The particulars which the princess had learned in regard
to Varenka’s past and her relations with Madame Stahl
were as follows:
Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had
worried her husband out of his life, while others said it
was he who had made her wretched by his immoral
behavior, had always been a woman of weak health and
enthusiastic temperament. When, after her separation from
her husband, she gave birth to her only child, the child
had died almost immediately, and the family of Madame
Stahl, knowing her sensibility, and fearing the news would
kill her, had substituted another child, a baby born the
same night and in the same house in Petersburg, the
daughter of the chief cook of the Imperial Household.
This was Varenka. Madame Stahl learned later on that
Varenka was not her own child, but she went on bringing
her up, especially as very soon afterwards Varenka had not
a relation of her own living. Madame Stahl had now been
living more than ten years continuously abroad, in the
south, never leaving her couch. And some people said that
Madame Stahl had made her social position as a
philanthropic, highly religious woman; other people said
she really was at heart the highly ethical being, living for
nothing but the good of her fellow creatures, which she
represented herself to be. No one knew what her faith
was—Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But one fact was
indubitable—she was in amicable relations with the
highest dignitaries of all the churches and sects.
Varenka lived with her all the while abroad, and
everyone who knew Madame Stahl knew and liked
Mademoiselle Varenka, as everyone called her.
Having learned all these facts, the princess found
nothing to object to in her daughter’s intimacy with
Varenka, more especially as Varenka’s breeding and
education were of the best—she spoke French and English
extremely well—and what was of the most weight,
brought a message from Madame Stahl expressing her
regret that she was prevented by her ill health from
making the acquaintance of the princess.
After getting to know Varenka, Kitty became more and
more fascinated by her friend, and every day she
discovered new virtues in her.
The princess, hearing that Varenka had a good voice,
asked her to come and sing to them in the evening.
‘Kitty plays, and we have a piano, not a good one, it’s
true, but you will give us so much pleasure,’ said the
princess with her affected smile, which Kitty disliked
particularly just then, because she noticed that Varenka
had no inclination to sing. Varenka came, however, in the
evening and brought a roll of music with her. The princess
had invited Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter and the
colonel.
Varenka seemed quite unaffected by there being
persons present she did not know, and she went directly to
the piano. She could not accompany herself, but she could
sing music at sight very well. Kitty, who played well,
accompanied her.
‘You have an extraordinary talent,’ the princess said to
her after Varenka had sung the first song extremely well.
Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter expressed their
thanks and admiration.
‘Look,’ said the colonel, looking out of the window,
‘what an audience has collected to listen to you.’ There
actually was quite a considerable crowd under the
windows.
‘I am very glad it gives you pleasure,’ Varenka
answered simply.
Kitty looked with pride at her friend. She was
enchanted by her talent, and her voice and her face, but
most of all by her manner, by the way Varenka obviously
thought nothing of her singing and was quite unmoved by
their praises. She seemed only to be asking: ‘Am I to sing
again, or is that enough?’
‘If it had been I,’ thought Kitty, ‘how proud I should
have been! How delighted I should have been to see that
crowd under the windows! But she’s utterly unmoved by
it. Her only motive is to avoid refusing and to please
mamma. What is there in her? What is it gives her the
power to look down on everything, to be calm
independently of everything? How I should like to know
it and to learn it of her!’ thought Kitty, gazing into her
serene face. The princess asked Varenka to sing again, and
Varenka sang another song, also smoothly, distinctly, and
well, standing erect at the piano and beating time on it
with her thin, dark-skinned hand.
The next song in the book was an Italian one. Kitty
played the opening bars, and looked round at Varenka.
‘Let’s skip that,’ said Varenka, flushing a little. Kitty let
her eyes rest on Varenka’s face, with a look of dismay and
inquiry.
‘Very well, the next one,’ she said hurriedly, turning
over the pages, and at once feeling that there was
something connected with the song.
‘No,’ answered Varenka with a smile, laying her hand
on the music, ‘no, let’s have that one.’ And she sang it just
as quietly, as coolly, and as well as the others.
When she had finished, they all thanked her again, and
went off to tea. Kitty and Varenka went out into the little
garden that adjoined the house.
‘Am I right, that you have some reminiscences
connected with that song?’ said Kitty. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she
added hastily, ‘only say if I’m right.’
‘No, why not? I’ll tell you simply,’ said Varenka, and,
without waiting for a reply, she went on: ‘Yes, it brings up
memories, once painful ones. I cared for someone once,
and I used to sing him that song.’
Kitty with big, wide-open eyes gazed silently,
sympathetically at Varenka.
‘I cared for him, and he cared for me; but his mother
did not wish it, and he married another girl. He’s living
now not far from us, and I see him sometimes. You didn’t
think I had a love story too,’ she said, and there was a faint
gleam in her handsome face of that fire which Kitty felt
must once have glowed all over her.
‘I didn’t think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never
care for anyone else after knowing you. Only I can’t
understand how he could, to please his mother, forget you
and make you unhappy; he had no heart.’
‘Oh, no, he’s a very good man, and I’m not unhappy;
quite the contrary, I’m very happy. Well, so we shan’t be
singing any more now,’ she added, turning towards the
house.
‘How good you are! how good you are!’ cried Kitty,
and stopping her, she kissed her. ‘If I could only be even a
little like you!’
‘Why should you be like anyone? You’re nice as you
are,’ said Varenka, smiling her gentle, weary smile.
‘No, I’m not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a
minute, let’s sit down,’ said Kitty, making her sit down
again beside her. ‘Tell me, isn’t it humiliating to think that
a man has disdained your love, that he hasn’t cared for
it?..’
‘But he didn’t disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but
he was a dutiful son..’
‘Yes, but if it hadn’t been on account of his mother, if
it had been his own doing?...’ said Kitty, feeling she was
giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with the
flush of shame, had betrayed her already.
‘I that case he would have done wrong, and I should
not have regretted him,’ answered Varenka, evidently
realizing that they were now talking not of her, but of
Kitty.
‘But the humiliation,’ said Kitty, ‘the humiliation one
can never forget, can never forget,’ she said, remembering
her look at the last ball during the pause in the music.
‘Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing
wrong?’
‘Worse than wrong—shameful.’
Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty’s
hand.
‘Why, what is there shameful?’ she said. ‘You didn’t tell
a man, who didn’t care for you, that you loved him, did
you?’
‘Of course not, I never said a word, but he knew it.
No, no, there are looks, there are ways; I can’t forget it, if
I live a hundred years.’
‘Why so? I don’t understand. The whole point is
whether you love him now or not,’ said Varenka, who
called everything by its name.
‘I hate him; I can’t forgive myself.’
‘Why, what for?’
‘The shame, the humiliation!’
‘Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!’ said
Varenka. ‘There isn’t a girl who hasn’t been through the
same. And it’s all so unimportant.’
‘Why, what is important?’ said Kitty, looking into her
face with inquisitive wonder.
‘Oh, there’s so much that’s important,’ said Varenka,
smiling.
‘Why, what?’
‘Oh, so much that’s more important,’ answered
Varenka, not knowing what to say. But at that instant they
heard the princess’s voice from the window. ‘Kitty, it’s
cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.’
‘It really is time to go in!’ said Varenka, getting up. ‘I
have to go on to Madame Berthe’s; she asked me to.’
Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate
curiosity and entreaty her eyes asked her: ‘What is it, what
is this of such importance that gives you such tranquillity?
You know, tell me!’ But Varenka did not even know
what Kitty’s eyes were asking her. She merely thought
that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too that evening,
and to make haste home in time for maman’s tea at twelve
o’clock. She went indoors, collected her music, and saying
good-bye to everyone, was about to go.
‘Allow me to see you home,’ said the colonel.
‘Yes, how can you go alone at night like this?’ chimed
in the princess. ‘Anyway, I’ll send Parasha.’
Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly restrain a smile at
the idea that she needed an escort.
‘No, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens
to me,’ she said, taking her hat. And kissing Kitty once
more, without saying what was important, she stepped out
courageously with the music under her arm and vanished
into the twilight of the summer night, bearing away with
her her secret of what was important and what gave her
the calm and dignity so much to be envied.
Chapter 33
Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and
this acquaintance, together with her friendship with
Varenka, did not merely exercise a great influence on her,
it also comforted her in her mental distress. She found this
comfort through a completely new world being opened to
her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing
in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from
the height of which she could contemplate her past
calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive
life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto there was
a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a
religion having nothing in common with that one which
Kitty had known from childhood, and which found
expression in litanies and all-night services at the Widow’s
Home, where one might meet one’s friends, and in
learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a
lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of
noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more
than merely believe because one was told to, which one
could love.
Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl
talked to Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on
with pleasure as on the memory of one’s youth, and only
once she said in passing that in all human sorrows nothing
gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ’s compassion for us no sorrow is trifling—and
immediately talked of other things. But in every gesture of
Madame Stahl, in every word, in every heavenly—as Kitty
called it—look, and above all in the whole story of her
life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized that
something ‘that was important,’ of which, till then, she
had known nothing.
Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl’s character was,
touching as was her story, and exalted and moving as was
her speech, Kitty could not help detecting in her some
traits which perplexed her. She noticed that when
questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl had
smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with
Christian meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had
found a Catholic priest with her, Madame Stahl had
studiously kept her face in the shadow of the lamp-shade
and had smiled in a peculiar way. Trivial as these two
observations were, they perplexed her, and she had her
doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on the other hand
Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or relations,
with a melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring
nothing, regretting nothing, was just that perfection of
which Kitty dared hardly dream. In Varenka she realized
that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one
will be calm, happy, and noble. And that was what Kitty
longed to be. Seeing now clearly what was the most
important, Kitty was not satisfied with being enthusiastic
over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole soul to
the new life that was opening to her. From Varenka’s
accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl and other people
whom she mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the
plan of her own future life. She would, like Madame
Stahl’s niece, Aline, of whom Varenka had talked to her a
great deal, seek out those who were in trouble, wherever
she might be living, help them as far as she could, give
them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick, the
criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to
criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all
these were secret dreams, of which Kitty did not talk
either to her mother or to Varenka.
While awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a
large scale, however, Kitty, even then at the springs,
where there were so many people ill and unhappy, readily
found a chance for practicing her new principles in
imitation of Varenka.
At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was
much under the influence of her engouement, as she
called it, for Madame Stahl, and still more for Varenka.
She saw that Kitty did not merely imitate Varenka in her
conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of
walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the
princess noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind
of serious spiritual change was taking place in her
daughter.
The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a
French testament that Madame Stahl had given her—a
thing she had never done before; that she avoided society
acquaintances and associated with the sick people who
were under Varenka’s protection, and especially one poor
family, that of a sick painter, Petrov. Kitty was
unmistakably proud of playing the part of a sister of mercy
in that family. All this was well enough, and the princess
had nothing to say against it, especially as Petrov’s wife
was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German
princess, noticing Kitty’s devotion, praised her, calling her
an angel of consolation. All this would have been very
well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess
saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so
indeed she told her.
‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer,’ she said to her.
Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she
thought that one could not talk about exaggeration where
Christianity was concerned. What exaggeration could
there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was
bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and
give one’s cloak if one’s coat were taken? But the princess
disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact
that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all her
heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings
from her mother. She concealed them not because she did
not respect or did not love her mother, but simply because
she was her mother. She would have revealed them to
anyone sooner than to her mother.
‘How is it Anna Pavlovna’s not been to see us for so
long?’ the princess said one day of Madame Petrova. ‘I’ve
asked her, but she seems put out about something.’
‘No, I’ve not noticed it, maman,’ said Kitty, flushing
hotly.
‘Is it long since you went to see them?’
‘We’re meaning to make an expedition to the
mountains tomorrow,’ answered Kitty,
‘Well, you can go,’ answered the princess, gazing at her
daughter’s embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause
of her embarrassment.
That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that
Anna Pavlovna had changed her mind and given up the
expedition for the morrow. And the princess noticed again
that Kitty reddened.
‘Kitty, haven’t you had some misunderstanding with
the Petrovs?’ said the princess, when they were left alone.
‘Why has she given up sending the children and coming
to see us?’
Kitty answered that nothing had happened between
them, and that she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna
seemed displeased with her. Kitty answered perfectly truly.
She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had changed
to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which
she could not tell her mother, which she did not put into
words to herself. It was one of those things which one
knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself
so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.
Again and again she went over in her memory all her
relations with the family. She remembered the simple
delight expressed on the round, good-humored face of
Anna Pavlovna at their meetings; she remembered their
secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw
him away from the work which was forbidden him, and
to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest
boy, who used to call her ‘my Kitty,’ and would not go to
bed without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled
the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck,
in his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning
blue eyes that were so terrible to Kitty at first, and his
painful attempts to seem hearty and lively in her presence.
She recalled the efforts she had made at first to overcome
the repugnance she felt for him, as for all consumptive
people, and the pains it had cost her to think of things to
say to him. She recalled the timid, softened look with
which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of
compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her
own goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all
was! But all that was at first. Now, a few days ago,
everything was suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met
Kitty with affected cordiality, and had kept continual
watch on her and on her husband.
Could that touching pleasure he showed when she
came near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coolness?
‘Yes,’ she mused, ‘there was something unnatural about
Anna Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when
she said angrily the day before yesterday: ‘There, he will
keep waiting for you; he wouldn’t drink his coffee
without you, though he’s grown so dreadfully weak.’ ‘
‘Yes, perhaps, too, she didn’t like it when I gave him
the rug. It was all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly,
and was so long thanking me, that I felt awkward too.
And then that portrait of me he did so well. And most of
all that look of confusion and tenderness! Yes, yes, that’s
it!’ Kitty repeated to herself with horror. ‘No, it can’t be,
it oughtn’t to be! He’s so much to be pitied!’ she said to
herself directly after.
This doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.
Chapter 34
Before the end of the course of drinking the waters,
Prince Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to
Baden and Kissingen to Russian friends—to get a breath
of Russian air, as he said—came back to his wife and
daughter.
The views of the prince and of the princess on life
abroad were completely opposed. The princess thought
everything delightful, and in spite of her established
position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a
European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the
simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman;
and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her.
The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign
detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian
habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less
European than he was in reality.
The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in
loose bags on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of
mind. His good humor was even greater when he saw
Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty’s friendship
with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the
princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed
in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual
feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter
away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have
got out of the reach of his influence into regions
inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all
drowned in the sea of kindliness and good humor which
was always within him, and more so than ever since his
course of Carlsbad waters.
The day after his arrival the prince, in his long
overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks
propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter
to the spring in the greatest good humor.
It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses
with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, redarmed,
beer-drinking German waitresses, working away
merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the
springs the oftener they met sick people; and their
appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the
everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Kitty was
no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sun, the
brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music were
for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces, with
their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence,
for which she watched. But to the prince the brightness
and gaiety of the June morning, and the sound of the
orchestra playing a --- waltz then in fashion, and above
all, the appearance of the healthy attendants, seemed
something unseemly and monstrous, in conjunction with
these slowly moving, dying figures gathered together from
all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of pride and, as it
were, of the return of youth, with his favorite daughter on
his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his
vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost
like a man not dressed in a crowd.
‘Present me to your new friends,’ he said to his
daughter, squeezing her hand with his elbow. ‘I like even
your horrid Soden for making you so well again. Only it’s
melancholy, very melancholy here. Who’s that?’
Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met,
with some of whom she was acquainted and some not. At
the entrance of the garden they met the blind lady,
Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was
delighted to see the old Frenchwoman’s face light up
when she heard Kitty’s voice. She at once began talking to
him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him
for having such a delightful daughter, extolling Kitty to
the skies before her face, and calling her a treasure, a pearl,
and a consoling angel.
‘Well, she’s the second angel, then,’ said the prince,
smiling. ‘she calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number
one.’