Anna Karenina
Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth was to Levin after what
had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to
Vronsky’s bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her
father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone
could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.
“Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Countess Nordston;
“we want to try an experiment.”
“What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and
gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,” said
the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his
suggestion. “There’s some sense in that, anyway.”
Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and,
with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of
the great ball that was to come off next week.
“I hope you will be there?” he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince
turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression
he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of
Kitty answering Vronsky’s inquiry about the ball.
Chapter 15
At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation
with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was
glad at the thought that she had received an _offer_. She had no doubt
that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long
while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It
was Levin’s face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking
out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father,
and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that
tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for
whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute
face, his noble self-possession, and the good nature conspicuous in
everything towards everyone. She remembered the love for her of the man
she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on
the pillow, smiling with happiness. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; but what
could I do? It’s not my fault,” she said to herself; but an inner voice
told her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin’s
love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was
poisoned by doubts. “Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us;
Lord, have pity on us!” she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep.
Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little library, one
of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their
favorite daughter.
“What? I’ll tell you what!” shouted the prince, waving his arms, and at
once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again. “That
you’ve no pride, no dignity; that you’re disgracing, ruining your
daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!”
“But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I done?” said the
princess, almost crying.
She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had
gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no
intention of telling him of Levin’s offer and Kitty’s refusal, still
she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically
settled with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon as his
mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at
once flown into a passion, and began to use unseemly language.
“What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all, you’re trying to
catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and
with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don’t
pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a
piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays,
hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you’ve
gone on till you’ve turned the poor wench’s head. Levin’s a thousand
times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they’re
turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish.
But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after
anyone.”
“But what have I done?”
“Why, you’ve....” The prince was crying wrathfully.
“I know if one were to listen to you,” interrupted the princess, “we
should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be so, we’d better go into
the country.”
“Well, and we had better.”
“But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don’t try to catch
them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love
with her, and she, I fancy....”
“Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he’s no more
thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to see it!
Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!” And the prince, imagining
that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word.
“And this is how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she’s
really got the notion into her head....”
“But what makes you suppose so?”
“I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though
women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s
Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who’s only amusing
himself.”
“Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!...”
“Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly.”
“Well, well, we won’t talk of it,” the princess stopped him,
recollecting her unlucky Dolly.
“By all means, and good-night!”
And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with
a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.
The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had
settled Kitty’s future, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s
intentions, but her husband’s words had disturbed her. And returning to
her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like
Kitty, repeated several times in her heart, “Lord, have pity; Lord,
have pity; Lord, have pity.”
Chapter 16
Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her
youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life,
and still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole
fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been
educated in the Corps of Pages.
Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once
got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go
more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always
hitherto been outside it.
In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and
coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and
innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered
his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At
balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at
their house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all
sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a
special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he
could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming
more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better
he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know
that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite
character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of
marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common
among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was
the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his
discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he
could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have
heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would
have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could
not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and
above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed
that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not
only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was,
in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all,
ridiculous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were
saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ that the secret
spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much
stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could
and ought to be taken he could not imagine.
“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious
feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he
had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of
tenderness at her love for him—“what is so exquisite is that not a word
has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in
this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly
than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most
of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet,
loving eyes! When she said: ‘Indeed I do....’
“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.” And
he began wondering where to finish the evening.
He passed in review of the places he might go to. “Club? a game of
bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. _Château des
Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick
of it. That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better.
I’ll go home.” He went straight to his room at Dussots’ Hotel, ordered
supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow,
fell into a sound sleep.
Chapter 17
Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station
of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he
came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was
expecting his sister by the same train.
“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you meeting?”
“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the
steps. “She is to be here from Petersburg today.”
“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did you
go after the Shtcherbatskys’?”
“Home,” answered Vronsky. “I must own I felt so well content yesterday
after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere.”
“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.
Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it,
but he promptly changed the subject.
“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.
“I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.
“You don’t say so!”
“_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ My sister Anna.”
“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.
“You know her, no doubt?”
“I think I do. Or perhaps not ... I really am not sure,” Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and
tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
“But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely
must know. All the world knows him.”
“I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he’s clever,
learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that’s not ... _not in my