SEVEN

 

 

Chapter 15

 

 

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AFTER the guests had gone Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin, and in spite of all her pity for him she was pleased by the thought that she had had a proposal. She did not doubt that she had acted rightly, yet for a long time she lay in bed unable to sleep. One image pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face with his kind eyes looking mournfully from under his knit brows as he stood listening to her father and glancing at her and at Vronsky, and she felt so sorry for him that tears rose to her eyes. But she immediately remembered for whom she had exchanged him. She vividly pictured to herself that strong manly face, that well-bred calm and the kindness toward everybody he always showed: she remembered the love the man she loved bore her, and again became joyful and with a happy smile put her head on her pillow. ‘It is a pity, a pity, but I am not to blame,’ she said to herself, but an inner voice said something different. Whether she repented of having drawn Levin on or of having rejected him she did not know, but her happiness was troubled by doubts.

 

‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,’ she repeated to herself till she fell asleep.

 

Meanwhile below in the Prince’s little study her parents were having one of their frequent scenes about their favourite daughter.

 

‘What? I’ll tell you what!’ shouted the Prince, flourishing his arms and immediately again wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown around him. ‘You have no pride, no dignity, you disgrace and ruin your daughter by this vile idiotic match-making.’

 

‘For goodness’ sake, Prince, what in heaven’s own name have I done?’ said the Princess almost in tears.

 

After her talk with her daughter she had come in, happy and contented, to say good-night to the Prince as usual, and though she did not intend to speak to him about Levin’s proposal and Kitty’s refusal she hinted to him that she thought the matter with Vronsky was quite settled and would probably be definitely decided as soon as his mother arrived. And when she said that, the Prince suddenly flared up and began to shout rudely: ‘What have you done? Why this: first of all you entice a suitor. All Moscow will talk about it and with reason. If you give a party invite everybody and not only selected suitors. Invite all the young puppies,’ so the Prince called the Moscow young men, ‘have a pianist and let them dance; but don’t have the sort of thing we had tonight — these suitors and this pairing off. It makes me sick to see it, simply sick, and you have had your way and have turned the child’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. This one is a little Petersburg fop. They are machine-made by the dozen, all to one pattern, and all mere rubbish. But even if he were a Prince of the blood my daughter does not need him.’

 

‘But what have I done?’

 

‘Just this . . .’ exclaimed the Prince angrily.

 

‘I know this much,’ the Princess interrupted him, ‘that if I were to listen to what you say we should never see our daughter married, and we had better go and live in the country.’

 

‘So we had!’

 

‘Wait a bit! Do I draw them on? No, certainly not, but a young man and an excellent young man falls in love with Kitty, and she too seems . . .’

 

‘Seems indeed! And suppose she really falls in love with him while he intends to marry about as much as I do. . . . Oh, I wish my eyes had never seen it . . . “Ah spiritualism! Ah how nice! Ah the ball!” ’ And the Prince imagining himself to be impersonating his wife curtsied at each word. ‘And then if we really ruin Kitty’s happiness, if she really gets it into her head . . .’

 

‘But why do you suppose such a thing?’

 

‘I don’t suppose, I know! We have eyes for those things, and women haven’t. I can recognize a man who has serious intentions — such as Levin — and I can see through a weathercock like that popinjay who only wishes to amuse himself.’

 

‘Oh well, when you once get a thing into your head . . .’

 

‘And you’ll find it out, but too late, just as with poor Dolly.’

 

‘All right. All right, don’t let’s talk,’ said the Princess, interrupting him and remembering the unfortunate Dolly.

 

‘Very well then, good-night.’

 

And having made the sign of the cross over one another and kissed, feeling that each of them retained their individual opinions, the couple separated for the night.

 

The Princess had been at first firmly convinced that this evening had decided Kitty’s fate and that there could be no doubt as to Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words disturbed her, and when she reached her room, in terror of the uncertainty of the future, she mentally repeated, just as Kitty had done: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

 

 

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VRONSKY had never known family life. His mother in her youth had been a brilliant Society woman, and during her married life and especially in her widowhood had had many love affairs, known to everybody. He hardly remembered his father, and had been educated in the Cadet Corps.

 

On leaving that Corps as a very young and brilliant officer he at once joined the swim of the wealthy military Petersburg set. Though he occasionally went into the highest Petersburg Society, all his love interests lay outside it.

 

In Moscow, after this luxurious course of Petersburg life, he experienced for the first time the delight of intimacy with a sweet, innocent Society girl who fell in love with him. It never entered his head that there could be any wrong in his relations with Kitty. At balls he danced chiefly with her and he visited her at her home. He talked with her the usual Society talk: all sorts of rubbish, but rubbish into which involuntarily he put a special meaning for her. Though he never said anything to her which could not have been said before everybody he was conscious that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this the pleasanter it was, and the more tender became his feelings toward her. He did not know that his behaviour toward Kitty had a name of its own, that it was decoying a girl with no intentions of marrying her, and is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men like himself. He thought he was the first to discover this pleasure and he enjoyed his discovery.

 

If he could have heard what her parents said that night, if he could have known her family’s point of view and learnt that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been much surprised and would not have believed it. He would not have believed that what gave so much and such excellent pleasure to him, and — what was more — to her, could be wrong. Even less could he have believed that he ought to marry.

 

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. Not only did he dislike family life, but in accordance with the views generally held in the bachelor world in which he lived he regarded the family, and especially a husband, as something alien, hostile, and above all ridiculous. But although Vronsky had no suspicion of what Kitty’s parents were saying, he felt, as he left the Shcherbatskys’ house that night, that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had so strengthened during the evening that some action ought to be taken. But what this should or could be he could not imagine.

 

‘That’s what is so delightful,’ he thought as he left the Shcherbatskys’ house, carrying away from there, as usual, a pleasant feeling of purity and freshness (partly due to the fact that he had not smoked at all that evening) and deeply touched by a new sense of tender joy in the consciousness of her love for him. ‘That is what is so delightful, that nothing was said either by me or by her, yet we so well understand one another in that subtle language of looks and tones that to-day more plainly than ever she has told me that she loves me. And how sweetly, simply, and above all trustfully! I feel myself better and purer, I feel I have a heart and that there is much that is good in me. Those dear loving eyes! when she said, “and very much”.’

 

‘Well, and what of it? Nothing, of course. It’s pleasant for me and for her,’ and he considered where he should finish his evening.

 

He passed in review the places he might go to. ‘The Club: a game of bezique, a bottle of champagne with Ignatev? No, I won’t go there. Château des Fleurs? There I should find Oblonsky, French couplets, the cancan. No, I am sick of it. That’s just what I like about the Shcherbatskys’, that I myself become better there. I’ll go home.’ He went straight to his rooms at the Hotel Dusseaux, had supper, and after undressing had hardly laid his head on his pillow before he was fast asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 17

 

 

 

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AT eleven o’clock next morning Vronsky drove to the Petersburg railway station in Moscow to meet his mother, and the first person he saw on the steps of the large portico was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the same train.

 

‘Hallo, your Excellency!’ exclaimed Oblonsky. ‘Whom are you after?’

 

‘My mother,’ replied Vronsky, shaking hands and smiling (as everybody did when meeting Oblonsky) as they went up the steps together. ‘She is coming from Petersburg to-day.’

 

‘I waited for you till two last night; where did you go from the Shcherbatskys’?’

 

‘Home,’ replied Vronsky. ‘To tell you the truth I felt in such a pleasant mood when I left the Shcherbatskys’ that I did not care to go anywhere else.’

 

‘ “Fiery steeds by” something “brands

 

I can always recognize;

 

Youths in love . . .” ’

 

declaimed Oblonsky, just as he had done to Levin.

 

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed not to deny the implication but he immediately changed the subject.

 

‘And whom have you come to meet?’ he asked.

 

‘I? A lovely woman,’ answered Oblonsky.

 

‘Dear me!’

 

‘Honi soit qui mal y pense! [Shame on him who thinks ill of it!] My sister Anna!’

 

‘Oh! Mrs. Karenina!’ said Vronsky.

 

‘I expect you know her?’

 

‘I think I do. But perhaps not. . . . I really can’t remember,’ answered Vronsky absent-mindedly, the name Karenina suggesting to him some one stiff and dull.

 

‘But you are sure to know Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin, my famous brother-in-law. All the world knows him.’

 

‘Yes, I know him by repute and by sight. I know he is clever, learned, and by way of being religious, but you know it is not my . . . not in my line,’ he added in English.

 

‘Oh yes, he is a very remarkable man, a bit conservative, but a splendid fellow,’ said Oblonsky, ‘a splendid fellow.’

 

‘Well, so much the better for him,’ and Vronsky smiled. ‘Ah, you are here!’ he went on, turning toward his mother’s old footman who was standing by the door. ‘Come in here.’

 

Besides liking Oblonsky, as everybody did, Vronsky latterly had felt still more drawn to him because he was connected in his mind with Kitty.

 

‘Well, are we to give a supper to the diva next Sunday?’ he asked smilingly, taking Oblonsky’s arm.

 

‘Certainly, I will collect subscriptions. I say, did you make the acquaintance of my friend Levin last night?’ asked Oblonsky.

 

‘Of course. Only he left very early.’

 

‘He is a splendid fellow,’ continued Oblonsky. ‘Don’t you think so?’

 

‘I don’t know how it is that all Muscovites, present company of course excepted,’ Vronsky put in jokingly, ‘are so abrupt. They are always standing on their hind legs getting angry, and seem to want to act on your feelings . . .’

 

‘Yes, there is some truth in that,’ said Oblonsky, laughing merrily.

 

‘Shall we have to wait much longer?’ asked Vronsky, turning to a porter.

 

‘The train is signalled,’ said the porter.

 

The approach of the train was made more and more evident by the increasing bustle and preparation on the platform and the arrival of people who had come to meet the train. Through the frosty mist one could see workmen in sheepskin coats and felt boots crossing the curved railway lines, and hear the whistle of a locomotive and the noisy movements of a heavy mass.

 

‘No,’ said Oblonsky who was anxious to tell Vronsky about Levin’s intentions concerning Kitty, ‘no, you have not judged my Levin rightly. He is a very nervous man, and does make himself unpleasant sometimes, that’s true enough; but on the other hand he is sometimes very charming. His is such an honest, straightforward nature, and he has a heart of gold. But yesterday there were special reasons,’ continued Oblonsky with a significant smile, quite forgetting the sincere sympathy he had felt for his friend the day before, and now only feeling the same sympathy for Vronsky. ‘Yes, there was a reason why he had to be either specially happy or specially unhappy.’

 

Vronsky stopped and asked him straight out: ‘What do you mean? Did he propose to your belle sœur [sister-in-law] last night?’

 

‘Perhaps,’ said Oblonsky. ‘I seemed to notice something of the kind yesterday. Oh yes, if he left early and was in a bad temper it must be that. . . . He has been in love with her so long, and I am very sorry for him.’

 

‘Dear me! . . . But I should think she may make a better match,’ said Vronsky, and expanding his chest he again moved forward. ‘However, I don’t know him,’ he added. ‘Yes, it is a painful position! That is why so many prefer women of the demi-monde. If you don’t succeed in that case it only shows that you have not enough money, but in this case one’s pride is in the balance. But here’s the train.’

 

In fact the engine was already whistling in the distance, and a few moments later the platform shook as the train puffed in; the steam spread low in the frozen air, the connecting rods slowly and rhythmically pushed and pulled, the bent figure of the engine-driver, warmly wrapped up, was seen covered with hoar-frost. The engine with the tender behind it moved slowly into the station, gradually slowing down and making the platform tremble still more. Then came the luggage van in which a dog was whining, and at last the passenger coaches, oscillating before they stopped.

 

The sprightly guard blew his whistle and jumped off while the train was still moving, and impatient passengers began to descend one after another: an officer of the guards, erect and looking sternly round, a fidgety little tradesman with a bag, a peasant with a sack over his shoulder. . . .

 

Vronsky, as he stood by Oblonsky and watched these passengers coming out of the carriages, quite forgot about his mother. What he had just heard about Kitty excited and delighted him. His chest involuntarily expanded and his eyes shone, he felt himself to be a conqueror.

 

‘The Countess Vronsky is in that compartment,’ said the sprightly guard, addressing Vronsky.

 

His words roused Vronsky from his reverie and reminded him of his mother and of the coming meeting.

 

In the depths of his heart he did not respect his mother and (though this he never acknowledged to himself) did not love her, but in accordance with the views of the set he lived in, and as a result of his education, he could not imagine himself treating her in any way but one altogether submissive and respectful; the more submissive and respectful he was externally, the less he honoured and loved her in his heart.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 18

 

 

 

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VRONSKY followed the guard to the carriage and had to stop at the entrance of the compartment to let a lady pass out.

 

The trained insight of a Society man enabled Vronsky with a single glance to decide that she belonged to the best Society. He apologized for being in her way and was about to enter the carriage, but felt compelled to have another look at her, not because she was very beautiful nor because of the elegance and modest grace of her whole figure, but because he saw in her sweet face as she passed him something specially tender and kind. When he looked round she too turned her head. Her bright grey eyes which seemed dark because of their black lashes rested for a moment on his face as if recognizing him, and then turned to the passing crowd evidently in search of some one. In that short look Vronsky had time to notice the subdued animation that enlivened her face and seemed to flutter between her bright eyes and a scarcely perceptible smile which curved her rosy lips. It was as if an excess of vitality so filled her whole being that it betrayed itself against her will, now in her smile, now in the light of her eyes. She deliberately tried to extinguish that light in her eyes, but it shone in spite of her in her faint smile.

 

Vronsky entered the carriage. His mother, a thin old woman with black eyes and curled hair, screwed up her eyes as she recognized her son and her thin lips smiled slightly. She rose from the seat, and giving her hand-bag to her maid held out her small dry hand to her son, then lifting his head which had been bent to kiss her hand kissed him on his face.

 

‘You had my telegram? You’re well? That’s a good thing.’

 

‘Have you had a good journey?’ asked her son, sitting down on the seat beside her and involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met as he entered the carriage.

 

‘All the same I don’t agree with you,’ the lady was saying.

 

‘Yours are Petersburg views, madam.’

 

‘Not at all, simply a woman’s views.’

 

‘Well, allow me to kiss your hand.’

 

‘Au revoir, Ivan Petrovich, and please if you see my brother send him to me,’ said the lady, closing the door and again entering the compartment.

 

‘Well, have you found your brother?’ asked Vronsky’s mother, addressing the lady.

 

Vronsky understood now that this was Mrs. Karenina.

 

‘Your brother is here,’ he said rising. ‘Excuse my not recognizing you before. Our acquaintance was so slight,’ he said with a bow, ‘that I am sure you do not remember me.’

 

‘Oh yes, I should have recognized you, especially as I believe your mother and I have talked of nothing but you all the way,’ said she, at last allowing the animation she had been trying to suppress to reveal itself in a smile. ‘But my brother is not here yet.’

 

‘Go and call him, Alexis,’ said the old Countess.

 

Vronsky went out on to the platform and shouted, ‘Oblonsky! Here!’

 

Mrs. Karenina did not wait for her brother to come in, but, on seeing him, descended from the carriage with a firm light step. As soon as her brother came up to her she threw her left arm round his neck with a movement that struck Vronsky by its firmness and grace, and drawing him to herself gave him a vigorous kiss. Vronsky did not take his eyes off her, and kept smiling, he knew not why. But remembering that his mother was waiting for him he went back into the carriage.

 

‘She is very charming, isn’t she?’ said the Countess, referring to Mrs. Karenina. ‘Her husband put her into the compartment with me and I was very pleased. We talked all the way. And you I hear . . . vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux [you carry on the perfect love. So much the better, my dear].’

 

‘I don’t know what you mean, maman,’ the son replied coldly. ‘Well, shall we go?’

 

Mrs. Karenina again entered the carriage to take leave of the Countess.

 

‘There, Countess, you have met your son and I my brother,’ she said, ‘and I have exhausted my stock of stories and should have had nothing more to tell you.’

 

‘No, no,’ said the Countess holding her hand, ‘I could travel round the world with you and not be dull. You are one of those charming women with whom it is nice to talk, and nice to be silent. But please don’t fret about your son, you can’t expect never to be parted.’

 

Mrs. Karenina stood very erect and her eyes were smiling.

 

‘Anna Arkadyevna Karenina has a son who, I think, is eight years old,’ explained the Countess, ‘and she has never before been separated from him and so she is worried at having left him.’

 

‘Yes, the Countess and I have talked all the time — I about my son and she about hers,’ said Mrs. Karenina, and a smile brightened her face, a kind smile on his account.

 

‘I expect you got very weary of it,’ he said, quickly seizing in its flight the bail of coquetry she had thrown at him. But she evidently did not wish to continue the conversation in that tone, and turned to the old Countess.

 

‘Thank you very much. I hardly noticed how the time passed. Au revoir, Countess.’

 

‘Good-bye, dear!’ answered the Countess. ‘Let me kiss your pretty face. I’m an old woman and say what I mean, and tell you frankly that I’ve lost my heart to you.’

 

Conventional as the phrase was, Mrs. Karenina evidently believed it and was pleased. She blushed, stooped a little, and held out her face for the Countess to kiss, then she stood up again, and with the same smile hovering between her lips and eyes held out her hand to Vronsky. He pressed the little hand, and the firm grip with which she shook his gave him unusual pleasure. She went out with that brisk tread which carried her rather full figure with such wonderful ease.

 

‘Very charming,’ said the old lady.

 

Her son thought so too. He followed her with his eyes as long as he could see her graceful form, and his face retained its smile. Through the carriage window he saw her approach her brother and speak to him with animation about something that evidently had no connection with him, Vronsky, and that seemed to him provoking.