Anna Karenina
agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises
not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and
misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to
this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon
Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to
centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent
development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of
speculation—all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that
in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would
arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into
agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite,
conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase
proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of
wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain
stage of agriculture there should be means of communication
corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land,
railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs,
were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected
of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the
development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress;
and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ
in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general
development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication,
manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had
arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing
into the background the chief question calling for settlement—the
question of the organization of agriculture.
While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial
her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want
of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s
jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s
jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr
the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling
of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from
his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he
feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round ... I’ll _will_ him
to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence
of her gaze.
“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was
looking at him and smiling, he looked round.
“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.
“He looked round,” she thought.
“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and
trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.
“How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going up to
her with a radiant smile of happiness.
“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.”
“And what were you thinking about?”
“I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break
off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little
holes now, do you see?”
She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.
“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and
watching the tiny scissors moving round.
“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the
back of your head.”
“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too
good,” he said, kissing her hand.
“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it
seems to me.”
“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her
head round.
“A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!”
Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another
like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.
“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.
“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”
“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else
I shall read your letters without you.”
Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio
bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the
elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin
smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those
thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something
shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his
present mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought.
“It’ll soon be three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today,
almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened?
I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I
have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all
to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she’s
dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing
much, somehow didn’t count, but that after marriage, life began in
earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my
time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won’t do; I must begin. Of
course, it’s not her fault. She’s not to blame in any way. I ought
myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action;
or else I shall get into such ways, and she’ll get used to them too....
Of course she’s not to blame,” he told himself.
But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone
else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground
of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin’s mind that she
herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but
what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous.
(“That fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn’t know
how to.”) “Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has),
apart from dress and _broderie anglaise_, she has no serious interests.
No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music,
though she’s rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and
is perfectly satisfied.” Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did
not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of
activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife
of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse,
and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of
this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not
reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her
love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future.
Chapter 16
When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver
samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea
Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a
letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent
correspondence.
“You see, your good lady’s settled me here, told me to sit a bit with
her,” said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty.
In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the
drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw
that, in spite of Agafea Mihalovna’s feelings being hurt by a new
mistress taking the reins of government out of her hands, Kitty had yet
conquered her and made her love her.
“Here, I opened your letter too,” said Kitty, handing him an illiterate
letter. “It’s from that woman, I think, your brother’s....” she said.
“I did not read it through. This is from my people and from Dolly.
Fancy! Dolly took Tanya and Grisha to a children’s ball at the
Sarmatskys’: Tanya was a French marquise.”
But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya
Nikolaevna, his brother’s former mistress, and began to read it. This
was the second letter he had received from Marya Nikolaevna. In the
first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his brother had sent her away
for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though
she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing,
but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay Dmitrievitch would
come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and
begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently.
She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him in
Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had
received a post in the government service. But that he had quarreled
with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had
been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever
leave his bed again, she wrote. “It’s always of you he has talked, and,
besides, he has no more money left.”
“Read this; Dolly writes about you,” Kitty was beginning, with a smile;
but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her
husband’s face.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“She writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death’s door. I shall
go to him.”
Kitty’s face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of
Dolly, all had vanished.
“When are you going?” she said.
“Tomorrow.”
“And I will go with you, can I?” she said.
“Kitty! What are you thinking of?” he said reproachfully.
“How do you mean?” offended that he should seem to take her suggestion
unwillingly and with vexation. “Why shouldn’t I go? I shan’t be in your
way. I....”
“I’m going because my brother is dying,” said Levin. “Why should
you....”
“Why? For the same reason as you.”
“And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being
dull by herself,” thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a matter of
such gravity infuriated him.
“It’s out of the question,” he said sternly.
Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put
down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in
which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially
because he evidently did not believe what she had said.
“I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly
come,” she said hastily and wrathfully. “Why out of the question? Why
do you say it’s out of the question?”
“Because it’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to
all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,” said Levin,
trying to be cool.
“Not at all. I don’t want anything. Where you can go, I can....”
“Well, for one thing then, because this woman’s there whom you can’t
meet.”
“I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. I know that
my husband’s brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go
with my husband too....”
“Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of
such importance that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a
feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you’ll be
dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.”
“There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,” she said with
tears of wounded pride and fury. “I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it
wasn’t ... I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in
trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to
understand....”
“No; this is awful! To be such a slave!” cried Levin, getting up, and
unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt
that he was beating himself.
“Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you