And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna
the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a
machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.
He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at
the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the
inward peace he had gained with such effort.
“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after
it?” Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest.
She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged,
thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any
change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin’s knowledge of farming.
General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of
milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that such principles
could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far
simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya Philimonovna had explained,
was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let the
cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundry maid’s cow. That was clear.
But general propositions as to feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful
and obscure. And, what was most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.
Chapter 10
“Kitty writes to me that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet
and solitude,” Dolly said after the silence that had followed.
“And how is she—better?” Levin asked in agitation.
“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were
affected.”
“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something
touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her
face.
“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Darya Alexandrovna,
smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry with
Kitty?”
“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.
“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them
when you were in Moscow?”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I
wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is you
feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know….”
“What do I know?”
“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all
the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced
by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.
“What makes you suppose I know?”
“Because everybody knows it….”
“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had
guessed it was so.”
“Well, now you know it.”
“All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully
miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would
not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did
pass between you? Tell me.”
“I have told you.”
“When was it?”
“When I was at their house the last time.”
“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully
sorry for her. You suffer only from pride….”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but….”
She interrupted him.
“But she, poor girl … I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it
all.”
“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up.
“Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”
“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve. “Wait a
minute, sit down.”
“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and at the
same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had believed to
be buried.
“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I did not
know you, as I do know you….”
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and
took possession of Levin’s heart.
“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You can’t
understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s
always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense, with all
a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who
takes everything on trust,—a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling
that she cannot tell what to say.”
“Yes, if the heart does not speak….”
“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a
girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait to see
if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you love her,
you make an offer….”
“Well, that’s not quite it.”
“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance
has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is
not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose,
she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the dead
thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on his
heart and set it aching.
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new dress or
some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much
the better…. And there can be no repeating it.”
“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him
for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which
only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an offer she was just
in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt. Doubt
between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you she had
not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older … I, for instance, in
her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it has
turned out.”
Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said: “No, that cannot be….”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in
me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong,
that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out
of the question for me,—you understand, utterly out of the question.”
“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my
sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared for you,
all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”
“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are
hurting me. It’s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to say to
you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might have lived,
and how happy you would have been in him. But he’s dead, dead, dead!…”
“How absurd you are!” said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with mournful
tenderness at Levin’s excitement. “Yes, I see it all more and more clearly,”
she went on musingly. “So you won’t come to see us, then, when Kitty’s
here?”
“No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance of my
presence.”
“You are very, very absurd,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
tenderness into his face. “Very well then, let it be as though we had not
spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?” she said in French to the
little girl who had come in.
“Where’s my spade, mamma?”
“I speak French, and you must too.”
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the French
for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French where to
look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and children struck him now
as by no means so charming as a little while before. “And what does she
talk French with the children for?” he thought; “how unnatural and false it
is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and unlearning sincerity,” he
thought to himself, unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that
