Chapter 11

‘What a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!’ he was thinking, as he stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

‘Well, didn’t I tell you?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, seeing that Levin had been completely won over.

‘Yes,’ said Levin dreamily, ‘an extraordinary woman! It’s not her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I’m awfully sorry for her!’

‘Now, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well, don’t be hard on people in future,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, opening the carriage door. ‘Good-bye; we don’t go the same way.’

Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase in their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest changes in her expression, entering more and more into her position, and feeling sympathy for her, Levin reached home.

At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite well, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed him two letters. Levin read them at once in the hall, that he might not over look them later. One was from Sokolov, his bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that it was fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more than that could not be got for it. The other letter was from his sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.

‘Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can’t get more,’ Levin decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot. ‘It’s extraordinary how all one’s time is taken up here,’ he thought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for her. ‘Today, again, I’ve not been to the court, but today I’ve certainly not had time.’ And resolving that he would not fail to do it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Levin rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the events of the day were conversations, conversations he had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken up, but here they were very interesting. And all these conversations were right enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was what he had said about the carp, the other was something not ‘quite the thing’ in the tender sympathy he was feeling for Anna.

Levin found his wife low-spirited and dull. The dinner of the three sisters had gone off very well, but then they had waited and waited for him, all of them had felt dull, the sisters had departed, and she had been left alone.

‘Well, and what have you been doing?’ she asked him, looking straight into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspicious brightness. But that she might not prevent his telling her everything, she concealed her close scrutiny of him, and with an approving smile listened to his account of how he had spent the evening.

‘Well, I’m very glad I met Vronsky. I felt quite at ease and natural with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him, but I’m glad that this awkwardness is all over,’ he said, and remembering that by way of trying not to see him, he had immediately gone to call on Anna, he blushed. ‘We talk about the peasants drinking; I don’t know which drinks most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do on holidays, but…’

But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking habits of the peasants. She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know why.

‘Well, and then where did you go?’

‘Stiva urged me awfully to go and see Anna Arkadyevna.’

And as he said this, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to whether he had done right in going to see Anna were settled once for all. He knew now that he ought not to have done so.

Kitty’s eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Anna’s name, but controlling herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and deceived him.

‘Oh!’ was all she said.

‘I’m sure you won’t be angry at my going. Stiva begged me to, and Dolly wished it,’ Levin went on.

‘Oh, no!’ she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him no good.

‘She is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman,’ he said, telling her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to her.

‘Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied,’ said Kitty, when he had finished. ‘Whom was your letter from?’

He told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his coat.

Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair. When he went up to her, she glanced at him and broke into sobs.

‘What? what is it?’ he asked, knowing beforehand what.

‘You’re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking at the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went…to her of all people! No, we must go away…. I shall go away tomorrow.’

It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife. At last he succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been too much for him, that he had succumbed to Anna’s artful influence, and that he would avoid her. One thing he did with more sincerity confess to was that living so long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and drinking, he was degenerating. They talked till three o’clock in the morning. Only at three o’clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be able to go to sleep.

Chapter 12

After taking leave of her guests, Anna did not sit down, but began walking up and down the room. She had unconsciously the whole evening done her utmost to arouse in Levin a feeling of love—as of late she had fallen into doing with all young men— and she knew she had attained her aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and conscientious man. She liked him indeed extremely, and, in spite of the striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Vronsky and Levin, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had made Kitty able to love both. Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she ceased to think of him.

One thought, and one only, pursued her in different forms, and refused to be shaken off. ‘If I have so much effect on others, on this man, who loves his home and his wife, why is it he is so cold to me?…not cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart now. Why wasn’t he here all the evening? He told Stiva to say he could not leave Yashvin, and must watch over his play. Is Yashvin a child? But supposing it’s true. He never tells a lie. But there’s something else in it if it’s true. He is glad of an opportunity of showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Stiva says he cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can’t write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself—the English family, writing, reading—but it’s all nothing but a sham, it’s all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me,’ she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming into her eyes.

She heard Vronsky’s abrupt ring and hurriedly dried her tears— not only dried her tears, but sat down by a lamp and opened a book, affecting composure. She wanted to show him that she was displeased that he had not come home as he had promised— displeased only, and not on any account to let him see her distress, and least of all, her self-pity. She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want strife, she blamed him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously put herself into an attitude of antagonism.

‘Well, you’ve not been dull?’ he said, eagerly and good-humoredly, going up to her. ‘What a terrible passion it is—gambling!’

‘No, I’ve not been dull; I’ve learned long ago not to be dull. Stiva has been here and Levin.’

‘Yes, they meant to come and see you. Well, how did you like Levin?’ he said, sitting down beside her.

‘Very much. They have not long been gone. What was Yashvin doing?’

‘He was winning—seventeen thousand. I got him away. He had really started home, but he went back again, and now he’s losing.’

‘Then what did you stay for?’ she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to him. The expression of her face was cold and ungracious. ‘You told Stiva you were staying on to get Yashvin away. And you have left him there.’

The same expression of cold readiness for the conflict appeared on his face too.

‘In the first place, I did not ask him to give you any message; and secondly, I never tell lies. But what’s the chief point, I wanted to stay, and I stayed,’ he said, frowning. ‘Anna, what is it for, why will you?’ he said after a moment’s silence, bending over towards her, and he opened his hand, hoping she would lay hers in it.

She was glad of this appeal for tenderness. But some strange force of evil would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the rules of warfare would not permit her to surrender.

‘Of course you wanted to stay, and you stayed. You do everything you want to. But what do you tell me that for? With what object?’ she said, getting more and more excited. ‘Does anyone contest your rights? But you want to be right, and you’re welcome to be right.’

His hand closed, he turned away, and his face wore a still more obstinate expression.

‘For you it’s a matter of obstinacy,’ she said, watching him intently and suddenly finding the right word for that expression that irritated her, ‘simply obstinacy. For you it’s a question of whether you keep the upper hand of me, while for me….’ Again she felt sorry for herself, and she almost burst into tears. ‘If you knew what it is for me! When I feel as I do now that you are hostile, yes, hostile to me, if you knew what this means for me! If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!’ And she turned away, hiding her sobs.

‘But what are you talking about?’ he said, horrified at her expression of despair, and again bending over her, he took her hand and kissed it. ‘What is it for? Do I seek amusements outside our home? Don’t I avoid the society of women?’

‘Well, yes! If that were all!’ she said.

‘Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I am ready to do anything to make you happy,’ he said, touched by her expression of despair; ‘what wouldn’t I do to save you from distress of any sort, as now, Anna!’ he said.

‘It’s nothing, nothing!’ she said. ‘I don’t know myself whether it’s the solitary life, my nerves…. Come, don’t let us talk of it. What about the race? You haven’t told me!’ she inquired, trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had anyway been on her side.

He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words that had given her the victory, ‘how I feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself,’ saw that this weapon was a dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could not exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart.

Chapter 13

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Levin could not have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to sleep in the condition in which he was that day, that leading an aimless, irrational life, living too beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and a still more inappropriate call upon a woman who could only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that woman and causing his wife distress—he could still go quietly to sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled.

At five o’clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up and looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.

‘What is it?…what is it?’ he said, half-asleep. ‘Kitty! What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her hand. ‘I felt unwell,’ she said, smiling a particularly sweet and meaning smile.

‘What? has it begun?’ he said in terror. ‘We ought to send…’ and hurriedly he reached after his clothes.

‘No, no,’ she said, smiling and holding his hand. ‘It’s sure to be nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It’s all over now.’

And getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she said ‘nothing,’ he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman’s life. At seven o’clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him.

‘Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s all right. But I fancy…. We ought to send for Lizaveta Petrovna.’

The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.

‘Please, don’t be frightened, it’s all right. I’m not a bit afraid,’ she said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to her lips.

He hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as he put on his dressing gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft curling hair under her night cap, was radiant with joy and courage.

Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty’s character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from reproaching him, that she loved him for her sufferings. ‘If not I, who is to blame for it?’ he thought unconsciously, seeking someone responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there was no one responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.

‘I have sent to mamma. You go quickly to fetch Lizaveta Petrovna …Kostya!… Nothing, it’s over.’

She moved away from him and rang the bell.

‘Well, go now; Pasha’s coming. I am all right.’

And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she had brought in in the night and begun working at it again.

As Levin was going out of one door, he heard the maid-servant come in at the other. He stood at the door and heard Kitty giving exact directions to the maid, and beginning to help her move the bedstead.

He dressed, and while they were putting in his horses, as a hired sledge was not to be seen yet, he ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe, it seemed to him, but on wings. Two maid-servants were carefully moving something in the bedroom.

Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions.

‘I’m going for the doctor. They have sent for Lizaveta Petrovna, but I’ll go on there too. Isn’t there anything wanted? Yes, shall I go to Dolly’s?’

She looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying.

‘Yes, yes. Do go,’ she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to him.

He had just gone into the drawing room, when suddenly a plaintive moan sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a long while he could not understand.

‘Yes, that is she,’ he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran downstairs.

‘Lord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!’ he repeated the words that for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

The horse was not yet ready, but feeling a peculiar concentration of his physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off on foot without waiting for the horse, and told Kouzma to overtake him.

At the corner he met a night cabman driving hurriedly. In the little sledge, wrapped in a velvet cloak, sat Lizaveta Petrovna with a kerchief round her head. ‘Thank God! thank God!’ he said, overjoyed to recognize her little fair face which wore a peculiarly serious, even stern expression. Telling the driver not to stop, he ran along beside her.

‘For two hours, then? Not more?’ she inquired. ‘You should let Pyotr Dmitrievitch know, but don’t hurry him. And get some opium at the chemist’s.’

‘So you think that it may go on well? Lord have mercy on us and help us!’ Levin said, seeing his own horse driving out of the gate. Jumping into the sledge beside Kouzma, he told him to drive to the doctor’s.