saw Vronsky for the first time, and she knew then what was in store for
her. With light and swift steps she descended the stairway which led
from the pump at the end of the platform down to the rails, and stood
very near the train, which was slowly passing by. She looked under the
cars, at the chains and the brake, and the high iron wheels, and she
tried to estimate with her eye the distance between the fore and back
wheels, and the moment when the middle would be in front of her.
“‘There,’ she said, looking at the shadow of the car thrown upon the
black coal-dust which covered the sleepers, ‘there, in the center,
he will be punished, and I shall be delivered from it all,--and from
myself.’
“Her little red travelling-bag caused her to lose the moment when she
could throw herself under the wheels of the first car: she could not
detach it from her arm. She awaited the second. A feeling like that
she had experienced once, just before taking a dive in the river, came
over her, and she made the sign of the cross. This familiar gesture
called back to her soul memories of youth and childhood. Life, with its
elusive joys, glowed for an instant before her, but she did not take
her eyes from the car; and when the middle, between the two wheels,
appeared, she threw away her red bag, drawing her head between her
shoulders, and, with outstretched hands, threw herself on her knees
under the car. She had time to feel afraid. ‘Where am I? What am I
doing? Why?’ thought she, trying to draw back; but a great, inflexible
mass struck her head, and threw her upon her back. ‘Lord, forgive me
all!’ she murmured, feeling the struggle to be in vain.... And the
candle by which she read, as in a book, the fulfilment of her life’s
work, of its deceptions, its grief, and its torment, flared up with
greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that
before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out
forever.”
Side by side with this tragedy of unlawful passion, the scenes
alternating every few chapters, is the development of the normal love
of Levin for Kitty, in scenes which are believed to have been taken
from the life of Tolstoi himself. Strange to say that, if this be
so, the passages of his own experience are less impressive (if not
less realistic) than his imaginative story of the guilty pair. There
are long and inconsequent discussions of agrarian problems, and a
revelation of Levin’s varying moods, which are, indeed, extremely true
to life, but awaken less sympathy or interest than the drama between
Anna and Vronsky. Levin proposes to Kitty again, rather awkwardly,
one would say, with chalk initials written on a card table, the
meaning of which she guesses and answers in kind, an answer which he
readily devines. Before their marriage he makes to her a full written
confession of all the shortcomings of his past life. She is not at
all alarmed or startled at his declaration of religious unbelief, but
certain passages revealing past immoralities impress her as “terrible.”
He finds her in tears, and she reproaches him for showing it to her,
yet grants him forgiveness. The wedding is graphically described,
especially the incident which shows the bridegroom “ramping with
despair like a wild beast in its cage” while the people were waiting in
church, because he could not find his shirt. Then comes the honeymoon,
in which he finds that married life was utterly different from his
dreams.
“His surprise was great to find this charming and poetic Kitty,
thinking, planning, taking charge of the linen, the furniture, the
mattresses, the table service, the kitchen. The decided way in which
she refused to travel, so that they might come immediately to their
country home, and her willingness to let it be known that she knew
something about domestic economy, and could think of such things in
spite of her love, had struck him even during their engagement. It
vexed him then, and now he felt still more vexed to find that she cared
for these wearisome minutiae and the material side of life. But he saw
that it was unavoidable.”
Their early quarrels are delineated with convincing realism, and
perhaps the strongest chapters in this part of the work are those in
which he describes Kitty’s insistence on going with him to visit his
profligate brother, Nikolai, who is dying with consumption and in great
poverty, being tended only by a poor creature who had long lived with
him as his wife. Levin at first refused to allow her to go, declaring
it impossible.
“‘I tell you, if you go, I am going too. I shall certainly go with
you,’ said she with angry determination. ‘I should like to know why it
would be impossible. Why did you say that?’
“--‘Because God knows when or in what place I shall find him, or by
what means I shall reach him. You would only hinder me,’ said he, doing
his best to retain his self-control.
“‘Not at all, I don’t need anything. Where you can go, I can go, too,
and’--
“‘Well! If it were only because of this woman, with whom you cannot
come in contact.’--
“‘Why not? I know nothing about all that, and don’t want to know. I
know that my husband’s brother is dying; that my husband is going to
see him; and I am going too’--
“‘Kitty! don’t be angry! and remember that in such a serious time
it is painful for me to have you add to my grief by showing your
weakness,--the fear of being alone. If you are lonely, go to Moscow’--
“‘You _always_ ascribe to me that I have such miserable sentiments,’
she cried, choking with tears of vexation. ‘I am not so weak.... I know
it is my duty to be with my husband when he is in sorrow, and you want
to wound me on purpose. You don’t want to take me’--
“‘Ah! this is frightful! to be such a slave!’ cried Levin, rising from
the table, no longer able to hide his anger.
“‘Why, then, did you get married? You might have been free. Why--if you
repent already?’--and Kitty fled from the room.
“When he went to find her, she was sobbing.
“He began to speak, striving to find words, not to persuade her,
but to calm her. She would not listen, and did not allow one of his
arguments. He bent over her, took one of her recalcitrant hands, kissed
it, kissed her hair, and then her hands again; but still she refused
to speak. But when, at length, he took her head between his two hands
and called her, ‘Kitty,’ she softly wept, and the reconciliation was
complete.”
He found his brother suffering, amid squalid and sordid surroundings.
Levin was struck with the uncleanliness and disorder of the room, and
the bad air and the sick man’s groans, and it seemed to him that there
was no hope. It did not occur to him to investigate how his poor limbs
were lying, under the coverlid, to try to comfort him materially, and
if he could not improve his condition, at least to make the best of a
bad situation. The mere thought of these details made a cold chill run
down his back; and the sick man, feeling instinctively that his brother
was powerless to help him, was irritated. So Levin kept leaving the
room under various pretexts, and coming back again,--unhappy to be with
his brother, still more unhappy to be away from him, and unable to stay
alone by himself.
“Kitty saw these things under a very different light: as soon as she
came near the dying man, she was filled with pity for him, and instead
of feeling fear or repulsion, her womanly heart moved her to seek every
means of ameliorating his sad condition. Convinced that it was her
duty to help him, she did not doubt the possibility of making him more
comfortable, and she set herself to work without delay. The details
which repelled her husband were the very ones which attracted her
attention. She sent for a doctor, she went to the drug store; she set
her maid and Marya Nikolayevna to sweeping, washing, and dusting, and
she helped them herself. She had all needless articles carried away,
and she had them replaced by things that were needed. Without minding
those whom she met on the way, she came and went from her room to her
brother-in-law’s, unpacking the articles that were necessary,--cloths,
pillow-cases, towels, nightshirts....
“‘Go and get a little flask out of my bag, and bring it to me,’ she
said to her husband. ‘In the meantime we will finish fixing him.’
“When Levin came back with the flask, the invalid was lying down in
bed, and everything about him had assumed a different appearance.
Instead of the stuffy air which they were breathing before, Kitty was
perfuming the room with aromatic vinegar from an atomizer. The dust
was all gone; a carpet was spread under the bed; on a little table
were arranged the medicine vials, a _carafe_, the necessary linen, and
Kitty’s English embroidery. On another table, near the bed, stood a
candle, his medicine, and powders. The sick man, bathed, with smoothly
brushed hair, lying between clean sheets, and propped up by several
pillows, was dressed in a clean nightshirt, the white collar of which
came around his extraordinarily long, thin neck. A new expression of
hope shone in his eyes as he looked at Kitty....
“‘He has hidden it from the wise, and revealed it unto children and
fools,’ thought Levin as he was talking with his wife a little while
later.”
The description of the sufferings and death of Nikolai are given with
a fidelity to truth which must commend itself to all those who have
witnessed the last days of agony in those who are near to them.
We are now led on to another scene of Tolstoi’s realism, the birth
of his first child, and here, too, every detail--the cheerfulness of
the young wife amid her suffering, the terror, anxiety, and utter
uselessness of the husband upon this critical occasion--were never set
forth with greater power. Tolstoi writes very freely upon subjects in
regard to which we English-speaking people deal with restraint and much
false modesty, so that his plain-speaking is quite startling to us as
we read.
In the later pages of the book are described the conversion of Levin
(probably Tolstoi himself) to that religious faith which became the
controlling force of his life. Evidently he had not advanced very
far when the book closed, for this religious regeneration did not
materially change his nature for the better nor make him so happy as he
hoped, and he thus concludes: “I shall probably continue to be vexed
with Ivan the coachman, and get into useless discussions, and express
my thoughts blunderingly. I shall always be blaming my wife for what
annoys me, and repenting at once. I shall always feel a certain barrier
between the sanctuary of my inmost soul, and the souls of others, even
my wife’s. I shall continue to pray without being able to explain to
myself why, but my inward life has conquered its liberty. It will be
no longer at the mercy of circumstances; and my whole life, every
moment of my life, will be, not meaningless as before, but full of deep
meaning, which I shall have power to impress on every action.”
In “Anna Karenina” the contrast is very strong between the two pairs,
Anna and Vronsky on the one hand, and Levin and Kitty on the other,
between the course of illicit and of lawful love. Yet one can not lay
down the book without feeling that the concluding chapters have fallen
off a little in power from those that had preceded them. But despite
its prolixity and thus weakening at its close Anna Karenina is entitled
to a place beside the very best that human genius has accomplished in
the literature of fiction.
TREASURE ISLAND
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
As a story of pure adventure, “Treasure Island” stands in the very
first rank. The plot is admirably conceived.
The novel opens with a description of “Bones,” an old buccaneer who
comes with his strong sea-chest to the “Admiral Benbow” inn, singing
the refrain which reappears in many places through the story:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum!”
His main purpose is to avoid observation, but he is at last discovered
by some of his former comrades whose object is to get possession of
his chest and the chart that is in it. This chart describes a place of
buried treasure. Bones, who has been drinking himself to death, expires
just before an attack upon the house by his fellow bandits. The chart
falls into the possession of the innkeeper’s son (the man who tells the
story), and he brings it to Squire Trelawney, who charters a schooner
to go in search of the treasure, but when the vessel draws near the
island in which the treasure is buried, it is found that most of the
crew hired by the garrulous squire belong to a band of pirates under
the orders of Long John Silver, the one-legged cook. The conspiracies,
the counterplots, the combats and murders on ship and shore, before
the treasure is secured and carried home, are related in Stevenson’s
wonderful style. Even in the wildest extravagancies there is an air
of probability which leads the imagination captive. The description
of Long John himself, with his plausible and garrulous good-nature
concealing the most diabolical character, is very lifelike. And those
of us who know nothing of buccaneers and their ways are quite convinced
that the men described in “Treasure Island” are just the sort of people
that pirates must really be.
From “Robinson Crusoe” to “Treasure Island” there is a long step in
advance.
CONCLUSION
If our views of contemporary fiction were ripe enough for final
judgment, I would much like to continue this excursion down to the
present date, and compare the foregoing works with some of the novels
written by authors who are now living. My conviction is that fiction
has not deteriorated, and that there has been no time in the past when
the standard was higher than it is to-day.