Anna Karenina
noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic priest with her,
Madame Stahl had studiously kept her face in the shadow of the
lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way. Trivial as these two
observations were, they perplexed her, and she had her doubts as to
Madame Stahl. But on the other hand Varenka, alone in the world,
without friends or relations, with a melancholy disappointment in the
past, desiring nothing, regretting nothing, was just that perfection of
which Kitty dared hardly dream. In Varenka she realized that one has
but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and
noble. And that was what Kitty longed to be. Seeing now clearly what
was _the most important_, Kitty was not satisfied with being
enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole soul
to the new life that was opening to her. From Varenka’s accounts of the
doings of Madame Stahl and other people whom she mentioned, Kitty had
already constructed the plan of her own future life. She would, like
Madame Stahl’s niece, Aline, of whom Varenka had talked to her a great
deal, seek out those who were in trouble, wherever she might be living,
help them as far as she could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to
the sick, to criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to
criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all these
were secret dreams, of which Kitty did not talk either to her mother or
to Varenka.
While awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a large scale,
however, Kitty, even then at the springs, where there were so many
people ill and unhappy, readily found a chance for practicing her new
principles in imitation of Varenka.
At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much under the
influence of her _engouement_, as she called it, for Madame Stahl, and
still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did not merely imitate
Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of
walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the princess
noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual
change was taking place in her daughter.
The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a French testament
that Madame Stahl had given her—a thing she had never done before; that
she avoided society acquaintances and associated with the sick people
who were under Varenka’s protection, and especially one poor family,
that of a sick painter, Petrov. Kitty was unmistakably proud of playing
the part of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well enough,
and the princess had nothing to say against it, especially as Petrov’s
wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess,
noticing Kitty’s devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of
consolation. All this would have been very well, if there had been no
exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into
extremes, and so indeed she told her.
“_Il ne faut jamais rien outrer_,” she said to her.
Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought that one
could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was concerned.
What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein
one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give
one’s cloak if one’s coat were taken? But the princess disliked this
exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt her
daughter did not care to show her all her heart. Kitty did in fact
conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them
not because she did not respect or did not love her mother, but simply
because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone
sooner than to her mother.
“How is it Anna Pavlovna’s not been to see us for so long?” the
princess said one day of Madame Petrova. “I’ve asked her, but she seems
put out about something.”
“No, I’ve not noticed it, maman,” said Kitty, flushing hotly.
“Is it long since you went to see them?”
“We’re meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,”
answered Kitty.
“Well, you can go,” answered the princess, gazing at her daughter’s
embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment.
That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna had
changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow. And the
princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.
“Kitty, haven’t you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?” said
the princess, when they were left alone. “Why has she given up sending
the children and coming to see us?”
Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she
could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Kitty
answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had
changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which she
could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself.
It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never
speak of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be
mistaken.
Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations with the
family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on the round,
good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings; she remembered
their secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw him
away from the work which was forbidden him, and to get him
out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her
“my Kitty,” and would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was!
Then she recalled the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his
long neck, in his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning
blue eyes that were so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful
attempts to seem hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the
efforts she had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for
him, as for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to
think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened look
with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of compassion and
awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own goodness, which she had
felt at it. How nice it all was! But all that was at first. Now, a few
days ago, everything was suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty
with affected cordiality, and had kept continual watch on her and on
her husband.
Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the cause
of Anna Pavlovna’s coolness?
“Yes,” she mused, “there was something unnatural about Anna Pavlovna,
and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily the day
before yesterday: ‘There, he will keep waiting for you; he wouldn’t
drink his coffee without you, though he’s grown so dreadfully weak.’”
“Yes, perhaps, too, she didn’t like it when I gave him the rug. It was
all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so long thanking
me, that I felt awkward too. And then that portrait of me he did so
well. And most of all that look of confusion and tenderness! Yes, yes,
that’s it!” Kitty repeated to herself with horror. “No, it can’t be, it
oughtn’t to be! He’s so much to be pitied!” she said to herself
directly after.
This doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.
Chapter 34
Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince
Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to
Russian friends—to get a breath of Russian air, as he said—came back to
his wife and daughter.
The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were
completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful, and in
spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad
to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the
simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she
was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the
contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European
life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself
abroad less European than he was in reality.
The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his
cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good humor was even
greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty’s
friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess
gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the
prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that
drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might
have got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to
him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of
kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and more so than
ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.
The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his
Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set
off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest good humor.
It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little
gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-drinking German
waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer
they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their
appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions
of prosperous German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast.
The bright sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the
music were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces,
with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for which
she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety of the June
morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay waltz then in
fashion, and above all, the appearance of the healthy attendants,
seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in conjunction with these
slowly moving, dying figures gathered together from all parts of
Europe. In spite of his feeling of pride and, as it were, of the return
of youth, with his favorite daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and
almost ashamed of his vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He
felt almost like a man not dressed in a crowd.
“Present me to your new friends,” he said to his daughter, squeezing
her hand with his elbow. “I like even your horrid Soden for making you
so well again. Only it’s melancholy, very melancholy here. Who’s that?”
Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some of whom
she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the garden they met
the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was
delighted to see the old Frenchwoman’s face light up when she heard
Kitty’s voice. She at once began talking to him with French exaggerated
politeness, applauding him for having such a delightful daughter,
extolling Kitty to the skies before her face, and calling her a
treasure, a pearl, and a consoling angel.
“Well, she’s the second angel, then,” said the prince, smiling. “she
calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number one.”
“Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she’s a real angel, allez,” Madame Berthe
assented.
In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly towards
them carrying an elegant red bag.
“Here is papa come,” Kitty said to her.
Varenka made—simply and naturally as she did everything—a movement
between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the
prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to everyone.
“Of course I know you; I know you very well,” the prince said to her
with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her father liked
her friend. “Where are you off to in such haste?”