At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the
drawing room, when the footman announced, ‘Konstantin
Dmitrievitch Levin.’ The princess was still in her room,
and the prince had not come in. ‘So it is to be,’ thought
Kitty, and all the blood seemed to rush to her heart. She
was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into the
looking-glass. At that moment she knew beyond doubt
that he had come early on purpose to find her alone and
to make her an offer. And only then for the first time the
whole thing presented itself in a new, different aspect;
only then she realized that the question did not affect her
only— with whom she would be happy, and whom she
loved—but that she would have that moment to wound a
man whom she liked. And to wound him cruelly. What
for? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in love with
her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it
would have to be.
‘My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?’
she thought. ‘Can I tell him I don’t love him? That will be
a lie. What am I to say to him? That I love someone else?
No, that’s impossible. I’m going away, I’m going away.’
She had reached the door, when she heard his step.
‘No! it’s not honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have
done nothing wrong. What is to be, will be! I’ll tell the
truth. And with him one can’t be ill at ease. Here he is,’
she said to herself, seeing his powerful, shy figure, with his
shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into his face,
as thought imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.
‘It’s not time yet; I think I’m too early,’ he said
glancing round the empty drawing room. When he saw
that his expectations were realized, that there was nothing
to prevent him from speaking, his face became gloomy.
‘Oh, no,’ said Kitty, and sat down at the table.
‘But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone,’ be
began, not sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not
to lose courage.
‘Mamma will be down directly. She was very much
tired.... Yesterday..’
She talked on, not knowing what her lips were
uttering, and not taking her supplicating and caressing eyes
off him.
He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.
‘I told you I did not know whether I should be here
long...that it depended on you..’
She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing
herself what answer she should make to what was coming.
‘That it depended on you,’ he repeated. ‘I meant to
say...I meant to say...I came for this...to be my wife!’ he
brought out, not knowing what he was saying; but feeling
that the most terrible thing was said, he stopped short and
looked at her...
She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was
feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She
had never anticipated that the utterance of love would
produce such a powerful effect on her. But it lasted only
an instant. She remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear,
truthful eyes, and seeing his desperate face, she answered
hastily:
‘That cannot be...forgive me.’
A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of
what importance in his life! And how aloof and remote
from him she had become now!
‘It was bound to be so,’ he said, not looking at her.
He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.
Chapter 14
But at that very moment the princess came in. There
was a look of horror on her face when she saw them
alone, and their disturbed faces. Levin bowed to her, and
said nothing. Kitty did not speak nor lift her eyes. ‘Thank
God, she has refused him,’ thought the mother, and her
face lighted up with the habitual smile with which she
greeted her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began
questioning Levin about his life in the country. He sat
down again, waiting for other visitors to arrive, in order to
retreat unnoticed.
Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty’s,
married the preceding winter, Countess Nordston.
She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman,
with brilliant black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her
affection for her showed itself, as the affection of married
women for girls always does, in the desire to make a
match for Kitty after her own ideal of married happiness;
she wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she had often
met at the Shtcherbatskys’ early in the winter, and she had
always disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit,
when they met, consisted in making fun of him.
‘I do like it when he looks down at me from the height
of his grandeur, or breaks off his learned conversation with
me because I’m a fool, or is condescending to me. I like
that so; to see him condescending! I am so glad he can’t
bear me,’ she used to say of him.
She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her,
and despised her for what she was proud of and regarded
as a fine characteristic—her nervousness, her delicate
contempt and indifference for everything coarse and
earthly.
The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that
relation with one another not seldom seen in society,
when two persons, who remain externally on friendly
terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot
even take each other seriously, and cannot even be
offended by each other.
The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.
‘Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you’ve come back to
our corrupt Babylon,’ she said, giving him her tiny, yellow
hand, and recalling what he had chanced to say early in
the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon. ‘Come, is
Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?’ she added,
glancing with a simper at Kitty.
‘It’s very flattering for me, countess, that you remember
my words so well,’ responded Levin, who had succeeded
in recovering his composure, and at once from habit
dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the Countess
Nordston. ‘They must certainly make a great impression
on you.’
‘Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down.
Well, Kitty, have you been skating again?...
And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for
Levin to withdraw now, it would still have been easier for
him to perpetrate this awkwardness than to remain all the
evening and see Kitty, who glanced at him now and then
and avoided his eyes. He was on the point of getting up,
when the princess, noticing that he was silent, addressed
him.
‘Shall you be long in Moscow? You’re busy with the
district council, though, aren’t you, and can’t be away for
long?’
‘No, princess, I’m no longer a member of the council,’
he said. ‘I have come up for a few days.’
‘There’s something the matter with him,’ thought
Countess Nordston, glancing at his stern, serious face. ‘He
isn’t in his old argumentative mood. But I’ll draw him
out. I do love making a fool of him before Kitty, and I’ll
do it.’
‘Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ she said to him, ‘do explain
to me, please, what’s the meaning of it. You know all
about such things. At home in our village of Kaluga all the
peasants and all the women have drunk up all they
possessed, and now they can’t pay us any rent. What’s the
meaning of that? You always praise the peasants so.’
At that instant another lady came into the room, and
Levin got up.
‘Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about
it, and can’t tell you anything,’ he said, and looked round
at the officer who came in behind the lady.
‘That must be Vronsky,’ thought Levin, and, to be sure
of it, glanced at Kitty. She had already had time to look at
Vronsky, and looked round at Levin. And simply from the
look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously brighter, Levin
knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if she
had told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he?
Now, whether for good or for ill, Levin could not choose
but remain; he must find out what the man was like
whom she loved.
There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no
matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on
everything good in him, and to see only what is bad.
There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all
to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has
outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart
only what is good. Levin belonged to the second class. But
he had no difficulty in finding what was good and
attractive in Vronsky. It was apparent at the first glance.
Vronsky was a squarely built, dark man, not very tall, with
a good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm and
resolute face. Everything about his face and figure, from
his short-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin down
to his loosely fitting, brand-new uniform, was simple and
at the same time elegant. Making way for the lady who
had come in, Vronsky went up to the princess and then to
Kitty.
As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a
specially tender light, and with a faint, happy, and
modestly triumphant smile (so it seemed to Levin),
bowing carefully and respectfully over her, he held out his
small broad hand to her.
Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat
down without once glancing at Levin, who had never
taken his eyes off him.
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‘Let me introduce you,’ said the princess, indicating
Levin. ‘Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, Count Alexey
Kirillovitch Vronsky.’
Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook
hands with him.
‘I believe I was to have dined with you this winter,’ he
said, smiling his simple and open smile; ‘but you had
unexpectedly left for the country.’
‘Konstantin Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and
us townspeople,’ said Countess Nordston.
‘My words must make a deep impression on you, since
you remember them so well,’ said Levin, and suddenly
conscious that he had said just the same thing before, he
reddened.
Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and
smiled.
‘Are you always in the country?’ he inquired. ‘I should
think it must be dull in the winter.’
‘It’s not dull if one has work to do; besides, one’s not
dull by oneself,’ Levin replied abruptly.
‘I am fond of the country,’ said Vronsky, noticing, and
affecting not to notice, Levin’s tone.
‘But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in
the country always,’ said Countess Nordston.
‘I don’t know; I have never tried for long. I experience
a queer feeling once,’ he went on. ‘I never longed so for
the country, Russian country, with bast shoes and
peasants, as when I was spending a winter with my mother
in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And
indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short
time. And it’s just there that Russia comes back to me
most vividly, and especially the country. It’s as though..’
He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning
his serene, friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying
obviously just what came into his head.
Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say
something, he stopped short without finishing what he
had begun, and listened attentively to her.
The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the
princess, who always kept in reserve, in case a subject
should be lacking, two heavy guns—the relative
advantages of classical and of modern education, and
universal military service—had not to move out either of
them, while Countess Nordston had not a chance of
chaffing Levin.
Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the
general conversation; saying to himself every instant,
‘Now go,’ he still did not go, as though waiting for
something.
The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits,
and Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism,
began to describe the marvels she had seen.
‘Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity’s sake
do take me to see them! I have never seen anything
extraordinary, though I am always on the lookout for it
everywhere,’ said Vronsky, smiling.
‘Very well, next Saturday,’ answered Countess
Nordston. ‘But you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you
believe in it?’ she asked Levin.
‘Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say.’
‘But I want to hear your opinion.’
‘My opinion,’ answered Levin, ‘is only that this tableturning
simply proves that educated society—so called—is
no higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye,
and in witchcraft and omens, while we..’
‘Oh, then you don’t believe in it?’
‘I can’t believe in it, countess.’
‘But if I’ve seen it myself?’
‘The peasant women too tell us they have seen
goblins.’
‘Then you think I tell a lie?’
And she laughed a mirthless laugh.
‘Oh, no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievitch said he could
not believe in it,’ said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin
saw this, and, still more exasperated, would have
answered, but Vronsky with his bright frank smile rushed
to the support of the conversation, which was threatening
to become disagreeable.
‘You do not admit the conceivability at all?’ he
queried. ‘But why not? We admit the existence of
electricity, of which we know nothing. Why should there
not be some new force, still unknown to us, which..’
‘When electricity was discovered,’ Levin interrupted
hurriedly, ‘it was only the phenomenon that was
discovered, and it was unknown from what it proceeded
and what were its effects, and ages passed before its
applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have
begun with tables writing for them, and spirits appearing
to them, and have only later started saying that it is an
unknown force.’
Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did
listen, obviously interested in his words.
‘Yes, but the spiritualists say we don’t know at present
what this force is, but there is a force, and these are the
conditions in which it acts. Let the scientific men find out
what the force consists in. Not, I don’t see why there
should not be a new force, if it..’
‘Why, because with electricity,’ Levin interrupted
again, ‘every time you rub tar against wool, a recognized
phenomenon is manifested, but in this case it does not
happen every time, and so it follows it is not a natural
phenomenon.’
Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a
tone too serious for a drawing room, Vronsky made no
rejoinder, but by way of trying to change the
conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.
‘Do let us try at once, countess,’ he said; but Levin
would finish saying what he thought.
‘I think,’ he went on, ‘that this attempt of the
spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new
natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual
force, and then try to subject it to material experiment.’
Every one was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.
‘And I think you would be a first-rate medium,’ said
Countess Nordston; ‘there’s something enthusiastic in
you.’
Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something,
reddened, and said nothing.
‘Do let us try table-turning at once, please,’ said
Vronsky. ‘Princess, will you allow it?’
And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table.
Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes
met Levin’s. She felt for him with her whole heart, the
more because she was pitying him for suffering of which
she was herself the cause. ‘If you can forgive me, forgive
me,’ said her eyes, ‘I am so happy.’
‘I hate them all, and you, and myself,’ his eyes
responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not
destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves
round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring,
the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies,
addressed Levin.
‘Ah!’ he began joyously. ‘Been here long, my boy? I
didn’t even know you were in town. Very glad to see
you.’ The old prince embraced Levin, and talking to him
did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was serenely
waiting till the prince should turn to him.
Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth was to
Levin after what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly
her father responded at last to Vronsky’s bow, and how
Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her father, as
though trying and failing to understand how and why
anyone could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she
flushed.
‘Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ said
Countess Nordston; ‘we want to try an experiment.’
‘What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must
excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but to my mind it is
better fun to play the ring game,’ said the old prince,
looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his
suggestion. ‘There’s some sense in that, anyway.’
Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his
resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately
talking to Countess Nordston of the great ball that was to
come off next week.
‘I hope you will be there?’ he said to Kitty. As soon as
the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out
unnoticed, and the last impression he carried away with
him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty
answering Vronsky’s inquiry about the ball.
Chapter 15
At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her
conversation with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt
for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had
received an OFFER. She had no doubt that she had acted
rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she
could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly.
It was Levin’s face, with his scowling brows, and his kind
eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he
stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at
Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that tears came into
her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for
whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his
manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the
good nature conspicuous in everything towards everyone.
She remembered the love for her of the man she loved,
and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on
the pillow, smiling with happiness. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry;
but what could I do? It’s not my fault,’ she said to herself;
but an inner voice told her something else. Whether she
felt remorse at having won Levin’s love, or at having
refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was
poisoned by doubts. ‘Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have
pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!’ she repeated to herself,
till she fell asleep.
Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little
library, one of the scenes so often repeated between the
parents on account of their favorite daughter.
‘What? I’ll tell you what!’ shouted the prince, waving
his arms, and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressinggown
round him again. ‘That you’ve no pride, no dignity;
that you’re disgracing, ruining your daughter by this
vulgar, stupid match-making!’
‘But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I
done?’ said the princess, almost crying.
She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her
daughter, had gone to the prince to say good-night as
usual, and though she had no intention of telling him of
Levin’s offer and Kitty’s refusal, still she hinted to her
husband that she fancied things were practically settled
with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon
as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the
prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began to
use unseemly language.
‘What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all,
you’re trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all
Moscow will be talking of it, and with good reason. If you
have evening parties, invite everyone, don’t pick out the
possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano
player, and let them dance, and not as you do things
nowadays, hunting up good matches. It makes me sick,
sick to see it, and you’ve gone on till you’ve turned the
poor wench’s head. Levin’s a thousand times the better
man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they’re turned out
by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish.
But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need
not run after anyone.’
‘But what have I done?’
‘Why, you’ve...’ The prince was crying wrathfully.
‘I know if one were to listen to you,’ interrupted the
princess, ‘we should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be
so, we’d better go into the country.’
‘Well, and we had better.’
‘But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I
don’t try to catch them in the least. A young man, and a
very nice one, has fallen in love with her, and she, I
fancy..’