Leo Tolstoy
Page 80
‘Is there a wickeder creature than that Mme Kartasov?’
‘But what did she do?’
‘My husband told me… She insulted Anna Arkadyevna. Her husband began talking to her across the box, and Mme Kartasov made a scene. They say she said something insulting and walked out.’
‘Count, your maman is calling you,’ said Princess Sorokin, looking out the door of the box.
‘And I’ve been waiting for you all this time,’ his mother said to him with a mocking smile. ‘One sees nothing of you.’
Her son noted that she could not suppress a smile of joy.
‘Good evening, maman. I was coming to see you,’ he said coldly.
‘Why don’t you go faire la cour à madame Karenine?* she said, when Princess Sorokin stepped away. ‘Elle fait sensation. On oubli la Patti pour elle.’*
‘Maman, I asked you not to talk to me about that,’ he answered, frowning.
‘I’m only saying what everybody says.’
Vronsky made no reply and, after saying a few words to Princess Sorokin, left. In the doorway he ran into his brother.
‘Ah, Alexei!’ said his brother. ‘What nastiness! A fool, nothing more … I was just about to go to her. Let’s go together.’
Vronsky was not listening. He went downstairs with quick steps: he felt he had to do something but did not know what. Vexation with her for putting herself and him in such a false position, along with pity for her suffering, agitated him. He went down to the stalls and made straight for Anna’s baignoire. Stremov stood there talking with her:
‘There are no more tenors. Le moule en est brisé.’*
Vronsky bowed to her and paused to greet Stremov.
‘It seems you got here late and missed the best aria,’ Anna said to Vronsky, looking at him mockingly, as it seemed to him.
‘I’m a poor connoisseur,’ he said, looking sternly at her.
‘Like Prince Yashvin,’ she said, smiling, ‘who finds that Patti sings too loud. Thank you,’ she added, her small hand in its long glove taking the playbill Vronsky had picked up, and suddenly at that instant her beautiful face twitched. She rose and went to the back of the box.
* Pay court to Mme Karenina.
* She’s caused a sensation. La Patti is forgotten on her account.
* Their mould has been broken.
Noticing that her box remained empty during the next act, Vronsky, provoking a hissing in the audience, which was hushed to the sounds of the cavatina, left the stalls and drove home.
Anna was already there. When Vronsky came in, she was alone, still wearing the same dress she had worn to the theatre. She was sitting in the first chair by the wall, staring straight ahead of her. She glanced at him and at once resumed her former position.
‘Anna,’ he said.
‘You, you’re to blame for it all!’ she cried, getting up, with tears of despair and anger in her voice.
‘I asked you, I implored you not to go. I knew it would be unpleasant…’
‘Unpleasant!’ she cried. ‘Terrible! I won’t forget it as long as I live. She said it was a disgrace to sit next to me.’
‘A foolish woman’s words,’ he said. ‘But why risk, why provoke …’
‘I hate your calmness. You shouldn’t have driven me to that. If you loved me …’
‘Anna! What does the question of my love have to do …’
‘Yes, if you loved as I do, if you suffered as I do …’ she said, looking at him with an expression of fear.
He felt sorry for her, and still he was vexed. He assured her of his love, because he saw that that alone could calm her now, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his soul he did reproach her.
And those assurances of love, which seemed so banal to him that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in and gradually grew calm. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country.
Part Six
* * *
I
Darya Alexandrovna was spending the summer with her children in Pokrovskoe at her sister Kitty Levin’s. On her own estate the house had completely fallen apart, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Stepan Arkadyich highly approved of this arrangement. He said he was very sorry that his duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him, and he remained in Moscow, occasionally going to the country for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with all the children and the governess, the old princess also stayed with the Levins that summer, considering it her duty to look after her inexperienced daughter, who was in a ‘certain condition’. Besides that, Varenka, Kitty’s friend from abroad, had kept her promise to visit Kitty when she was married and was now her friend’s guest. These were all relations and friends of Levin’s wife. And though he loved them all, he slightly regretted his Levin world and order, which was smothered under this influx of the ‘Shcherbatsky element’, as he kept saying to himself. Of his own relations only Sergei Ivanovich stayed with him that summer, but even he was a man not of the Levin but of the Koznyshev stamp, so that the Levin spirit was completely annihilated.
In Levin’s long–deserted house there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day the old princess had to count them as they sat down at the table and seat the thirteenth granddaughter or grandson at a separate table. And for Kitty, who diligently occupied herself with the household, there was no little bother over procuring chickens, turkeys and ducks, of which, considering the summer appetites of guests and children, a great many were needed.
The whole family was sitting at dinner. Dolly’s children were making plans with the governess and Varenka about where to go mushrooming. Sergei Ivanovich, whose intellect and learning enjoyed a respect among all the guests amounting almost to veneration, surprised them all by mixing into the conversation about mushrooms.
‘Take me with you. I like mushrooming very much,’ he said, looking at Varenka. ‘I find it a very good occupation.’
‘Why, we’d be very glad to,’ Varenka said, blushing. Kitty exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The suggestion of the learned and intelligent Sergei Ivanovich that he go mushrooming with Varenka confirmed some of Kitty’s surmises, which had occupied her very much of late. She hastened to address her mother, so that her glances would not be noticed. After dinner Sergei Ivanovich sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing–room window, continuing a conversation he and his brother had begun and glancing towards the door through which the children who were going mushrooming were supposed to come. Levin sat on the window–seat beside his brother.
Kitty stood near her husband, obviously waiting for the end of the conversation, which did not interest her, so that she could tell him something.
‘You’ve changed in many ways since you got married, and for the better,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling at Kitty and obviously not much interested in the conversation they had begun, ‘but you’ve remained loyal to your passion for defending the most paradoxical themes.’
‘Katia, it’s not good for you to stand,’ her husband said to her, moving a chair over for her and giving her a meaningful look.
‘Well, yes, and anyway there’s no time,’ Sergei Ivanovich added, seeing the children run out.
Ahead of them all came Tanya in her tight stockings, galloping sideways, waving her basket and Sergei Ivanovich’s hat and running straight towards him.
Having boldly run up to Sergei Ivanovich, her eyes shining, so like her father’s beautiful eyes, she handed him his hat and made as if to put it on him, softening her liberty with a timid and tender smile.
‘Varenka’s waiting,’ she said, carefully putting the hat on his head, seeing by Sergei Ivanovich’s smile that it was allowed.
Varenka stood in the doorway, having changed into a yellow cotton dress, with a white kerchief tied on her head.
‘Coming, coming, Varvara Andreevna,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, finishing
his cup of coffee and putting his handkerchief and cigar–case in his pockets.
‘How lovely my Varenka is, isn’t she?’ Kitty said to her husband, as soon as Sergei Ivanovich got up. She said it so that Sergei Ivanovich could hear her, which she obviously wanted. ‘And how beautiful she is, how nobly beautiful! Varenka!’ Kitty shouted, ‘will you be in the mill wood? We’ll meet you there.’
‘You quite forget your condition, Kitty,’ the old princess said, hurrying out of the door. ‘You mustn’t shout like that.’
Varenka, hearing Kitty’s voice and her mother’s reprimand, quickly came up to her with a light step. Her quickness of movement, the colour that suffused her animated face, all showed that something extraordinary was taking place in her. Kitty knew what this extraordinary thing was and observed her closely. She had called Varenka now only so as to bless her mentally for the important event which, in Kitty’s mind, was to take place after dinner today in the forest.
‘Varenka, I’ll be very happy if a certain thing happens,’ she said in a whisper, kissing her.
‘And will you come with us?’ Varenka said to Levin, embarrassed and pretending not to have heard what had been said to her.
‘I will, but only as far as the threshing floor, and I’ll stay there.’
‘Now, what have you got to do there?’ said Kitty.
T must look over the new wagons and do some figures,’ said Levin. ‘And where will you be?’
‘On the terrace.’
II
The entire company of women gathered on the terrace. They generally liked to sit there after dinner, but today they also had things to do. Besides the sewing of little shirts and the knitting of baby blankets, with which they were all occupied, jam was being made there according to a method new to Agafya Mikhailovna, without the addition of water. Kitty was introducing this new method which they used at home. Agafya Mikhailovna, who had been in charge of it before, considering that nothing done in the Levins’ house could be bad, had put water in the strawberry and wild strawberry jam all the same, insisting that it could not be done otherwise; she had been caught at it, and now raspberry jam was being made in front of everyone, and Agafya Mikhailovna had to be brought to believe that jam without water could turn out well.
Agafya Mikhailovna, with a flushed and upset face, her hair tousled, her thin arms bared to the elbows, rocked the basin in circular movements over the brazier and stared gloomily at the raspberry jam, wishing with all her heart that it would thicken before it was cooked through. The princess, feeling that Agafya Mikhailovna’s wrath must be directed at her, as the chief adviser on making raspberry jam, tried to pretend she was busy with something else and not interested in the jam, talked about unrelated things, but kept casting sidelong glances at the brazier.
‘I always buy dresses for my maids myself, at a discount,’ the princess said, continuing the conversation they had begun… ‘Shouldn’t you skim it now, dear?’ she added, addressing Agafya Mikhailovna. ‘It’s quite unnecessary for you to do it yourself– and it’s hot,’ she stopped Kitty.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Dolly, and, getting up, she began drawing the spoon carefully over the foaming sugar, tapping it now and then to knock off what stuck to it on to a plate, which was already covered with the bright–coloured yellow–pink scum, with an undercurrent of blood–red syrup. ‘How they’ll lick it up with their tea!’ She thought of her children, remembering how she herself, as a child, had been surprised that grownups did not eat the best part – the scum.
‘Stiva says it’s much better to give them money,’ Dolly meanwhile continued the interesting conversation they had begun about the best way of giving presents to servants, ‘but…’
‘How can you give money!’ the princess and Kitty said with one voice. ‘They appreciate presents so.’
‘Last year, for instance, I bought not poplin exactly but something like it for our Matryona Semyonovna,’ said the princess.
‘I remember, she wore it for your name–day party.’
‘The sweetest pattern – so simple and noble. I’d have liked to make it for myself, if she hadn’t had it. Like Varenka’s. So sweet and inexpensive.’
‘Well, it seems to be ready now,’ said Dolly, pouring the syrup off the spoon.
‘When it leaves a tail, it’s ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafya Mikhailovna.’
‘These flies!’ Agafya Mikhailovna said crossly. ‘It’ll be all the same,’ she added.
‘Ah, how sweet he is, don’t frighten him!’ Kitty said suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had alighted on the railing and, turning over a raspberry stem, began pecking at it.
‘Yes, but you keep away from the brazier,’ said her mother.
‘A propos de Varenka,’ Kitty said in French, which they had been speaking all the while so that Agafya Mikhailovna would not understand them. ‘You know, maman, for some reason I expect a decision today. You understand what I mean. How good it would be!’
‘What an expert matchmaker, though!’ said Dolly. ‘How carefully and skilfully she brings them together …’
‘No, tell me, maman, what do you think?’
‘What is there to think? He’ (‘he’ meaning Sergei Ivanovich) ‘could always make the foremost match in Russia; he’s not so young any more, but I know that many would marry him even now … She’s very kind, but he could …’
‘No, mama, you must understand why one couldn’t think of anything better for him or for her. First, she’s lovely!’ Kitty said, counting off one finger.
‘He likes her very much, it’s true,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘Then, he occupies such a position in society that he has absolutely no need for a wife with a fortune or social position. He needs one thing – a good and sweet wife, a peaceful one.’
‘Yes, with her he can be peaceful,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘Third, that she should love him. And that’s there … I mean, it would be so good! … I’m just waiting for them to come back from the forest and everything will be decided. I’ll see at once from their eyes. I’d be so glad! What do you think, Dolly?’
‘Don’t get excited. You must never get excited,’ said her mother.
‘But I’m not excited, mama. I think he’ll propose today.’
‘Ah, it’s so strange, when and how a man proposes … There’s some obstacle, and suddenly it’s broken through,’ said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyich.
‘Mama, how did papa propose to you?’ Kitty asked suddenly.
‘There was nothing extraordinary, it was quite simple,’ replied the princess, but her face became all bright at the memory.
‘No, but how? Anyway, you loved him before you were allowed to talk?’
Kitty felt a special charm in being able to talk with her mother as an equal about these most important things in a woman’s life.
‘Of course I loved him. He used to visit us in the country.’
‘But how did it get decided? Mama?’
‘You probably think you invented something new? It was all the same: it got decided by looks, by smiles …’
‘How well you put it, mama! Precisely by looks and smiles,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘But what words did he say?’
‘What did Kostya say to you?’
‘He wrote with chalk. It was amazing … It seems so long ago!’ she said.