Anna Karennina

by Leo Tolstoy

PART FIVE

Chapter I.
Princess Shcherbatskaia considered that it was out of the question for the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shcherbatsky's was seriously ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts- a larger and a smaller trousseau- the Princess consented to have the wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be sent on later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as, immediately after the wedding, the newly married couple were to go to the country, where the belongings of the larger trousseau would not be wanted.
Levin still continued in the same delirious condition, in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and sole aim of all existence, and that he need not now think or care about anything, that everything was being done and would be done for him by others. He had not even plans and aims for the future, he left its arrangement to others, knowing that everything would be delightful. His brother, Sergei Ivanovich, and Stepan Arkadyevich, and the Princess, guided him in doing what he had to do. All he did was to agree entirely with everything suggested to him. His brother raised money for him, the Princess advised him to leave Moscow after the wedding. Stepan Arkadyevich advised him to go abroad. He agreed to everything. "Do what you choose, if it amuses you, I'm happy, and my happiness can be no greater and no less because of anything you do," he thought. When he told Kitty of Stepan Arkadyevich's advice that they should go abroad, he was much surprised that she did not agree to this, and had some definite requirements of her own in regard to their future. She knew Levin had work he loved in the country. She did not, as he saw, understand this work- she did not even care to understand it. But that did not prevent her from regarding it as a matter of great importance. And therefore she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to go not abroad where she was not going to live, but to the place where their home would be. This definitely expressed purpose astonished Levin. But since he did not care either way, he immediately asked Stepan Arkadyevich, as though it were his duty, to go down to the country and to arrange everything there to the best of his ability, with that taste of which he had so much.
"But, I say," Stepan Arkadyevich said to him one day after he had come back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young people's arrival, "have you a certificate of having been at confession?"
"No. But what of it?"
"You can't be married without it."
"My, my, my!" cried Levin. "Why, I believe it's nine years since I've taken the sacrament! I never thought of it."
"You're a pretty fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevich laughing, "and you call me a Nihilist! But this won't do, you know. You must take the sacrament."
"When? There are four days left now."
Stepan Arkadyevich arranged this also, and Levin had to prepare himself for the sacrament. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and to take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now, in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to be a liar or a blasphemer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevich with questions as to the possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating, Stepan Arkadyevich maintained that it was out of the question.
"Besides, what is it to you- two days? And he's an awfully fine, clever old fellow. He'll pull the tooth out for you so gently you won't notice it."
Standing at the first mass, Levin attempted to revive in himself his youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls; but he felt that he could not do that either. Levin found himself, like the majority of his contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the significance of what he was doing, nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice told him, was therefore false and wrong.
During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during this idle time of standing in church.
He had stood through the mass, the evening service, and the midnight service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and, without having tea, went at eight o'clock in the morning to the church for the morning service and the confession.
There was no one in church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and the churchmen. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and, at once going to a little table at the wall, read the exhortations. During the reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, "Lord, have mercy on us!" which sounded like "mercynuslor!" Levin felt that his thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now, or else confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor examining what was said. "It's wonderful what expression there is in her hand," he thought, remembering how they had been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed her hand and then had examined the lines on the pink palm. "Another 'mercynuslor!'" thought Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon's back bowing before him. "She took my hand then and examined the lines. 'You've got a splendid hand,' she said." And he looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. "Yes, now it will soon be over," he thought. "No, it seems to be starting up again," he thought, listening to the prayers. "No, it's just ending: there he is bowing down to the ground. That's always at the end."
The deacon's hand in a plush cuff unobtrusively accepted a three-rouble note, and the deacon said he would put Levin's name down in the register, and, his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir in Levin's head, but he made haste to drive it away. "It will come right somehow," he thought, and went toward the ambo. He went up the steps, and turning to the right, saw the priest. The priest, a little ancient with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the lectern, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in an accustomed voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and turned, facing Levin.
"Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession," he said, pointing to the crucifix. "Do you believe in all the doctrines of the Holy Apostolic Church?" the priest went on, turning his eyes away from Levin's face and folding his hands under his stole.
"I have doubted- I doubt everything," said Levin in a voice that jarred on himself, and he ceased speaking.
The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:
"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?" he added, without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time.
"My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most part I am in doubt."
"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind," the priest repeated the same words. "What do you doubt about principally?"
"I doubt everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence of God," Levin could not help saying, and he was horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin's words did not, it seemed, make much impression on the priest.
"What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?" he said hurriedly, with a barely perceptible smile.
Levin did not speak.
"What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?" the priest went on in the rapid customary recitative. "Who has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly at Levin.
Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a direct answer to the question.
"I don't know," he said.
"You don't know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?" the priest said, with good-humored perplexity.
"I don't understand it at all," said Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid in such a position.
"Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God," he repeated hurriedly.
The priest paused for some time, as though meditating.
"You, I hear, are about to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son in the spirit, Prince Shcherbatsky?" he resumed, with a smile. "An excellent young lady."
"Yes," answered Levin, blushing for the priest. "What does he want to ask me about this at confession for?" he thought.
And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:
"You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with offspring. Are you?- Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to infidelity?" he said, with gentle reproachfulness. "If you love your child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him when the innocent babe asks you: 'Papa! Who made all that enchants me in this world- the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the grass?' Can you say to him: 'I don't know?' You cannot but know, since the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you: 'What awaits me in the life beyond the grave?' What will you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That's not right," he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes.
Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter upon a discussion with the priest, but because no one had ever asked him such questions- and when his babes did ask him those questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them.
"You are entering upon a time of life," pursued the priest, "when you must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His mercy aid you and have mercy on you!" he concluded. "Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His loving-kindness, forgives this child..." and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the priest blessed him and dismissed him.
On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the awkward position being over and having been got through without his having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory that what the kind, fine old fellow had said had not been at all as stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it that must be cleared up.
"Of course, not now," thought Levin, "but at some later day." Levin felt more than ever now that there was something not clear and not clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same position which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for which he blamed his friend Sviiazhsky.
Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly's, and was in very high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevich the state of excitement in which he found himself, he said that he was happy, like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea, and done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps up to the table and the window sills in its delight.
Chapter II.
On the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the Princess and Darya Alexandrovna insisted on strictly keeping all the customs), Levin did not see his betrothed, and dined at his hotel with three bachelor friends, casually brought together at his rooms. These were Sergei Ivanovich, Katavassov, a university friend, now professor of natural science, whom Levin had met in the street and insisted on taking home with him, and Chirikov, his best man, a Moscow justice of the peace, Levin's companion in his bear hunts. The dinner was a very merry one: Sergei Ivanovich was in his happiest mood, and was much amused by Katavassov's originality. Katavassov, feeling his originality was appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Chirikov always gave a lively and good-humored support to conversation of any sort.
"See, now," said Katavassov, drawling his words from a habit acquired in the lecture room, "what a capable fellow was our friend Konstantin Dmitrievich. I'm speaking of absent company- he doesn't exist for us now. At the time he left the university he was fond of science, took an interest in humanity; now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit."
"A more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw," said Sergei Ivanovich.
"Oh, no, I'm not an enemy of matrimony. I'm in favor of division of labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people, while the rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That's how I look at it. To muddle up two trades there are too many amateurs; I'm not one of their number."
"How happy I shall be when I hear that you're in love!" said Levin. "Please invite me to the wedding."
"I'm in love now."
"Yes, with a cuttlefish! You know," Levin turned to his brother, "Mikhail Semionovich is writing a work on the digestive organs of the..."
"Now, make a muddle of it! It doesn't matter what about. And the fact is, I certainly do love cuttlefish."
"But that's no hindrance to your loving your wife."
"The cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance."
"Why so?"
"Oh, you'll see! You care about farming, hunting- well, you'll see!..."
"Arkhip was here today; he said there were no end of elk in Prudnoe, and two bears," said Chirikov.
"Well, you must go and get them without me."
"Ah, that's the truth," said Sergei Ivanovich. "And you may say good-by to bear hunting for the future- your wife won't allow it!"
Levin smiled. The picture of his wife not letting him go was so pleasant that he was ready to renounce forever the delights of looking upon bears.
"Still, it's a pity they should get those two bears without you. Do you remember last time at Khapilovo? And now it would be a delightful hunt!" said Chirikov.
Levin had not the heart to disillusion him of the notion that there could be something delightful apart from her, and so said nothing.
"There's some sense in this custom of saying good-by to bachelor life," said Sergei Ivanovich. "However happy you may be, you must regret your freedom."
"And confess there is a feeling that you want to jump out of the window, like Gogol's bridegroom?"
"Of course there is, but he won't confess," said Katavassov, and he broke into loud laughter.
"Oh, well, the window's open.... Let's start off this instant to Tver! There's a big she-bear; one can go right up to the lair. Seriously, let's go by the five o'clock! And here let them do what they like," said Chirikov smiling.
"Well, now, on my honor," said Levin smiling, "I can't find in my heart that feeling of regret for my freedom."
"Yes, there's such a chaos in your heart just now that you can't find anything there," said Katavassov. "Wait a bit, when you set it to rights a little, you'll find it!"
"No; if so, I should have felt a little, apart from my feeling" (he could not say "love" before them) "and happiness, a certain regret at losing my freedom.... On the contrary, I am glad at the very loss of my freedom."
"Awful! It's a hopeless case!" said Katavassov. "Well, let's drink to his recovery, or wish that a hundredth part of his dreams may be realized- and that would be happiness such as never has been seen on earth!"
Soon after dinner the guests went away to dress in time for the wedding.
When he was left alone, and recalled the conversation of these bachelor friends, Levin asked himself: Had he in his heart that regret for his freedom of which they had spoken? He smiled at the question. "Freedom! What is freedom for? Happiness is only in loving and wishing her wishes, thinking her thoughts; that is to say, not freedom at all- that's happiness!"
"But do I know her thoughts, her wishes, her feelings?" some voice suddenly whispered to him. The smile died away from his face, and he grew thoughtful. And suddenly a strange feeling came upon him. There came over him a dread and doubt- doubt of everything.
"What if she does not love me? What if she's marrying me simply to be married? What if she doesn't see herself what she's doing?" he asked himself. "She may come to her senses, and only when she is being married realize that she does not and cannot love me." And strange, most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen her with Vronsky had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him everything.
He jumped up quickly. "No, this can't go on!" he said to himself in despair. "I'll go to her; I'll ask her; I'll say for the last time: We are free, and hadn't we better stay so? Anything's better than endless misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!" With despair in his heart and bitter anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the hotel and drove to her house.
He found her in one of the rear rooms. She was sitting on a chest and making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor.
"Ah!" she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. "Kostia! Konstantin Dmitrievich!" (These latter days she used these names almost alternately.) "I didn't expect you! I'm going through my girlish wardrobe to see what's for whom...."
"Oh! That's very lovely!" he said gloomily, looking at the maid.
"You can go, Duniasha, I'll call you presently," said Kitty. "Kostia, what's the matter?" she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her.
"Kitty! I'm in torture. I can't be in torture alone," he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself. "I've come to say that there's still time. This can all be stopped and set right."
"What? I don't understand. What is the matter?"
"What I have said a thousand times over, and can't help thinking... that I'm not worthy of you. You couldn't consent to marry me. Think a little. You've made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can't love me... if... Better say so," he said, without looking at her. "I shall be wretched. Let people say what they like; anything's better than misery.... Far better now while there's still time...."
"I don't understand," she answered, panic-stricken; "you mean you want to give it up... that you don't want it?"
"Yes- if you don't love me."
"You're out of your mind!" she cried, turning crimson with vexation. But his face was so piteous that she restrained her vexation, and flinging some clothes off an armchair, she sat down beside him. "What are you thinking? Tell me all."
"I am thinking you can't love me. What can you love me for?"
"My God! What can I do?..." she said, and burst into tears.
"Oh! What have I done?" he cried, and kneeling before her, he fell to kissing her hands.
When the old Princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them completely reconciled. Kitty had not simply assured him that she loved him, but had gone so far- in answer to his question, what she loved him for- as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly clear. When the Princess came to them, they were sitting side by side on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty's wanting to give Duniasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but that Duniasha should have the blue one.
"How is it you don't see? She's a brunette, and it won't suit her.... I've worked it all out."
Hearing why he had come, the Princess was half-humorously, half-seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to hinder Kitty's hairdressing, as Charles the coiffeur was just coming.
"As it is, she's been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks, and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense," she said to him. "Get along with you, my dear!"
Levin, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his hotel. His brother, Darya Alexandrovna, and Stepan Arkadyevich, all in full dress, were waiting for him to bless him with an icon. There was no time to lose. Darya Alexandrovna had to drive home again to fetch her curled and pomaded son, who was to carry the icon in the bride's carriage. Then a carriage had to be sent for the best man, and another, that would take Sergei Ivanovich away, would have to be sent back.... Altogether there were a great many most complicated matters to be considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable- that there must be no delay, as it was already half-past six.
Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the icon. Stepan Arkadyevich stood in a comically solemn pose beside his wife, took the icon, and, telling Levin to bow down to the ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him three times; Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and immediately was in a hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the due order of the various carriages.
"Come, I'll tell you how we'll manage: you drive in our carriage to fetch him, and Sergei Ivanovich, if he'll be so good, will drive there and then send his carriage."
"Of course; I shall be delighted."
"We'll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?" asked Stepan Arkadyevich.
"Yes," answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to lay out his clothes for him to dress.
Chapter III.
A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off their kepis or black hats, kept walking into the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the icons. The golden nimbus on the red ground of the ikonostasis, and the gilt relief on the icons and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the floor-flags, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the ambo, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and surplices- all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm church, in the crowd of evening dresses and white ties, of uniforms, and of silk, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, of bare shoulders and arms and long gloves, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or some spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation.
At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late. Then they began to look more and more often toward the door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom at all, but were engrossed in conversation.
The protodeacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time, coughed impatiently, making the windowpanes rattle in their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the church clerk and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, "It really is strange, though!" and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom's best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and, in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms, was standing in the drawing room of the Shcherbatskys' house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her bridal mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from her best man that her bridegroom was at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his head out of door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came back in despair, and waving his hands addressed Stepan Arkadyevich, who was smoking serenely.
"Was ever a man in such a fearful fool's position?" he said.
"Yes, it is stupid," Stepan Arkadyevich assented, smiling soothingly. "But don't worry, it'll be brought directly."
"No, what is to be done!" said Levin, with smothered fury. "And these fool open waistcoats! Out of the question!" he said, looking at the crumpled front of his shirt. "And what if the things have been taken on to the railway station!" he roared in desperation.
"Then you must put on mine."
"I ought to have done so long ago, if at all."
"It's not well to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! It will come round."
The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that was wanted.
"But the shirt!" cried Levin.
"You've got a shirt on," Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.
Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the Shcherbatskys' house, from which the young people were to set out the same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the Shcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up- it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan Arkadyevich's and brought a shirt- it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the Shcherbatskys' to unpack the things. The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.
"Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van," said Kouzma.
Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, without looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
"You won't help matters like that," said Stepan Arkadyevich with a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. "It will come round, it will come round- I tell you."
Chapter IV.
"They've come!" "Here he is!" "Which one?" "Rather young, eh?" "Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!" were the comments in the crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her into the church.
Stepan Arkadyevich told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not nearly as pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the high, scalloped de Medici collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, and her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever- not because these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness.
"I was beginning to think you meant to run away," she said, and smiled to him.
What happened to me is so stupid I'm ashamed to speak of it!" he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergei Ivanovich, who came up to him.
"This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!" said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head and smiling.
"Yes, yes!" answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking about.
"Now, Kostia, you have to decide," said Stepan Arkadyevich with an air of mock dismay, "a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been lighted? It's a matter of ten roubles," he added, relaxing his lips into a smile. "I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree."
Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.
"Well, how's it to be then- unused or used candles?- that is the question."
"Yes, yes, unused ones."
"Oh, I'm very glad. The question's decided!" said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling. "How silly men become, though, in this situation," he said to Chirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to his bride.
"Kitty, mind you're the first to step on the carpet," said Countess Nordstone, coming up. "You're a fine person!" she said to Levin.
"Aren't you frightened, eh?" said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.
"Are you cold? You're pale. Stop a minute, stoop down," said Kitty's sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, pretty hands she smilingly set straight the flowers on her head.
Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and then laughed naturally.
Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.
Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the porch of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did not hear what the priest said.
"Take the bride's hand and lead her up," the best man said to Levin.
It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin again- because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm- till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at last he had taken the bride's hand in the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of trains. Someone stooped down and straightened out the bride's train. The church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard falling from the candles.
The little old priest in his calotte, with his long silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.
Stepan Arkadyevich approached him cautiously, whispered something, and, giving a wink at Levin, walked back again.
The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the bridal pair. The priest was the same old man who had confessed Levin. He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom, sighed, and, putting his right hand out from under his vestment, blessed the bridegroom with it, and also, with a shade of solicitous tenderness, laid his crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the candles, and, taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.
"Can it be true?" thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride. Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the candle.
All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position- all suddenly passed away and he was filled with joy and dread.
The handsome, stately protodeacon wearing a silver robe, and his curly locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward, and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.
"Blessed be the name of the Lord," the solemn syllables rang out slowly one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.
"Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, as now, and forever and aye," the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died away.
They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Czar; they prayed, too, for the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their troth.
"Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace, and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee," the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the protodeacon.
Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. "How did they guess that it is help, just help that one wants?" he thought, recalling all his fears and doubts of late. "What do I know? what can I do in this fearful business," he thought, "without help? Yes, it is help I want now."
When the deacon had finished the liturgical prayer, the priest turned to the bridal pair with his book: "Eternal God, who joinest together in love them that were separate," he read in a gentle, piping voice, "who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant, bless Thou Thy servants, Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works. For gracious and merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and forever and aye."- "Amen!" the unseen choir sent rolling again through the air.
"'Joinest together in love them that were separate.' What deep meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this moment," thought Levin. "Is she feeling the same as I?"
And, looking round, he met her eyes. And from their expression he concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the day when in the drawing room of the house in the Arbat street she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and had given herself to him without a word- on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her- to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a thought, nor a wish, apart from life with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold anticipation and uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life- all this was ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have terrors for her by its obscurity; but, terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in her heart.
Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took Kitty's little ring, and, asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first joint of his finger. "The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth to the servant of God, Ekaterina." And putting his big ring on Kitty's touchingly weak, pink tiny finger, the priest said the same thing.
And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in a whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having made with the rings the sign of the cross over them, the priest handed Kitty the big ring, and Levin the little one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings from hand to hand, still without doing what was expected.
Dolly, Chirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevich stepped forward to set them right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did not change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they looked more grave and deeply moved than before, and the smile with which Stepan Arkadyevich whispered to them that now they would each put on their own ring died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any smile would jar on them.
"Thou who didst from the beginning create male and female," the priest read after the exchange of rings, "from Thee woman was given to man to be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of children. O Lord, our God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to generation, bless Thy servants Konstantin and Ekaterina, and make their troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and in truth, and in love...."
Levin felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his dreams of how he would order his life, were mere childishness, and that it was something he had not understood hitherto, and now understood less than ever, though it was being performed upon him. The lump in his throat rose higher and higher; tears that would not be checked came into his eyes.
Chapter V.
In the church there was all Moscow, all the friends and relations; and during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the brilliantly lighted church, there was an incessant flow of discreetly subdued talk in the circle of gaily dressed women and girls, and men in white ties, evening dress, and uniform. The talk was principally kept up by the men, while the women were absorbed in watching every detail of the ceremony, which always touches them so much.
In the little group nearest the bride were her two sisters: Dolly, and the younger one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame Lvova, who had just arrived from abroad.
"Why is it Marie's in lilac? It's as bad as black at a wedding," said Madame Korsunskaia.
"With her complexion, it's her one salvation," responded Madame Drubetskaia. "I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It's like shop people...."
"So much prettier. I was married in the evening too...." answered Madame Korsunskaia, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had been that day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how different it all was now.
"They say if anyone is best man more than ten times, he'll never be married. I wanted to be one for the tenth time, but the post was taken," said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Charskaia, who had designs on him.
Princess Charskaia only answered with a smile. She looked at Kitty, thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty's place, and how she would remind him then of his joke today.
Shcherbatsky told the old Hoffraulein, Madame Nikoleva, that he meant to put the crown on Kitty's chignon for luck.
"She ought not to have worn a chignon," answered Madame Nikoleva, who had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. "I don't like such faste."
Sergei Ivanovich was talking to Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of themselves.
"Your brother may feel proud of himself. She's a marvel of sweetness. I believe you're envious."
"Oh, I've got over that, Darya Dmitrievna," he answered, and a melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.
Stepan Arkadyevich was telling his sister-in-law his joke about divorce.
"The wreath wants setting straight," she answered, without listening to him.
"What a pity she's lost her looks so," Countess Nordstone said to Madame Lvova. "Still, he's not worth her little finger, is he?"
"Oh, I like him so- not because he's my future beau-frere," answered Madame Lvova. "And how well he's behaving! It's so difficult, too, to look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he's not ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he's moved."
"You expected it, I suppose?"
"Almost. She always cared for him."
"Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned Kitty."
"It will make no difference," said Madame Lvova, "we're all obedient wives; it's in our family."
"Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassilii on purpose. And you, Dolly?"
Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure of Stepan Arkadyevich, forgot all the present, and remembered only her own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her women friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of their triumph, when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown, with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as innocent, in orange blossoms and bridal veil. And now? "It's terribly strange," she said to herself.
It was not merely the sisters, the women friends, and the female relations of the bride, who were following every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.
"Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?"
"Against her will- to a fine fellow like that? A Prince, isn't he?"
"Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon booms out, 'and obey!'"
"Are the choristers from the church of the Miracle?"
"No- from the Synodal school."
"I'm told- he's going to take her home to his country place at once. I asked the footman. Awfully rich, they say. That's why she's being married to him."
"No- they're a well-matched pair."
"I say, Marya Vassilyevna, you claimed those flyaway crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress- an ambassador's wife, they say she is- see, how her skirt bounces!... So and so!"
"What a pretty dear the bride is- like a lamb decked with flowers! Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister."
Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.
Chapter VI.
When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the sacristan spread before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest, turning round, pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable of recollecting it, as they took the few steps toward it. They did not hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he had stepped on it first, and others that both had stepped on it together.
After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began. Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and deprived her of all power of attention.
They prayed: "Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and daughters." They alluded to God's creation of a wife from Adam's rib, "and for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh," and that "this is a great mystery;" they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their children's children. "That's all splendid," thought Kitty, catching the words, "all that's just as it should be," and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.
"Put it on completely!" voices were heard urging when, after the priest had put on their wedding crowns, and Shcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its three-button glove, was holding the crown high above her head.
"Put it on!" she whispered smiling.
Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her, felt joyous and happy.
They enjoyed hearing the Epistle read, and the roll of the protodeacon's voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest, flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting: "Isaiah rejoice!" Shcherbatsky and Chirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over the bride's train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to have infected everyone in the church. It seemed to Levin that the priest and the deacon too wanted to smile, just as he did.
Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and congratulated the young couple. Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say something to her, but he did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, "Kiss your wife- and you kiss your husband," and took the candles out of their hands.
Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and, with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he felt that they were one.
After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.
Chapter VII.
Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together in Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome and Naples, and had just arrived at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time.
A handsome headwaiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upward, wearing an evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of watch charms dangling above his small bay window, stood with his hands in his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids, while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped still. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry toward the staircase, the headwaiter turned round, and, seeing the Russian Count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had come, and that the business about the palazzo had been arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.
"Ah! I'm glad to hear it," said Vronsky. "Is Madame at home or not?"
"Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now," answered the waiter.
Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And, glancing casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at him, he would have gone on.
"This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you," said the headwaiter.
With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman, who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light came into the eyes of both.
"Golenishchev!"
"Vronsky!"
It really was Golenishchev, a comrade of Vronsky's in the Corps of Pages. In the Corps Golenishchev had belonged to the liberal party; he left the Corps without entering the army, and had never taken office under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways on leaving the Corps, and had only met once since.
At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishchev had taken up a sort of lofty intellectually liberal line, and was consequently disposed to look down upon Vronsky's interests and calling in life. Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: "You may like or dislike my ways of life, that's a matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect if you want to know me." Golenishchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Vronsky. That meeting might have been expected to estrange them still more. But now they beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Vronsky would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishchev, but probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishchev's face.
"How glad I am to meet you!" said Vronsky, showing his strong white teeth in a friendly smile.
"I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm very, very glad!"
"Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing."
"I've been living here for two years. I'm working."
"Ah!" said Vronsky, with sympathy. "Let's go in."
And with the habit common among Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.
"Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to see her now," he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishchev's face.
"Ah, I did not know" (though he did know), Golenishchev answered carelessly. "Have you been here long?" he added.
"Three days," Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend's face intently.
"Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly," Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishchev's face and the change of subject. "I can introduce him to Anna- he looks at it properly."
During the three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had met with the "proper" way of looking at it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it "properly" had been asked exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.
In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the "proper" view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled-for to put all this into words.
Vronsky at once divined that Golenishchev was of this class, and therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And, in fact, Golenishchev's manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.
He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and, still more, by the naturalness with which she accepted her position. She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishchev, and he was extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on purpose, so that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply Alexei, and said they were moving into a house they had just taken- what was here called a palazzo. Golenishchev liked this direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at Anna's manner of simplehearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexei Alexandrovich and Vronsky, Golenishchev fancied that he understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and happiness.
"It's in the guidebook," said Golenishchev, referring to the palazzo Vronsky had taken. "There's a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his latest period."
"I tell you what: it's a lovely day, let's go and have another look at it," said Vronsky, addressing Anna.
"I shall be very glad to; I'll go and put on my hat. Would you say it's hot?" she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly at Vronsky. And again a vivid flush overspread her face.
Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared to be with Golenishchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would wish.
He bestowed a long, tender look at her.
"No, not very," he said.
And it seemed to her that she understood everything- most of all, that he was pleased with her; and, smiling to him, she walked with her rapid step out of the door.
The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into both faces, as though Golenishchev, unmistakably admiring her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so.
"Well then," Vronsky began, to start a conversation of some sort, "so you're settled here? You're still at the same work, then?" he went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishchev was writing something.
"Yes, I'm writing the second part of the Two Elements," said Golenishchev, coloring with pleasure at the question- "that is, to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium," and he launched into a long and heated explanation of his views.
Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the first part of the Two Elements, of which the author spoke as something well known. But as Golenishchev began to lay down his opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the Two Elements, he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky could not make out the reason for his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Vronsky disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, as, without even noticing Anna's coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.
When Anna came in in her hat and cape, her lovely hand rapidly swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishchev which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness. Golenishchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed as she was at that time to feel friendly with everyone, soon revived his spirits by her direct and lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to him attentively. They walked to the house they had taken and looked over it.
"I am very glad of one thing," said Anna to Golenishchev when they were on their way back, "Alexei will have a capital atelier. You must certainly take that room," she said to Vronsky in Russian, using the affectionately familiar form, as though she saw that Golenishchev would become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no need of reserve before him.
"Do you paint?" said Golenishchev turning round quickly to Vronsky.
"Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little," said Vronsky, reddening.
"He has great talent," said Anna with a delighted smile. "I'm no judge, of course. But good judges have said the same."
Chapter VIII.
Anna, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life. The thought of her husband's unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side her husband's unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her reconciliation with her husband, the rupture, the news of Vronsky's wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her husband's house, the parting from her son- all that seemed to her like a delirious dream, from which she had waked up abroad, alone with Vronsky. The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.
One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. "I have inevitably made that man wretched," she thought; "but I don't want to profit by his misery. I, too, am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything- I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and so I don't want happiness, I don't want a divorce, and shall suffer from my shame and the separation from my child." But, however sincerely Anna had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was none. With the tact of which both had such a large share, they had succeeded in avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never placed themselves in a false position, and everywhere they had met people who pretended that they perfectly understood their position, far better indeed than they did themselves. Separation from the son she loved- even that did not cause her anguish in these early days. The baby girl- his child- was so sweet, and had so won Anna's heart, since she was all that was left her, that Anna rarely thought of her son.
The desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was so intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Anna felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. Her complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her. His presence was always sweet to her. All the traits of his character, which she learned to know better and better, were unutterably dear to her. His appearance, changed by his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as though she were some young girl in love. In everything he said, thought, and did, she saw something particularly noble and elevated. Her adoration of him alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him anything not fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he might sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it. But she could not help being grateful to him for his attitude to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been certain to play a leading part- he had sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than ever, and the constant care that she should not feel the awkwardness of her position never deserted him for a single instant. He, so manly a man, never opposed her, had indeed, with her, no will of his own, and was anxious, it seemed, for nothing but to anticipate her wishes. And she could not but appreciate this, even though the very intensity of his solicitude for her, the atmosphere of care with which he surrounded her, sometimes weighed upon her.
Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general, of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love- and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires- longing. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up time in Peterburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence, which had provided Vronsky with entertainment on previous tours abroad, they could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of the sort had led to a sudden attack of depression in Anna, quite out of proportion with the cause- a late supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society of the place- foreign and Russian- were equally out of the question, owing to the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already, had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the inexplicable significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.
And, just as the hungry animal eagerly clutches every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.
As he had, ever since he was a child, a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon it the unoccupied fund of desires which demanded satisfaction.
As he had a capacity for understanding art, and for true and tasteful imitation in the art of painting, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to select- religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting- he set to work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired by any one of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to imitate.
More than any other style he liked the French- graceful and effective- and in that style he began to paint Anna's portrait in Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who saw it, extremely successful.
Chapter IX.
The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty plastic plafonds and frescoes on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms hung with pictures- this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired officer of the life guards, as an enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake of the woman he loved.
The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was completely successful, and having, through Golenishchev, made the acquaintance of a few interesting people, for a time he was satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an Italian professor of painting, and studied medieval Italian life. Medieval Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that even his hat, and a plaid flung over his shoulder, were worn in the medieval style, which, indeed, was extremely becoming to him.
"Here we live, and know nothing of what's going on," Vronsky said to Golenishchev, when the latter came to see him one morning. "Have you seen Mikhailov's picture?" he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist, living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an artist be left without encouragement and support.
"I've seen it," answered Golenishchev. "Of course, he's not without talent, but it's all in a wrong direction. It's all the Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting."
"What is the subject of the picture?" asked Anna.
"Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the realism of the new school."
And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to one of his favorite theories, Golenishchev launched forth into a disquisition on it.
"I can't understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken for their art, and then..."
"And is it true that this Mikhailov is in such poverty?" asked Vronsky, thinking that, as a Russian Maecenas, it was his duty to assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.
"Hardly. He's a remarkable portrait painter. Have you ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassilkova? But I believe he doesn't care about painting any more portraits, and so, likely as not, he may be in want. I maintain that..."
"Couldn't we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?" said Vronsky.
"Why mine?" said Anna. "After yours I don't want another portrait. Better have one of Annie" (so she called her baby girl). "Here she is," she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing, unperceived, at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and medievalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.
Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna's eyes, and, turning at once to Golenishchev, he said:
"Do you know this Mikhailov?"
"I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You know, one of those savage new people one is forever coming across nowadays; one of those freethinkers, you know, who are reared d'emblee in theories of atheism, negation, and materialism. In former days," said Golenishchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, "in former days the freethinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of native freethinker who grows up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grows up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, a savage. Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture- the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself- a Frenchman, for instance- would have set to work to study all the classics: theologians and tragedians and historians and philosophers, and, you see, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he's all set. And that's not all- twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else; just evolution, natural selection, the struggle for existence- and that's all. In my article I've..."
"I tell you what," said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; "I tell you what," she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishchev, who was still talking away, "let's go and see him!"
Golenishchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But, as the artist lived in a remote ward of the town, it was decided to take a carriage.
An hour later Anna, with Golenishchev by her side and Vronsky on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to an ugly new house in a remote ward. On learning from the porter's wife, who came out to them, that Mikhailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his pictures.
Chapter X.
The artist Mikhailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishchev were brought to him. In the morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.
"I've said it to you twenty times, don't enter into details. You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you're a triple fool," he said after a long dispute.
"Don't let it run so long; it's not my fault. If I had the money..."
"Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" Mikhailov shrieked, with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, on the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. "There's no sense in her!" he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.
Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. "Oh! damn them all!" he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it. "No, that one was better.... Where is it?" He went back to his wife, and, scowling and not looking at her, asked his eldest little girl: Where was that piece of paper he had given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.
"That's it! That's it!" he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began drawing rapidly. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin, on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure; the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair, too, might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the veils which hindered it from being distinctly seen; each new feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the cards were brought him.
"Coming, coming!"
He went in to his wife.
"Come, Sasha, don't be cross!" he said, smiling timidly and affectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame. I'll make it all right." And, having made peace with his wife, he put on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went toward his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage.
Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the bottom of his heart one conviction- that no one had ever painted a picture like it. He did not believe that this picture was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people's criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, which showed that the critic saw even the tiniest part of what he himself saw in the picture, agitated him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his judges a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he found this.
He walked rapidly to the do