PART SIX

 

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Chapter 1

 

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DOLLY and her children were spending the summer with her sister Kitty at Pokrovsk. The house on her own estate was quite dilapidated, so Levin and his wife persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Oblonsky quite approved of this arrangement. He said he greatly regretted that his duties prevented his spending the summer with his family in the country, which would have given him the greatest pleasure; and he remained in Moscow, visiting the country occasionally for a day or two at a time. Beside the Oblonskys with all their children and their governess, the Levins had other visitors — the old Princess, who considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in that condition; and also Varenka, Kitty’s friend from abroad, who was keeping her promise to visit her friend now that she was married. All these were relations and friends of Kitty’s, and, though Levin liked them, he regretted his own — the Levin — world and order of things, which was being submerged by this influx of ‘the Shcherbatsky element,’ as he put it to himself. Only one of his relatives, Sergius Ivanich, visited him that summer — and he was a man of the Koznyshev type and not a Levin, so that the Levin spirit was quite overwhelmed.

 

In the Levin house, so long empty, there were now so many people that nearly every room was occupied, and the old Princess was obliged almost daily to count those present before sitting down to a meal. If there chanced to be thirteen, she would make a grandchild sit at the side-table. And Kitty, who conducted her household with great assiduity, had no little trouble to procure all the chickens, turkeys, and ducks, of which, with the visitors’ and the children’s summer appetites, very many were required.

 

The whole family was assembled at dinner. Dolly’s children, their governess, and Varenka were planning where they should hunt for mushrooms; Koznyshev, who by his intellect and learning commanded a respect almost amounting to veneration from all the visitors, surprised every one by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.

 

‘You must take me too! I am very fond of looking for mushrooms,’ he said with a glance at Varenka. ‘I consider it a very good occupation.’

 

‘Why, certainly! We shall be very pleased,’ replied Varenka with a blush. Kitty and Dolly exchanged significant looks. The intellectual and learned Koznyshev’s offer to go and gather mushrooms with Varenka confirmed a suspicion that had greatly occupied Kitty’s mind of late. She hastened to say something to her mother so that her glance should pass unnoticed.

 

After dinner Koznyshev sat down by the drawing-room window, continuing his conversation with his brother over a cup of coffee and glancing now and then at the door through which the children, who were preparing to set out on the mushroom hunt, would enter. Levin sat down on the window-sill beside his brother.

 

Kitty stood near her husband, evidently waiting for the end of the conversation — which did not interest her — before speaking to him.

 

‘In many ways you have changed since your marriage, and for the better,’ said Koznyshev, smiling at Kitty and apparently not much interested in his conversation with his brother; ‘but you have remained true to your passion for defending the most paradoxical views.’

 

‘Kate, it is not good for you to be standing,’ said her husband, with a meaning look, moving a chair toward her.

 

‘Ah, well! there’s no time now,’ added Koznyshev as the children came running in.

 

In advance of them all, at a sideways gallop, came Tanya in tightly pulled-up stockings, running toward Koznyshev, flourishing a basket and his hat. Having boldly approached him, her beautiful eyes beaming (eyes so like her father’s), she gave him his hat and made a movement as if to put it on him, her shy and gentle smile softening the boldness of the action.

 

‘Varenka is waiting,’ she said, carefully placing his hat on his head when she saw from his smile that she had permission to do so.

 

Varenka, who was wearing a yellow print dress and a white kerchief on her head, stood in the doorway.

 

‘I’m coming, Mlle Varenka,’ said Koznyshev, drinking up his coffee and pocketing his handkerchief and cigar-case.

 

‘What a darling my Varenka is, eh?’ Kitty said to her husband as soon as Koznyshev had risen. She said it so that the latter could hear, with an evident desire that he should do so. ‘And how handsome, how nobly handsome! . . . Varenka!’ she exclaimed. ‘You will be in the wood by the mill? We will drive there.’

 

‘You quite forget your condition, Kitty,’ said the old Princess, hurrying in. ‘You should not shout so.’

 

Varenka, hearing Kitty’s voice and her mother reprimanding her, came up with her light step. The quickness of Varenka’s movements, the colour suffusing her animated face, all showed that something unusual was taking place within her. Kitty knew what that unusual thing was, and watched her attentively. She had now called Varenka only to give her a silent blessing for the important event which, according to Kitty, was to happen in the woods that day after dinner.

 

‘Varenka, I shall be very happy if a certain thing comes to pass,’ she whispered, kissing her.

 

‘And are you coming with us?’ Varenka, quite confused, asked Levin, pretending not to have heard what had been said to her.

 

‘I will come, but only as far as the threshing-floor. I shall stay there.’

 

‘Oh, why should you?’ said Kitty.

 

‘I must look at the new waggons, and count them,’ said Levin. ‘And where will you be?’

 

‘On the balcony.’

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

 

 

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ALL the women of the household were assembled on the balcony. They always liked to sit there after dinner, but to-day they had special business there. Besides the sewing of little shirts and the knitting of swaddling bands, on which they were all engaged, to-day jam was being made there in a way new to Agatha Mikhaylovna: without the addition of water to the fruit. Kitty was introducing this new way, which had been employed in her old home; but Agatha Mikhaylovna, to whom this work had formerly been entrusted, and who considered that nothing that used to be done in the Levin house could be wrong, had, despite her directions, put water in the strawberry and the wild strawberry jam, declaring it to be indispensable. She had been detected doing this, and now the raspberry jam was being made in every one’s presence, as Agatha Mikhaylovna had to be convinced that without water the jam could turn out well.

 

Agatha Mikhaylovna, with a flushed face and aggrieved expression, her hair ruffled and her thin arms bared to the elbow, was shaking the preserving pan over the brazier with a circular movement, looking dismally at the raspberries and hoping with all her heart that they would harden and not get cooked through. The old Princess, conscious that against her, as chief adviser in the matter of jam boiling, Agatha Mikaylovna’s wrath should he directed, tried to look as if she were thinking of other things and was not interested in the raspberries. She talked of other matters, but watched the brazier out of the corner of her eye.

 

‘I always buy dress materials for the maids myself, at the sales,’ the Princess said, continuing the conversation. ‘Is it not time to take the scum off, my dear?’ she added, turning to Agatha Mikhaylovna. ‘It is not at all necessary for you to do it yourself, besides it’s hot,’ she said, stopping Kitty.

 

‘I will do it,’ said Dolly, and she got up and began carefully sliding the spoon over the surface of the bubbling syrup, and now and then, to remove what had stuck to the spoon, she tapped it against a plate already covered with the yellowish pink scum, with blood-red streaks of syrup showing beneath it. ‘How they’ll lick it up at tea-time!’ she thought of the children, remembering how she herself, when a child, used to marvel that the grown-ups did not eat the scum — the nicest part.

 

‘Stiva says it’s better to give them money,’ Dolly remarked, returning to the interesting topic of what presents it was best to give to the servants, ‘but . . .’

 

‘How can one give them money!’ said the Princess and Kitty with one voice. ‘They value presents so!’

 

‘Well, I for instance got our Matrena Semenovna not exactly poplin, but something of that kind, last year,’ said the Princess.

 

‘Yes, I remember she wore it on your Name day.’

 

‘The pattern is charming — so simple and refined. I would have had one made like it myself if she hadn’t had it. It is something like Varenka’s, and so pretty and cheap.’

 

‘Well, I think it is ready now,’ said Dolly, dripping syrup from the spoon. ‘When it begins to string, it is ready. Boil it up a little longer, Agatha Mikhaylovna.’

 

‘Oh, these flies!’ cried Agatha Mikhaylovna crossly. ‘It will come out just the same.’

 

‘Oh, how sweet he is — don’t frighten him!’ exclaimed Kitty unexpectedly, looking at a sparrow that had settled on the railing, turned a raspberry stalk over, and was pecking at it.

 

‘Yes, but keep away from the brazier,’ said her mother.

 

‘À propos de Varenka,’ said Kitty in French, which they had been talking all the time so that Agatha Mikhaylovna should not understand them. ‘Do you know, Mama, I am somehow expecting it to be settled to-day! You understand what I mean. How nice it would be!’

 

‘Dear me! What a skilful matchmaker!’ teased Dolly. ‘How carefully and adroitly she brings them together!’

 

‘Come, Mama! Tell me what you think about it?’

 

‘What am I to think? He’ (he meant Koznyshev) ‘could have made the best match in Russia any time; now he is no longer so young, but all the same I am sure many would marry him even now. . . . She is very good-natured, but he might . . .’

 

‘Oh, but, Mama, try and understand why nothing better could be imagined either for him or for her. First of all, she is simply charming!’ expostulated Kitty, crooking one finger.

 

‘He certainly likes her very much,’ Dolly chimed in.

 

‘Secondly, his position in the world is such that neither property nor the social position of his wife matters to him at all. He only needs a good, sweet, quiet wife.’

 

‘Yes, one certainly can trust her,’ again chimed in Dolly.

 

‘Thirdly, she must love him; and that too is . . . In a word, it would be splendid! I expect when they come back from the wood it will all be settled. I shall see it at once by their eyes. I should be so glad! What do you think, Dolly?’

 

‘But don’t get excited; there is no need at all for you to get excited,’ admonished her mother.

 

‘But I am not excited, Mama! I think he will propose to-day.’

 

‘Ah, how strange it is when and how a man proposes. . . . There is a sort of barrier, and suddenly down it goes,’ said Dolly with a dreamy smile, recalling her past with Oblonsky.

 

‘Mama, how did Papa propose to you?’ Kitty suddenly inquired.

 

‘There was nothing special about it — it was quite simple,’ answered the Princess, but her face brightened at the memory.

 

‘No, but how . . . ? You really loved him before you were allowed to talk to one another?’

 

Kitty felt a particular charm in being able now to talk with her mother as an equal about those chief events in a woman’s life.

 

‘Of course he loved me; he used to visit us in the country.’

 

‘But how was it decided, Mama?’

 

‘I suppose you think you discovered something new? It was just the same — it was decided by the eyes, by smiles . . .’

 

‘How well you put it, Mama! By the eyes and by smiles, that’s just it!’ chimed in Dolly.

 

‘But what were the words he said?’

 

‘What words did Constantine say to you?’

 

‘He wrote with chalk. It was wonderful. . . . How long ago it seems!’ she replied.

 

And the three women meditated silently on the same subject. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She recalled the whole of the winter preceding her marriage, and her infatuation with Vronsky.

 

‘There’s one thing . . . that old love-affair of Varenka’s,’ she said, following the natural sequence of her thoughts. ‘I wished to tell Koznyshev somehow, to prepare him. Men, all of them, are terribly jealous of our pasts.’

 

‘Not all,’ said Dolly. ‘You judge by your own husband. He is still tormented by the memory of Vronsky. Eh? Am I not right?’

 

‘You are,’ answered Kitty, her eyes smiling dreamily.

 

‘But I do not know,’ interposed the Princess, defending her maternal watchfulness over her daughter, ‘what there is in your past to trouble him! That Vronsky courted you? Such things happen to every girl.’

 

‘Oh, but we are not talking about that,’ said Kitty, blushing.

 

‘No, excuse me!’ her mother continued. ‘And then you yourself would not let me talk it over with Vronsky. Don’t you remember?’

 

‘Oh Mama!’ said Kitty, looking pained.

 

‘Nowadays one can’t hold you girls in. . . . Your relations with him could not have gone beyond what was proper, else I should have spoken to him myself! However, my love, it won’t do for you to get agitated. Please remember that and keep calm.’

 

‘I am quite calm, Mama.’

 

‘How happily it turned out for Kitty that Anna came,’ said Dolly, ‘and how unhappily for her! The exact reverse,’ she added, struck by her thought. ‘Then Anna was so happy and Kitty considered herself miserable. Now it’s the exact reverse! I often think of her.’

 

‘She’s not worth thinking about! A horrid, disgusting woman without a heart,’ said their mother, unable to forget that Kitty had not married Vronsky but Levin.

 

‘What is the use of talking about that?’ expostulated Kitty with vexation. ‘I don’t think about it, and don’t want to,’ she said, listening to her husband coming up the balcony steps. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

 

About what don’t you want to think?’ he asked as he came up.

 

No one answered and he did not repeat the question.

 

‘I am sorry I have intruded into your women’s domain,’ he said, glancing round at them all with a dissatisfied air, and realizing that they had been talking of something they would not have talked of in his presence.

 

For an instant he felt that he shared Agatha Mikhaylovna’s dissatisfaction that the jam was boiled without water, and with the alien Shcherbatsky influence in general. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.

 

‘Well?’ he asked, looking at her with the expression with which every one addressed her nowadays.

 

‘Quite all right,’ replied Kitty with a smile. ‘And your affairs?’

 

‘The waggons’ll hold three times as much as peasant carts. Shall we go and fetch the children? I have ordered the trap.’

 

‘What? Are you going to take Kitty in the trap?’ said her mother reproachfully.

 

‘Only at a walking pace, Princess.’

 

Levin never called the Princess Maman, as sons-in-law usually do, and this displeased the Princess. But though he liked and respected her very much, Levin could not address her so without violating his feeling for his dead mother.

 

‘Come with us, Mama,’ said Kitty.

 

‘I don’t wish to see such unreasonable doings.’

 

‘Well, then I’ll go on foot! Walking is good for me,’ and Kitty rose, went to her husband and took his arm.

 

‘It’s good for you in moderation,’ said the Princess.

 

‘Well, Agatha Mikhaylovna, is the jam done?’ asked Levin, smiling at her and wishing to cheer her up. ‘Has it turned out well the new way?’

 

‘I suppose. We’d have thought it overdone.’

 

‘It’s better so, Agatha Mikhaylovna: it won’t ferment, and we have no ice left in the cellar and nowhere to keep it cool,’ said Kitty, immediately seeing her husband’s intention and addressing the old woman in the same spirit. ‘On the other hand, your pickling is such that Mama says she never tasted anything like it!’ she added, smiling and putting the old woman’s kerchief straight.

 

Agatha Mikhaylovna looked crossly at Kitty.

 

‘You need not comfort me, ma’am! I just look at you and him, and then I feel happy,’ she said, and that disrespectful way of speaking of her master as him seemed touching to Kitty.

 

‘Come with us and get mushrooms! You will show us the right places.’

 

Agatha Mikhaylovna smiled and shook her head, as much as to say: ‘Though I should like to be cross with you, I can’t do it.’

 

‘Please follow my advice,’ said the old Princess, ‘cover the jam with paper soaked in rum, and then it will not get mouldy, even without ice.’

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

 

 

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KITTY was particularly glad of the opportunity of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shadow of pain that flitted over his face, which so vividly reflected all his emotions, when he came on the balcony, asked what they were talking about and received no reply.

 

When they started on their walk in advance of the others and had passed out of sight of the house on to the hard, dusty road, strewn with rye-ears and grain, she leaned more heavily on his arm and pressed it. He had already forgotten that momentarily unpleasant impression, and being alone with her experienced, now that the thought of her pregnancy never left him, a feeling still novel and joyful to him of pleasure, entirely free from sensuality, at the nearness of a beloved woman. They had nothing to say to one another, but he wanted to hear the sound of her voice, which like her look had been changed by her pregnancy. In her voice as in her look there was now a certain softness and seriousness, as of a person continually intent on one beloved task.

 

‘You’re sure you won’t be tired? Lean more on me,’ he said.

 

‘No. I am so glad of a chance to be alone with you; and I own that, nice as it is to have them all, I regret our winter evenings alone together.’

 

‘They were pleasant, but this is still better. . . . Both are better,’ he said, pressing her hand.

 

‘Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?’

 

‘About the jam?’

 

‘Yes, about jam, and then . . . about how people propose.’

 

‘Ah!’ said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to her words, thinking all the while about the road, which now led through the wood, and avoiding places where she might take a false step.

 

‘And about Sergius and Varenka. Did you notice? . . . I want it so much,’ she went on. ‘What do you think about it?’ and she looked into his face.

 

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Levin replied with a smile. ‘Sergius seems very strange to me in that regard. I told you . . .’

 

‘Yes — that he was in love with that girl who died. . . .’

 

‘It happened when I was still a child; I only knew of it from what I was told. I remember him at that time. He was wonderfully charming. But since then I have observed him with women; he is amiable, and some of them please him, but I feel that for him they are simply human beings, not women.’

 

‘Yes, but now with Varenka? . . . There seems to be something . . .’

 

‘Perhaps there is. . . . But one must know him. He is a peculiar, a wonderful man. He lives only a spiritual life. He is a man of too pure and lofty a nature.’

 

‘What! Would that lower him?’

 

‘No, but he is so used to living a purely spiritual life that he cannot reconcile himself to realities, and, after all, Varenka is a reality!’

 

Levin had by this time become accustomed to express his thoughts boldly, without troubling to put them into precise phraseology; he knew that at such loving moments as the present his wife would understand what he meant from a mere hint, and she did understand him.

 

‘Yes, but in her there is not so much of that reality as there is in me; I know he would never have loved me. She is all spirit.’

 

‘Oh no! He is very fond of you, and it is always such a pleasure to me when my people are fond of you.’

 

‘Yes, he is kind to me, but . . .’

 

‘But it’s not like poor Nicholas. . . . You would have loved one another,’ said Levin, finishing her sentence for her. ‘Why not speak of him?’ he added. ‘Sometimes I blame myself for not doing so; it will end by my forgetting him. Oh, what a dreadful, what a charming man he was! . . . Yes, what were we talking about?’ he concluded after a pause.

 

‘You think he can’t fall in love, then?’ said Kitty, putting his thoughts into her own words.

 

‘Not exactly that he can’t fall in love,’ Levin answered with a smile, ‘but he has none of that weakness which is necessary . . . I always envied him, and even now, when I am so happy, I still envy him.’

 

‘You envy him because he can’t fall in love?’

 

‘I envy him because he is better than I am,’ replied he, smiling. ‘He does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to duty. And so he can be calm and contented.’

 

‘And you?’ said Kitty with a mocking smile of loving amusement.

 

She could not have expressed the sequence of thoughts that made her smile; but the last deduction was that her husband, in extolling his brother and depreciating himself, was not quite sincere. But she knew that this insincerity was the outcome of his affection for his brother, of a sense of shame at his own excessive happiness, and especially of that desire to improve which never left him; she loved this in him, and therefore smiled.