by Leo Tolstoy
'You wear leggings when you ride?'
'Yes, it's much cleaner,' said Vasenka, putting his fat leg on a chair, fastening the lower hook, and smiling cheerfully and good-naturedly.
He was undoubtedly a nice fellow, and Levin felt sorry for him and ashamed for himself, the master of the house, when he noticed the timidity in Vasenka's eyes.
* I believe Veslovsky's courting Kitty a bit.
On the table lay a piece of a stick they had broken that morning during gymnastics, when they had tried to raise the jammed bars. Levin took the piece in his hands and started breaking off the splintered end, not knowing how to begin.
'I wanted ...' He fell silent, but suddenly, remembering Kitty and all that had taken place, he said, looking him resolutely in the eye: 'I've ordered the horses to be harnessed for you.'
'How's that?' Vasenka began in surprise. 'To go where?'
'You are going to the station,' Levin said darkly, splintering the end of the stick.
'Are you leaving, or has something happened?'
'It happens that I am expecting guests,' said Levin breaking off the splintered ends of the stick more and more quickly with his strong fingers. 'No, I am not expecting guests, and nothing has happened, but I am asking you to leave. You may explain my discourtesy in any way you like.'
Vasenka drew himself up.
'I ask you to explain to me ...' he said with dignity, having understood at last.
'I cannot explain to you,' Levin spoke softly and slowly, trying to hide the quivering of his jaw. 'And it is better that you not ask.'
And as the splintered ends were all broken off, Levin took the thick ends in his fingers, snapped the stick in two and carefully caught one end as it fell.
Probably it was the sight of those nervously tensed arms, those same muscles that he had felt that morning during the gymnastics, and the shining eyes, the soft voice and quivering jaw, that convinced Vasenka more than any words. He shrugged his shoulders and bowed with a contemptuous smile.
'May I see Oblonsky?'
The shrug of the shoulders and the smile did not annoy Levin. 'What else can he do?' he thought.
'I'll send him to you presently.'
'What is this senselessness?' said Stepan Arkadyich, on learning from his friend that he was being chased out of the house, and finding Levin in the garden, where he was strolling, waiting for his guest's departure. 'Mais c'est ridicule!* What fly has bitten you? Mais c'est du dernier
But this is ridiculous! ridicule! What are you imagining to yourself, if a young man ...'
But the place where the fly had bitten Levin was evidently still sore, because he turned pale again when Stepan Arkadyich wanted to explain the reason and hastily interrupted him:
'Please, don't explain any reasons! I could not do otherwise! I am very ashamed before you and before him. But for him I don't think it will be a great misfortune to leave, while for me and my wife his presence is disagreeable.'
'But it's insulting to him! Et puis c'est ridicule!'
'And for me it's both insulting and painful! And I'm not at fault in anything, and there's no need for me to suffer!'
'Well, I never expected this from you! On peut etre jaloux, mais a ce point, c'est du dernier ridicule!'*
Levin turned quickly, walked away from him into the depths of the alley and went on pacing back and forth alone. Soon he heard the clatter of the tarantass and through the trees saw Vasenka, sitting on some hay (as luck would have it there was no seat on the tarantass), in his Scotch cap, bobbing with the bumps as they rolled down the drive.
'What's this now?' thought Levin, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the tarantass. It was the mechanic, whom Levin had completely forgotten. The mechanic bowed and said something to Veslovsky; then he got into the tarantass and they drove off together.
Stepan Arkadyich and the princess were indignant at Levin's act. And he himself felt that he was not only ridicule in the highest degree, but also guilty and disgraced all round; but, recalling what he and his wife had suffered through, he asked himself how he would act another time and replied that he would do exactly the same thing.
Despite all that, towards the end of the day everybody except the princess, who could not forgive Levin this act, became extremely animated and merry, like children after being punished or grownups after a difficult official reception, and that evening, in the princess's absence, Vasenka's banishment was talked about like a long-past event. And Dolly, who had inherited her father's gift for comic storytelling, made Varenka roll with laughter when she told for the third or fourth time, always with new humorous additions, how she had been about to put on some new ribbons for the guest and come out to the drawing room,
* But this is the height of ridiculousness!
* One can be jealous, but to such an extent, it's the height of ridiculousness! when she suddenly heard the noise of the old rattletrap. And who was in the old rattletrap but Vasenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his romances, and his leggings, sitting on the hay.
'You might at least have had the carriage harnessed! But no, and then I hear: "Wait!" Well, I think, they've taken pity on him. I look, and they put the fat German in with him and drive off ... And my ribbons all went for naught! ...'
XVI
Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna. She was very sorry to upset her sister and cause her husband unpleasantness; she understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have any connections with Vronsky; but she considered it her duty to visit Anna and show her that her feelings could not change, despite the change in Anna's situation.
So as not to depend on the Levins for the trip, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses; but Levin, learning of it, came to reprimand her.
'Why do you think your trip is unpleasant for me? And even if it was unpleasant, it is still more unpleasant that you're not taking my horses,' he said. 'You never once told me you had decided on going. And to hire in the village is, first of all, unpleasant for me, but the main thing is that they'll promise to get you there and won't do it. I have horses. And if you don't want to upset me, you'll take mine.'
Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the appointed day Levin prepared a four-in-hand and a relay, assembling it from work and saddle horses, not very handsome, but capable of getting Darya Alexandrovna there in a day. Now, when horses were needed both for the departing princess and for the midwife, this was difficult for Levin, but by the duty of hospitality he could not allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire horses while in his house, and, besides, he knew that the twenty roubles Darya Alexandrovna would be asked to pay for the trip were very important for her; and he felt Darya Alexandrovna's money matters, which were in a very bad state, as if they were his own.
On Levin's advice, Darya Alexandrovna started out before dawn. The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses ran at a merry pace, and on the box beside the coachman sat the clerk, whom Levin sent along instead of a footman for safety's sake. Darya Alexandrovna dozed off and woke up only as they were approaching an inn where the horses were to be changed.
After having tea with the same rich muzhik-proprietor with whom Levin had stayed on his way to Sviyazhsky's, and talking with the women about children and with the old man about Count Vronsky, whom he praised very much, Darya Alexandrovna set off again at ten o'clock. At home, busy with the children, she never had time to think. But now, during this four-hour drive, all the previously repressed thoughts suddenly came crowding into her head, and she thought about the whole of her life as never before, and from all different sides. She herself found her thoughts strange. First she thought of her children, about whom she still worried, though the princess, and above all Kitty (she relied more on her), had promised to look after them. 'What if Masha starts her pranks again, and what if Grisha gets kicked by a horse, and what if Lily's stomach gets still more upset?' But then the questions of the present were supplanted by questions of the near future. She bega
n thinking that they ought to rent a new apartment in Moscow for the next winter, the furniture in the drawing room should be changed and a fur coat should be made for the oldest daughter. Then came thoughts of the more distant future: how she was going to send the children into the world. 'Never mind about the girls - but the boys?
'Very well, I can busy myself with Grisha now, but that's because I'm now free myself, I'm not pregnant. Naturally, there's no counting on Stiva. With the help of good people, I will send them out; but if there's another child ...' And it occurred to her how incorrect the saying was about a curse being laid upon woman, that in pain she would bring forth children.[6] 'Never mind giving birth, but being pregnant - that's the pain,' she thought, picturing her last pregnancy and the death of that last child. And she remembered her conversation with the young peasant woman at the inn. To the question whether she had children, the beautiful young woman had cheerfully replied:
'I had one girl, but God freed me, I buried her during Lent.'
'And aren't you very sorry about her?' Darya Alexandrovna had asked.
'Why be sorry? The old man has lots of grandchildren. Nothing but trouble. No work, no nothing. Just bondage.'
This answer had seemed repulsive to Darya Alexandrovna, despite the young woman's good-natured prettiness, but now she inadvertently recalled those words. Cynical as they were, there was some truth in them.
'And generally,' thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back at the whole of her life in those fifteen years of marriage, 'pregnancy, nausea, dullness of mind, indifference to everything, and, above all, ugliness. Kitty, young and pretty Kitty, even she has lost her good looks, but when I'm pregnant I get ugly, I know it. Labour, suffering, ugly suffering, that last moment ... then nursing, the sleepless nights, the terrible pains...'
Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from cracked nipples that she had endured with almost every child. 'Then the children's illnesses, this eternal fear; then their upbringing, vile inclinations' (she remembered little Masha's crime in the raspberries), 'education, Latin - all of it so incomprehensible and difficult. And on top of it all, the death of these same children.' And again there came to her imagination the cruel memory, eternally gnawing at her mother's heart, of the death of her last infant boy, who had died of croup, his funeral, the universal indifference before that small, pink coffin, and her own heart-rending, lonely pain before the pale little forehead with curls at the temples, before the opened, surprised little mouth she had glimpsed in the coffin just as it was covered by the pink lid with the lace cross.
'And all that for what? What will come of it all? That I, having not a moment's peace, now pregnant, now nursing, eternally angry, grumpy, tormented myself and tormenting others, repulsive to my husband, will live my life out and bring up unfortunate, poorly educated and destitute children. Even now, if we weren't with the Levins, I don't know how we'd live. Of course, Kostya and Kitty are so delicate that we don't notice it; but it can't go on. They'll start having children and won't be able to help us; they're in tight straits even now. Is papa, who has kept almost nothing for himself, to help us? And so I can't set my children up myself, but only with the help of others, in humiliation. Well, and if we take the most fortunate outcome: the children won't die any more, and I'll bring them up somehow. At best they simply won't turn out to be scoundrels. That's all I can wish for. And for that so much torment, so much work ... A whole life ruined!' Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, and again the recollection was vile to her; but she could not help admitting that there was a dose of crude truth in those words.
'Is it far now, Mikhaila?' Darya Alexandrovna asked the clerk, to get her mind off these thoughts that frightened her.
'Five miles from this village, they say.'
The carriage drove down the village street on to a bridge. Along the bridge, with cheerful, ringing talk, went a crowd of merry peasant women with plaited sheaf-binders on their shoulders. The women stopped on the bridge, gazing curiously at the carriage. The faces turned to her all seemed healthy and cheerful to Darya Alexandrovna, taunting her with the joy of life. 'Everybody lives, everybody enjoys life,' she went on thinking, going past the women and on up the hill at a trot, again rocking pleasantly on the soft springs of the old carriage, 'and I, released, as if from prison, from a world that is killing me with cares, have only now come to my senses for a moment. Everybody lives - these women, and my sister Natalie, and Varenka, and Anna, whom I am going to see - and only I don't.
'And they all fall upon Anna. What for? Am I any better? I at least have a husband I love. Not as I'd have wanted to love, but I do love him, and Anna did not love hers. How is she to blame, then? She wants to live. God has put that into our souls. I might very well have done the same. Even now I don't know if I did the right thing to listen to her that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought to have left my husband then and started life over from the beginning. I might have loved and been loved in a real way. And is it better now? I don't respect him. He's necessary to me,' she thought about her husband, 'and so I put up with him. Is that better? I could still have been liked then, I still had some of my beauty,' Darya Alexandrovna went on thinking and wanted to look in the mirror. She had a travelling mirror in her bag and would have liked to take it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the rocking clerk, she felt she would be embarrassed if one of them turned round, and so she did not take the mirror out.
But even without looking in the mirror she thought it was still not too late. She remembered Sergei Ivanovich, who was especially amiable towards her, and Stiva's friend, the kindly Turovtsyn, who had helped her take care of her children when they had scarlet fever and was in love with her. And there was also one quite young man who, as her husband had told her jokingly, found her the most beautiful of all the sisters. And Darya Alexandrovna pictured the most passionate and impossible love affairs. 'Anna acted splendidly, and I am not going to reproach her. She's happy, she makes another person happy, and she's not downtrodden the way I am, but is probably as fresh, intelligent and open to everything as ever,' she thought, and a sly, contented smile puckered her lips, particularly because, as she thought about Anna's love affair, she imagined, parallel to it, an almost identical love affair of her own, with an imaginary collective man who was in love with her. She confessed everything to her husband, just as Anna had done. And Stepan Arkadyich's astonishment and perplexity at the news made her smile.
In such reveries she reached the turning from the high road that led to Vozdvizhenskoe.
XVII
The coachman reined in the four-in-hand and looked to the right, at a field of rye, where some muzhiks were sitting by a cart. The clerk was about to jump down, then changed his mind and shouted peremptorily to a muzhik, beckoning him over. The breeze they had felt during the drive became still when they stopped; horseflies covered the sweaty horses, who angrily tried to shake them off. The metallic ring of a scythe blade being hammered beside the cart became still. One of the muzhiks stood up and came over to the carriage.
'See how rusty he is!' the clerk shouted angrily at the barefooted muzhik stepping slowly over the bumps of the dry, untrampled road. 'Come on, you!'
The curly-headed old man, his hair tied with a strip of bast, his hunched back dark with sweat, quickened his pace, came up to the carriage and placed his sunburnt hand on the splash-board.
'Vozdvizhenskoe? The master's house? The count's?' he repeated. 'Just beyond that little rise. There's a left turn. Straight down the avenue and you run smack into it. Who is it you want? Himself?'
'And are they at home, my dear man?' Darya Alexandrovna said vaguely, not even knowing how to ask the muzhik about Anna.
'Should be,' said the muzhik, shifting his bare feet and leaving a clear, five-toed footprint in the dust. 'Should be,' he repeated, obviously willing to strike up a conversation. 'There's more guests came yesterday. No end of guests.. .What is it?'He turned to a lad who sho
uted something to him from the cart. 'Ah, yes! They just passed here on horseback to go and look at a reaper. They should be home by now. And where are you from?...' 'Far away,' said the coachman, getting up on the box. 'So it's nearby?'
'I told you, it's right here. Just beyond . ..' he said, moving his hand on the splash-board.
A young, hale, strapping fellow also came over.
'Is there any work at the harvesting?' he asked.
'I don't know, my dear.'
'So just go left and you come straight to it,' said the muzhik, obviously wishing to talk and reluctant to let the travellers go.
The coachman started, but they had no sooner made the turn than they heard the muzhik shouting:
'Wait! Hey, wait, man!' two voices cried.
The coachman stopped.
'It's them coming! There they are!' cried the muzhik. 'See them coming along!' he said, pointing to four people on horseback and two in a char a banc moving along the road.
It was Vronsky with his jockey, Veslovsky and Anna on horseback, and Princess Varvara and Sviyazhsky in the char a banc. They had gone for a ride and to see some newly arrived reaping machines at work.