“Can it be true?” he said at last in a choked voice. “I can’t believe you
love me, dear!”
She smiled at that “dear,” and at the timidity with which he glanced at
her.
“Yes!” she said significantly, deliberately. “I am so happy!”
Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The princess,
seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry and then
immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step Levin had not
expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his
cheeks with her tears.
“So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad…. Kitty!”
“You’ve not been long settling things,” said the old prince, trying to seem
unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned to him.
“I’ve long, always wished for this!” said the prince, taking Levin by the
arm and drawing him towards himself. “Even when this little feather-head
fancied….”
“Papa!” shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.
“Well, I won’t!” he said. “I’m very, very … plea… Oh, what a fool I
am….”
He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made
the sign of the cross over her.
And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man, till then so
little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Kitty kissed his
muscular hand.
Chapter 16
The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince sat down
beside her. Kitty stood by her father’s chair, still holding his hand. All were
silent.
The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to translate
all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And all equally felt this
strange and painful for the first minute.
“When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement. And
when’s the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexander?”
“Here he is,” said the old prince, pointing to Levin—“he’s the principal
person in the matter.”
“When?” said Levin blushing. “Tomorrow. If you ask me, I should say,
the benediction today and the wedding tomorrow.”
“Come, mon cher, that’s nonsense!”
“Well, in a week.”
“He’s quite mad.”
“No, why so?”
“Well, upon my word!” said the mother, smiling, delighted at this haste.
“How about the trousseau?”
“Will there really be a trousseau and all that?” Levin thought with horror.
“But can the trousseau and the benediction and all that—can it spoil my
happiness? Nothing can spoil it!” He glanced at Kitty, and noticed that she
was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the
trousseau. “Then it must be all right,” he thought.
“Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like,” he said
apologetically.
“We’ll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take
place now. That’s very well.”
The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone
away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young lover, kissed
her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously muddled for a
moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who were in love
again or their daughter. When the prince and the princess had gone, Levin
went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and
could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not at
all what he had to say.
“How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I
was always sure,” he said. “I believe that it was ordained.”
“And I!” she said. “Even when….” She stopped and went on again,
looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, “Even when I thrust from
me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but I was carried away. I ought
to tell you…. Can you forgive that?”
“Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I
ought to tell you….”
This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved
from the first to tell her two things—that he was not chaste as she was, and
that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered he ought to
tell her both these facts.
“No, not now, later!” he said.
“Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I’m not afraid of
anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled.”
He added: “Settled that you’ll take me whatever I may be—you won’t
give me up? Yes?”
“Yes, yes.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an
affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil. Before she
had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations. Then relations
arrived, and there began that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin
did not emerge till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state
of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness went on
all the while increasing. He felt continually that a great deal was being
expected of him—what, he did not know; and he did everything he was
told, and it all gave him happiness. He had thought his engagement would
have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged
couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly
as other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and
becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had
ever happened.
“Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat,” said Mademoiselle Linon—and
Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.
“Well, I’m very glad,” said Sviazhsky. “I advise you to get the bouquets
from Fomin’s.”
“Oh, are they wanted?” And he drove to Fomin’s.
His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many
expenses, presents to give….
“Oh, are presents wanted?” And he galloped to Foulde’s.
And at the confectioner’s, and at Fomin’s, and at Foulde’s he saw that he
was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and prided themselves on
his happiness, just as everyone whom he had to do with during those days.
What was extraordinary was that everyone not only liked him, but even
people previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over
him, gave way to him in everything, treated his feeling with tenderness and
delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was the happiest man in the
world because his betrothed was beyond perfection. Kitty too felt the same
thing. When Countess Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for
something better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that
nothing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had
to admit it, and in Kitty’s presence never met Levin without a smile of
ecstatic admiration.
The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this time.
He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction gave Kitty his diary, in
which there was written the confession that tortured him. He had written
this diary at the time with a view to his future wife. Two things caused him
anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief
passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths of
religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. Through
love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she saw what she wanted, and
that such a state of soul should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of
no account. The other confession set her weeping bitterly.
Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He knew that
between him and her there could not be, and should not be, secrets, and so
he had decided that so it must be. But he had not realized what an effect it
would have on her, he had not put himself in her place. It was only when
the same evening he came to their house before the theater, went into her
room and saw her tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with suffering
he had caused and nothing could undo, he felt the abyss that separated his
shameful past from her dovelike purity, and was appalled at what he had
done.
“Take them, take these dreadful books!” she said, pushing away the
notebooks lying before her on the table. “Why did you give them me? No, it
