“Her husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my

solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however

difficult it may be for me—not like some other people. And how sweet it

is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like the best of

married couples; it’s for God to judge them, not for us. And didn’t

Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva ... and Sam Nikandrov, and Vassiliev

and Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova.... Did no one say anything

about them? And it has ended by their being received by everyone. And

then, _c’est un intérieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-à-fait à

l’anglaise. On se réunit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se sépare._

Everyone does as he pleases till dinner time. Dinner at seven o’clock.

Stiva did very rightly to send you. He needs their support. You know

that through his mother and brother he can do anything. And then they

do so much good. He didn’t tell you about his hospital? _Ce sera

admirable_—everything from Paris.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had found the men of

the party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace.

There was still a long time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite

weather, and so several different methods of spending the next two

hours were proposed. There were very many methods of passing the time

at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at

Pokrovskoe.

“_Une partie de lawn-tennis,_” Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome

smile. “We’ll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna.”

“No, it’s too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row in the

boat, show Darya Alexandrovna the river banks.” Vronsky proposed.

“I agree to anything,” said Sviazhsky.

“I imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a stroll—wouldn’t

you? And then the boat, perhaps,” said Anna.

So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevitch went off to the bathing

place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for them.

They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviazhsky, and

Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in the

new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically,

she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Anna’s conduct.

As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary

of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only

excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Anna

with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life among these

strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Darya

Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was

seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook everything for the sake of

the comforts she enjoyed.

As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna’s action;

but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was

disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought

him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud

except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he

overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She

felt with him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her

dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly

ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly

ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.

Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation.

Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house

and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the

same tell him how much she liked his house.

“Yes, it’s a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,”

he said.

“I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?”

“Oh, no!” he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. “If you could

only have seen that court last spring!”

And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried

away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various

details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that,

having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his

home, Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person,

and was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovna’s praise.

“If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed,

it’s not far. Shall we go?” he said, glancing into her face to convince

himself that she was not bored. “Are you coming, Anna?” he turned to

her.

“We will come, won’t we?” she said, addressing Sviazhsky. “_Mais il ne

faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se morfondre là

dans le bateau._ We must send and tell them.”

“Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here,” said Anna, turning to

Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which she had

previously talked about the hospital.

“Oh, it’s a work of real importance!” said Sviazhsky. But to show he

was not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he promptly added

some slightly critical remarks.

“I wonder, though, count,” he said, “that while you do so much for the

health of the peasants, you take so little interest in the schools.”

“_C’est devenu tellement commun les écoles,_” said Vronsky. “You

understand it’s not on that account, but it just happens so, my

interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the hospital,”

he said to Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.

The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path. After

going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya

Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large

pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which

was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine.

Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by

scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying

bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.

“How quickly work gets done with you!” said Sviazhsky. “When I was here

last time the roof was not on.”

“By the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is done,”

said Anna.

“And what’s this new building?”

“That’s the house for the doctor and the dispensary,” answered Vronsky,

seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing

himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.

Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still

with the architect and began talking rather warmly.

“The front is still too low,” he said to Anna, who had asked what was

the matter.

“I said the foundation ought to be raised,” said Anna.

“Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna,” said

the architect, “but now it’s too late.”

“Yes, I take a great interest in it,” Anna answered Sviazhsky, who was

expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. “This new

building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an

afterthought, and was begun without a plan.”

Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the

ladies, and led them inside the hospital.

Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were

painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were

finished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they

walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like

marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet

floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a

block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their

hair, to greet the gentry.

“This is the reception room,” said Vronsky. “Here there will be a desk,

tables, and benches, and nothing more.”

“This way; let us go in here. Don’t go near the window,” said Anna,

trying the paint to see if it were dry. “Alexey, the paint’s dry

already,” she added.

From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky

showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he

showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he

showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room,

then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would

make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors,

and many other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest

mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply

wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it

all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great

satisfaction.

“Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly

fitted hospital in Russia,” said Sviazhsky.

“And won’t you have a lying-in ward?” asked Dolly. “That’s so much

needed in the country. I have often....”

In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.

“This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is

intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,” he said. “Ah!

look at this,” and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair

that had just been ordered for the convalescents. “Look.” He sat down

in the chair and began moving it. “The patient can’t walk—still too

weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air,

and he moves, rolls himself along....”

Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything

very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural,

simple-hearted eagerness. “Yes, he’s a very nice, good man,” she

thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and

penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in

Anna’s place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest

that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.

Chapter 21

“No, I think the princess is tired, and horses don’t interest her,”

Vronsky said to Anna, who wanted to go on to the stables, where

Sviazhsky wished to see the new stallion. “You go on, while I escort

the princess home, and we’ll have a little talk,” he said, “if you

would like that?” he added, turning to her.

“I know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted,” answered Darya

Alexandrovna, rather astonished.

She saw by Vronsky’s face that he wanted something from her. She was

not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back

into the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having

made sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:

“You guess that I have something I want to say to you,” he said,

looking at her with laughing eyes. “I am not wrong in believing you to

be a friend of Anna’s.” He took off his hat, and taking out his

handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald.

Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with

dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his

laughing eyes and stern expression scared her.

The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to

her flashed into her brain. “He is going to beg me to come to stay with

them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set

that will receive Anna in Moscow.... Or isn’t it Vassenka Veslovsky and

his relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was

to blame?” All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess

what he really wanted to talk about to her.

“You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,” he said;

“do help me.”

Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face,

which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches

by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She

waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her,

scratching with his cane in the gravel.

“You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna’s former

friends—I don’t count Princess Varvara—but I know that you have done

this not because you regard our position as normal, but because,

understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her

and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?” he asked,

looking round at her.

“Oh, yes,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade,

“but....”

“No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position

into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that

she had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than

I do all the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may well

understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am

to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.”

“I understand,” said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the

sincerity and firmness with which he said this. “But just because you

feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,” she said.

“Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.”

“In the world it is hell!” he brought out quickly, frowning darkly.

“You can’t imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through

in Petersburg in that fortnight ... and I beg you to believe it.”

“Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna ... nor you miss society....”

“Society!” he said contemptuously, “how could I miss society?”

“So far—and it may be so always—you are happy and at peace. I see in

Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so

much already,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as

she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna

really were happy.

But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “I know that she has revived after all her

sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I am

afraid of what is before us ... I beg your pardon, you would like to

walk on?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Well, then, let us sit here.”

Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue.

He stood up facing her.

“I see that she is happy,” he repeated, and the doubt whether she were

happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna’s mind. “But can it

last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but

the die is cast,” he said, passing from Russian to French, “and we are

bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we

hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the

law and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of

complications arise which she does not see and does not want to see.

And that one can well understand. But I can’t help seeing them. My

daughter is by law not my daughter, but Karenin’s. I cannot bear this

falsity!” he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked

with gloomy inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna.

She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:

“One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Karenin;

he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however

happy we may be in our home life and however many children we may have,

there will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You can

understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to

speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She does not understand, and

to her I cannot speak plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I

am happy, happy in her love, but I must have occupation. I have found

occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and consider it nobler than

the pursuits of my former companions at court and in the army. And most

certainly I would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am

working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy and contented,

and we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. _Ce

n’est pas un pis-aller,_ on the contrary....”

Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he

grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but

she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of

which he could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of

everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell

into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of

his relations with Anna.

“Well, I will go on,” he said, collecting himself. “The great thing is

that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will

not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,—and this I

have not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that his children,

the children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to

someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!”

He paused, evidently much moved.

“Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?” queried Darya

Alexandrovna.

“Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said,

calming himself with an effort. “Anna can, it depends on her.... Even

to petition the Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And

that depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorce—at that time your

husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not

refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to him. He said plainly at

that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of

course,” he said gloomily, “it is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of

which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any

recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a

letter from her. I can understand that it is agony to her. But the

matter is of such importance, that one must _passer par-dessus toutes

ces finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de l’existence d’Anne

et de ses enfants._ I won’t speak of myself, though it’s hard for me,

very hard,” he said, with an expression as though he were threatening

someone for its being hard for him. “And so it is, princess, that I am

shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to

persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce.”

“Yes, of course,” Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly

recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. “Yes, of

course,” she repeated with decision, thinking of Anna.

“Use your influence with her, make her write. I don’t like—I’m almost

unable to speak about this to her.”

“Very well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think of it

herself?” said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she suddenly at

that point recalled Anna’s strange new habit of half-closing her eyes.

And she remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper

questions of life were touched upon. “Just as though she half-shut her

eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything,” thought Dolly.

“Yes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,” Dolly

said in reply to his look of gratitude.

They got up and walked to the house.

Chapter 22

When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently in her

eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with

Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.

“I believe it’s dinner time,” she said. “We’ve not seen each other at

all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I

expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings.”

Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was

impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in order to

signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to

brush her dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her

head.

“This is all I can do,” she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to

her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.

“Yes, we are too formal here,” she said, as it were apologizing for her

magnificence. “Alexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at

anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,” she added. “You’re

not tired?”

There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going into

the drawing-room they found Princess Varvara already there, and the

gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats. The architect wore a

swallow-tail coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to his

guest. The architect he had already introduced to her at the hospital.

A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a

starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies

got up. Vronsky asked Sviazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna, and himself

offered his arm to Dolly. Veslovsky was before Tushkevitch in offering

his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevitch with the steward and

the doctor walked in alone.

The dinner, the dining-room, the service, the waiting at table, the

wine, and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of

modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous

and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was novel to

her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a household—although

she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own household, as

it was all in a style of luxury far above her own manner of living—she

could not help scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how and by whom

it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even Sviazhsky,

and many other people she knew, would never have considered this

question, and would have readily believed what every well-bred host

tries to make his guests feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered

in his house has cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of

itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well aware that even porridge for the

children’s breakfast does not come of itself, and that therefore, where

so complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained,

someone must give earnest attention to its organization. And from the

glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the table, from the way

he nodded to the butler, and offered Darya Alexandrovna her choice

between cold soup and hot soup, she saw that it was all organized and

maintained by the care of the master of the house himself. It was

evident that it all rested no more upon Anna than upon Veslovsky. She,

Sviazhsky, the princess, and Veslovsky, were equally guests, with light

hearts enjoying what had been arranged for them.

Anna was the hostess only in conducting the conversation. The

conversation was a difficult one for the lady of the house at a small

table with persons present, like the steward and the architect,

belonging to a completely different world, struggling not to be

overawed by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to

sustain a large share in the general conversation. But this difficult

conversation Anna directed with her usual tact and naturalness, and

indeed she did so with actual enjoyment, as Darya Alexandrovna

observed. The conversation began about the row Tushkevitch and

Veslovsky had taken alone together in the boat, and Tushkevitch began

describing the last boat races in Petersburg at the Yacht Club. But

Anna, seizing the first pause, at once turned to the architect to draw

him out of his silence.

“Nikolay Ivanitch was struck,” she said, meaning Sviazhsky, “at the

progress the new building had made since he was here last; but I am

there every day, and every day I wonder at the rate at which it grows.”

“It’s first-rate working with his excellency,” said the architect with

a smile (he was respectful and composed, though with a sense of his own

dignity). “It’s a very different matter to have to do with the district

authorities. Where one would have to write out sheaves of papers, here

I call upon the count, and in three words we settle the business.”

“The American way of doing business,” said Sviazhsky, with a smile.

“Yes, there they build in a rational fashion....”

The conversation passed to the misuse of political power in the United

States, but Anna quickly brought it round to another topic, so as to

draw the steward into talk.

“Have you ever seen a reaping machine?” she said, addressing Darya

Alexandrovna. “We had just ridden over to look at one when we met. It’s

the first time I ever saw one.”

“How do they work?” asked Dolly.

“Exactly like little scissors. A plank and a lot of little scissors.

Like this.”

Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands covered with

rings, and began showing how the machine worked. It was clear that she

saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but aware that

her talk was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on explaining.

“More like little penknives,” Veslovsky said playfully, never taking

his eyes off her.

Anna gave a just perceptible smile, but made no answer. “Isn’t it true,

Karl Fedoritch, that it’s just like little scissors?” she said to the

steward.

“_Oh, ja,_” answered the German. _“Es ist ein ganz einfaches Ding,”_

and he began to explain the construction of the machine.

“It’s a pity it doesn’t bind too. I saw one at the Vienna exhibition,

which binds with a wire,” said Sviazhsky. “They would be more

profitable in use.”

_“Es kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.”_

And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. _“Das

lässt sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.”_ The German was just feeling in the

pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but

recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronsky’s chilly

glance, he checked himself. _“Zu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,”_

he concluded.

_“Wünscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,”_ said Vassenka

Veslovsky, mimicking the German. _“J’adore l’allemand,”_ he addressed

Anna again with the same smile.

_“Cessez,”_ she said with playful severity.

“We expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch,” she said

to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; “have you been there?”

“I went there, but I had taken flight,” the doctor answered with gloomy

jocoseness.

“Then you’ve taken a good constitutional?”

“Splendid!”

“Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it’s not typhus?”

“Typhus it is not, but it’s taking a bad turn.”

“What a pity!” said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to

her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.

“It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your

description, Anna Arkadyevna,” Sviazhsky said jestingly.

“Oh, no, why so?” said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew

there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that

had been noticed by Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness

made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.

“But Anna Arkadyevna’s knowledge of architecture is marvelous,” said

Tushkevitch.

“To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths

and damp-courses,” said Veslovsky. “Have I got it right?”

“There’s nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of

it,” said Anna. “But, I dare say, you don’t even know what houses are

made of?”

Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that

existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her

will.

Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously

attached no significance to Veslovsky’s chattering; on the contrary, he

encouraged his jests.

“Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?”

“By cement, of course.”

“Bravo! And what is cement?”

“Oh, some sort of paste ... no, putty,” said Veslovsky, raising a

general laugh.

The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect,

and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a

conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on

another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once

Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she

positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said

anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin,

describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its

effects on Russian agriculture.

“I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,” Vronsky said,

smiling, “but most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns;

or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer

fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort

of views can anyone have on such a subject?”

“Turkish views, in general,” Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a

smile.

“I can’t defend his opinions,” Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; “but

I can say that he’s a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he

would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of

doing so.”

“I like him extremely, and we are great friends,” Sviazhsky said,

smiling good-naturedly. “_Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toqué;_ he

maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards

are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.”

“It’s our Russian apathy,” said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced

decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; “we’ve no sense of the

duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize

these duties.”

“I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,” said

Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky’s tone of superiority.

“For my part,” pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or

other keenly affected by this conversation, “such as I am, I am, on the

contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to

Nikolay Ivanitch” (he indicated Sviazhsky), “in electing me a justice

of the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the

session, of judging some peasants’ quarrel about a horse, is as

important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if

they elect me for the district council. It’s only in that way I can pay

for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don’t

understand the weight that the big landowners ought to have in the

state.”

It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he

was of being right at his own table. She thought how Levin, who

believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own

table. But she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.

“So we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming elections?” said

Sviazhsky. “But you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the

spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me.”

“I rather agree with your _beau-frère_,” said Anna, “though not quite

on the same ground as he,” she added with a smile. “I’m afraid that we

have too many of these public duties in these latter days. Just as in

old days there were so many government functionaries that one had to

call in a functionary for every single thing, so now everyone’s doing

some sort of public duty. Alexey has been here now six months, and he’s

a member, I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. _Du

train que cela va,_ the whole time will be wasted on it. And I’m afraid

that with such a multiplicity of these bodies, they’ll end in being a

mere form. How many are you a member of, Nikolay Ivanitch?” she turned

to Sviazhsky—“over twenty, I fancy.”

Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone.

Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it

instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronsky’s face had

immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this,

and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the conversation

by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky

had without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the

country, Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was

connected with some deep private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.

The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good;

but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners

and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it

all had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an

ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable

impression on her.

After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn

tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides

of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and

rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but

it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the

time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with

Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner,

Tushkevitch, gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a

long time. Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously.

They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without

haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly up to them,

waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over

the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but

he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and

outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the

ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure

in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his

impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on

the memory.

When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed

her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.

During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did

not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time

between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether

of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child’s

game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time

somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be

enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in

a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was

spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of

staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the

game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The

maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now,

after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and

tempted her back to them.

When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya

Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began

arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.

It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to

see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.

Chapter 23

Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired

for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to

speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she

had stopped: “Afterwards, by ourselves, we’ll talk about everything.

I’ve got so much I want to tell you,” she said.

Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about.

She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind

all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible

beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that

everything had been said already.

“Well, what of Kitty?” she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently

at Dolly. “Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn’t she angry with me?”

“Angry? Oh, no!” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.

“But she hates me, despises me?”

“Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn’t forgiven.”

“Yes, yes,” said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window.

“But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What’s the meaning of

being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could

it possibly have happened that you didn’t become the wife of Stiva?”

“Really, I don’t know. But this is what I want you to tell me....”

“Yes, yes, but we’ve not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He’s a

very nice man, they say.”

“He’s much more than very nice. I don’t know a better man.”

“Ah, how glad I am! I’m so glad! Much more than very nice,” she

repeated.

Dolly smiled.

“But tell me about yourself. We’ve a great deal to talk about. And I’ve

had a talk with....” Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it

awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.

“With Alexey,” said Anna, “I know what you talked about. But I wanted

to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?”

“How am I to say like that straight off? I really don’t know.”

“No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn’t forget

that you’re seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we

are not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite

alone, and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But

imagine me living alone without him, alone, and that will be ... I see

by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be half the

time away from home,” she said, getting up and sitting down close by

Dolly.

“Of course,” she interrupted Dolly, who would have answered, “of course

I won’t try to keep him by force. I don’t keep him indeed. The races

are just coming, his horses are running, he will go. I’m very glad. But

think of me, fancy my position.... But what’s the use of talking about

it?” She smiled. “Well, what did he talk about with you?”

“He spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and it’s easy for me

to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ... whether

you could not....” (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) “correct, improve

your position.... You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if

possible, you should get married....”

“Divorce, you mean?” said Anna. “Do you know, the only woman who came

to see me in Petersburg was Betsy Tverskaya? You know her, of course?

_Au fond, c’est la femme la plus depravée qui existe._ She had an

intrigue with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And

she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was

irregular. Don’t imagine I would compare ... I know you, darling. But I

could not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?” she

repeated.

“He said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you

will say that it’s egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He

wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband,

to have a legal right to you.”

“What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?”

she put in gloomily.

“The chief thing he desires ... he desires that you should not suffer.”

“That’s impossible. Well?”

“Well, and the most legitimate desire—he wishes that your children

should have a name.”

“What children?” Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing her

eyes.

“Annie and those to come....”

“He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children.”

“How can you tell that you won’t?”

“I shall not, because I don’t wish it.” And, in spite of all her

emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naïve expression of curiosity,

wonder, and horror on Dolly’s face.

“The doctor told me after my illness....”

“Impossible!” said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.

For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and

deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the

first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one

will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.

This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or

two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her,

aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that

she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder

at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now

learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was

too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.

_“N’est-ce pas immoral?”_ was all she said, after a brief pause.

“Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be

with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my

husband—practically my husband,” Anna said in a tone intentionally

superficial and frivolous.

“Yes, yes,” said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments she had

used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.

“For you, for other people,” said Anna, as though divining her

thoughts, “there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must

consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And

how am I to keep his love? Not like this!”

She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with

extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas

and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna’s head. “I,” she thought,

“did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the

first woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always

pretty and lively. He deserted her and took another. And can Anna

attract and keep Count Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks

for, he will find dresses and manners still more attractive and

charming. And however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however

beautiful her full figure and her eager face under her black curls, he

will find something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and

charming husband does.”

Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,

indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other

arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.

“Do you say that it’s not right? But you must consider,” she went on;

“you forget my position. How can I desire children? I’m not speaking of

the suffering, I’m not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children

to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger’s name. For

the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their

mother, their father, their birth.”

“But that is just why a divorce is necessary.” But Anna did not hear

her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she

had so many times convinced herself.

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing

unhappy beings into the world!” She looked at Dolly, but without

waiting for a reply she went on:

“I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,” she said.

“If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are

unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.”

These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own

reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. “How can

one wrong creatures that don’t exist?” she thought. And all at once the

idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been

better for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed

to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this

tangle of whirling, mad ideas.

“No, I don’t know; it’s not right,” was all she said, with an

expression of disgust on her face.

“Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I.... And besides that,”

added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of

Dolly’s objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right,

“don’t forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position

as you. For you the question is: do you desire not to have any more

children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And that’s a

great difference. You must see that I can’t desire it in my position.”

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got

far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions

on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to

speak.

Chapter 24

“Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position,

if possible,” said Dolly.

“Yes, if possible,” said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly

different tone, subdued and mournful.

“Surely you don’t mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your husband

had consented to it.”

“Dolly, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Oh, we won’t then,” Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the

expression of suffering on Anna’s face. “All I see is that you take too

gloomy a view of things.”

“I? Not at all! I’m always bright and happy. You see, _je fais des

passions._ Veslovsky....”

“Yes, to tell the truth, I don’t like Veslovsky’s tone,” said Darya

Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

“Oh, that’s nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that’s all; but he’s a boy,

and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as I please. It’s just

as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!”—she suddenly changed the

subject—“you say I take too gloomy a view of things. You can’t

understand. It’s too awful! I try not to take any view of it at all.”

“But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can.”

“But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, and say I

don’t think about it. I don’t think about it!” she repeated, and a

flush rose into her face. She got up, straightening her chest, and

sighed heavily. With her light step she began pacing up and down the

room, stopping now and then. “I don’t think of it? Not a day, not an

hour passes that I don’t think of it, and blame myself for thinking of

it ... because thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!” she

repeated. “When I think of it, I can’t sleep without morphine. But

never mind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first

place, he won’t give me a divorce. He’s under the influence of Countess

Lidia Ivanovna now.”

Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head,

following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.

“You ought to make the attempt,” she said softly.

“Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?” she said, evidently

giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and

learned by heart. “It means that I, hating him, but still recognizing

that I have wronged him—and I consider him magnanimous—that I humiliate

myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort; I do it.

Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have

received his consent, say....” Anna was at that moment at the furthest

end of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the curtain

at the window. “I receive his consent, but my ... my son? They won’t

give him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his father, whom

I’ve abandoned. Do you see, I love ... equally, I think, but both more

than myself—two creatures, Seryozha and Alexey.”

She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly, with

her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white dressing gown

her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She bent her head,

and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a thin

little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and nightcap,

shaking all over with emotion.

“It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the

other. I can’t have them together, and that’s the only thing I want.

And since I can’t have that, I don’t care about the rest. I don’t care

about anything, anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I

can’t, I don’t like to talk of it. So don’t blame me, don’t judge me

for anything. You can’t with your pure heart understand all that I’m

suffering.” She went up, sat down beside Dolly, and with a guilty look,

peeped into her face and took her hand.

“What are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don’t despise

me. I don’t deserve contempt. I’m simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy,

I am,” she articulated, and turning away, she burst into tears.

Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed. She

had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but

now she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home

and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm

quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own

seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any

account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that

she would certainly go back next day.

Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine-glass and dropped

into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient

was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while,

she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.

When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her. He was

looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so

long in Dolly’s room, she must have had with her. But in her expression

of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find

nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was

used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should

affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of,

but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But

she only said:

“I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don’t you?”

“Oh, I’ve known her a long while, you know. She’s very good-hearted, I

suppose, _mais excessivement terre-à-terre._ Still, I’m very glad to

see her.”

He took Anna’s hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.

Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in spite of

the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward

journey. Levin’s coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat,

with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mud-guards,

drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.

Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the

gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her

hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that

it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that

now, from Dolly’s departure, no one again would stir up within her soul

the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to

stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of

her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in

the life she was leading.

As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a

delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how

they had liked being at Vronsky’s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip,

expressed himself unasked:

“Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they

gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn’t a grain left by

cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to

forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much

as they can eat.”

“The master’s a screw,” put in the counting-house clerk.

“Well, did you like their horses?” asked Dolly.

“The horses!—there’s no two opinions about them. And the food was good.

But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don’t

know what you thought,” he said, turning his handsome, good-natured

face to her.

“I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?”

“Eh, we must!”

On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and

particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness

telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of

the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their

recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.

“One has to know Anna and Vronsky—I have got to know him better now—to

see how nice they are, and how touching,” she said, speaking now with

perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction

and awkwardness she had experienced there.

Chapter 25

Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the

country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps

to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they

should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived

alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they

could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it.

Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired.

They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and

both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance

when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of

novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all

the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she

received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only

given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of

interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that

he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or

architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding

or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was

disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she

would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.

The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely

assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her chief

thought was still of herself—how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far

she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated

this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the

sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the

loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and

he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an

ever growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether

they hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to

be free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to go to the town to a

meeting or a race, Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his

life. The rôle he had taken up, the rôle of a wealthy landowner, one of

that class which ought to be the very heart of the Russian aristocracy,

was entirely to his taste; and now, after spending six months in that

character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his

management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and

more, was most successful. In spite of the immense sums cost him by the

hospital, by machinery, by cows ordered from Switzerland, and many

other things, he was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing

his substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of timber,

wheat, and wool, the letting of lands, Vronsky was hard as a rock, and

knew well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on

this and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving

no risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an

extreme degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German

steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his

original estimate always far larger than really required, and then

representing to Vronsky that he might get the thing cheaper, and so

make a profit, Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward,

cross-examined him, and only agreed to his suggestions when the

implement to be ordered or constructed was the very newest, not yet

known in Russia, and likely to excite wonder. Apart from such

exceptions, he resolved upon an increased outlay only where there was a

surplus, and in making such an outlay he went into the minutest

details, and insisted on getting the very best for his money; so that

by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was clear that he was

not wasting, but increasing his substance.

In October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky

province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviazhsky, Koznishev,

Oblonsky, and a small part of Levin’s land.

These elections were attracting public attention from several

circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part

in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great

preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the

elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to

attend these. Vronsky had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them.

Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove

over to fetch Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a

quarrel between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was

the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and

so, preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold

expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to

her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with

great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked

intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his

look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew

that it only happened when she had determined upon something without

letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so

anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half

sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in—her reasonableness.

“I hope you won’t be dull?”

“I hope not,” said Anna. “I got a box of books yesterday from

Gautier’s. No, I shan’t be dull.”

“She’s trying to take that tone, and so much the better,” he thought,

“or else it would be the same thing over and over again.”

And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid

explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their

intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From

one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that

it was better so. “At first there will be, as this time, something

undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I

can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence,” he

thought.

Chapter 26

In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement. He had

spent a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergey

Ivanovitch, who had property in the Kashinsky province, and took great

interest in the question of the approaching elections, made ready to

set off to the elections. He invited his brother, who had a vote in the

Seleznevsky district, to come with him. Levin had, moreover, to

transact in Kashin some extremely important business relating to the

wardship of land and to the receiving of certain redemption money for

his sister, who was abroad.

Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was bored in Moscow,

and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the proper

nobleman’s uniform, costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid

for the uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Levin to go.

He went to Kashin....

Levin had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each day, and

busily engaged about his sister’s business, which still dragged on. The

district marshals of nobility were all occupied with the elections, and

it was impossible to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the

court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the sums due, was

met too by difficulties. After long negotiations over the legal

details, the money was at last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most

obliging person, could not hand over the order, because it must have

the signature of the president, and the president, though he had not

given over his duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these

worrying negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and

talking with pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the

unpleasantness of the petitioner’s position, but were powerless to

assist him—all these efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling

of misery in Levin akin to the mortifying helplessness one experiences

in dreams when one tries to use physical force. He felt this frequently

as he talked to his most good-natured solicitor. This solicitor did, it

seemed, everything possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of

his difficulties. “I tell you what you might try,” he said more than

once; “go to so-and-so and so-and-so,” and the solicitor drew up a

regular plan for getting round the fatal point that hindered

everything. But he would add immediately, “It’ll mean some delay,

anyway, but you might try it.” And Levin did try, and did go. Everyone

was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up again in the

end, and again to bar the way. What was particularly trying, was that

Levin could not make out with whom he was struggling, to whose interest

it was that his business should not be done. That no one seemed to

know; the solicitor certainly did not know. If Levin could have

understood why, just as he saw why one can only approach the booking

office of a railway station in single file, it would not have been so

vexatious and tiresome to him. But with the hindrances that confronted

him in his business, no one could explain why they existed.

But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was patient,

and if he could not see why it was all arranged like this, he told

himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and that

most likely it must be so, and he tried not to fret.

In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried now

not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully as

he could the question which was so earnestly and ardently absorbing

honest and excellent men whom he respected. Since his marriage there

had been revealed to Levin so many new and serious aspects of life that

had previously, through his frivolous attitude to them, seemed of no

importance, that in the question of the elections too he assumed and

tried to find some serious significance.

Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and object of the

proposed revolution at the elections. The marshal of the province in

whose hands the law had placed the control of so many important public

functions—the guardianship of wards (the very department which was

giving Levin so much trouble just now), the disposal of large sums

subscribed by the nobility of the province, the high schools, female,

male, and military, and popular instruction on the new model, and

finally, the district council—the marshal of the province, Snetkov, was

a nobleman of the old school,—dissipating an immense fortune, a

good-hearted man, honest after his own fashion, but utterly without any

comprehension of the needs of modern days. He always took, in every

question, the side of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic to

the spread of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely

party character to the district council which ought by rights to be of

such an immense importance. What was needed was to put in his place a

fresh, capable, perfectly modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to

frame their policy so as from the rights conferred upon the nobles, not

as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to extract

all the powers of self-government that could possibly be derived from

them. In the wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of

other provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of

forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might

serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia. And hence the

whole question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to elect

as marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still,

Nevyedovsky, a former university professor, a man of remarkable

intelligence and a great friend of Sergey Ivanovitch.

The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the

nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard

for persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and

hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as

at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the

exalted confidence of the monarch.

When he had finished with his speech, the governor walked out of the

hall, and the noblemen noisily and eagerly—some even

enthusiastically—followed him and thronged round him while he put on

his fur coat and conversed amicably with the marshal of the province.

Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss anything, stood

there too in the crowd, and heard the governor say: “Please tell Marya

Ivanovna my wife is very sorry she couldn’t come to the Home.” And

thereupon the nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and

all drove off to the cathedral.

In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and repeating

the words of the archdeacon, swore with most terrible oaths to do all

the governor had hoped they would do. Church services always affected

Levin, and as he uttered the words “I kiss the cross,” and glanced

round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he felt

touched.

On the second and third days there was business relating to the

finances of the nobility and the female high school, of no importance

whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained, and Levin, busy seeing after

his own affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the

auditing of the marshal’s accounts took place at the high table of the

marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first skirmish

between the new party and the old. The committee who had been deputed

to verify the accounts reported to the meeting that all was in order.

The marshal of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their

confidence, and shed tears. The nobles gave him a loud welcome, and

shook hands with him. But at that instant a nobleman of Sergey

Ivanovitch’s party said that he had heard that the committee had not

verified the accounts, considering such a verification an insult to the

marshal of the province. One of the members of the committee

incautiously admitted this. Then a small gentleman, very young-looking

but very malignant, began to say that it would probably be agreeable to

the marshal of the province to give an account of his expenditures of

the public moneys, and that the misplaced delicacy of the members of

the committee was depriving him of this moral satisfaction. Then the

members of the committee tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergey

Ivanovitch began to prove that they must logically admit either that

they had verified the accounts or that they had not, and he developed

this dilemma in detail. Sergey Ivanovitch was answered by the spokesman

of the opposite party. Then Sviazhsky spoke, and then the malignant

gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and ended in

nothing. Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this subject

so long, especially as, when he asked Sergey Ivanovitch whether he

supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch

answered:

“Oh, no! He’s an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of

paternal family arrangements in the management of provincial affairs

must be broken down.”

On the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals. It was

rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Seleznevsky district

Sviazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a

dinner that evening.

Chapter 27

The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the

province.

The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in all sorts of

uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen each

other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from

abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much

discussion around the governor’s table under the portrait of the Tsar.

The nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms, grouped

themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances,

from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a group,

and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to the

farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the

other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two

classes: the old and the new. The old were for the most part either in

old uniforms of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats,

or in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms.

The uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way

with epaulets on their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and

short in the waist, as though their wearers had grown out of them. The

younger men wore the uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad

shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black

collars and with the embroidered badges of justices of the peace. To

the younger men belonged the court uniforms that here and there

brightened up the crowd.

But the division into young and old did not correspond with the

division of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed, belonged

to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the

contrary, were whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent

partisans of the new party.

Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and taking

light refreshments, close to his own friends, and listening to what

they were saying, he conscientiously exerted all his intelligence

trying to understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the center

round which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that

moment to Sviazhsky and Hliustov, the marshal of another district, who

belonged to their party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his

district to ask Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to

do so, and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Levin could not

make out why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand whom they

wanted to supersede.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some lunch,

came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping

his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.

“We are placing our forces,” he said, pulling out his whiskers, “Sergey

Ivanovitch!”

And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhsky’s contention.

“One district’s enough, and Sviazhsky’s obviously of the opposition,”

he said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.

“Why, Kostya, you here too! I suppose you’re converted, eh?” he added,

turning to Levin and drawing his arm through his. Levin would have been

glad indeed to be converted, but could not make out what the point was,

and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he explained to Stepan

Arkadyevitch his inability to understand why the marshal of the

province should be asked to stand.

_“O sancta simplicitas!”_ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and briefly and

clearly he explained it to Levin. If, as at previous elections, all the

districts asked the marshal of the province to stand, then he would be

elected without a ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had

agreed to call upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline

to stand at all; and then the old party might choose another of their

party, which would throw them completely out in their reckoning. But if

only one district, Sviazhsky’s, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov

would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some of them, going

to vote for him, and purposely to let him get a good many votes, so

that the enemy might be thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of

the other side was put up, they too might give him some votes. Levin

understood to some extent, but not fully, and would have put a few more

questions, when suddenly everyone began talking and making a noise and

they moved towards the big room.

“What is it? eh? whom?” “No guarantee? whose? what?” “They won’t pass

him?” “No guarantee?” “They won’t let Flerov in?” “Eh, because of the

charge against him?” “Why, at this rate, they won’t admit anyone. It’s

a swindle!” “The law!” Levin heard exclamations on all sides, and he

moved into the big room together with the others, all hurrying

somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the crowding

noblemen, he drew near the high table where the marshal of the

province, Sviazhsky, and the other leaders were hotly disputing about

something.

Chapter 28

Levin was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily and

hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking,

prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft

voice of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant

gentleman, and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as far

as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the act and

the exact meaning of the words: “liable to be called up for trial.”

The crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch approaching the

table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the malignant gentleman had

finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be to

refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The

act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a ballot.

Sergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its meaning, but at

that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered landowner, with dyed

whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut the back of his neck, interrupted

him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his finger ring, he

shouted loudly: “A ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more

talking!” Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall

nobleman with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more

and more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said.

He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but

it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of

hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it

the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other

side. Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was confusion, so that

the marshal of the province had to call for order.

“A ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed our blood for our

country!... The confidence of the monarch.... No checking the accounts

of the marshal; he’s not a cashier.... But that’s not the point....

Votes, please! Beastly!...” shouted furious and violent voices on all

sides. Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their

words. They expressed the most implacable hatred. Levin did not in the

least understand what was the matter, and he marveled at the passion

with which it was disputed whether or not the decision about Flerov

should be put to the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to

him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public

good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the

marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a

majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerov’s right to vote;

that to secure the recognition of Flerov’s right to vote they must

decide on the interpretation to be put on the act.

“And one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious

and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life,” concluded

Sergey Ivanovitch. But Levin forgot all that, and it was painful to him

to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such

an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this

painful feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody

except the waiters at the refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over

washing up the crockery and setting in order their plates and

wine-glasses, seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Levin felt an

unexpected sense of relief as though he had come out of a stuffy room

into the fresh air. He began walking up and down, looking with pleasure

at the waiters. He particularly liked the way one gray-whiskered

waiter, who showed his scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered

at by them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly. Levin

was just about to enter into conversation with the old waiter, when the

secretary of the court of wardship, a little old man whose specialty it

was to know all the noblemen of the province by name and patronymic,

drew him away.

“Please come, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” he said, “your brother’s

looking for you. They are voting on the legal point.”

Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his

brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing

with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and

sniffing at it. Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the

ball somewhere, and making room for Levin, stopped. Levin advanced, but

utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned

to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, “Where am I to put it?” He

asked this softly, at a moment when there was talking going on near, so

that he had hoped his question would not be overheard. But the persons

speaking paused, and his improper question was overheard. Sergey

Ivanovitch frowned.

“That is a matter for each man’s own decision,” he said severely.

Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand under

the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his right hand.

Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have thrust his left

hand too, and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more

overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the background.

“A hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight against!” sang

out the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter _r_.

Then there was a laugh; a button and two nuts were found in the box.

The nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party had

conquered.

But the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Levin heard

that they were asking Snetkov to stand, and he saw that a crowd of

noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something. Levin

went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of the

province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him, which he

did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to the

nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service. Several times

he repeated the words: “I have served to the best of my powers with

truth and good faith, I value your goodness and thank you,” and

suddenly he stopped short from the tears that choked him, and went out

of the room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice

being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from the strain of

the position he was placed in, feeling himself surrounded by enemies,

his emotion infected the assembly, the majority were touched, and Levin

felt a tenderness for Snetkov.

In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Levin.

“Beg pardon, excuse me, please,” he said as to a stranger, but

recognizing Levin, he smiled timidly. It seemed to Levin that he would

have liked to say something, but could not speak for emotion. His face

and his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white

trousers striped with braid, as he moved hurriedly along, reminded

Levin of some hunted beast who sees that he is in evil case. This

expression in the marshal’s face was particularly touching to Levin,

because, only the day before, he had been at his house about his

trustee business and had seen him in all his grandeur, a kind-hearted,

fatherly man. The big house with the old family furniture; the rather

dirty, far from stylish, but respectful footmen, unmistakably old house

serfs who had stuck to their master; the stout, good-natured wife in a

cap with lace and a Turkish shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her

daughter’s daughter; the young son, a sixth form high school boy,

coming home from school, and greeting his father, kissing his big hand;

the genuine, cordial words and gestures of the old man—all this had the

day before roused an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in

Levin. This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Levin now,

and he longed to say something pleasant to him.

“So you’re sure to be our marshal again,” he said.

“It’s not likely,” said the marshal, looking round with a scared

expression. “I’m worn out, I’m old. If there are men younger and more

deserving than I, let them serve.”

And the marshal disappeared through a side door.

The most solemn moment was at hand. They were to proceed immediately to

the election. The leaders of both parties were reckoning white and

black on their fingers.

The discussion upon Flerov had given the new party not only Flerov’s

vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they could send to

fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to take part in the

elections by the wiles of the other party. Two noble gentlemen, who had

a weakness for strong drink, had been made drunk by the partisans of

Snetkov, and a third had been robbed of his uniform.

On learning this, the new party had made haste, during the dispute

about Flerov, to send some of their men in a sledge to clothe the

stripped gentleman, and to bring along one of the intoxicated to the

meeting.

“I’ve brought one, drenched him with water,” said the landowner, who

had gone on this errand, to Sviazhsky. “He’s all right? he’ll do.”

“Not too drunk, he won’t fall down?” said Sviazhsky, shaking his head.

“No, he’s first-rate. If only they don’t give him any more here....

I’ve told the waiter not to give him anything on any account.”

Chapter 29

The narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking refreshments,

was full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense, and every face

betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the

leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every

vote. They were the generals organizing the approaching battle. The

rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were

getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the

interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the

table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking

cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long

while.

Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to

join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch,

Sviazhsky and the rest, because Vronsky in his equerry’s uniform was

standing with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him already at

the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not

caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the

groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt

depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager,

anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little

man with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had

no interest in it and nothing to do.

“He’s such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no

difference. Only think of it! He couldn’t collect it in three years!”

he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country

gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and

new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped

energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this

gentleman sharply turned his back.

“Yes, it’s a dirty business, there’s no denying,” a small gentleman

assented in a high voice.

Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general,

hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a

place where they could talk without being overheard.

“How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I

expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He’d better not say it, the

beast!”

“But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,” was being said in

another group; “the wife must be registered as noble.”

“Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We’re all gentlemen, aren’t

we? Above suspicion.”

“Shall we go on, your excellency, _fine champagne?_”

Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a

loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.

“I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for she can

never save a profit,” he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker was a

country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of

an old general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had met

at Sviazhsky’s. He knew him at once. The landowner too stared at Levin,

and they exchanged greetings.

“Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last year

at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch’s.”

“Well, and how is your land doing?” asked Levin.

“Oh, still just the same, always at a loss,” the landowner answered

with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and

conviction that so it must be. “And how do you come to be in our

province?” he asked. “Come to take part in our _coup d’état?_” he said,

confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent. “All

Russia’s here—gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the

ministry.” He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in

white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a general.

“I ought to own that I don’t very well understand the drift of the

provincial elections,” said Levin.

The landowner looked at him.

“Why, what is there to understand? There’s no meaning in it at all.

It’s a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of

inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it’s an assembly of

justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but

not of noblemen.”

“Then why do you come?” asked Levin.

“From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up connections.

It’s a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, there’s

one’s own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent

member; they’re not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These

gentlemen, now, what do they come for?” he said, pointing to the

malignant gentleman, who was talking at the high table.

“That’s the new generation of nobility.”

“New it may be, but nobility it isn’t. They’re proprietors of a sort,

but we’re the landowners. As noblemen, they’re cutting their own

throats.”

“But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.”

“That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more

respectfully. Snetkov, now.... We may be of use, or we may not, but

we’re the growth of a thousand years. If we’re laying out a garden,

planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s

stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be, and

yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds,

but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won’t

grow him again in a year,” he said cautiously, and he immediately

changed the conversation. “Well, and how is your land doing?”

“Oh, not very well. I make five per cent.”

“Yes, but you don’t reckon your own work. Aren’t you worth something

too? I’ll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the land,

I had a salary of three hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more

work than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent. on

the land, and thank God for that. But one’s work is thrown in for

nothing.”

“Then why do you do it, if it’s a clear loss?”

“Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It’s habit, and one knows

it’s how it should be. And what’s more,” the landowner went on, leaning

his elbows on the window and chatting on, “my son, I must tell you, has

no taste for it. There’s no doubt he’ll be a scientific man. So

there’ll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year

I’ve planted an orchard.”

“Yes, yes,” said Levin, “that’s perfectly true. I always feel there’s

no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it....

It’s a sort of duty one feels to the land.”

“But I tell you what,” the landowner pursued; “a neighbor of mine, a

merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden.

‘No,’ said he, ‘Stepan Vassilievitch, everything’s well looked after,

but your garden’s neglected.’ But, as a fact, it’s well kept up. ‘To my

thinking, I’d cut down that lime-tree. Here you’ve thousands of limes,

and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark’s

worth something. I’d cut down the lot.’”

“And with what he made he’d increase his stock, or buy some land for a

trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants,” Levin added, smiling.

He had evidently more than once come across those commercial

calculations. “And he’d make his fortune. But you and I must thank God

if we keep what we’ve got and leave it to our children.”

“You’re married, I’ve heard?” said the landowner.

“Yes,” Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. “Yes, it’s rather

strange,” he went on. “So we live without making anything, as though we

were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.”

The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.

“There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or

Count Vronsky, that’s settled here lately, who try to carry on their

husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing

but making away with capital on it.”

“But why is it we don’t do like the merchants? Why don’t we cut down

our parks for timber?” said Levin, returning to a thought that had

struck him.

“Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that’s not work for a

nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn’t done here at the elections,

but yonder, each in our corner. There’s a class instinct, too, of what

one ought and oughtn’t to do. There’s the peasants, too, I wonder at

them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can.

However bad the land is, he’ll work it. Without a return too. At a

simple loss.”

“Just as we do,” said Levin. “Very, very glad to have met you,” he

added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.

“And here we’ve met for the first time since we met at your place,”

said the landowner to Sviazhsky, “and we’ve had a good talk too.”

“Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?” said Sviazhsky

with a smile.

“That we’re bound to do.”

“You’ve relieved your feelings?”

Chapter 30

Sviazhsky took Levin’s arm, and went with him to his own friends.

This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan

Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he

drew near.

“Delighted! I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you ... at

Princess Shtcherbatskaya’s,” he said, giving Levin his hand.

“Yes, I quite remember our meeting,” said Levin, and blushing crimson,

he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.

With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously

without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with

Levin. But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking

round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss

over his rudeness.

“What are we waiting for now?” asked Levin, looking at Sviazhsky and

Vronsky.

“For Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,” answered

Sviazhsky.

“Well, and what has he done, consented or not?”

“That’s the point, that he’s done neither,” said Vronsky.

“And if he refuses, who will stand then?” asked Levin, looking at

Vronsky.

“Whoever chooses to,” said Sviazhsky.

“Shall you?” asked Levin.

“Certainly not I,” said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an

alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside

Sergey Ivanovitch.

“Who then? Nevyedovsky?” said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot

into it.

But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two

candidates.

“I certainly shall not, under any circumstances,” answered the

malignant gentleman.

This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin.

“Well, you find it exciting too?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at

Vronsky. “It’s something like a race. One might bet on it.”

“Yes, it is keenly exciting,” said Vronsky. “And once taking the thing

up, one’s eager to see it through. It’s a fight!” he said, scowling and

setting his powerful jaws.

“What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.”

“Oh, yes!” Vronsky assented indifferently.

A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he had to look at

something—looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his

face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to

say something:

“How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a

justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.”

“It’s because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly

institution,” Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking

for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to

smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.

“I don’t think so, quite the contrary,” Vronsky said, with quiet

surprise.

“It’s a plaything,” Levin cut him short. “We don’t want justices of the

peace. I’ve never had a single thing to do with them during eight

years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of

the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles

I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.”

And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and

when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All

this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as

he said it.

“Oh, this is such an original fellow!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with

his most soothing, almond-oil smile. “But come along; I think they’re

voting....”

And they separated.

“I can’t understand,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his

brother’s clumsiness, “I can’t understand how anyone can be so

absolutely devoid of political tact. That’s where we Russians are so

deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him

you’re _ami cochon_, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now ...

I’m not making a friend of him; he’s asked me to dinner, and I’m not

going; but he’s one of our side—why make an enemy of him? Then you ask

Nevyedovsky if he’s going to stand. That’s not a thing to do.”

“Oh, I don’t understand it at all! And it’s all such nonsense,” Levin

answered gloomily.

“You say it’s all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do

with it, you make a muddle.”

Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.

The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in the air

of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not been called

upon by all to stand, had still made up his mind to stand. All was

silence in the room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the

captain of the guards, Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov, would now be

balloted for as marshal of the province.

The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls, from

their tables to the high table, and the election began.

“Put it in the right side,” whispered Stepan Arkadyevitch, as with his

brother Levin followed the marshal of his district to the table. But

Levin had forgotten by now the calculations that had been explained to

him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in saying

“the right side.” Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went up, he held

the ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong, just at the box

he changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left.

An adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere

action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It

was no good for him to use his insight.

Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard. Then a

single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against. The

marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was noise

and eager movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the nobles

thronged round him, congratulating him.

“Well, now is it over?” Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.

“It’s only just beginning,” Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey

Ivanovitch with a smile. “Some other candidate may receive more votes

than the marshal.”

Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember that

there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored to think

what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to get out of the

crowd.

As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently needed

him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the

refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he saw

the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to have something, and

Levin agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the

waiters of their former masters, Levin, not wishing to go back to the

hall, where it was all so distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through

the galleries. The galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies,

leaning over the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of

what was being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing

smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers.

Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried the

marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In one group

Levin heard his brother’s praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:

“How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It’s worth losing one’s dinner. He’s

exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it! There’s not one of you in

the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel, and he’s

not so eloquent by a long way.”

Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began

looking and listening.

All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers according to

their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in a uniform,

who shouted in a loud, high voice:

“As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the province we

call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!” A dead silence

followed, and then a weak old voice was heard: “Declined!”

“We call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol,” the voice

began again.

“Declined!” a high boyish voice replied.

Again it began, and again “Declined.” And so it went on for about an

hour. Levin, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and listened. At

first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure

that he could not make it out he began to be bored. Then recalling all

the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen on all the faces, he felt

sad; he made up his mind to go, and went downstairs. As he passed

through the entry to the galleries he met a dejected high school boy

walking up and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a

couple—a lady running quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy

prosecutor.

“I told you you weren’t late,” the deputy prosecutor was saying at the

moment when Levin moved aside to let the lady pass.

Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in his

waistcoat pocket for the number of his overcoat, when the secretary

overtook him.

“This way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievitch; they are voting.”

The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so

stoutly denied all idea of standing. Levin went up to the door of the

room; it was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin

was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out.

“I can’t stand any more of it,” said one red-faced gentleman.

After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His

face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.

“I told you not to let anyone out!” he cried to the doorkeeper.

“I let someone in, your excellency!”

“Mercy on us!” and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked

with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his

legs staggering in his white trousers.

Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he

was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were

pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and

unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair,

which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the

crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as

they had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as

they had followed Snetkov when he was elected.

Chapter 31

The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that

day with Vronsky.

Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the

country and wanted to show Anna his right to independence, and also to

repay Sviazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he

had taken for Vronsky at the district council election, but chiefly in

order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and landowner

which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least expected

that the election would so interest him, so keenly excite him, and that

he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in

the circle of the nobility of the province, but his success was

unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he had already

obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to his wealth and

reputation, the capital house in the town lent him by his old friend

Shirkov, who had a post in the department of finances and was director

of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Vronsky had brought

from the country, and his friendship with the governor, who was a

schoolfellow of Vronsky’s—a schoolfellow he had patronized and

protected indeed. But what contributed more than all to his success was

his direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly made the

majority of the noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed

haughtiness. He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical

gentleman married to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had _à propos de

bottes_ poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such

spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had

become his adherent. He saw clearly, and other people recognized it,

too, that he had done a great deal to secure the success of

Nevyedovsky. And now at his own table, celebrating Nevyedovsky’s

election, he was experiencing an agreeable sense of triumph over the

success of his candidate. The election itself had so fascinated him

that, if he could succeed in getting married during the next three

years, he began to think of standing himself—much as after winning a

race ridden by a jockey, he had longed to ride a race himself.

Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Vronsky sat at the

head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a general

of high rank. To all the rest he was the chief man in the province, who

had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a

feeling of respect and even of awe in many people, as Vronsky saw; to

Vronsky he was little Katka Maslov—that had been his nickname in the

Pages’ Corps—whom he felt to be shy and tried to _mettre à son aise_.

On the left hand sat Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and

malignant face. With him Vronsky was simple and deferential.

Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no

failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to

Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the

new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest

person, as he said, was on the side of today’s success and was

rejoicing over it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and

that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a

good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the

tearful discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky,

that his excellency would have to select another more complicated

method of auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely

described how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshal’s

ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless the new

marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.

Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: “our marshal,” and

“your excellency.”

This was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called

“Madame” and her husband’s name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely

indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that

he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to

betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone.

After dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the

result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was in high good

humor, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram: “Nevyedovsky elected by

twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people.” He dictated it aloud,

saying: “We must let them share our rejoicing.” Darya Alexandrovna,

getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and

understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a

weakness after dining for _faire jouer le télégraphe._

Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from

Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely

dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party—some twenty—had been

selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of

the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well

bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal

of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of “our

amiable host.”

Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone

in the provinces.

Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked

Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his

wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up.

“There’ll be a ball, and you’ll see the belle of the province. Worth

seeing, really.”

“Not in my line,” Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase. But

he smiled, and promised to come.

Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking,

Vronsky’s valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.

“From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,” he said with a significant

expression.

“Astonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,” said

one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky, frowning, read

the letter.

The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its

contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had

promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the

letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The

letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her

yet.

The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected,

and particularly disagreeable to him. “Annie is very ill, the doctor

says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Princess

Varvara is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before

yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you

are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better

of it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know

what to do.”

The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter

ill, and this hostile tone.

The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome

love to which he had to return struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he

had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home.

Chapter 32

Before Vronsky’s departure for the elections, Anna had reflected that

the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home,

might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and

resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the

parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had

looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her,

and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.

In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed

his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same

point—the sense of her own humiliation. “He has the right to go away

when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He

has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do

it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe

expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it

has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,” she

thought. “That glance shows the beginning of indifference.”

And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was

nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to

him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And

so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at

night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he

ceased to love her. It is true there was still one means; not to keep

him—for that she wanted nothing more than his love—but to be nearer to

him, to be in such a position that he would not leave her. That means

was divorce and marriage. And she began to long for that, and made up

her mind to agree to it the first time he or Stiva approached her on

the subject.

Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five

days that he was to be at the elections.

Walks, conversation with Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital, and,

most of all, reading—reading of one book after another—filled up her

time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without him,

she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of

him and of what he was doing there, just at that time her little girl

was taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that did not

distract her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However

hard she tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love

was beyond her powers. Towards the evening of that day, still alone,

Anna was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the

town, but on second thoughts wrote him the contradictory letter that

Vronsky received, and without reading it through, sent it off by a

special messenger. The next morning she received his letter and

regretted her own. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had

flung at her at parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not

dangerously ill. But still she was glad she had written to him. At this

moment Anna was positively admitting to herself that she was a burden

to him, that he would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to

her, and in spite of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of

her, but he would be here with her, so that she would see him, would

know of every action he took.

She was sitting in the drawing-room near a lamp, with a new volume of

Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and

every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had

fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At

last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachman’s shout and

the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Princess Varvara, playing

patience, confirmed this, and Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead

of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She

suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how

he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was

only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that

her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt

positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her

letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of

him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting

everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.

“Well, how is Annie?” he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as

she ran down to him.

He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm

over-boot.

“Oh, she is better.”

“And you?” he said, shaking himself.

She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never

taking her eyes off him.

“Well, I’m glad,” he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress,

which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many

times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so

dreaded settled upon his face.

“Well, I’m glad. And are you well?” he said, wiping his damp beard with

his handkerchief and kissing her hand.

“Never mind,” she thought, “only let him be here, and so long as he’s

here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.”

The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Princess

Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking morphine in

his absence.

“What am I to do? I couldn’t sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When

he’s here I never take it—hardly ever.”

He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit questions

to bring him to what gave him most pleasure—his own success. She told

him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told

him was of the most cheerful description.

But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she

had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful

impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:

“Tell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didn’t

believe me?”

As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings

were to her, he had not forgiven her for that.

“Yes,” he said, “the letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then

you thought of coming yourself.”

“It was all the truth.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.”

“Yes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see.”

“Not for one moment. I’m only vexed, that’s true, that you seem somehow

unwilling to admit that there are duties....”

“The duty of going to a concert....”

“But we won’t talk about it,” he said.

“Why not talk about it?” she said.

“I only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Now,

for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the

house.... Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? Don’t you know that I

can’t live without you?”

“If so,” said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, “it means that you are

sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men

do....”

“Anna, that’s cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life.”

But she did not hear him.

“If you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we

must separate or else live together.”

“Why, you know, that’s my one desire. But for that....”

“We must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on like

this.... But I will come with you to Moscow.”

“You talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much

as never to be parted from you,” said Vronsky, smiling.

But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold

look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.

She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.

“If so, it’s a calamity!” that glance told her. It was a moment’s

impression, but she never forgot it.

Anna wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and towards the

end of November, taking leave of Princess Varvara, who wanted to go to

Petersburg, she went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an

answer from Alexey Alexandrovitch, and after that the divorce, they now

established themselves together like married people.

PART SEVEN

Chapter 1

The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on

which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned

in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she was still

about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than

two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her

mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the approaching

event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the

only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.

She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love

for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already,

and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now

altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life

independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at

the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.

All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so

attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything

presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all

soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter

life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was

that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in

the country.