Chapter 16

When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent correspondence.

‘You see, your good lady’s settled me here, told me to sit a bit with her,’ said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty.

In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw that, in spite of Agafea Mihalovna’s feelings being hurt by a new mistress taking the reins of government out of her hands, Kitty had yet conquered her and made her love her.

‘Here, I opened your letter too,’ said Kitty, handing him an illiterate letter. ‘It’s from that woman, I think, your brother’s…’ she said. ‘I did not read it through. This is from my people and from Dolly. Fancy! Dolly took Tanya and Grisha to a children’s ball at the Sarmatskys’: Tanya was a French marquise.’

But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya Nikolaevna, his brother’s former mistress, and began to read it. This was the second letter he had received from Marya Nikolaevna. In the first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his brother had sent her away for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing, but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay Dmitrievitch would come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently. She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him in Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had received a post in the government service. But that he had quarreled with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever leave his bed again, she wrote. ‘It’s always of you he has talked, and, besides, he has no more money left.’

‘Read this; Dolly writes about you,’ Kitty was beginning, with a smile; but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her husband’s face.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘She writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death’s door. I shall go to him.’

Kitty’s face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of Dolly, all had vanished.

‘When are you going?’ she said.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘And I will go with you, can I?’ she said.

‘Kitty! What are you thinking of?’ he said reproachfully.

‘How do you mean?’ offended that he should seem to take her suggestion unwillingly and with vexation. ‘Why shouldn’t I go? I shan’t be in your way. I…’

‘I’m going because my brother is dying,’ said Levin. ‘Why should you…’

‘Why? For the same reason as you.’

‘And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being dull by herself,’ thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a matter of such gravity infuriated him.

‘It’s out of the question,’ he said sternly.

Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said.

‘I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come,’ she said hastily and wrathfully. ‘Why out of the question? Why do you say it’s out of the question?’

‘Because it’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,’ said Levin, trying to be cool.

‘Not at all. I don’t want anything. Where you can go, I can….’

‘Well, for one thing then, because this woman’s there whom you can’t meet.’

‘I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. I know that my husband’s brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go with my husband too….’

‘Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you’ll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.’

‘There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,’ she said with tears of wounded pride and fury. ‘I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it wasn’t…I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand….’

‘No; this is awful! To be such a slave!’ cried Levin, getting up, and unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating himself.

‘Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret it?’ she said, getting up and running away into the drawing room.

When he went to her, she was sobbing.

He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything. He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again—still she was silent. But when he took her face in both his hands and said ‘Kitty!’ she suddenly recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were reconciled.

It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin told his wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna’s being with his brother did not make her going improper, but he set off at the bottom of his heart dissatisfied both with her and with himself. He was dissatisfied with her for being unable to make up her mind to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, so lately hardly daring to believe in such happiness as that she could love him—now was unhappy because she loved him too much!), and he was dissatisfied with himself for not showing more strength of will. Even greater was the feeling of disagreement at the bottom of his heart as to her not needing to consider the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the contingencies they might meet with. The mere idea of his wife, his Kitty, being in the same room with a common wench, set him shuddering with horror and loathing.

Chapter 17

The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying ill was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy frock coat, and the common dining room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their fresh young life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted her to the room assigned them.

‘Go, do go!’ she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little plumper.

‘Well, how is he? how is he?’

‘Very bad. He can’t get up. He has kept expecting you. He…. Are you…with your wife?’

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.

‘I’ll go away. I’ll go down to the kitchen,’ she brought out. ‘Nikolay Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady, and remembers her abroad.’

Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to make.

‘Come along, come along to him!’ he said.

But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to do.

For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible to her; but it lasted only a single instant.

‘Well! how is he?’ she turned to her husband and then to her.

‘But one can’t go on talking in the passage like this!’ Levin said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs.

‘Well then, come in,’ said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had recovered herself, but noticing her husband’s face of dismay, ‘or go on; go, and then come for me,’ she said, and went back into the room.

Levin went to his brother’s room. He had not in the least expected what he saw and felt in his brother’s room. He had expected to find him in the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent with the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his brother’s visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical signs of the approach of death more marked—greater weakness, greater emaciation, but still almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he found something utterly different.

In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the scanty locks wet with sweat on the temples and tense, transparent-looking forehead.

‘It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?’ thought Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible. In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to glance at those eager eyes raised at his approach, only to catch the faint movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the terrible truth that this death-like body was his living brother.

The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his brother as he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt the reproach in the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.

When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile was faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern expression of the eyes was unchanged.

‘You did not expect to find me like this,’ he articulated with effort.

‘Yes…no,’ said Levin, hesitating over his words. ‘How was it you didn’t let me know before, that is, at the time of my wedding? I made inquiries in all directions.’

He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say, especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the inner meaning of each word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him. Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and began to say something. Levin expected something of peculiar gravity and importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolay began speaking of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.

Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to escape, if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he would go and fetch his wife.

‘Very well, and I’ll tell her to tidy up here. It’s dirty and stinking here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room,’ the sick man said with effort. ‘Oh, and when you’ve cleared up, go away yourself,’ he added, looking inquiringly at his brother.

Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion he was feeling, he decided that he would try on the contrary to persuade her not to go in to the sick man. ‘Why should she suffer as I am suffering?’ he thought.

‘Well, how is he?’ Kitty asked with a frightened face.

‘Oh, it’s awful, it’s awful! What did you come for?’ said Levin.

Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.

‘Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together. You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,’ she said. ‘You must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!’ she besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended on it.

Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man’s bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to women.

‘We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,’ she said. ‘You never thought I was to be your sister?’

‘You would not have recognized me?’ he said, with a radiant smile at her entrance.

‘Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious.’

But the sick man’s interest did not last long.

Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man’s envy of the living.

‘I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,’ she said, turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. ‘We must ask about another room,’ she said to her husband, ‘so that we might be nearer.’