blushing now much more, much, much more,” she said, blushing till the
tears came into her eyes. “But that you couldn’t see through a crack.”
The truthful eyes told Levin that she was satisfied with herself, and in
spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began questioning her,
which was all she wanted. When he had heard everything, even to the detail
that for the first second she could not help flushing, but that afterwards she
was just as direct and as much at her ease as with any chance acquaintance,
Levin was quite happy again and said he was glad of it, and would not now
behave as stupidly as he had done at the election, but would try the first
time he met Vronsky to be as friendly as possible.
“It’s so wretched to feel that there’s a man almost an enemy whom it’s
painful to meet,” said Levin. “I’m very, very glad.”
Chapter 2
“Go, please, go then and call on the Bols,” Kitty said to her husband,
when he came in to see her at eleven o’clock before going out. “I know you
are dining at the club; papa put down your name. But what are you going to
do in the morning?”
“I am only going to Katavasov,” answered Levin.
“Why so early?”
“He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him about
my work. He’s a distinguished scientific man from Petersburg,” said Levin.
“Yes; wasn’t it his article you were praising so? Well, and after that?”
said Kitty.
“I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister’s business.”
“And the concert?” she queried.
“I shan’t go there all alone.”
“No? do go; there are going to be some new things…. That interested you
so. I should certainly go.”
“Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner,” he said, looking at his
watch.
“Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Countess
Bola.”
“But is it absolutely necessary?”
“Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in, sit
down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go away.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! I’ve got so out of the way of all this that it
makes me feel positively ashamed. It’s such a horrible thing to do! A
complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to do, wastes
their time and worries himself, and walks away!”
Kitty laughed.
“Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn’t
you?”
“Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I’m so out of the way of
it that, by Jove! I’d sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay
this call! One’s so ashamed! I feel all the while that they’re annoyed, that
they’re saying, ‘What has he come for?’”
“No, they won’t. I’ll answer for that,” said Kitty, looking into his face
with a laugh. She took his hand. “Well, good-bye…. Do go, please.”
He was just going out after kissing his wife’s hand, when she stopped
him.
“Kostya, do you know I’ve only fifty roubles left?”
“Oh, all right, I’ll go to the bank and get some. How much?” he said,
with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.
“No, wait a minute.” She held his hand. “Let’s talk about it, it worries
me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away
simply. We don’t manage well, somehow.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said with a little cough, looking at her from under
his brows.
That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not
with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased not at so much
money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something
was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.
“I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the
mill. We shall have money enough in any case.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid that altogether….”
“Oh, it’s all right, all right,” he repeated. “Well, good-bye, darling.”
“No, I’m really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it
would have been in the country! As it is, I’m worrying you all, and we’re
wasting our money.”
“Not at all, not at all. Not once since I’ve been married have I said that
things could have been better than they are….”
“Truly?” she said, looking into his eyes.
He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when he
glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on
him, he repeated it with his whole heart. “I was positively forgetting her,”
he thought. And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come.
“Will it be soon? How do you feel?” he whispered, taking her two hands.
“I have so often thought so, that now I don’t think about it or know
anything about it.”
“And you’re not frightened?”
She smiled contemptuously.
“Not the least little bit,” she said.
“Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavasov’s.”
“No, nothing will happen, and don’t think about it. I’m going for a walk
on the boulevard with papa. We’re going to see Dolly. I shall expect you
before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly’s position is becoming
utterly impossible? She’s in debt all round; she hasn’t a penny. We were
talking yesterday with mamma and Arseny” (this was her sister’s husband
Lvov), “and we determined to send you with him to talk to Stiva. It’s really
unbearable. One can’t speak to papa about it…. But if you and he….”
“Why, what can we do?” said Levin.
“You’ll be at Arseny’s, anyway; talk to him, he will tell what we
decided.”
“Oh, I agree to everything Arseny thinks beforehand. I’ll go and see him.
By the way, if I do go to the concert, I’ll go with Natalia. Well, good-bye.”
On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had
been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their household in
town.
“Beauty” (that was the left shaft-horse brought up from the country) “has
been badly shod and is quite lame,” he said. “What does your honor wish to
be done?”
During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his own
horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this part of their
expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it appeared that their
own horses came dearer than hired horses, and they still hired too.
“Send for the veterinary, there may be a bruise.”
“And for Katerina Alexandrovna?” asked Kouzma.
Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that to get
from one end of Moscow to the other he had to have two powerful horses
put into a heavy carriage, to take the carriage three miles through the snowy
slush and to keep it standing there four hours, paying five roubles every
time.
Now it seemed quite natural.
“Hire a pair for our carriage from the jobmaster,” said he.
“Yes, sir.”
And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life, Levin
settled a question which, in the country, would have called for so much
personal trouble and exertion, and going out onto the steps, he called a
sledge, sat down, and drove to Nikitsky. On the way he thought no more of
money, but mused on the introduction that awaited him to the Petersburg
savant, a writer on sociology, and what he would say to him about his book.
Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been struck
by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unproductive but
inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by now he had
grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter which is said to
happen to drunkards—the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies
down like a hawk, but after the third they’re like tiny little birds. When
Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his
footmen and hall-porter he could not help reflecting that these liveries were
of no use to anyone—but they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the
amazement of the princess and Kitty when he suggested that they might do
without liveries,—that these liveries would cost the wages of two laborers
for the summer, that is, would pay for about three hundred working days
