Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the holy
picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn pose beside his
wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin to bow down to the ground, he
blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him three times;
Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and immediately was in a hurry to get
off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the destinations of the
various carriages.
“Come, I’ll tell you how we’ll manage: you drive in our carriage to fetch
him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he’ll be so good, will drive there and then
send his carriage.”
“Of course; I shall be delighted.”
“We’ll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
“Yes,” answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for
him to dress.
Chapter 3
A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church
lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into the
main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling, and
peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the
street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood at the
entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were continually driving
up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off
their helmets or black hats kept walking into the church. Inside the church
both lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the holy
pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the holy picture-stand, and the gilt
relief on the pictures, and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the
stones of the floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the
steps of the altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and
surplices—all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm
church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms and broadcloth,
velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders and arms and long gloves,
there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high
cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door the
conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round
expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had
opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or
guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a spectator, who
had eluded or softened the police officer, and went to join the crowd of
outsiders on the left. Both the guests and the outside public had by now
passed through all the phases of anticipation.
At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late. Then they
began to look more and more often towards the door, and to talk of whether
anything could have happened. Then the long delay began to be positively
discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not
thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.
The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time,
coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in their frames. In
the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and
blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the beadle and
then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and
more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to
the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the ladies,
glancing at her watch, said, “It really is strange, though!” and all the guests
became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and
dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom’s best men went to find out what had
happened. Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white
dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the
drawing-room of the Shtcherbatskys’ house with her sister, Madame Lvova,
who was her bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had
been for over half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from the best man
that her bridegroom was at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was
walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his head out
of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there
was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came back in despair,
and frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was
smoking serenely.
“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.
“Yes, it is stupid,” Stepan Arkadyevitch assented, smiling soothingly.
“But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”
“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “And these
fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!” he said, looking at the
crumpled front of his shirt. “And what if the things have been taken on to
the railway station!” he roared in desperation.
“Then you must put on mine.”
“I ought to have done so long ago, if at all.”
“It’s not nice to look ridiculous…. Wait a bit! it will come round.”
The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his
old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that was
wanted.
“But the shirt!” cried Levin.
“You’ve got a shirt on,” Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.
Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving
instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the Shtcherbatskys’
house, from which the young people were to set out the same evening, he
had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The shirt worn since the
morning was crumpled and out of the question with the fashionable open
waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the Shtcherbatskys’. They sent out to
buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up—it was Sunday.
They sent to Stepan Arkadyevitch’s and brought a shirt—it was impossibly
wide and short. They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys’ to unpack the
things. The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up
and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor,
and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to
Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.
“Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,” said Kouzma.
Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking at
his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
