Anna Karenina
occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with
smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly
breathe. “How dare he look at my wife like that!” was the feeling that
boiled within him.
“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Vassenka, sitting down on
a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.
Levin’s jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived
husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to
provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in
spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about
his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next
day.
Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up
herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin
could not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess,
Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew
back her hand and said with a naïve bluntness, for which the old
princess scolded her afterwards:
“We don’t like that fashion.”
In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to
arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did
not like them.
“Why, how can one want to go to bed!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who,
after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most
charming and sentimental humor. “Look, Kitty,” he said, pointing to the
moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees—“how exquisite!
Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid
voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some
lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara Andreevna and he must sing
some duets.”
When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while
about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing
one of the new songs.
Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife’s
bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what
was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the
question: “Was there perhaps something you disliked about
Veslovsky?”—it all burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated
himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.
He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his
scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as
though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression
of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the
same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were
twitching, and his voice kept breaking.
“You must understand that I’m not jealous, that’s a nasty word. I can’t
be jealous, and believe that.... I can’t say what I feel, but this is
awful.... I’m not jealous, but I’m wounded, humiliated that anybody
dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.”
“Eyes like what?” said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to
recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied
in them.
At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something
precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other
end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would
have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so
increase his suffering.
“And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?...”
“Ah!” he cried, clutching at his head, “you shouldn’t say that!... If
you had been attractive then....”
“Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!” she said, looking
at him with an expression of pained commiseration. “Why, what can you
be thinking about! When for me there’s no one in the world, no one, no
one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?”
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was
angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be
forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely
such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from
the agony he was suffering.
“You must understand the horror and comedy of my position,” he went on
in a desperate whisper; “that he’s in my house, that he’s done nothing
improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits
on his legs. He thinks it’s the best possible form, and so I’m obliged
to be civil to him.”
“But, Kostya, you’re exaggerating,” said Kitty, at the bottom of her
heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his
jealousy.
“The most awful part of it all is that you’re just as you always are,
and especially now when to me you’re something sacred, and we’re so
happy, so particularly happy—and all of a sudden a little wretch....
He’s not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do
with him. But why should my, and your, happiness....”
“Do you know, I understand now what it’s all come from,” Kitty was
beginning.
“Well, what? what?”
“I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.”
“Well, well!” Levin said in dismay.
She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she
was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space, then he
scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his
head.
“Katya, I’ve been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It’s madness!
Katya, I’m a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such
idiocy?”
“Oh, I was sorry for you.”
“For me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It’s
awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness.”
“It’s humiliating too, of course.”
“Oh, then I’ll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him
with civility,” said Levin, kissing her hands. “You shall see.
Tomorrow.... Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow.”
Chapter 8
Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the
shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning
that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and
fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and,
disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which
the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was
Vassenka Veslovsky, in new high boots that reached half-way up his
thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather
cartridge-belt, and in his Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new
English gun without a sling. Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and
jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming
soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of
observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one
ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round
and round and turning over in the air. Stepan Arkadyevitch himself
followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.
“Good dog, good dog, Krak!” he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put
his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Stepan Arkadyevitch
was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short
coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but
his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and
cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best quality.
Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly _chic_
for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of
the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevitch,
radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian
nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he
would certainly adopt the same get-up.
“Well, and what about our host?” he asked.
“A young wife,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
“Yes, and such a charming one!”
“He came down dressed. No doubt he’s run up to her again.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife
to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and,
moreover, to beg her for Christ’s sake to be more careful. The great
thing was for her to keep away from the children—they might any minute
push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she
was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to
be sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to
write him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was
well with her.
Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of
days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big
and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of
sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot
her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him
cheerfully.
“Pardon, gentlemen!” he said, running out onto the steps. “Have you put
the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn’t
matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!”
“Put it with the herd of oxen,” he said to the herdsman, who was
waiting for him at the steps with some question. “Excuse me, here comes
another villain.”
Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his
seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in
his hand.
“You didn’t come to the counting house yesterday, and now you’re
detaining me. Well, what is it?”
“Would your honor let me make another turning? It’s only three steps to
add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more
convenient.”
“You should have listened to me,” Levin answered with annoyance. “I
said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there’s no setting
it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase.”
The point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had
spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the
space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was
put in place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to
add three steps.
“It will be much better.”
“But where’s your staircase coming out with its three steps?”
“Why, upon my word, sir,” the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile.
“It comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak,” he said,
with a persuasive gesture; “it comes down, and comes down, and comes
out.”
“But three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come
out?”
“Why, to be sure, it’ll start from the bottom and go up and go up, and
come out so,” the carpenter said obstinately and convincingly.
“It’ll reach the ceiling and the wall.”
“Upon my word! Why, it’ll go up, and up, and come out like this.”
Levin took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the
dust.
“There, do you see?”
“As your honor likes,” said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in his
eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. “It seems it’ll be
best to make a new one.”
“Well, then, do it as you’re told,” Levin shouted, seating himself in
the wagonette. “Down! Hold the dogs, Philip!”
Levin felt now at leaving behind all his family and household cares
such an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was not
disposed to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of concentrated
excitement that every sportsman experiences as he approaches the scene
of action. If he had anything on his mind at that moment, it was only
the doubt whether they would start anything in the Kolpensky marsh,