looking straight before him. But his whole face suddenly bore the solemn
rigidity of the dead, and his expression did not change during the whole
time of the drive home. On reaching the house he turned his head to her,
still with the same expression.
“Very well! But I expect a strict observance of the external forms of
propriety till such time”—his voice shook—“as I may take measures to
secure my honor and communicate them to you.”
He got out first and helped her to get out. Before the servants he pressed
her hand, took his seat in the carriage, and drove back to Petersburg.
Immediately afterwards a footman came from Princess Betsy and brought
Anna a note.
“I sent to Alexey to find out how he is, and he writes me he is quite well
and unhurt, but in despair.”
“So he will be here,” she thought. “What a good thing I told him all!”
She glanced at her watch. She had still three hours to wait, and the
memories of their last meeting set her blood in flame.
“My God, how light it is! It’s dreadful, but I do love to see his face, and I
do love this fantastic light…. My husband! Oh! yes…. Well, thank God!
everything’s over with him.”
Chapter 30
In the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys had
betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are gathered
together, the usual process, as it were, of the crystallization of society went
on, assigning to each member of that society a definite and unalterable
place. Just as the particle of water in frost, definitely and unalterably, takes
the special form of the crystal of snow, so each new person that arrived at
the springs was at once placed in his special place.
Fürst Shtcherbatsky, sammt Gemahlin und Tochter, by the apartments
they took, and from their name and from the friends they made, were
immediately crystallized into a definite place marked out for them.
There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German Fürstin, in
consequence of which the crystallizing process went on more vigorously
than ever. Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished, above everything, to present
her daughter to this German princess, and the day after their arrival she duly
performed this rite. Kitty made a low and graceful curtsey in the very
simple, that is to say, very elegant frock that had been ordered her from
Paris. The German princess said, “I hope the roses will soon come back to
this pretty little face,” and for the Shtcherbatskys certain definite lines of
existence were at once laid down from which there was no departing. The
Shtcherbatskys made the acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady
Somebody, and of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war,
and of a learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably
the Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a Moscow lady,
Marya Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter, whom Kitty disliked,
because she had fallen ill, like herself, over a love affair, and a Moscow
colonel, whom Kitty had known from childhood, and always seen in
uniform and epaulets, and who now, with his little eyes and his open neck
and flowered cravat, was uncommonly ridiculous and tedious, because there
was no getting rid of him. When all this was so firmly established, Kitty
began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went away to
Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She took no interest in the
people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh would come of them. Her chief
mental interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and making
theories about the people she did not know. It was characteristic of Kitty
that she always imagined everything in people in the most favorable light
possible, especially so in those she did not know. And now as she made
surmises as to who people were, what were their relations to one another,
and what they were like, Kitty endowed them with the most marvelous and
noble characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her observations.
Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl who
had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady, Madame
Stahl, as everyone called her. Madame Stahl belonged to the highest
society, but she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on
exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in an invalid
carriage. But it was not so much from ill-health as from pride—so Princess
Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it—that Madame Stahl had not made the
acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian girl looked
after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as Kitty observed, on
friendly terms with all the invalids who were seriously ill, and there were
many of them at the springs, and looked after them in the most natural way.
This Russian girl was not, as Kitty gathered, related to Madame Stahl, nor
was she a paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other
people called her “Mademoiselle Varenka.” Apart from the interest Kitty
took in this girl’s relations with Madame Stahl and with other unknown
persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to
Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware when their eyes met that she too
liked her.
Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her first
youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she might have
been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her features were criticized
separately, she was handsome rather than plain, in spite of the sickly hue of
her face. She would have been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her
extreme thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her
medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men. She was like
a fine flower, already past its bloom and without fragrance, though the
petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she would have been unattractive to
men also from the lack of just what Kitty had too much of—of the
suppressed fire of vitality, and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.
She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no
doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It
was just this contrast with her own position that was for Kitty the great
attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of
life, she would find an example of what she was now so painfully seeking:
interest in life, a dignity in life—apart from the worldly relations of girls
with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now as a shameful
hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser. The more attentively Kitty
watched her unknown friend, the more convinced she was this girl was the
perfect creature she fancied her, and the more eagerly she wished to make
her acquaintance.
The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met,
Kitty’s eyes said: “Who are you? What are you? Are you really the
exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t
suppose,” her eyes added, “that I would force my acquaintance on you, I
