Anna Karenina
“The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we
going for the children? I’ve ordered the horses to be put in.”
“What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?” her mother said
reproachfully.
“Yes, at a walking pace, princess.”
Levin never called the princess “maman” as men often do call their
mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though
he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so
without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.
“Come with us, maman,” said Kitty.
“I don’t like to see such imprudence.”
“Well, I’ll walk then, I’m so well.” Kitty got up and went to her
husband and took his hand.
“You may be well, but everything in moderation,” said the princess.
“Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?” said Levin, smiling to
Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. “Is it all right in the
new way?”
“I suppose it’s all right. For our notions it’s boiled too long.”
“It’ll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won’t mildew, even
though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we’ve no cool cellar
to store it,” said Kitty, at once divining her husband’s motive, and
addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; “but your
pickle’s so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,” she
added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.
“You needn’t try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you
with him, and I feel happy,” she said, and something in the rough
familiarity of that _with him_ touched Kitty.
“Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best
places.” Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:
“I should like to be angry with you too, but I can’t.”
“Do it, please, by my receipt,” said the princess; “put some paper over
the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it
will never go mildewy.”
Chapter 3
Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her
husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed
over his face—always so quick to reflect every feeling—at the moment
when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of,
and had got no answer.
When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of
sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels
and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and
pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary
unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought
of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his
mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in
the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet
he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had
changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes,
there was that softness and gravity which is found in people
continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.
“So you’re not tired? Lean more on me,” said he.
“No, I’m so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own,
though I’m happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.”
“That was good, but this is even better. Both are better,” he said,
squeezing her hand.
“Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?”
“About jam?”
“Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.”
“Ah!” said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to the
words she was saying, and all the while paying attention to the road,
which passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she
might make a false step.
“And about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. You’ve noticed?... I’m very
anxious for it,” she went on. “What do you think about it?” And she
peeped into his face.
“I don’t know what to think,” Levin answered, smiling. “Sergey seems
very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know....”
“Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died....”
“That was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and
tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But I’ve
watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes,
but one feels that to him they’re simply people, not women.”
“Yes, but now with Varenka ... I fancy there’s something....”
“Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He’s a peculiar,
wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. He’s too pure, too
exalted a nature.”
“Why? Would this lower him, then?”
“No, but he’s so used to a spiritual life that he can’t reconcile
himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact.”
Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly, without
taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew that his
wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would understand
what he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.
“Yes, but there’s not so much of that actual fact about her as about
me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether
spiritual.”
“Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my people
like you....”
“Yes, he’s very nice to me; but....”
“It’s not as it was with poor Nikolay ... you really cared for each
other,” Levin finished. “Why not speak of him?” he added. “I sometimes
blame myself for not; it ends in one’s forgetting. Ah, how terrible and
dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking about?” Levin said, after a
pause.
“You think he can’t fall in love,” said Kitty, translating into her own
language.
“It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love,” Levin said, smiling,
“but he has not the weakness necessary.... I’ve always envied him, and
even now, when I’m so happy, I still envy him.”
“You envy him for not being able to fall in love?”
“I envy him for being better than I,” said Levin. “He does not live for
himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that’s why he
can be calm and contented.”
“And you?” Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.
She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her
smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his
brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that
this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of
shame at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to
be better—she loved it in him, and so she smiled.
“And you? What are you dissatisfied with?” she asked, with the same
smile.
Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and
unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds
of her disbelief.
“I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....” he said.
“Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?”
“Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing
whatever but that you should not stumble—see? Oh, but really you
mustn’t skip about like that!” he cried, breaking off to scold her for
too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path.
“But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others,
especially with my brother, I feel I’m a poor creature.”
“But in what way?” Kitty pursued with the same smile. “Don’t you too
work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work
on the estate, and your book?...”
“Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now—it’s your fault,” he said,
pressing her hand—“that all that doesn’t count. I do it in a way
halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!...
Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.”
“Well, what would you say about papa?” asked Kitty. “Is he a poor
creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?”
“He?—no! But then one must have the simplicity, the
straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven’t got
that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It’s all your doing. Before
there was you—and _this_ too,” he added with a glance towards her waist
that she understood—“I put all my energies into work; now I can’t, and
I’m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I’m
pretending....”
“Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey
Ivanovitch?” said Kitty. “Would you like to do this work for the
general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing
else?”
“Of course not,” said Levin. “But I’m so happy that I don’t understand
anything. So you think he’ll make her an offer today?” he added after a
brief silence.
“I think so, and I don’t think so. Only, I’m awfully anxious for it.
Here, wait a minute.” She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at
the edge of the path. “Come, count: he does propose, he doesn’t,” she
said, giving him the flower.
“He does, he doesn’t,” said Levin, tearing off the white petals.
“No, no!” Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been
watching his fingers with interest. “You picked off two.”
“Oh, but see, this little one shan’t count to make up,” said Levin,
tearing off a little half-grown petal. “Here’s the wagonette overtaking
us.”
“Aren’t you tired, Kitty?” called the princess.
“Not in the least.”
“If you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking.”
But it was not worth while to get in, they were quite near the place,
and all walked on together.
Chapter 4
Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the
children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same
time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from
the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked
beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he
recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the
good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the
feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long,
long ago, and only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness
in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point
that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he
looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and
alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself,
and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much.
“If so,” he said to himself, “I ought to think it over and make up my
mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment.”
“I’m going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my
efforts will make no show,” he said, and he left the edge of the forest
where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees
standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where
between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark
bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch,
knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in
full flower with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round
him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like
a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the
children’s voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not
far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenka’s contralto voice,
calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch’s
face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his
own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long
while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch
tree. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and