Anna Karenina
“Oh, I like him so—not because he’s my future _beau-frère_,” answered
Madame Lvova. “And how well he’s behaving! It’s so difficult, too, to
look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he’s not
ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he’s moved.”
“You expected it, I suppose?”
“Almost. She always cared for him.”
“Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned
Kitty.”
“It will make no difference,” said Madame Lvova; “we’re all obedient
wives; it’s in our family.”
“Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Dolly?”
Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She
was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have
spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going
back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure
of Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered only her
own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her
women-friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of
their triumph, when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown,
with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and
stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came
back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose
proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as
innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? “It’s terribly
strange,” she said to herself. It was not merely the sisters, the
women-friends and female relations of the bride who were following
every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere
spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear
of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom,
and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the
callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.
“Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?”
“Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn’t he?”
“Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon
booms out, ‘And fearing her husband.’”
“Are the choristers from Tchudovo?”
“No, from the Synod.”
“I asked the footman. He says he’s going to take her home to his
country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That’s why she’s being
married to him.”
“No, they’re a well-matched pair.”
“I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away
crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress—an
ambassador’s wife they say she is—how her skirt bounces out from side
to side!”
“What a pretty dear the bride is—like a lamb decked with flowers! Well,
say what you will, we women feel for our sister.”
Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded
in slipping in at the church doors.
Chapter 6
When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before
the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff,
the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and
tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round
pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often
heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the
rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable
of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it. They did not
hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he
had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.
After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon
matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their
answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began.
Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their
meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant
happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and
deprived her of all power of attention.
They prayed: “Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and
vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and
daughters.” They alluded to God’s creation of a wife from Adam’s rib
“and for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave
unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,” and that “this is a
great mystery”; they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless
them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they
might look upon their children’s children. “That’s all splendid,”
thought Kitty, catching the words, “all that’s just as it should be,”
and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who
looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.
“Put it on quite,” voices were heard urging when the priest had put on
the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its
three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.
“Put it on!” she whispered, smiling.
Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her
face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her felt
glad and happy.
They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head
deacon’s voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the
outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm
red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest,
flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them
round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting “Glory
to God.”
Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over
the bride’s train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were
at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as
the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to
have infected everyone in the church. It seemed to Levin that the
priest and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.
Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and
congratulated the young people. Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never
before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance
of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say something to her, but he
did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his
difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, “Kiss your
wife, and you kiss your husband,” and took the candles out of their
hands.
Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and
with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did
not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when
their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he
felt that they were one.
After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.
Chapter 7
Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together in
Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived
at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time. A handsome
head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an
evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of
trinkets hanging above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the
full curve of his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his
eyelids while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped
him. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the
entry towards the staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing
the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands
out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a
courier had been, and that the business about the palazzo had been
arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.
“Ah! I’m glad to hear it,” said Vronsky. “Is madame at home or not?”
“Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now,” answered the
waiter.
Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief
over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and
was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And glancing
casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at
him, he would have gone on.
“This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you,” said the
head waiter.
With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from
acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from
the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman,
who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light
came into the eyes of both.
“Golenishtchev!”
“Vronsky!”
It really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Vronsky’s in the Corps of
Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal party; he
left the corps without entering the army, and had never taken office
under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways
on leaving the corps, and had only met once since.
At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up a
sort of lofty, intellectually liberal line, and was consequently
disposed to look down upon Vronsky’s interests and calling in life.
Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so
well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: “You may like or
dislike my way of life, that’s a matter of the most perfect
indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect if you want
to know me.” Golenishtchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the
tone taken by Vronsky. This second meeting might have been expected,
one would have supposed, to estrange them still more. But now they
beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Vronsky
would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishtchev, but
probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the
disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank
delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of
delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishtchev’s face.
“How glad I am to meet you!” said Vronsky, showing his strong white
teeth in a friendly smile.
“I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn’t know which one. I’m very, very
glad!”
“Let’s go in. Come, tell me what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been living here for two years. I’m working.”
“Ah!” said Vronsky, with sympathy; “let’s go in.” And with the habit
common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to
keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.
“Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to
see her now,” he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishtchev’s
face.
“Ah! I did not know” (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered
carelessly. “Have you been here long?” he added.
“Four days,” Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend’s face
intently.
“Yes, he’s a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,”
Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev’s
face and the change of subject. “I can introduce him to Anna, he looks
at it properly.”
During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he
had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would
look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had
met with the “proper” way of looking at it. But if he had been asked,
and those who looked at it “properly” had been asked, exactly how they
did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to
answer.
In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the “proper” view had no
sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do