Anna Karenina
the light went out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant
cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away
forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a
birch tree. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked
gently on, deliberating on his position.
“Why not?” he thought. “If it were only a passing fancy or a passion,
if it were only this attraction—this mutual attraction (I can call it a
_mutual_ attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with
the whole bent of my life—if I felt that in giving way to this
attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but it’s
not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie,
I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That’s the
only thing I can say against my feeling.... That’s a great thing,”
Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this
consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but
would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of
others. “But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never
find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by
considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything
better.”
However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not
think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the
qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and
freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she
loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing.
Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an
unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she
knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society,
which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch’s conception of
the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and
not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for
example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in
trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in
his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring
with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husband’s
house, as he saw now in Kitty’s case. She would owe everything to her
husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family
life. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was
a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There
was one consideration against it—his age. But he came of a long-lived
family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for
forty, and he remembered Varenka’s saying that it was only in Russia
that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of
fifty considers himself _dans la force de l’âge_, while a man of forty
is _un jeune homme_. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter
when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it
not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to
the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting
sunbeams the gracious figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her
basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when
this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with
the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the
slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked
with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart
throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he
had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a
mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away
the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.
Chapter 5
“Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the
ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have
lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I
sought—in you. I love you, and offer you my hand.”
Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces
from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard
them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.
“Come here, little ones! There are so many!” she was saying in her
sweet, deep voice.
Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not
change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence
and was glad of it.
“Well, did you find some?” she asked from under the white kerchief,
turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.
“Not one,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Did you?”
She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.
“That one too, near the twig,” she pointed out to little Masha a little
fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under
which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus,
breaking it into two white halves. “This brings back my childhood,” she
added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to
speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had
walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did
not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent.
After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they
wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own
will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:
“So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always
fewer, though.” Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was
annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her
back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after
a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an
observation in response to her last words.
“I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at
the edge of the wood, though I can’t tell them apart.”
Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the
children, and were quite alone. Varenka’s heart throbbed so that she
heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red
again.
To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame
Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was
almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would
have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking
and his not speaking.
Now or never it must be said—that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too.
Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes
of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and
felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a
slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in
support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in
which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some
utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:
“What is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom and the ‘white’
mushroom?”
Varenka’s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:
“In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it’s in the stalk.”
And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it
was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their
emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense,
began to subside.
“The birch mushroom’s stalk suggests a dark man’s chin after two days
without shaving,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.
“Yes, that’s true,” answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously the
direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the
children. Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had
a sense of relief.
When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey
Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He
could not be false to the memory of Marie.
“Gently, children, gently!” Levin shouted quite angrily to the
children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of
children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.
Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the
wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and
somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.
“Well?” her husband questioned her as they were going home again.
“It doesn’t bite,” said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking
recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.
“How doesn’t bite?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, taking her husband’s hand, lifting it to her
mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. “Like a kiss on a
priest’s hand.”
“Which didn’t it bite with?” he said, laughing.
“Both. But it should have been like this....”
“There are some peasants coming....”
“Oh, they didn’t see.”
Chapter 6
During the time of the children’s tea the grown-up people sat in the
balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all,
especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware that
there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great
importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a
schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or
shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that
something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin
and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that
evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a
disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and
could not—and they felt a prick of conscience.
“Mark my words, Alexander will not come,” said the old princess.
That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come down by
train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.
“And I know why,” the princess went on; “he says that young people
ought to be left alone for a while at first.”
“But papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,” said Kitty.
“Besides, we’re not young people!—we’re old, married people by now.”
“Only if he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,” said
the princess, sighing mournfully.
“What nonsense, mamma!” both the daughters fell upon her at once.
“How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now....”
And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess’s voice.
Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. “Maman always
finds something to be miserable about,” they said in that glance. They
did not know that happy as the princess was in her daughter’s house,
and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely
miserable, both on her own account and her husband’s, ever since they
had married their last and favorite daughter, and the old home had been
left empty.
“What is it, Agafea Mihalovna?” Kitty asked suddenly of Agafea
Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of
meaning.
“About supper.”
“Well, that’s right,” said Dolly; “you go and arrange about it, and
I’ll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing
done all day.”
“That’s my lesson! No, Dolly, I’m going,” said Levin, jumping up.
Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of
the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who had been
studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on