’s tea the grown-up people sat in the

balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all,

especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware that

there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great

importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a

schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or

shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that

something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin

and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that

evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a

disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and

could not—and they felt a prick of conscience.

“Mark my words, Alexander will not come,” said the old princess.

That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come down by

train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.

“And I know why,” the princess went on; “he says that young people

ought to be left alone for a while at first.”

“But papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,” said Kitty.

“Besides, we’re not young people!—we’re old, married people by now.”

“Only if he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,” said

the princess, sighing mournfully.

“What nonsense, mamma!” both the daughters fell upon her at once.

“How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now....”

And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess’s voice.

Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. “Maman always

finds something to be miserable about,” they said in that glance. They

did not know that happy as the princess was in her daughter’s house,

and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely

miserable, both on her own account and her husband’s, ever since they

had married their last and favorite daughter, and the old home had been

left empty.

“What is it, Agafea Mihalovna?” Kitty asked suddenly of Agafea

Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of

meaning.

“About supper.”

“Well, that’s right,” said Dolly; “you go and arrange about it, and

I’ll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing

done all day.”

“That’s my lesson! No, Dolly, I’m going,” said Levin, jumping up.

Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of

the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who had been

studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on

coming to the Levins’ to go over with him, at least once a day, the

most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had offered to

take her place, but the mother, having once overheard Levin’s lesson,

and noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had

given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment and anxiety

not to mortify Levin, that they must keep strictly to the book as the

teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it again herself.

Levin was amazed both at Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his

duty, threw upon the mother the supervision of studies of which she had

no comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the children so

badly. But he promised his sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as

she wished. And he went on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by

the book, and so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour

of the lesson. So it had been today.

“No, I’m going, Dolly, you sit still,” he said. “We’ll do it all

properly, like the book. Only when Stiva comes, and we go out shooting,

then we shall have to miss it.”

And Levin went to Grisha.

Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy,

well-ordered household of the Levins Varenka had succeeded in making

herself useful.

“I’ll see to the supper, you sit still,” she said, and got up to go to

Agafea Mihalovna.

“Yes, yes, most likely they’ve not been able to get chickens. If so,

ours....”

“Agafea Mihalovna and I will see about it,” and Varenka vanished with

her.

“What a nice girl!” said the princess.

“Not nice, maman; she’s an exquisite girl; there’s no one else like

her.”

“So you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch today?” said Sergey

Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about

Varenka. “It would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike

than yours,” he said with a subtle smile. “One all movement, only

living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively,

alert, quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he either

sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land.”

“Yes, he’s very heedless,” said the princess, addressing Sergey

Ivanovitch. “I’ve been meaning, indeed, to ask you to tell him that

it’s out of the question for her” (she indicated Kitty) “to stay here;

that she positively must come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor

down....”

“Maman, he’ll do everything; he has agreed to everything,” Kitty said,

angry with her mother for appealing to Sergey Ivanovitch to judge in

such a matter.

In the middle of their conversation they heard the snorting of horses

and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Dolly had not time to get up to

go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where

Grisha was having his lesson, Levin leaped out and helped Grisha out

after him.

“It’s Stiva!” Levin shouted from under the balcony. “We’ve finished,

Dolly, don’t be afraid!” he added, and started running like a boy to

meet the carriage.

“_Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!_” shouted Grisha, skipping along the

avenue.

“And someone else too! Papa, of course!” cried Levin, stopping at the

entrance of the avenue. “Kitty, don’t come down the steep staircase, go

round.”

But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the

carriage for the old prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw

beside Stepan Arkadyevitch not the prince but a handsome, stout young

man in a Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind. This was Vassenka

Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shtcherbatskys, a brilliant young

gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow society. “A capital fellow, and a

keen sportsman,” as Stepan Arkadyevitch said, introducing him.

Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come in

place of the old prince, Veslovsky greeted Levin gaily, claiming

acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the

carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyevitch had

brought with him.

Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was rather

vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more

the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka

Veslovsky, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him

still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on approaching the steps

where the whole party, children and grown-up, were gathered together in

much excitement, Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly warm

and gallant air, kissing Kitty’s hand.

“Your wife and I are cousins and very old friends,” said Vassenka

Veslovsky, once more shaking Levin’s hand with great warmth.

“Well, are there plenty of birds?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Levin,

hardly leaving time for everyone to utter their greetings. “We’ve come

with the most savage intentions. Why, maman, they’ve not been in Moscow

since! Look, Tanya, here’s something for you! Get it, please, it’s in

the carriage, behind!” he talked in all directions. “How pretty you’ve

grown, Dolly,” he said to his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding

it in one of his, and patting it with the other.

Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind, now

looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him.

“Who was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?” he thought, looking

at Stepan Arkadyevitch’s tender demonstrations to his wife. He looked

at Dolly, and he did not like her either.

“She doesn’t believe in his love. So what is she so pleased about?

Revolting!” thought Levin.

He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before,

and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka,

with his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.

Even Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto the steps, seemed to

him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Stepan

Arkadyevitch, though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor

respected Oblonsky.

And Varenka, even she seemed hateful, with her air _sainte nitouche_

making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was

thinking of nothing but getting married.

And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in with the tone of

gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country, as

though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all,

unpleasant was that particular smile with which she responded to his

smile.

Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were

all seated, Levin turned and went out.

Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a

moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her,

saying he was wanted at the counting-house. It was long since his own

work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment.

“It’s all holiday for them,” he thought; “but these are no holiday

matters, they won’t wait, and there’s no living without them.”

Chapter 7

Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to

supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna,

consulting about wines for supper.

“But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.”

“No, Stiva doesn’t drink ... Kostya, stop, what’s the matter?” Kitty

began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the

dining-room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively

general conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka

Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Well, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?” said Stepan

Arkadyevitch.

“Please, do let’s go,” said Veslovsky, moving to another chair, where

he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.

“I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet

this year?” said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg, but

speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him,

and that was so out of keeping with him. “I can’t answer for our

finding grouse, but there are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start

early. You’re not tired? Aren’t you tired, Stiva?”

“Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night.

Let’s go for a walk!”

“Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!” Veslovsky chimed

in.

“Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up

too,” Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her

voice which she almost always had now with her husband. “But to my

thinking, it’s time for bed now.... I’m going, I don’t want supper.”

“No, do stay a little, Dolly,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going round to

her side behind the table where they were having supper. “I’ve so much

still to tell you.”

“Nothing really, I suppose.”

“Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s going to them

again? You know they’re hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must

certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!”

Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.

“Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?” Darya

Alexandrovna appealed to him.

Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing

in his conversation with the princess and Varenka, he saw that there

was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan

Arkadyevitch, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw

on his wife’s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with

fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them

something with great animation.

“It’s exceedingly nice at their place,” Veslovsky was telling them

about Vronsky and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to

judge, but in their house you feel the real feeling of home.”

“What do they intend doing?”

“I believe they think of going to Moscow.”

“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are

you going there?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.

“I’m spending July there.”

“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.

“I’ve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,” said Dolly.

“I am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. I will go

alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it

will be better indeed without you.”

“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “And you, Kitty?”

“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced

round at her husband.

“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a very

fascinating woman.”

“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and

walked across to her husband.

“Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?” she said.

His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had

overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far

indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own

fashion. Strange as it was to him afterwards to recall it, it seemed to

him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going shooting,

all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to

Vassenka Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.

“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable

to himself.

“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of

her husband, and set off the day after,” said Kitty.

The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus: “Don’t

separate me from _him_. I don’t care about _your_ going, but do let me

enjoy the society of this delightful young man.”

“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with

peculiar amiability.

Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had

occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with

smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.

Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly

breathe. “How dare he look at my wife like that!” was the feeling that

boiled within him.

“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Vassenka, sitting down on

a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.

Levin’s jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived

husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to

provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in

spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about

his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next

day.

Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up

herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin

could not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess,

Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew

back her hand and said with a naïve bluntness, for which the old

princess scolded her afterwards:

“We don’t like that fashion.”

In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to

arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did

not like them.