Anna Karenina
may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of
hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness
that they saw in their mother’s face. On his invitation, the two elder
ones at once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would
have done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too,
began begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat
her on his shoulder and ran along with her.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!” he said,
smiling good-humoredly to the mother; “there’s no chance of my hurting
or dropping her.”
And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly
wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and
approvingly as she watched him.
Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna, with
whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent with him,
of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. As
he ran with the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss
Hoole laughing with his queer English accent, and talked to Darya
Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the country.
After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the
balcony, began to speak of Kitty.
“You know, Kitty’s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with
me.”
“Really,” he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation,
he said: “Then I’ll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist on a bill
you shall pay me five roubles a month; but it’s really too bad of you.”
“No, thank you. We can manage very well now.”
“Oh, well, then, I’ll have a look at your cows, and if you’ll allow me,
I’ll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their
food.”
And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna
the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is
simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.
He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and,
at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up
of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.
“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to
look after it?” Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest.
She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged,
thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any
change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin’s knowledge of
farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the
production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that
such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all
seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya
Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more
food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to
the laundry maid’s cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to
feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was
most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.
Chapter 10
“Kitty writes to me that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet
and solitude,” Dolly said after the silence that had followed.
“And how is she—better?” Levin asked in agitation.
“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were
affected.”
“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something
touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently
into her face.
“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Darya Alexandrovna,
smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry
with Kitty?”
“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.
“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them
when you were in Moscow?”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I
wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is
you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know....”
“What do I know?”
“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all
the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was
replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.
“What makes you suppose I know?”
“Because everybody knows it....”
“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had
guessed it was so.”
“Well, now you know it.”
“All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully
miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she
would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else.
But what did pass between you? Tell me.”
“I have told you.”
“When was it?”
“When I was at their house the last time.”
“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully
sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but....”
She interrupted him.
“But she, poor girl ... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see
it all.”
“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up.
“Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”
“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve. “Wait a
minute, sit down.”
“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and
at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he
had believed to be buried.
“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I
did not know you, as I do know you....”
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and
took possession of Levin’s heart.
“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You can’t
understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s
always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense,
with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from
afar, who takes everything on trust,—a girl may have, and often has,
such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”
“Yes, if the heart does not speak....”
“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about
a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you
wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are
sure you love her, you make an offer....”
“Well, that’s not quite it.”
“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance
has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl
is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot
choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the dead
thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on
his heart and set it aching.
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new dress or
some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much
the better.... And there can be no repeating it.”
“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him
for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling
which only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an offer she
was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt.
Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you
she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older ... I,
for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked
him, and so it has turned out.”
Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said: “_No, that cannot be_....”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in
me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or
wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina
Alexandrovna out of the question for me,—you understand, utterly out of
the question.”
“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my
sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared
for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves
nothing.”
“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are
hurting me. It’s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were
to say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might
have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he’s dead,
dead, dead!...”
“How absurd you are!” said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with mournful
tenderness at Levin’s excitement. “Yes, I see it all more and more
clearly,” she went on musingly. “So you won’t come to see us, then,
when Kitty’s here?”
“No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance
of my presence.”
“You are very, very absurd,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
tenderness into his face. “Very well then, let it be as though we had
not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?” she said in French
to the little girl who had come in.
“Where’s my spade, mamma?”
“I speak French, and you must too.”
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the
French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French
where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on
Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and children struck him now as
by no means so charming as a little while before. “And what does she
talk French with the children for?” he thought; “how unnatural and
false it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and
unlearning sincerity,” he thought to himself, unaware that Darya
Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty times already, and yet,
even at the cost of some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to
teach her children French in that way.
“But why are you going? Do stay a little.”
Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt ill
at ease.
After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in,
and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly disturbed,
with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Levin had been
outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the
happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children.
Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna,
hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya
was pulling Grisha’s hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was
beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something
snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if
darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children
of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but
positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal
propensities—wicked children.
She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak
to Levin of her misery.
Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it
showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it,
he was thinking in his heart: “No, I won’t be artificial and talk
French with my children; but my children won’t be like that. All one
has to do is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and
they’ll be delightful. No, my children won’t be like that.”
He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.
Chapter 11
In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin’s sister’s
estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on
how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income
on his sister’s estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years