Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

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Chapter 3
When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled
some scent on himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs,
distributed into his pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook,
matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and
shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean,
fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his
unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg
into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting
for him, and beside the coffee, letters and papers from the
office.
He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a
merchant who was buying a forest on his wife’s property.
To sell this forest was absolutely essential; but at present,
until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could
not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that
his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the
question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea
that he might be let on by his interests, that he might seek
a reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the
forest—that idea hurt him.
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When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch
moved the office-papers close to him, rapidly looked
through two pieces of business, made a few notes with a
big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his
coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp
morning paper, and began reading it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper,
not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by
the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and
politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held
those views on all these subjects which were held by the
majority and by his paper, and he only changed them
when the majority changed them—or, more strictly
speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly
changed of themselves within him.
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political
opinions or his views; these political opinions and views
had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose
the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that
were being worn. And for him, living in a certain
society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years
of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have
views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there
was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative
views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose
not from his considering liberalism more rational, but
from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life.
The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong,
and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and
was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that
marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it
needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded
Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him
into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his
nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be
understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check
the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan
Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service
without his legs aching from standing up, and could never
make out what was the object of all the terrible and highflown
language about another world when life might be so
very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a
plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin,
he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder
of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had
become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his
newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight
fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in
which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our
day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to
swallow up all conservative elements, and that the
government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, ‘in our opinion
the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra,
but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress,’
etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one,
which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some
innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his
characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each
innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what
ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always
did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was
embittered by Matrona Philimonovna’s advice and the
unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that
Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and
that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a
light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation;
but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a
quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a
second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up,
shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and,
squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because
there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the
joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.
But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to
him, and he grew thoughtful.
Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized
the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his
eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They were
carrying something, and dropped it.
‘I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,’ said the
little girl in English; ‘there, pick them up!’
‘Everything’s in confusion,’ thought Stepan
Arkadyevitch; ‘there are the children running about by
themselves.’ And going to the door, he called them. They
threw down the box, that represented a train, and came in
to their father.
The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly,
embraced him, and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying
as she always did the smell of scent that came from his
whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was
flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with
tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away
again; but her father held her back.
‘How is mamma?’ he asked, passing his hand over his
daughter’s smooth, soft little neck. ‘Good morning,’ he
said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him.
He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always
tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond
with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.
‘Mamma? She is up,’ answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. ‘That means that she’s not
slept again all night,’ he thought.
‘Well, is she cheerful?’
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between
her father and mother, and that her mother could not be
cheerful, and that her father must be aware of this, and
that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly.
And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it,
and blushed too.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She did not say we must do
our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with
Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s.’
‘Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute,
though,’ he said, still holding her and stroking her soft
little hand.
He took off the matelpiece, where he had put it
yesterday, a little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking
out her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.
‘For Grisha?’ said the little girl, pointing to the
chocolate.
‘Yes, yes.’ And still stroking her little shoulder, he
kissed her on the roots of here hair and neck, and let her
go.
‘The carriage is ready,’ said Matvey; ‘but there’s some
one to see you with a petition.’
‘Been here long?’ asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Half an hour.’
‘How many times have I told you to tell me at once?’
‘One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,’
said Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it
was impossible to be angry.
‘Well, show the person up at once,’ said Oblonsky,
frowning with vexation.
The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin,
came with a request impossible and unreasonable; but
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he generally did, made her sit
down, heard her to the end attentively without
interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how
and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large,
sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent
little note to a personage who might be of use to her.
Having got rid of the staff captain’s widow, Stepan
Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect
whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he
had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget—
his wife.
‘Ah, yes!’ He bowed his head, and his handsome face
assumed a harassed expression. ‘To go, or not to go!’ he
said to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not
go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to
amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because
it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to
inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible
to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it
now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.
‘It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,’
he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his
chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it
into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps
walked through the drawing room, and opened the other
door into his wife’s bedroom.

Chapter 4
Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her
now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up
with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin
face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from
the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all
sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open
bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing
her husband’s steps, she stopped, looking towards the
door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe
and contemptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of
him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just
attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times
already in these last three days—to sort out the children’s
things and her own, so as to take them to her mother’s—
and again she could not bring herself to do this; but now
again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself, ‘that
things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step’
to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some
little part at least of the suffering he had caused her. She
still continued to tell herself that she should leave him, but
she was conscious that this was impossible; it was
impossible because she could not get out of the habit of
regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this,
she realized that if even here in her own house she could
hardly manage to look after her five children properly,
they would be still worse off where she was going with
them all. As it was, even in the course of these three days,
the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome
soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner
the day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to
go away; but, cheating herself, she went on all the same
sorting out her things and pretending she was going.
Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the
drawer of the bureau as though looking for something,
and only looked round at him when he had come quite
up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a severe
and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and
suffering.
‘Dolly!’ he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent
his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and
humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and
health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that
beamed with health and freshness. ‘Yes, he is happy and
content!’ she thought; ‘while I.... And that disgusting good
nature, which every one likes him for and praises—I hate
that good nature of his,’ she thought. Her mouth stiffened,
the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of
her pale, nervous face.
‘What do you want?’ she said in a rapid, deep,
unnatural voice.
‘Dolly!’ he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. ‘Anna
is coming today.’
‘Well, what is that to me? I can’t see her!’ she cried.
‘But you must, really, Dolly..’
‘Go away, go away, go away!’ she shrieked, not
looking at him, as though this shriek were called up by
physical pain.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought
of his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as
Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his
paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her
tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice,
submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in
his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to
shine with tears.
‘My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God’s sake!....
You know....’ He could not go on; there was a sob in his
throat.
She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.
‘Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing:
forgive...Remember, cannot nine years of my life atone
for an instant...’
She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he
would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or
other to make her believe differently.
‘—instant of passion?’ he said, and would have gone
on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips
stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek
worked.
‘Go away, go out of the room!’ she shrieked still more
shrilly, ‘and don’t talk to me of your passion and your
loathsomeness.’
She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back
of a chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips
swelled, his eyes were swimming with tears.
‘Dolly!’ he said, sobbing now; ‘for mercy’s sake, think
of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and
punish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do,
I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can
express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!’
She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing,
and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several
times to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.
‘You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them;
but I remember them, and know that this means their
ruin,’ she said—obviously one of the phrases she had more
than once repeated to herself in the course of the last few
days.
She had called him ‘Stiva,’ and he glanced at her with
gratitude, and moved to take her hand, but she drew back
from him with aversion.
‘I think of the children, and for that reason I would do
anything in the world to save them, but I don’t myself
know how to save them. by taking them away from their
father, or by leaving them with a vicious father—yes, a
vicious father.... Tell me, after what...has happened, can
we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it
possible?’ she repeated, raising her voice, ‘after my
husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair
with his own children’s governess?’
‘But what could I do? what could I do?’ he kept saying
in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his
head sank lower and lower.
‘You are loathsome to me, repulsive!’ she shrieked,
getting more and more heated. ‘Your tears mean nothing!
You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor
honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a
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stranger—yes, a complete stranger!’ With pain and wrath
she uttered the word so terrible to herself—stranger.
He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face
alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his
pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for
her, but not love. ‘No, she hates me. She will not forgive
me,’ he thought.
‘It is awful! awful!’ he said.
At that moment in the next room a child began to cry;
probably it had fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened,
and her face suddenly softened.
She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few
seconds, as though she did not know where she was, and
what she was doing, and getting up rapidly, she moved
towards the door.
‘Well, she loves my child,’ he thought, noticing the
change of her face at the child’s cry, ‘my child: how can
she hate me?’
‘Dolly, one word more,’ he said, following her.
‘If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the
children! They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am
going away at once, and you may live here with your
mistress!’
And she went out, slamming the door.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a
subdued tread walked out of the room. ‘Matvey says she
will come round; but how? I don’t see the least chance of
it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how vulgarly she
shouted,’ he said to himself, remembering her shriek and
the words—‘scoundrel’ and ‘mistress.’ ‘And very likely the
maids were listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible!’ Stepan
Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds alone, wiped his face,
squared his chest, and walked out of the room.
It was Friday, and in the dining room the German
watchmaker was winding up the clock. Stepan
Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this punctual,
bald watchmaker, ‘that the German was wound up for a
whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches,’ and he
smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: ‘And
maybe she will come round! That’s a good expression,
‘come round,’’ he thought. ‘I must repeat that.’
‘Matvey!’ he shouted. ‘Arrange everything with Darya
in the sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna,’ he said to
Matvey when he came in.
‘Yes, sir.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out
onto the steps.
‘You won’t dine at home?’ said Matvey, seeing him off.
‘That’s as it happens. But here’s for the housekeeping,’
he said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. ‘That’ll
be enough.’
‘Enough or not enough, we must make it do,’ said
Matvey, slamming the carriage door and stepping back
onto the steps.
Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the
child, and knowing from the sound of the carriage that he
had gone off, went back again to her bedroom. It was her
solitary refuge from the household cares which crowded
upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the
short time she had been in the nursery, the English
governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in
putting several questions to her, which did not admit of
delay, and which only she could answer: ‘What were the
children to put on for their walk? Should they have any
milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?’
‘Ah, let me alone, let me alone!’ she said, and going
back to her bedroom she sat down in the same place as she
had sat when talking to her husband, clasping tightly her
thin hands with the rings that slipped down on her bony
fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the
conversation. ‘He has gone! But has he broken it off with
her?’ she thought. ‘Can it be he sees her? Why didn’t I ask
him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we
remain in the same house, we are strangers—strangers
forever! She repeated again with special significance the
word so dreadful to her. ‘And how I loved him! my God,
how I loved him!.... How I loved him! And now don’t I
love him? Don’t I love him more than before? The most
horrible thing is,’ she began, but did not finish her
thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in
at the door.
‘Let us send for my brother,’ she said; ‘he can get a
dinner anyway, or we shall have the children getting
nothing to eat till six again, like yesterday.’
‘Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But
did you send for some new milk?’
And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the
day, and drowned her grief in them for a time.
Chapter 5
Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school,
thanks to his excellent abilities, but he had been idle and
mischievous, and therefore was one of the lowest in his
class. But in spite of his habitually dissipated mode of life,
his inferior grade in the service, and his comparative
youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative position of
president of one of the government boards at Moscow.
This post he had received through his sister Anna’s
husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one
of the most important positions in the ministry to whose
department the Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin
had not got his brother- in-law this berth, then through a
hundred other personages— brothers, sisters, cousins,
uncles, and aunts—Stiva Oblonsky would have received
this post, or some other similar one, together with the
salary of six thousand absolutely needful for them, as his
affairs, in spite of his wife’s considerable property, were in
an embarrassed condition.
Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations
of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those
who had been and are the powerful ones of this world.
One-third of the men in the government, the older men,
had been friends of his father’s, and had known him in
petticoats; another third were his intimate chums, and the
remainder were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the
distributors of earthly blessings in the shape of places,
rents, shares, and such, were all his friends, and could not
overlook one of their own set; and Oblonsky had no need
to make any special exertion to get a lucrative post. He
had only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to
be quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his
characteristic good nature he never did. It would have
struck him as absurd if he had been told that he would not
get a position with the salary he required, especially as he
expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what
the men of his own age and standing did get, and he was
no worse qualified for performing duties of the kind than
any other man.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who
knew him for his good humor, but for his bright
disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him, in his
handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and
eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was
something which produced a physical effect of kindliness
and good humor on the people who met him. ‘Aha! Stiva!
Oblonsky! Here he is!’ was almost always said with a smile
of delight on meeting him. Even though it happened at
times that after a conversation with him it seemed that
nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day,
and the next, every one was just as delighted at meeting
him again.
After filling for three years the post of president of one
of the government boards at Moscow, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had won the respect, as well as the liking, of
his fellow officials, subordinates, and superiors, and all who
had had business with him. The principal qualities in
Stepan Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal
respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his
extreme indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness
of his own shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect
liberalism—not the liberalism he read of in the papers, but
the liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of which he
treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the same,
whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly—
the most important point—his complete indifference to
the business in which he was engaged, in consequence of
which he was never carried away, and never made
mistakes.
On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, escorted by a deferential porter with a
portfolio, went into his little private room, put on his
uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and
copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored
deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to
his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat down.
He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was
consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one
knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the
exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official
stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. A
secretary, with the good-humored deference common to
every one in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with
papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone
which had been introduced by Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘We have succeeded in getting the information from
the government department of Penza. Here, would you
care?...’
‘You’ve got them at last?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
laying his finger on the paper. ‘Now, gentlemen...’
And the sitting of the board began.
‘If they knew,’ he thought, bending his head with a
significant air as he listened to the report, ‘what a guilty
little boy their president was half an hour ago.’ And his
eyes were laughing during the reading of the report. Till
two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break, and
at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon.
It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the
boardroom suddenly opened and someone came in.
All the officials sitting on the further side under the
portrait of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any
distraction, looked round at the door; but the doorkeeper
standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and
closed the glass door after him.
When the case had been read through, Stepan
Arkadyevitch got up and stretched, and by way of tribute
to the liberalism of the times took out a cigarette in the
boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the
members of the board, the old veteran in the service,
Nikitin, and the Kammerjunker Grinevitch, went in with
him.
‘We shall have time to finish after lunch,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
‘To be sure we shall!’ said Nikitin.
‘A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,’ said
Grinevitch of one of the persons taking part in the case
they were examining.
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words,
giving him thereby to understand that it was improper to
pass judgment prematurely, and made him no reply.
‘Who was that came in?’ he asked the doorkeeper.
‘Someone, your excellency, crept in without
permission directly my back was turned. He was asking for
you. I told him: when the members come out, then..’
‘Where is he?’
‘Maybe he’s gone into the passage, but here he comes
anyway. That is he,’ said the doorkeeper, pointing to a
strongly built, broadshouldered man with a curly beard,
who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was running
lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone
staircase.b One of the members going down—a lean
official with a portfolio—stood out of his way and looked
disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then glanced
inquiringly at Oblonsky.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the
stairs. His good-naturedly beaming face above the
embroidered collar of his uniform beamed more than ever
when he recognized the man coming up.
‘Why, it’s actually you, Levin, at last!’ he said with a
friendly mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached.
‘How is it you have deigned to look me up in this den?’
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking
hands, he kissed his friend. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘I have just come, and very much wanted to see you,’
said Levin, looking shyly and at the same time angry and
uneasily around.
‘Well, let’s go into my room,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who knew his friend’s sensitive and irritable
shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew him along, as though
guiding him through dangers.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost
all his acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their
Christian names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors,
ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many
of his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme
ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much
surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of
Oblonsky, something in common. He was the familiar
friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of
champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with
everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his
disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his
friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he well knew
how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish the
disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was not a
disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt
that Levin fancied he might not care to show his intimacy
with him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to
take him off into his room.
Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their
intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had
been the friend and companion of his early youth. They
were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their
characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another
who have been together in early youth. But in spite of
this, each of them—as is often the way with men who
have selected careers of different kinds—though in
discussion he would even justify the other’s career, in his
heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he
led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his
friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a
slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he
had seen him come up to Moscow from the country
where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan
Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he
took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow
always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated
by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a
perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan
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Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way
Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his
friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and
regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky,
as he was doing the same as every one did, laughed
complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed
without complacency and sometimes angrily.
‘We have long been expecting you,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, going into his room and letting Levin’s
hand go as though to show that here all danger was over.
‘I am very, very glad to see you,’ he went on. ‘Well, how
are you? Eh? When did you come?’
Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of
Oblonsky’s two companions, and especially at the hand of
the elegant Grinevitch, which had such long white fingers,
such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and such huge
shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they
absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of
thought. Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.
‘Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you,’ he said. ‘My
colleagues: Philip Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch
Grinevitch’—and turning to Levin—‘a district councilor, a
modern district councilman, a gymnast who lifts thirteen
stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman, and
my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of
Sergey Ivonovitch Koznishev.’
‘Delighted,’ said the veteran.
‘I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch,’ said Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand
with its long nails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned
to Oblonsky. Though he had a great respect for his halfbrother,
an author well known to all Russia, he could not
endure it when people treated him not as Konstantin
Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.
‘No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have
quarreled with them all, and don’t go to the meetings any
more,’ he said, turning to Oblonsky.
‘You’ve been quick about it!’ said Oblonsky with a
smile. ‘But how? why?’
‘It’s a long story. I will tell you some time,’ said Levin,
but he began telling him at once. ‘Well, to put it shortly, I
was convinced that nothing was really done by the district
councils, or ever could be,’ he began, as though some one
had just insulted him. ‘On one side it’s a plaything; they
play at being a parliament, and I’m neither young enough
nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on
the other side’ (he stammered) ‘it’s a means for the coterie
of the district to make money. Formerly they had
wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district
council—not in the form of bribes, but in the form of
unearned salary,’ he said, as hotly as though someone of
those present had opposed his opinion.
‘Aha! You’re in a new phase again, I see—a
conservative,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘However, we
can go into that later.’
‘Yes, later. But I wanted to see you,’ said Levin,
looking with hatred at Grinevitch’s hand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.
‘How was it you used to say you would never wear
European dress again?’ he said, scanning his new suit,
obviously cut by a French tailor. ‘Ah! I see: a new phase.’
Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush,
slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys
blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their
shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing still
more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so strange to
see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight, that
Oblonsky left off looking at him.
‘Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very
much to talk to you,’ said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to ponder.
‘I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and
there we can talk. I am free till three.’
‘No,’ answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, ‘I have
got to go on somewhere else.’
‘All right, then, let’s dine together.’
‘Dine together? But I have nothing very particular,
only a few words to say, and a question I want to ask you,
and we can have a talk afterwards.’
‘Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll
gossip after dinner.’
‘Well, it’s this,’ said Levin; ‘but it’s of no importance,
though.’
His face all at once took an expression of anger from
the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.
‘What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it
used to be?’ he said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin
was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly
perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily.
‘You said a few words, but I can’t answer in a few
words, because.... Excuse me a minute..’
A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the
modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of
superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business;
he went up to Oblonsky with some papers, and began,
under pretense of asking a question, to explain some
objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out,
laid his hand genially on the secretary’s sleeve.
‘No, you do as I told you,’ he said, softening his words
with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of
the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: ‘So
do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch.’
The secretary retired in confusion. During the
consultation with the secretary Levin had completely
recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with
his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a
look of ironical attention.
‘I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,’ he said.
‘What don’t you understand?’ said Oblonsky, smiling as
brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected
some queer outburst from Levin.
‘I don’t understand what you are doing,’ said Levin,
shrugging his shoulders. ‘How can you do it seriously?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why, because there’s nothing in it.’
‘You think so, but we’re overwhelmed with work.’
‘On paper. But, there, you’ve a gift for it,’ added
Levin.
‘That’s to say, you think there’s a lack of something in
me?’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Levin. ‘But all the same I admire your
grandeur, and am proud that I’ve a friend in such a great
person. You’ve not answered my question, though,’ he
went on, with a desperate effort looking Oblonsky straight
in the face.
‘Oh, that’s all very well. You wait a bit, and you’ll
come to this yourself. It’s very nice for you to have over
six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district, and such
muscles, and the freshness of a girl of twelve; still you’ll be
one of us one day. Yes, as to your question, there is no
change, but it’s a pity you’ve been away so long.’
‘Oh, why so?’ Levin queried, panic-stricken.
‘Oh, nothing,’ responded Oblonsky. ‘We’ll talk it over.
But what’s brought you up to town?’
‘Oh, we’ll talk about that, too, later on,’ said Levin,
reddening again up to his ears.
‘All right. I see,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘I should ask
you to come to us, you know, but my wife’s not quite the
thing. But I tell you what; if you want to see them,
they’re sure now to be at the Zoological Gardens from
four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and I’ll
come and fetch you, and we’ll go and dine somewhere
together.’
‘Capital. So good-bye till then.’
‘Now mind, you’ll forget, I know you, or rush off
home to the country!’ Stepan Arkadyevitch called out
laughing.
‘No, truly!’
And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in
the doorway remembering that he had forgotten to take
leave of Oblonsky’s colleagues.
‘That gentleman must be a man of great energy,’ said
Grinevitch, when Levin had gone away.
‘Yes, my dear boy,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding
his head, ‘he’s a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in
the Karazinsky district; everything before him; and what
youth and vigor! Not like some of us.’
‘You have a great deal to complain of, haven’t you,
Stepan Arkadyevitch?’
‘Ah, yes, I’m in a poor way, a bad way,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch with a heavy sigh.
Chapter 6
When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to
town, Levin blushed, and was furious with himself for
blushing, because he could not answer, ‘I have come to
make your sister-in-law an offer,’ though that was
precisely what he had come for.
The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were
old, noble Moscow families, and had always been on
intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had grown still
closer during Levin’s student days. He had both prepared
for the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky,
the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the
same time with him. In those days Levin used often to be
in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the
Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was
with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was
in love, especially with the feminine half of the household.
Levin did not remember his own mother, and his only
sister was older than he was, so that it was in the
Shtcherbatskys’ house that he saw for the first time that
inner life of an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable
family of which he had been deprived by the death of his
father and mother. All the members of that family,
especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it
were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and
he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but
under the poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the
existence of the loftiest sentiments and every possible
perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one day
to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at
certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the
sounds of which were audible in their brother’s room
above, where the students used to work; why they were
visited by those professors of French literature, of music,
of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three
young ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the
coach to the Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin
cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalia in a half-long one, and
Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in tightly-drawn
red stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was they
had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by a
footman with a gold cockade in his hat—all this and much
more that was done in their mysterious world he did not
understand, but he was sure that everything that was done
there was very good, and he was in love precisely with the
mystery of the proceedings.
In his student days he had all but been in love with the
eldest, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky.
Then he began being in love with the second. He felt, as
it were, that he had to be in love with one of the sisters,
only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too,
had hardly made her appearance in the world when she
married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when
Levin left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky went into
the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and Levin’s relations
with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship with
Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the
winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in
the country, and saw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized
which of the three sisters he was indeed destined to love.
One would have thought that nothing could be simpler
than for him, a man of good family, rather rich than poor,
and thirty-two years old, to make the young Princess
Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all likelihood he
would at once have been looked upon as a good match.
But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty
was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far
above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so
low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived
that other people and she herself could regard him as
worthy of her.
After spending two months in Moscow in a state of
enchantment, seeing Kitty almost every day in society,
into which he went so as to meet her, he abruptly decided
that it could not be, and went back to the country.
Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on
the idea that in the eyes of her family he was a
disadvantageous and worthless match for the charming
Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. In her
family’s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and
position in society, while his contemporaries by this time,
when he was thirty-two, were already, one a colonel, and
another a professor, another director of a bank and
railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he (he
knew very well how he must appear to others) was a
country gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting
game, and building barns; in other words, a fellow of no
ability, who had not turned out well, and who was doing
just what, according to the ideas of the world, is done by
people fit for nothing else.
The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not
love such an ugly person as he conceived himself to be,
and, above all, such an ordinary, in no way striking
person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the past—the
attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his
friendship with her brother—seemed to him yet another
obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, as he
considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a
friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with which
he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and,
still more, a distinguished man.
He had heard that women often did care for ugly and
ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by
himself, and he could not himself have loved any but
beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.
But after spending two months alone in the country, he
was convinced that this was not one of those passions of
which he had had experience in his early youth; that this
feeling gave him not an instant’s rest; that he could not
live without deciding the question, would she or would
she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only
from his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that
he would be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow
with a firm determination to make an offer, and get
married if he were accepted. Or...he could not conceive
what would become of him if he were rejected.
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Chapter 7
On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had
put up at the house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev.
After changing his clothes he went down to his brother’s
study, intending to talk to him at once about the object of
his visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother was not
alone. With him there was a well-known professor of
philosophy, who had come from Harkov expressly to clear
up a difference that had arisen between them on a very
important philosophical question. The professor was
carrying on a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey
Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest,
and after reading the professor’s last article, he had written
him a letter stating his objections. He accused the
professor of making too great concessions to the
materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to
argue the matter out. The point in discussion was the
question then in vogue: Is there a line to be drawn
between psychological and physiological phenomena in
man? and if so, where?
Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of
chilly friendliness he always had for everyone, and
introducing him to the professor, went on with the
conversation.
A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore
himself from the discussion for an instant to greet Levin,
and then went on talking without paying any further
attention to him. Levin sat down to wait till the professor
should go, but he soon began to get interested in the
subject under discussion.
Levin had come across the magazine articles about
which they were disputing, and had read them, interested
in them as a development of the first principles of science,
familiar to him as a natural science student at the
university. But he had never connected these scientific
deductions as to the origin of man as an animal, as to
reflex action, biology, and sociology, with those questions
as to the meaning of life and death to himself, which had
of late been more and more often in his mind.
As he listened to his brother’s argument with the
professor, he noticed that they connected these scientific
questions with those spiritual problems, that at times they
almost touched on the latter; but every time they were
close upon what seemed to him the chief point, they
promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea
of subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions,
and appeals to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he
understood what they were talking about.
‘I cannot admit it,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his
habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of
phrase. ‘I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my
whole conception of the external world has been derived
from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of
existence, has not been received by me through sensation;
indeed, there is no special sense-organ for the transmission
of such an idea.’
‘Yes, but they—Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov—
would answer that your consciousness of existence is
derived from the conjunction of all your sensations, that
that consciousness of existence is the result of your
sensations. Wurt, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there
are no sensations, it follows that there is no idea of
existence.’
‘I maintain the contrary,’ began Sergey Ivanovitch.
But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close
upon the real point of the matter, they were again
retreating, and he made up his mind to put a question to
the professor.
‘According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my
body is dead, I can have no existence of any sort?’ he
queried.
The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental
suffering at the interruption, looked round at the strange
inquirer, more like a bargeman than a philosopher, and
turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovitch, as though to ask:
What’s one to say to him? But Sergey Ivanovitch, who
had been talking with far less heat and one-sidedness than
the professor, and who had sufficient breadth of mind to
answer the professor, and at the same time to comprehend
the simple and natural point of view from which the
question was put, smiled and said:
‘That question we have no right to answer as yet.’
‘We have not the requisite data,’ chimed in the
professor, and he went back to his argument. ‘No,’ he
said; ‘I would point out the fact that if, as Pripasov directly
asserts, perception is based on sensation, then we are
bound to distinguish sharply between these two
conceptions.’
Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the
professor to go.
Chapter 8
When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch
turned to his brother.
‘Delighted that you’ve come. For some time, is it?
How’s your farming getting on?’
Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in
farming, and only put the question in deference to him,
and so he only told him about the sale of his wheat and
money matters.
Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination
to get married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly
resolved to do so. But after seeing his brother, listening to
his conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards the
unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother
questioned him about agricultural matters (their mother’s
property had not been divided, and Levin took charge of
both their shares), Levin felt that he could not for some
reason begin to talk to him of his intention of marrying.
He felt that his brother would not look at it as he would
have wished him to.
‘Well, how is your district council doing?’ asked Sergey
Ivanovitch, who was greatly interested in these local
boards and attached great importance to them.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘What! Why, surely you’re a member of the board?’
‘No, I’m not a member now; I’ve resigned,’ answered
Levin, ‘and I no longer attend the meetings.’
‘What a pity!’ commented Sergey Ivanovitch,
frowning.
Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place
in the meetings in his district.
‘That’s how it always is!’ Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted
him. ‘We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it’s our
strong point, really, the faculty of seeing our own
shortcomings; but we overdo it, we comfort ourselves
with irony which we always have on the tip of our
tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our local selfgovernment
to any other European people—why, the
Germans or the English would have worked their way to
freedom from them, while we simply turn them into
ridicule.’
‘But how can it be helped?’ said Levin penitently. ‘It
was my last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can’t.
I’m no good at it.’
‘It’s not that you’re no good at it,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch; ‘it is that you don’t look at it as you should.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Levin answered dejectedly.
‘Oh! do you know brother Nikolay’s turned up again?’
This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of
Konstantin Levin, and half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a
man utterly ruined, who had dissipated the greater part of
his fortune, was living in the strangest and lowest
company, and had quarreled with his brothers.
‘What did you say?’ Levin cried with horror. ‘How do
you know?’
‘Prokofy saw him in the street.’
‘Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?’ Levin
got up from his chair, as though on the point of starting
off at once.
‘I am sorry I told you,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking
his head at his younger brother’s excitement. ‘I sent to
find out where he is living, and sent him his IOU to
Trubin, which I paid. This is the answer he sent me.’
And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a
paper-weight and handed it to his brother.
Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: ‘I
humbly beg you to leave me in peace. That’s the only
favor I ask of my gracious brothers.—Nikolay Levin.’
Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with
the note in his hands opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.
There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to
forget his unhappy brother for the time, and the
consciousness that it would be base to do so.
‘He obviously wants to offend me,’ pursued Sergey
Ivanovitch; ‘but he cannot offend me, and I should have
wished with all my heart to assist him, but I know it’s
impossible to do that.’
‘Yes, yes,’ repeated Levin. ‘I understand and appreciate
your attitude to him; but I shall go and see him.’
‘If you want to, do; but I shouldn’t advise it,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘As regards myself, I have no fear of
your doing so; he will not make you quarrel with me; but
for your own sake, I should say you would do better not
to go. You can’t do him any good; still, do as you please.’
‘Very likely I can’t do any good, but I feel—especially
at such a moment—but that’s another thing—I feel I
could not be at peace.’
‘Well, that I don’t understand,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘One thing I do understand,’ he added; ‘it’s a lesson in
humility. I have come to look very differently and more
charitably on what is called infamous since brother
Nikolay has become what he is...you know what he did..’
‘Oh, it’s awful, awful!’ repeated Levin.
After obtaining his brother’s address from Sergey
Ivanovitch’s footman, Levin was on the point of setting off
at once to see him, but on second thought he decided to
put off his visit till the evening. The first thing to do to set
his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had come to
Moscow for. From his brother’s Levin went to Oblonsky’s
office, and on getting news of the Shtcherbatskys from
him, he drove to the place where he had been told he
might find Kitty.
Chapter 9
At four o’clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin
stepped out of a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens,
and turned along the path to the frozen mounds and the
skating ground, knowing that he would certainly find her
there, as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys’ carriage at the
entrance.
It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges,
drivers, and policemen were standing in the approach.
Crowds of well-dressed people, with hats bright in the
sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the well-swept
little paths between the little houses adorned with carving
in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens,
all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly
decked in sacred vestments.
He walked along the path towards the skating-ground,
and kept saying to himself—‘You mustn’t be excited, you
must be calm. What’s the matter with you? What do you
want? Be quiet, stupid,’ he conjured his heart. And the
more he tried to compose himself, the more breathless he
found himself. An acquaintance met him and called him
by his name, but Levin did not even recognize him. He
went towards the mounds, whence came the clank of the
chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up,
the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry
voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground
lay open before his eyes, and at once, amidst all the skaters,
he knew her.
He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror
that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady
at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently
nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for
Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose
among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She
was the smile that shed light on all round her. ‘Is it
possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?’ he
thought. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy
shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when
he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with
terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to
remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about
her, and that he too might come there to skate. He walked
down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the
sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.
On that day of the week and at that time of day people
of one set, all acquainted with one another, used to meet
on the ice. There were crack skaters there, showing off
their skill, and learners clinging to chairs with timid,
awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating
with hygienic motives. They seemed to Levin an elect
band of blissful beings because they were here, near her.
All the skaters, it seemed, with perfect self-possession,
skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke to her, and
were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice
and the fine weather.
Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in a short jacket
and tight trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his
skates on. Seeing Levin, he shouted to him:
‘Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? Firstrate
ice—do put your skates on.’
‘I haven’t got my skates,’ Levin answered, marveling at
this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one
second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her.
He felt as though the sun were coming near him. She was
in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in their high
boots with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A
boy in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and
bowed down to the ground, overtook her. She skated a
little uncertainly; taking her hands out of the little muff
that hung on a cord, she held them ready for emergency,
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and looking towards Levin, whom she had recognized, she
smiled at him, and at her own fears. When she had got
round the turn, she gave herself a push off with one foot,
and skated straight up to Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his
arm, she nodded smiling to Levin. She was more splendid
that he had imagined her.
When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid
picture of her to himself, especially the charm of that little
fair head, so freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and
so full of childish brightness and good humor. The
childishness of her expression, together with the delicate
beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that
he fully realized. But what always struck him in her as
something unlooked for, was the expression of her eyes,
soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which
always transported Levin to an enchanted world, where he
felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself
in some days of his early childhood.
‘Have you been here long?’ she said, giving him her
hand. ‘Thank you,’ she added, as he picked up the
handkerchief that had fallen out of her muff.
‘I? I’ve not long...yesterday...I mean today...I arrived,’
answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding
her question. ‘I was meaning to come and see you,’ he
said; and then, recollecting with what intention he was
trying to see her, he was promptly overcome with
confusion and blushed.
‘I didn’t know you could skate, and skate so well.’
She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make
out the cause of his confusion.
‘Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up
here that you are the best of skaters,’ she said, with her
little black-gloved hand brushing a grain of hoarfrost off
her muff.
‘Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to
reach perfection.’
‘You do everything with passion, I think,’ she said
smiling. ‘I should so like to see how you skate. Put on
skates, and let us skate together.’
‘Skate together! Can that be possible?’ thought Levin,
gazing at her.
‘I’ll put them on directly,’ he said.
And he went off to get skates.
‘It’s a long while since we’ve seen you here, sir,’ said
the attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the
heel of the skate. ‘Except you, there’s none of the
gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all right?’ said he,
tightening the strap.
‘Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,’ answered Levin, with
difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would
overspread his face. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘this now is life, this
is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together!
Speak to her now? But that’s just why I’m afraid to
speak—because I’m happy now, happy in hope, anyway....
And then?.... But I must! I must! I must! Away with
weakness!’
Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and
scurrying over the rough ice round the hut, came out on
the smooth ice and skated without effort, as it were, by
simple exercise of will, increasing and slackening speed
and turning his course. He approached with timidity, but
again her smile reassured him.
She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side,
going faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved
the more tightly she grasped his hand.
‘With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel
confidence in you,’ she said to him.
‘And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning
on me,’ he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he
had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he
uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going
behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin
detected the familiar change in her expression that
denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her
smooth brow.
‘Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right
to ask such a question,’ he added hurriedly.
‘Oh, why so?.... No, I have nothing to trouble me,’ she
responded coldly; and she added immediately: ‘You
haven’t seen Mlle. Linon, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.’
‘What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!’
thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman
with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling
and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old
friend.
‘Yes, you see we’re growing up,’ she said to him,
glancing towards Kitty, ‘and growing old. Tiny bear has
grown big now!’ pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing,
and she reminded him of his joke about the three young
ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the
English nursery tale. ‘Do you remember that’s what you
used to call them?’
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been
laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.
‘Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has
learned to skate nicely, hasn’t she?’
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer
stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and
friendliness, but Levin fancied that in her friendliness there
was a certain note of deliberate composure. And he felt
depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and
her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.
‘Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter,
aren’t you?’ she said.
‘No, I’m not dull, I am very busy,’ he said, feeling that
she was holding him in check by her composed tone,
which he would not have the force to break through, just
as it had been at the beginning of the winter.
‘Are you going to stay in town long?’ Kitty questioned
him.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered, not thinking of what he
was saying. The thought that if he were held in check by
her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back
again without deciding anything came into his mind, and
he resolved to make a struggle against it.
‘How is it you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know. It depends upon you,’ he said, and was
immediately horror-stricken at his own words.
Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that
she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble,
twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She
skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went
towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.
‘My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me,
guide me,’ said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same
time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about
describing inner and outer circles.
At that moment one of the young men, the best of the
skaters of the day, came out of the coffee-house in his
skates, with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he
dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding
up and down. He flew down, and without even changing
the position of his hands, skated away over the ice.
‘Ah, that’s a new trick!’ said Levin, and he promptly
ran up to the top to do this new trick.
‘Don’t break you neck! it needs practice!’ Nikolay
Shtcherbatsky shouted after him.
Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best
he cold, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this
unwonted movement with his hands. On the last step he
stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with
a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing.
‘How splendid, how nice he is!’ Kitty was thinking at
that time, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle.
Linon, and looked towards him with a smile of quiet
affection, as though he were a favorite brother. ‘And can it
be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk
of flirtation. I know it’s not he that I love; but still I am
happy with him, and he’s so jolly. Only, why did he say
that?...’ she mused.
Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother
meeting her at the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid
exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He took off
his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the
entrance of the gardens.
‘Delighted to see you,’ said Princess Shtcherbatskaya.
‘On Thursdays we are home, as always.’
‘Today, then?’
‘We shall be pleased to see you,’ the princess said stiffly.
This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the
desire to smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned
her head, and with a smile said:
‘Good-bye till this evening.’
At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked
on one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the
garden like a conquering hero. But as he approached his
mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen
tone to her inquiries about Dolly’s health. After a little
subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-inlaw,
he threw out his chest again, and put his arm in
Levin’s.
‘Well, shall we set off?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been thinking
about you all this time, and I’m very, very glad you’ve
come,’ he said, looking him in the face with a significant
air.
‘Yes, come along,’ answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing
unceasingly the sound of that voice saying, ‘Good-bye till
this evening,’ and seeing the smile with which it was said.
‘To the England or the Hermitage?’
‘I don’t mind which.’
‘All right, then, the England,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than
at the Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to
avoid it. ‘Have you got a sledge? That’s first-rate, for I sent
my carriage home.’
The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was
wondering what that change in Kitty’s expression had
meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was
hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes
were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite
another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her
smile and those words, ‘Good-bye till this evening.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in
composing the menu of the dinner.
‘You like trout, don’t you?’ he said to Levin as they
were arriving.
‘Eh?’ responded Levin. ‘Turbot? Yes, I’m AWFULLY
fond of turbot.’