Chapter 23

 

 

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VRONSKY and Kitty waltzed several times round the room and then Kitty went to her mother, but hardly had she exchanged a few words with the Countess Nordston before Vronsky returned to fetch her for the first quadrille. Nothing special was said during the quadrille: they talked in snatches about the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom Vronsky very amusingly described as dear forty-year-old children, and about a proposed Stage Society, and only once did the conversation touch her to the quick — when he asked her about Levin, whether he was still in Moscow, and added that he had liked him very much. But Kitty had not expected more from the quadrille, she waited with a clutch at her heart for the mazurka. It seemed to her that the mazurka would settle everything. That he did not ask her for the mazurka while they were dancing the quadrille did not disturb her. She was sure that she would dance the mazurka with him as at previous balls, and she refused five other partners for that dance, saying that she was already engaged. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty an enchanted dream of gay flowers, sounds, and movements. She only stopped dancing when she felt too tired and had to ask to be allowed a rest. But while dancing the last quadrille with one of the youthful bores whom it would not do to refuse, she happened to be vis-à-vis to Anna. She had not come across Anna since the beginning of the ball, and now she suddenly saw her again in a different and unexpected light. She noticed that Anna was elated with success, a feeling Kitty herself knew so well. She saw that Anna was intoxicated by the rapture she had produced. She knew the feeling and knew its symptoms, and recognized them in Anna — she saw the quivering light flashing in her eyes, the smile of happiness and elation that involuntarily curled her lips, and the graceful precision, the exactitude and lightness, of her movements.

 

‘Who is the cause?’ she asked herself. ‘All or only one?’ And without trying to help her youthful partner who was painfully struggling to carry on the conversation the thread of which he had lost, as she mechanically obeyed the merry, loud, and authoritative orders of Korsunsky, who commanded every one to form now a grand rond, now a chaine, she watched, and her heart sank more and more.

 

‘No, it is not the admiration of the crowd that intoxicates her, but the rapture of one, and that one is . . . can it be he?’

 

Every time he spoke to Anna the joyful light kindled in her eyes and a smile of pleasure curved her rosy lips. She seemed to make efforts to restrain these signs of joy, but they appeared on her face of their own accord. ‘But what of him?’ Kitty looked at him and was filled with horror. What she saw so distinctly in the mirror of Anna’s face, she saw in him. What had become of his usually quiet and firm manner and the carelessly calm expression of his face? Every time he turned toward Anna he slightly bowed his head as if he wished to fall down before her, and in his eyes there was an expression of submission and fear. ‘I do not wish to offend,’ his every look seemed to say, ‘I only wish to save myself, but I do not know how.’ His face had an expression which she had never seen before.

 

They talked about their mutual friends, carrying on a most unimportant conversation, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deciding their and her fate. And, strange to say, though they were talking about Ivan Ivanich, who made himself so ridiculous with his French, and how Miss Eletskaya could have made a better match, yet these words were important for them, and they felt this as well as Kitty. A mist came over the ball and the whole world in Kitty’s soul. Only the thorough training she had had enabled and obliged her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer the questions put to her, to talk, and even to smile. But before the mazurka began, when the chairs were already being placed for it, and several couples moved from the small to the large ball-room, Kitty was for a moment seized with despair. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka and now she had no partner for it. She had not even a hope of being asked again just because she had too much success in Society for anyone to think that she was not already engaged for the dance. She must tell her mother that she was feeling ill, and go home, but she had not the strength to do it. She felt herself quite broken-hearted.

 

She went to the far end of a little drawing-room and sank into an easy chair. Her light skirt stood out like a cloud round her slight body; one thin bare girlish arm dropped listlessly and sank into the pink folds of her tunic; the other hand held a fan with which she rapidly fanned her flushed face. But although she seemed like a butterfly just settled on a blade of grass and ready at any moment to flutter and spread its rainbow wings, her heart was crushed with terrible despair.

 

‘But perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps it was nothing of the kind?’ And she again recalled all that she had witnessed.

 

‘Kitty, what does this mean?’ asked the Countess Nordston, coming up inaudibly over the carpet. ‘I don’t understand it.’

 

Kitty’s nether lip trembled, and she rose quickly.

 

‘Kitty, are you not dancing the mazurka?’

 

‘No, no,’ said Kitty in a voice tremulous with tears.

 

‘He asked her for the mazurka in my presence,’ said the Countess, knowing that Kitty would understand whom she meant by ‘him’ and ‘her’. ‘She asked, “Are you not dancing with the Princess Shcherbatsky?” ’

 

‘Oh! it’s all the same to me!’ replied Kitty. No one but herself understood her situation, because no one knew that she had only a few days ago refused a man whom she perhaps loved, and refused him because she trusted another.

 

The Countess Nordston, who was engaged to Korsunsky for the mazurka, told him to ask Kitty instead.

 

Kitty danced in the first pair, and luckily for her she was not obliged to talk, because Korsunsky ran about all the time giving orders in his domain. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite to her. And she saw them with her far-sighted eyes, she saw them close by, too, when they met in the dance, and the more she saw of them the surer she was that the blow had fallen. She saw that they felt as if they were alone in that crowded ball-room. On Vronsky’s face, usually so firm and self-possessed, she noticed that expression of bewilderment and submission which had so surprised her — an expression like that of an intelligent dog when it feels guilty.

 

Anna smiled — and the smile passed on to him; she became thoughtful — and he became serious. Some supernatural power attracted Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She looked charming in her simple black dress; her full arms with the bracelets, her firm neck with the string of pearls round it, her curly hair now disarranged, every graceful movement of her small feet and hands, her handsome, animated face, — everything about her was enchanting, but there was something terrible and cruel in her charm.

 

Kitty admired her even more than before, and suffered more and more. She felt herself crushed and her face expressed it.

 

When Vronsky happened to knock against her as they danced, he did not at once recognize her, so changed was she.

 

‘A delightful ball,’ he remarked, in order to say something.

 

‘Yes,’ she replied.

 

In the middle of the mazurka, performing a complicated figure newly-invented by Korsunsky, Anna stepped into the middle of the room and chose two men and two ladies, one of whom was Kitty, to join her. Kitty, as she moved toward Anna, gazed at her with fear. Anna half closed her eyes to look at Kitty, smiled and pressed her hand, but noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of surprise and despair, she turned away from her and talked cheerfully with the other lady.

 

‘Yes, there is something strange, satanic, and enchanting about her,’ thought Kitty.

 

Anna did not wish to stay to supper, but the master of the house tried to persuade her to do so.

 

‘Come, Anna Arkadyevna,’ began Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under his, ‘I have such a good idea for a cotillion — Un bijou [A jewel].’ And he moved slowly on, trying to draw her with him. Their host smiled approvingly.

 

‘No, I won’t stay,’ answered Anna, smiling, and despite her smile Korsunsky and the host understood from the firm tone of her voice that she would not stay.

 

‘No, as it is I have danced more in Moscow at your one ball than I danced the whole winter in Petersburg,’ said Anna, looking round at Vronsky who stood beside her. ‘I must rest before my journey.’

 

‘So you really are going to-morrow?’ said Vronsky.

 

‘Yes, I think so,’ Anna replied as if surprised at the boldness of his question; but the uncontrollable radiance of her eyes and her smile burnt him as she spoke the words.

 

Anna did not stay for supper, but went away.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 24

 

 

 

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‘YES, there is certainly something objectionable and repellent about me,’ thought Levin after leaving the Shcherbatskys, as he walked toward his brother’s lodgings. ‘I do not get on with other people. They say it is pride! No, I am not even proud. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself into such a position.’ And he pictured to himself, Vronsky, happy, kind, clever, calm, and certainly never placing himself in such a terrible position as he, Levin, had been in that evening. ‘Yes, she was bound to choose him. It had to be so, and I have no cause to complain of anyone or anything. It was my own fault. What right had I to imagine that she would wish to unite her life with mine? Who and what am I? A man of no account, wanted by no one and of no use to anyone.’ And he remembered his brother Nicholas, and kept his mind gladly on that memory. ‘Is he not right that everything on earth is evil and horrid? And have we judged brother Nicholas fairly? Of course, from Prokofy’s point of view, who saw him in a ragged coat and tipsy, he is a despicable fellow; but I know him from another side. I know his soul, and know that we resemble one another. And yet I, instead of looking him up, dined out and came here.’ Levin went up to a lamp-post and read his brother’s address which he had in his pocket-book, and then hired a sledge. On the long way to his brother’s he recalled all the events he knew of Nicholas’s life. He recalled how despite the ridicule of his fellow-students his brother had lived like a monk while at the University and for a year after, strictly observing all the religious rites, attending service, fasting, avoiding all pleasures and especially women; and then how he suddenly broke loose, became intimate with the vilest people and gave himself up to unbridled debauchery. He remembered how his brother had brought a boy from the country to educate, and in a fit of anger had so beaten the lad that proceedings were commenced against him for causing bodily harm. He remembered an affair with a sharper to whom his brother had lost money, and whom he had first given a promissory note and then prosecuted on a charge of fraud. (That was when his brother Sergius had paid the money for him.) Then he remembered the night which Nicholas had spent in the police cells for disorderly conduct, and the disgraceful proceedings he had instigated against his brother Sergius Ivanich, whom he accused of not having paid out to him his share of his mother’s fortune: and lastly, the time when his brother took an official appointment in one of the Western Provinces and was there arrested for assaulting an Elder. . . . It was all very disgusting, but to Levin it did not seem nearly so disgusting as it must have seemed to those who did not know Nicholas, nor his whole story, nor his heart.

 

Levin remembered that when Nicholas was passing through his pious stage of fasting, visiting monks, and going to church; when he was seeking in religion for help to curb his passionate nature, not only did no one encourage him, but every one, and Levin among them, made fun of him. He was teased and called ‘Noah’ and ‘monk’, and then when he broke loose no one helped him, but all turned away from him with horror and disgust.

 

Levin felt that his brother Nicholas, in his soul, in the innermost depths of his soul, despite the depravity of his life, was no worse than those who despised him. It was not his fault that he was born with his ungovernable temper, and with a cramped mind. He always wished to do right. ‘I will tell him everything, I will get him to tell me everything. I will show him that I love and therefore understand him,’ Levin decided in his mind, as toward eleven o’clock he drove up to the hotel of which he had the address.

 

‘Upstairs, Nos. 12 and 13,’ said the hall porter in reply to Levin’s question.

 

‘Is he in?’

 

‘I expect so.’

 

The door of No. 12 was ajar, and from within, visible in the streak of light, issued dense fumes of inferior and weak tobacco. Levin heard a stranger’s voice, but knew at once that his brother was there, for he heard him coughing.

 

As he entered the doorway the stranger’s voice was saying: ‘It all depends on how intelligently and rationally the affair is conducted.’

 

Constantine Levin glanced into the room, which was beyond a partition, and saw that the speaker was a young man with an enormous head of hair, who wore a workman’s coat, and that a young, pock-marked woman in a woollen dress without collar or cuffs was sitting on the sofa. [At that time better-class women always wore something white round their necks and wrists.] He could not see his brother, and his heart sank painfully at the thought that Nicholas lived among such strange people. No one noticed him, and, as he took off his goloshes, he overheard what the man in the workman’s coat was saying. He was talking about some commercial enterprise.

 

‘Oh, let the privileged classes go to the devil,’ said his brother’s voice, with a cough.

 

‘Masha, get us some supper and bring the wine if any is left, or send for some.’

 

The woman rose, came out from behind the partition, and saw Constantine.

 

‘Here is a gentleman, Nicholas Dmitrich,’ she said.

 

‘Whom do you want?’ said Nicholas Levin’s voice angrily.

 

‘It is I,’ answered Constantine Levin, coming forward into the lamp-light.

 

‘Who’s I?’ said the voice of Nicholas Levin still more angrily.

 

Constantine heard how he rose hurriedly and caught against something, and then in the doorway before him he saw the familiar yet ever strange figure of his brother, wild, sickly, gigantic, lean, and round-shouldered, with large, frightened eyes.

 

He was even more emaciated than three years before, when Constantine Levin had last seen him. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and broad bones appeared more immense than ever. His hair was thinner, but the same straight moustache covered his lips; and the same eyes with their peculiar, naïve gaze looked out at the new-comer.

 

‘Ah! Kostya!’ he said suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. But at the same moment he turned to look at the young man and convulsively jerked his head and neck as if his neck-tie were strangling him, a movement Levin knew well, and quite another expression — a wild, suffering, and cruel look — settled on his haggard face.

 

‘I wrote both to you and to Sergius Ivanich that I do not know you and do not wish to know you. What is it? What do you want?’

 

He was not at all as Constantine had imagined him. Constantine when thinking of him had forgotten the most trying and worst part of his character, that which made intercourse with him so difficult; but now when he saw his face, and especially that convulsive movement of his head, he remembered it all.

 

‘I do not want anything of you specially,’ he answered meekly; ‘I have simply come to see you.’

 

His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nicholas, whose lips quivered.

 

‘Ah! You have come just for that?’ he said. ‘Well, come in, sit down. Will you have some supper? Masha, get supper for three. No, wait a little. Do you know who this is?’ he added, turning to his brother and pointing to the man in the workman’s coat. ‘It is Mr. Kritsky, my friend ever since my Kiev days, a very remarkable fellow. Of course the police are after him, because he is not a scoundrel.’

 

And he glanced round at everybody present as was his way. Seeing that the woman in the doorway was about to go out he shouted to her: ‘Wait, I told you,’ and in the awkward and blundering manner familiar to Constantine, he again looked round at everybody, and began to tell his brother about Kritsky: how he had been expelled from the University because he had started a society to help the poorer students, and also Sunday schools, and how he had afterwards taught in an elementary school, and had been turned out from that too, and had then been tried on some charge or other.

 

‘You were at Kiev University?’ Constantine Levin asked Kritsky, in order to break the awkward silence that followed.

 

‘Yes, at Kiev,’ Kritsky replied with an angry frown.

 

‘And this woman,’ said Nicholas Levin, interrupting him, and pointing to her, ‘is my life’s companion, Mary Nikolavna; I took her out of a house . . .’ and as he said this he again jerked his neck. ‘But I love and respect her and beg all those who wish to know me,’ he added, raising his voice and scowling, ‘to love and respect her. She is just the same to me as a wife, just the same. So now you know whom you have to deal with, and if you fear you will be degraded — there is the door.’

 

And again his eyes glanced questioningly around.

 

‘Why should I be degraded? I don’t understand.’

 

‘Well, Masha, order supper for three, with vodka and wine. . . . No, wait. No, never mind. . . . You may go.’

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 25

 

 

 

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‘SO you see, . . .’ Nicholas Levin continued with an effort, wrinkling his brow and twitching.

 

He evidently found it hard to decide what to say and to do.

 

‘Do you see . . .’he pointed to a bundle of iron rods tied together with string, in a corner of the room. ‘Do you see that? It is the beginning of a new business we are undertaking. The business is to be a Productive Association . . .’

 

Constantine hardly listened. He kept glancing at his brother’s sickly, consumptive face, and felt more and more sorry for him, nor could he force himself to pay attention to what Nicholas was telling him about the Association. He realized that this Association was merely an anchor to save his brother from self-contempt. Nicholas Levin continued speaking:

 

‘You know that capitalism oppresses the workers. Our workmen the peasants bear the whole burden of labour, but are so placed that, work as they may, they cannot escape from their degrading condition. All the profits on their labour, by which they might better their condition, give themselves some leisure, and consequently gain some education, all this surplus value is taken away by the capitalists. And our society has so shaped itself that the more the people work the richer the merchants and landowners will become, while the people will remain beasts of burden for ever. And this system must be changed,’ he concluded, with an inquiring look at his brother.

 

‘Yes, of course,’ said Constantine, looking intently at the hectic flush which had appeared on his brother’s face below its prominent cheek bones.

 

‘And so we are starting a Locksmiths’ Association, in which all the products and the profits and, above all, the instruments of production will be common property.’

 

‘Where will the business be?’ asked Constantine.

 

‘In the village of Vozdrema, Kazan Government.’

 

‘Why in a village? It seems to me there is plenty of work to do in the country as it is. Why start a Locksmiths’ Association there?’

 

‘Because the peasants are still just as much slaves as they used to be, and that is why you and Sergius Ivanich don’t like it when anyone wishes to deliver them from their slavery,’ replied Nicholas Levin, irritated by Constantine’s objection.

 

Constantine sighed and at the same time looked round the room which was dismal and dirty. The sigh seemed to irritate Nicholas still more.

 

‘I know your aristocratic outlook and Sergius Ivanich’s. I know that he uses all the powers of his mind to justify the existing evils.’

 

‘But why talk about Sergius Ivanich?’ said Levin with a smile.

 

‘Sergius Ivanich? This is why!’ suddenly shouted Nicholas at the mention of the name. ‘This is why. . . . But what is the good of talking? One thing only. . . . Why have you come here? You despise it, well, that is all right — then go away. Go, go in God’s name!’ he exclaimed, rising from his chair. ‘Go, go!’

 

‘I do not despise it at all,’ Constantine replied meekly. ‘I do not even dispute it.’

 

Meanwhile Mary Nikolavna had come back. Nicholas gave her an angry look. She hurried up to him and said something in a whisper.

 

‘I am not well and have grown irritable,’ said Nicholas, breathing heavily and quieting down. ‘And you talk to me about Sergius Ivanich and his article. It is such rubbish, such humbug, such self-deception. What can a man write about justice, who does not understand it?’