“You won’t help matters like this,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. “It will come round, it
will come round … I tell you.”
Chapter 4
“They’ve come!” “Here he is!” “Which one?” “Rather young, eh?”
“Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!” were the comments
in the crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with
her into the church.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests
were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no
one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not
nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think so. He
looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers
and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid
her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, her strikingly slender
figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever—not because
these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to her beauty;
but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the
expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own
characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness.
“I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled
to him.
“It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he
said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who came
up to him.
“This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!” said Sergey Ivanovitch,
shaking his head and smiling.
“Yes, yes!” answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking
about.
“Now, Kostya, you have to decide,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air
of mock dismay, “a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the
humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the
candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been
lighted? It’s a matter of ten roubles,” he added, relaxing his lips into a
smile. “I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.”
Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.
“Well, how’s it to be then?—unlighted or lighted candles? that’s the
question.”
“Yes, yes, unlighted.”
“Oh, I’m very glad. The question’s decided!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling. “How silly men are, though, in this position,” he said to Tchirikov,
when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to his bride.
“Kitty, mind you’re the first to step on the carpet,” said Countess
Nordston, coming up. “You’re a nice person!” she said to Levin.
“Aren’t you frightened, eh?” said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.
“Are you cold? You’re pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,” said Kitty’s
sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly
set straight the flowers on her head.
Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and
then laughed unnaturally.
Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.
Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the
priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart of the
church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did not hear
what the priest said.
“Take the bride’s hand and lead her up,” the best man said to Levin.
It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of
him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin again—
because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm—till
he understood at last that what he had to do was, without changing his
position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at last he had taken
the bride’s hand in the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of
them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations moved
after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of skirts. Someone stooped down
and pulled out the bride’s train. The church became so still that the drops of
wax could be heard falling from the candles.
The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long silvery-gray
locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with something at the
lectern, putting out his little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment
with the gold cross on the back of it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something,
and making a sign to Levin, walked back again.
The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them
sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the
bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Levin. He
looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom,
sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the
bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid the
crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the candles,
and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.
“Can it be true?” thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride.
Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely
perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of his
eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped collar, that
reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held
back in her throat, and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the
candle.
All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and relations,
their annoyance, his ludicrous position—all suddenly passed away and he
was filled with joy and dread.
The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly
locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward, and
lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.
“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the solemn syllables rang out slowly
one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.
“Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be,” the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still
fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir
rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof,
with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and
slowly died away.
They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation,
for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for the servants of
God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their troth.
“Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we
beseech Thee,” the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the
head deacon.
Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. “How did they guess
that it is help, just help that one wants?” he thought, recalling all his fears
and doubts of late. “What do I know? what can I do in this fearful
business,” he thought, “without help? Yes, it is help I want now.”
When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the
priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: “Eternal God, that joinest
together in love them that were separate,” he read in a gentle, piping voice:
“who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder,
Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their descendants, according to
Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants, Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading
them in the path of all good works. For gracious and merciful art Thou, our
Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now
and ever shall be.”
“Amen!” the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.
“‘Joinest together in love them that were separate.’ What deep meaning
in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this
moment,” thought Levin. “Is she feeling the same as I?”
And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a
mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the
service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them and
take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast and grew
stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion of the process
that for the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had
during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the day when in
the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street she had gone up to him in
her brown dress, and given herself to him without a word—on that day, at
that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old
life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while
the old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for her
been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her
desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended
by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and
repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while
she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the
old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness
to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who
loved her—to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her
kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she
was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had
brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a thought, not a wish
apart from life with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could
not even picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread
and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold—anticipation and
uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life—all was ending,
and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have terrors for her
inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks
before in her soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long
been completed in her heart.
Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took Kitty’s
little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first joint of his
finger. “The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth to the servant of
God, Ekaterina.” And putting his big ring on Kitty’s touchingly weak, pink
little finger, the priest said the same thing.
And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to do,
and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in a
whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having signed the
rings with the cross, the priest handed Kitty the big ring, and Levin the little
one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings from hand to hand, still
without doing what was expected.
Dolly, Tchirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set them
right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but the
expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did not
change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they looked
