He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before,
and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka, with
his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.
Even Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto the steps, seemed to
him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Stepan
Arkadyevitch, though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor
respected Oblonsky.
And Varenka, even she seemed hateful, with her air sainte nitouche
making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was
thinking of nothing but getting married.
And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in with the tone of
gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country, as though
it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all, unpleasant
was that particular smile with which she responded to his smile.
Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were all
seated, Levin turned and went out.
Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a
moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her,
saying he was wanted at the counting-house. It was long since his own
work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment. “It’s
all holiday for them,” he thought; “but these are no holiday matters, they
won’t wait, and there’s no living without them.”
Chapter 7
Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to
supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna, consulting
about wines for supper.
“But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.”
“No, Stiva doesn’t drink … Kostya, stop, what’s the matter?” Kitty began,
hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the dining-room
without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively general
conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka Veslovsky and
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Well, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
“Please, do let’s go,” said Veslovsky, moving to another chair, where he
sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.
“I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet this
year?” said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg, but speaking
with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so
out of keeping with him. “I can’t answer for our finding grouse, but there
are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start early. You’re not tired? Aren’t
you tired, Stiva?”
“Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night. Let’s
go for a walk!”
“Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!” Veslovsky chimed in.
“Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up
too,” Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice
which she almost always had now with her husband. “But to my thinking,
it’s time for bed now…. I’m going, I don’t want supper.”
“No, do stay a little, Dolly,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going round to
her side behind the table where they were having supper. “I’ve so much still
to tell you.”
“Nothing really, I suppose.”
“Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s going to them
again? You know they’re hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must
certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!”
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.
“Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?” Darya
Alexandrovna appealed to him.
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in
his conversation with the princess and Varenka, he saw that there was an
eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyevitch,
Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wife’s face
an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome
face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.
“It’s exceedingly nice at their place,” Veslovsky was telling them about
Vronsky and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but in
their house you feel the real feeling of home.”
“What do they intend doing?”
“I believe they think of going to Moscow.”
“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are
you going there?” Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.
“I’m spending July there.”
“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.
“I’ve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,” said Dolly. “I
am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. I will go alone,
when you go back, and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better
indeed without you.”
“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “And you, Kitty?”
“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced
round at her husband.
“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a
very fascinating woman.”
“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and
walked across to her husband.
“Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?” she said.
His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had
overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far indeed.
Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange
as it was to him afterwards to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear
that in asking whether he was going shooting, all she cared to know was
whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka Veslovsky, with whom, as
he fancied, she was in love.
“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to
himself.
“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of
her husband, and set off the day after,” said Kitty.
The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus: “Don’t
separate me from him. I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy
the society of this delightful young man.”
“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with
peculiar amiability.
Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had
occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling
and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly
breathe. “How dare he look at my wife like that!” was the feeling that
boiled within him.
“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Vassenka, sitting down on a
chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.
Levin’s jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived
husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to
provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life…. But in spite of
that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting,
his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.
Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up
herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin could
not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess, Vassenka
would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand
and said with a naïve bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her
afterwards:
“We don’t like that fashion.”
In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to
arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not
like them.
“Why, how can one want to go to bed!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who,
after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most
charming and sentimental humor. “Look, Kitty,” he said, pointing to the
moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees—“how exquisite!
Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid
voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some
lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara Andreevna and he must sing
some duets.”
When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while
about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing one of
the new songs.
Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife’s
bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what
was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the question:
“Was there perhaps something you disliked about Veslovsky?”—it all burst
out, and he told her all. He was humiliated himself at what he was saying,
and that exasperated him all the more.
He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his
scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as
though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression of
his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the same time
had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were twitching, and his
voice kept breaking.
“You must understand that I’m not jealous, that’s a nasty word. I can’t be
jealous, and believe that…. I can’t say what I feel, but this is awful…. I’m
not jealous, but I’m wounded, humiliated that anybody dare think, that
anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.”
“Eyes like what?” said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to
recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied in
them.
At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something
precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other end
of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would have been
even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so increase his
suffering.
“And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?…”
“Ah!” he cried, clutching at his head, “you shouldn’t say that!… If you
had been attractive then….”
“Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!” she said, looking at
him with an expression of pained commiseration. “Why, what can you be
thinking about! When for me there’s no one in the world, no one, no one!…
Would you like me never to see anyone?”
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was angry
that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be forbidden
her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely such trifles, but
everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was
suffering.
“You must understand the horror and comedy of my position,” he went
on in a desperate whisper; “that he’s in my house, that he’s done nothing
improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits on his
legs. He thinks it’s the best possible form, and so I’m obliged to be civil to
him.”
“But, Kostya, you’re exaggerating,” said Kitty, at the bottom of her heart
rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his jealousy.
“The most awful part of it all is that you’re just as you always are, and
especially now when to me you’re something sacred, and we’re so happy,
so particularly happy—and all of a sudden a little wretch…. He’s not a little
wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do with him. But why
should my, and your, happiness….”
“Do you know, I understand now what it’s all come from,” Kitty was
beginning.
“Well, what? what?”
“I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.”
“Well, well!” Levin said in dismay.
She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she
was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space, then he scanned
her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his head.
“Katya, I’ve been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It’s madness!
Katya, I’m a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such idiocy?”
“Oh, I was sorry for you.”
“For me? for me? How mad I am!… But why make you miserable? It’s
awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness.”
“It’s humiliating too, of course.”
“Oh, then I’ll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him
with civility,” said Levin, kissing her hands. “You shall see. Tomorrow….
Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow.”
