cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother,
especially as her mother considered herself to blame.
“May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor said to
her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began
asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up,
furious.
“Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third
time you’ve asked me the same thing.”
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
“Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the
room. “However, I had finished….”
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an
exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and
concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly
harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into
deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his
decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in
foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after
the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went
back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had
often, almost always, to be pretending now.
“Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s go!”
she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began
talking of the preparations for the journey.
Chapter 2
Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a
consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement
(she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she
had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a
sick child, to come and hear Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that day.
“Well, well?” she said, coming into the drawing-room, without taking off
her hat. “You’re all in good spirits. Good news, then?”
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though
the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly
impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it
was settled they should go abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going
away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan
Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union
Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family
harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been
nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money,
too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by
suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of
jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once
lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of
infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a
discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let
herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself, for the weakness.
Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first,
the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had gone
away, now one of the children had fallen ill.
“Well, how are all of you?” asked her mother.
“Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I’m
afraid it’s scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and then I
shall shut myself up entirely, if—God forbid—it should be scarlatina.”
The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor’s
departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words
to her, he turned to his wife:
“How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and what do you mean to
do with me?”
“I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,” said his wife.
“That’s as you like.”
“Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?” said Kitty. “It would be
nicer for him and for us too.”
The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She lifted her head and
looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he
understood her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say much
about her. Being the youngest, she was her father’s favorite, and she fancied
that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly
eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her,
and understood all that was not good that was passing within her.
Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only
patted her hair and said:
“These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real daughter. One
simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,” he turned to his
elder daughter, “what’s your young buck about, hey?”
“Nothing, father,” answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was
meant. “He’s always out; I scarcely ever see him,” she could not resist
adding with a sarcastic smile.
“Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet—to see about selling that
forest?”
“No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.”
“Oh, that’s it!” said the prince. “And so am I to be getting ready for a
journey too? At your service,” he said to his wife, sitting down. “And I tell
you what, Katia,” he went on to his younger daughter, “you must wake up
one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I’m quite well, and merry, and going
out again with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?”
What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty
became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. “Yes, he sees it all,
he understands it all, and in these words he’s telling me that though I’m
ashamed, I must get over my shame.” She could not pluck up spirit to make
any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed
out of the room.
“See what comes of your jokes!” the princess pounced down on her
husband. “You’re always….” she began a string of reproaches.
The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a long while without
speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.
“She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you
don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause of it.
Ah! to be so mistaken in people!” said the princess, and by the change in
her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of Vronsky. “I
don’t know why there aren’t laws against such base, dishonorable people.”
“Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!” said the prince gloomily, getting up from
his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the
doorway. “There are laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it,
I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody else.
Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there still
are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am,
I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you
physic her and call in these quacks.”
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess
heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did
on serious occasions.
“Alexander, Alexander,” she whispered, moving to him and beginning to
weep.
As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to
her.
“There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched too, I know. It
can’t be helped. There’s no great harm done. God is merciful … thanks….”
he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss
of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room.
Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with
her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman’s
work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and,
morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her
mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as
filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s outburst she was silent;
she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so
quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for
what was the chief thing needful—to go to Kitty and console her.
“I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did
you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the
last time? He told Stiva so.”
