some evil spirit of strife, which she could not exorcise from his, and still
less from her own heart.
Chapter 13
There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially
if he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Levin could not
have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to sleep
in the condition in which he was that day, that leading an aimless, irrational
life, living too beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call
what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately friendly
relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and a still
more inappropriate call upon a woman who could only be called a lost
woman, after being fascinated by that woman and causing his wife distress
—he could still go quietly to sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a
sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and
untroubled.
At five o’clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up
and looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light
moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.
“What is it?… what is it?” he said, half-asleep. “Kitty! What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her
hand. “I felt unwell,” she said, smiling a particularly sweet and meaning
smile.
“What? has it begun?” he said in terror. “We ought to send….” and
hurriedly he reached after his clothes.
“No, no,” she said, smiling and holding his hand. “It’s sure to be nothing.
I was rather unwell, only a little. It’s all over now.”
And getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still.
Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her
breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and
excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she said
“nothing,” he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he
remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must
have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not
stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman’s life. At seven
o’clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle
whisper. She seemed struggling between regret at waking him, and the
desire to talk to him.
“Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s all right. But I fancy…. We ought to
send for Lizaveta Petrovna.”
The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some
knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.
“Please, don’t be frightened, it’s all right. I’m not a bit afraid,” she said,
seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to
her lips.
He hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as
he put on his dressing gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to
go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her
face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How
hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had
caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft curling hair under
her night cap, was radiant with joy and courage.
Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty’s
character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when
suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone
in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very
woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him,
smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and
going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him,
breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and was, as it were,
complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it
seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness
that told him that she was far from reproaching him, that she loved him for
her sufferings. “If not I, who is to blame for it?” he thought unconsciously,
seeking someone responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there
was no one responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in
her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that
something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could
not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.
“I have sent to mamma. You go quickly to fetch Lizaveta Petrovna …
Kostya!… Nothing, it’s over.”
She moved away from him and rang the bell.
“Well, go now; Pasha’s coming. I am all right.”
And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she
had brought in in the night and begun working at it again.
As Levin was going out of one door, he heard the maid-servant come in
at the other. He stood at the door and heard Kitty giving exact directions to
the maid, and beginning to help her move the bedstead.
He dressed, and while they were putting in his horses, as a hired sledge
was not to be seen yet, he ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe, it
seemed to him, but on wings. Two maid-servants were carefully moving
something in the bedroom.
Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions.
“I’m going for the doctor. They have sent for Lizaveta Petrovna, but I’ll
go on there too. Isn’t there anything wanted? Yes, shall I go to Dolly’s?”
She looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying.
“Yes, yes. Do go,” she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to
him.
He had just gone into the drawing-room, when suddenly a plaintive moan
sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a
long while he could not understand.
“Yes, that is she,” he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran
downstairs.
“Lord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!” he repeated the words that
for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated
these words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that all his
doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was
aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that
now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him
in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?
The horse was not yet ready, but feeling a peculiar concentration of his
physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off on foot
without waiting for the horse, and told Kouzma to overtake him.
