servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on
learning that he was not, said to him, “Well, mind you don’t run after other
men’s wives—you’d better get one of your own.” These words had
particularly amused Veslovsky.
“Altogether, I’ve enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?”
“I have, very much,” Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly
delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling towards
Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most friendly
disposition to him.
Chapter 14
Next day at ten o’clock Levin, who had already gone his rounds, knocked
at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.
“Entrez!” Veslovsky called to him. “Excuse me, I’ve only just finished
my ablutions,” he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes
only.
“Don’t mind me, please.” Levin sat down in the window. “Have you slept
well?”
“Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?”
“What will you take, tea or coffee?”
“Neither. I’ll wait till lunch. I’m really ashamed. I suppose the ladies are
down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses.”
After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing some
gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin returned to the
house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing-room.
“We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!” said
Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the samovar. “What a pity
ladies are cut off from these delights!”
“Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,” Levin
said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the all-
conquering air with which their guest addressed Kitty….
The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya Vlasyevna
and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and began to talk to him
about moving to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement, and getting ready rooms
for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the trivial preparations for his
wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of the event, now he felt still more
offensive the preparations for the approaching birth, the date of which they
reckoned, it seemed, on their fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these
discussions of the best patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to
turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the
triangles of linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance.
The birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised
him, but which he still could not believe in—so marvelous it seemed—
presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so immense, and
therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so mysterious, that this
assumption of a definite knowledge of what would be, and consequent
preparation for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people,
jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his
reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference, and so
she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Stepan Arkadyevitch to look
at a flat, and now she called Levin up.
“I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,” he said.
“You must decide when you will move.”
“I really don’t know. I know millions of children are born away from
Moscow, and doctors … why….”
“But if so….”
“Oh, no, as Kitty wishes.”
“We can’t talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her? Why,
this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doctor.”
“I will do just what you say,” he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though the
conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was gloomy,
not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at the samovar.
“No, it’s impossible,” he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka
bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and at
her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenka’s attitude, in his eyes, in his
smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kitty’s attitude and look. And
again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a sudden,
without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a pinnacle of
happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage, and
humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful to him.
“You do just as you think best, princess,” he said again, looking round.
“Heavy is the cap of Monomach,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said playfully,
hinting, evidently, not simply at the princess’s conversation, but at the cause
of Levin’s agitation, which he had noticed.
“How late you are today, Dolly!”
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose for an
instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic of the modern
young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation again,
laughing at something.
“I’ve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is dreadfully
tiresome today,” said Dolly.
The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on the
same lines as on the previous evening, discussing Anna, and whether love is
to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty disliked the
conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in
which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect it would
have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to know how to
cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure
afforded her by the young man’s very obvious admiration. She wanted to
stop it, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did she knew would
be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And, in
fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with Masha, and Vassenka,
waiting till this uninteresting conversation was over, began to gaze
indifferently at Dolly, the question struck Levin as an unnatural and
disgusting piece of hypocrisy.
“What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?” said
Dolly.
“By all means, please, and I shall come too,” said Kitty, and she blushed.
She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would come, and
she did not ask him. “Where are you going, Kostya?” she asked her
husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute step. This
guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
“The mechanician came when I was away; I haven’t seen him yet,” he
said, not looking at her.
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard
his wife’s familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him.
“What do you want?” he said to her shortly. “We are busy.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said to the German mechanician; “I want a few
words with my husband.”
The German would have left the room, but Levin said to him:
“Don’t disturb yourself.”
“The train is at three?” queried the German. “I mustn’t be late.”
Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.
“Well, what have you to say to me?” he said to her in French.
He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in her
condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.
“I … I want to say that we can’t go on like this; that this is misery….” she
said.
“The servants are here at the sideboard,” he said angrily; “don’t make a
scene.”
“Well, let’s go in here!”
They were standing in the passage. Kitty would have gone into the next
room, but there the English governess was giving Tanya a lesson.
“Well, come into the garden.”
In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no longer
considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his agitated face,
that they looked like people fleeing from some disaster, they went on with
rapid steps, feeling that they must speak out and clear up
misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid of the misery they
were both feeling.
