Anna Karenina
him, but had gone so far—in answer to his question, what she loved him
for—as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she
understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and
because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly
clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side
on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty’s wanting to
give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed
to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but
Dunyasha must have the blue one.
“How is it you don’t see? She’s a brunette, and it won’t suit her....
I’ve worked it all out.”
Hearing why he had come, the princess was half humorously, half
seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to hinder
Kitty’s hair-dressing, as Charles the hair-dresser was just coming.
“As it is, she’s been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks,
and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense,” she said to
him. “Get along with you, my dear!”
Levin, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his hotel. His
brother, Darya Alexandrovna, and Stepan Arkadyevitch, all in full
dress, were waiting for him to bless him with the holy picture. There
was no time to lose. Darya Alexandrovna had to drive home again to
fetch her curled and pomaded son, who was to carry the holy pictures
after the bride. Then a carriage had to be sent for the best man, and
another that would take Sergey Ivanovitch away would have to be sent
back.... Altogether there were a great many most complicated matters to
be considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that there must
be no delay, as it was already half-past six.
Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the holy
picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn pose beside
his wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin to bow down to the
ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him
three times; Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and immediately was in a
hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the
destinations of the various carriages.
“Come, I’ll tell you how we’ll manage: you drive in our carriage to
fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he’ll be so good, will drive there
and then send his carriage.”
“Of course; I shall be delighted.”
“We’ll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Yes,” answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for
him to dress.
Chapter 3
A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church
lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into
the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling,
and peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the
street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood
at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were
continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their
trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking
into the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted,
and all the candles before the holy pictures. The gilt on the red
ground of the holy picture-stand, and the gilt relief on the pictures,
and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the
floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps
of the altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and
surplices—all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm
church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms and
broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders and arms
and long gloves, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed
strangely in the high cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of
the opened door the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody
looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the
door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a
belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the
right, or a spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer,
and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests
and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of
anticipation.
At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late.
Then they began to look more and more often towards the door, and to
talk of whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began
to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look
as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in
conversation.
The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time,
coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in their frames. In
the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and
blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the
beadle and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not
come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an
embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At
last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, “It really is
strange, though!” and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly
expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom’s
best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long
ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath
of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing-room of the
Shtcherbatskys’ house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her
bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over
half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from the best man that her
bridegroom was at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat,
was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting
his head out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in
the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he
came back in despair, and frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was smoking serenely.
“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.
“Yes, it is stupid,” Stepan Arkadyevitch assented, smiling soothingly.
“But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”
“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “And these
fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!” he said, looking at the
crumpled front of his shirt. “And what if the things have been taken on
to the railway station!” he roared in desperation.
“Then you must put on mine.”
“I ought to have done so long ago, if at all.”
“It’s not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will _come
round_.”
The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his
old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that
was wanted.
“But the shirt!” cried Levin.
“You’ve got a shirt on,” Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.
Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving
instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the
Shtcherbatskys’ house, from which the young people were to set out the
same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit.
The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question
with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the
Shtcherbatskys’. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back;
everything was shut up—it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s and brought a shirt—it was impossibly wide and short.
They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys’ to unpack the things. The
bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down
his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor,
and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to
Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.
“Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,” said
Kouzma.
Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking
at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
“You won’t help matters like this,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. “It will come round,
it will come round ... I tell you.”
Chapter 4
“They’ve come!” “Here he is!” “Which one?” “Rather young, eh?” “Why, my
dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!” were the comments in the
crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her
into the church.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the
guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing
and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not
nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think
so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and
white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a
maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in
front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she
looked better than ever—not because these flowers, this veil, this gown
from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the
elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet
face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic
expression of guileless truthfulness.
“I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled
to him.
“It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he
said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who
came up to him.
“This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.
“Yes, yes!” answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking
about.
“Now, Kostya, you have to decide,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air
of mock dismay, “a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the
humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the
candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been
lighted? It’s a matter of ten roubles,” he added, relaxing his lips
into a smile. “I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.”
Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.
“Well, how’s it to be then?—unlighted or lighted candles? that’s the
question.”
“Yes, yes, unlighted.”
“Oh, I’m very glad. The question’s decided!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling. “How silly men are, though, in this position,” he said to
Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to
his bride.
“Kitty, mind you’re the first to step on the carpet,” said Countess
Nordston, coming up. “You’re a nice person!” she said to Levin.
“Aren’t you frightened, eh?” said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.
“Are you cold? You’re pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,” said Kitty’s
sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly
set straight the flowers on her head.
Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and
then laughed unnaturally.
Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.
Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the
priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart