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FORTY-FOUR

Chapter 11
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EVERYBODY took part in the general conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first when the influence of one nation on another was being talked about, thoughts of what he had to say on the subject involuntarily came into Levin’s mind; but these thoughts, formerly so important to him, now only flickered through his mind as in a dream and were not of the slightest interest. It even struck him as strange that they should care to talk about things that could make no difference to anyone. In the same way what was being said about the rights and the education of women should have interested Kitty. How often she had thought about that question when she remembered her friend abroad and the irksome state of dependence in which Varenka lived, how often she had wondered what would be her own fate if she did not get married, and how many times she had argued about it with her sister. But now it did not interest her at all. She and Levin were carrying on their own separate conversation, and it was not even a conversation but a kind of mystic intercourse, which every moment bound them closer and closer and created in both a feeling of joyful fear before the unknown upon which they were entering.
They began by Levin’s telling Kitty in answer to her question of how he could have seen her in the carriage in the summer, how he was going back from the hay fields along the high road and met her.
‘It was early in the morning. I expect you had only just woken up. Your mother was asleep in her corner. It was a lovely morning. I was going along and wondering who that could be in a four-horsed coach, a splendid team with bells, and for an instant you appeared and I saw you at the window sitting like this, holding the strings of your cap with both hands and thinking very deeply about something,’ he said and smiled. ‘How I wish I knew what you were thinking about! Something important?’
‘Was I not very untidy?’ she thought, but seeing the rapturous smile which the recollection of these details evoked she felt that the impression she had produced was a very pleasing one. She blushed and laughed joyously. ‘I really don’t remember.’
‘How pleasantly Turovtsyn laughs!’ said Levin, looking with pleasure at his moist eyes and shaking body.
‘Have you known him long?’ asked Kitty.
‘Who does not know him?’
‘I see you think he is a bad man.’
‘Not bad, but a mere cipher.’
‘He is not. Change your opinion quickly,’ said Kitty. ‘I too did not think much of him, but he is . . . he is a dear fellow and wonderfully kind-hearted. He has a heart of gold.’
‘How did you manage to find out his heart?’
‘He and I are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter soon after . . . soon after you came to us,’ she said with a penitent and at the same time a trustful smile, ‘Dolly’s children all had scarlet fever and he happened to call. And fancy!’ she went on in a whisper, ‘he was so sorry for her that he stopped and helped her to nurse the children. Really, he stayed three weeks in the house and looked after the children like a nurse.’
‘I am telling Constantine Dmitrich about Turovtsyn and the scarlet fever,’ she said, leaning over toward her sister.
‘Yes? it was wonderful! he is splendid!’ said Dolly, looking toward Turovtsyn who felt that he was being talked about, and giving him a gentle smile.
Levin looked at Turovtsyn again and wondered how it was he had failed to realize what a charming man he was.
‘I am sorry, very sorry. I shall never again think ill of anyone!’ he said merrily; expressing what he sincerely felt at the moment.
Chapter 12
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IN the conversation which had been begun on the rights of women there were raised some questions not freely to be discussed in the presence of ladies concerning the inequalities of marriage relations. Pestsov more than once during dinnertime flew at these questions, but Koznyshev and Oblonsky carefully diverted him from them.
When they rose from table and the ladies had left the room, Pestsov did not follow them, but turned to Karenin and began to state the chief cause of inequality. The inequality between husband and wife, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of a wife and that of a husband were unequally punished both by law and by public opinion.
Oblonsky hurriedly offered Karenin a cigar.
‘No, I don’t smoke,’ quietly replied Karenin, and, as if wishing to show that he was not afraid of the conversation, he turned with a cold smile to Pestsov.
‘I imagine that the cause of the prevailing opinion lies in the very nature of things,’ he said, and was about to go to the drawing-room, but Turovtsyn quite unexpectedly addressed him.
‘Have you heard about Pryachnikov?’ said Turovtsyn, animated by the champagne he had drunk, and impatient to break his silence, which had long oppressed him. And with a kindly smile on his moist and rosy lips, he went on addressing himself chiefly to Karenin, the principal guest.
‘Vasya Pryachnikov, as I was told to-day, has fought a duel with Kvitsky and killed him.’
As one always seems to knock a sore place, so that day Oblonsky felt that unfortunately the conversation kept striking Karenin’s sore place. He again made an attempt to draw his brother-in-law away, but Karenin himself asked with interest:
‘What did Pryachnikov fight about?’
‘His wife. He behaved like a brick! Challenged the other and killed him!’
‘Oh!’ said Karenin indifferently, and raising his eyebrows he went to the drawing-room.
‘I am so glad you came,’ said Dolly with a frightened smile, as she met him in the sitting-room through which he had to pass: ‘I must speak with you. Let us sit down here.’
Karenin, with the same look of indifference, produced by his raised eyebrows, sat down beside her and feigned a smile.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘especially as I wished to ask you to excuse me for having to go away at once. I am leaving Moscow to-morrow.’
Dolly was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and felt herself growing pale and her lips trembling from anger with this cold, unfeeling man who so calmly intended to ruin her innocent friend.
‘Alexis Alexandrovich,’ she said, looking into his eyes with desperate determination. ‘I asked you about Anna and you did not give me an answer. How is she?’
‘I think she is well, Darya Alexandrovna,’ replied Karenin without looking at her.
‘Alexis Alexandrovich, forgive me, I have no right to . . . but I love Anna like a sister, and respect her; and I beg, I implore you to tell me what has happened between you; what do you accuse her of?’
Alexis Alexandrovich winced, and almost closing his eyes bowed his head.
‘I expect your husband has told you the reasons which make me consider it necessary to change my former relations with Anna Arkadyevna,’ he said without looking in her eyes, discontentedly eyeing Shcherbatsky who was passing through the sitting-room.
‘I don’t, I don’t believe it, I cannot believe it!’ Dolly said, clasping her bony hands with an energetic movement. She rose quickly, put her hand on Karenin’s sleeve and said, ‘We shall be disturbed here, come this way, please.’
Dolly’s excitement affected Karenin. He rose and obediently followed her into the schoolroom. They sat down at the table covered with leather cloth all cut about with penknives.
‘I don’t believe it, I don’t!’ she uttered, trying to catch his eyes, which avoided hers.
‘One can’t disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, emphasizing the word facts.
‘But what has she done?’ asked Darya Alexandrovna. ‘What is it she has done?’
‘She has despised her duties and betrayed her husband. That is what she has done,’ he said.
‘No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake. . . . you are mistaken,’ said Dolly, raising her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.
Karenin smiled coldly with his lips only, wishing to prove to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this passionate defence, though it did not shake him, lacerated his wound. He began speaking with more animation.
‘It is difficult to make a mistake when a wife herself announces to her husband that eight years of married life and a son have all been an error, and that she wants to begin life from the beginning again,’ he said crossly, sniffing.
‘Anna and — vice. . . . I cannot combine them, I cannot believe it!’
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, now looking straight at Dolly’s kind, excited face and feeling his tongue involuntarily loosened. ‘I would give much for the possibility of doubting. While I was in doubt it was hard, but not so hard as it is now. While I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope left and all the same I doubt everything. I doubt everything so much that I hate my son, and sometimes believe he is not my son. I am very unhappy.’
There was no need for him to say this. Dolly had understood it as soon as he looked her in the face. She felt sorry for him, and her faith in her friend’s innocence was shaken.
‘Oh, it is terrible, terrible! But can it be true that you have decided on a divorce?’
‘I have decided to take the final step. There is nothing else for me to do.’
‘Nothing to do, nothing to do!’ she muttered with tears in her eyes. ‘No, there is something else to do,’ she said.
‘That is just what is so terrible in this kind of grief that you can’t do as in all other troubles — losses or deaths — just bear your cross, but here you must act,’ he said, as if guessing her thoughts. ‘You must come out of the degrading position in which you are placed; it is impossible to live three together.’
‘I understand, I understand very well,’ said Dolly and her head dropped. She was silent, thinking of herself and her own sorrow, and then suddenly and energetically she raised her head and folded her hands as in prayer. ‘But wait! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her if you throw her off?’
‘I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, and have thought deeply,’ said Karenin. His face flushed in blotches and his dim eyes looked straight at her. Dolly now pitied him with all her heart. ‘I did that very thing when she herself informed me of my shame; I let everything go on as before. I gave her a chance to turn over a new leaf and I tried to save her. With what result? She disregarded my very easy demand — that she should observe the proprieties,’ he went on, getting heated. ‘One may save a person who does not wish to perish; but if a nature is so spoilt and depraved that it regards ruin as salvation, what can one do?’
‘Anything but divorce!’ answered Dolly.
‘But what is “anything”?’
‘No, this is too awful. She will be nobody’s wife, she will be ruined.’
‘What can I do?’ said Karenin, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last delinquency irritated him so much that he again became as cold as he had been at the beginning of the conversation. ‘I am very grateful for your sympathy, but it is time for me to go,’ he said rising.
‘No, wait a bit! You should not ruin her. Wait a bit. I will tell you about myself. I married, and my husband deceived me; in my anger and jealousy I wished to abandon everything, I myself wished . . . But I was brought to my senses, and by whom? Anna saved me. And here I am living; my children growing, my husband returns to the family and feels his error, grows purer and better, and I live . . . I have forgiven, and you must forgive.’
Karenin listened, but her words no longer affected him. All the bitterness of the day when he decided on a divorce rose again in his soul. He gave himself a shake and began to speak in a loud and piercing voice.
‘I cannot forgive; I don’t wish to and don’t think it would be right. I have done everything for that woman, and she has trampled everything in the mud which is natural to her. I am not a cruel man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with the whole strength of my soul and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her so much for all the wrong she has done me!’ he said with tears of anger choking him.
‘Love those that hate you . . .’ whispered Dolly shamefacedly.
Karenin smiled contemptuously. He had long known all that, but it could not apply to his case.
‘Love them that hate you, but you can’t love them whom you hate. Forgive me for having upset you. Every one has trouble enough of his own!’ And having got himself under control, Karenin quietly rose, said good-bye and went away.
Chapter 13
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WHEN everybody was leaving the table Levin wanted to follow Kitty into the drawing-room but was afraid she would not like it because it would make his attentions to her too obvious. So he stopped with the group of men, taking part in their conversation. But without looking through the open door at Kitty he was conscious of her movements, her looks, and the place in the drawing-room where she sat.
He began at once, and without the slightest effort, to fulfil the promise he had made her, of thinking well of and always liking everybody. The conversation had turned to the question of village communes, in which Pestsov saw some special principle which he called the ‘chorus principle’. Levin did not agree either with Pestsov or with his brother Sergius, who, in a way of his own, both admitted and did not admit the importance of the Russian Communal System. But he talked to them only with the idea of getting them to agree and softening their controversy. He was not at all interested in what he himself said, still less in what they were saying, and only desired one thing — that everybody should feel contented and pleased. He now knew the one thing that was important. And that one thing was at first there in the drawing-room, but afterwards began moving and paused in the doorway. Without looking round he felt a pair of eyes and a smile directed toward him, and he could not help turning. She stood in the doorway with Shcherbatsky and was looking at him.
‘I thought you were going to the piano,’ he said, moving toward her. ‘That is what I miss in the country — music.’
‘No, we were only coming to call you away. Thank you for coming,’ she said, rewarding him with a smile as with a gift. ‘What is the use of arguing? No one ever convinces another.’
‘Yes, you are quite right,’ said Levin, ‘for the most part, people argue so warmly only because they cannot make out what it is that their opponent wants to prove.’
Levin had often noticed in arguments among the most intelligent people that after expending enormous efforts and an immense number of logical subtleties and words, the disputants at last became conscious of the fact that the thing they had been at such pains to prove to one another had long ago, from the very beginning of the controversy, been known to them, but that they liked different things and were disinclined to mention what they liked lest it should be attacked. He had experienced the fact that sometimes in the middle of a discussion one understands what it is that one’s opponent likes, and suddenly likes it oneself and immediately agrees with him, when all proofs become superfluous and unnecessary. Sometimes the reverse happens; one at last mentions the thing one likes, for the sake of which one has been devising arguments, and if this is said well and sincerely, one’s opponent suddenly agrees and ceases to dispute. This was what he wanted to express.
She wrinkled her forehead, trying to understand. But as soon as he began to explain she understood.
‘I see: one must find out what one’s opponent is contending for, what he likes, and then one can . . .’
She had completely grasped and found the right expression for his badly-expressed thought. Levin smiled joyfully: he was so struck by the change from the confused wordy dispute with his brother and Pestsov to this laconic, clear, and almost wordless communication of a very complex idea.
Shcherbatsky left them, and Kitty went up to a table prepared for cards, sat down, took a piece of chalk, and began drawing concentric circles on the new green cloth of the table.
They went back to the conversation at dinner about women’s rights and occupations. Levin agreed with Dolly, that a girl who does not get married can find woman’s work in the family. He supported this view by saying that no family can dispense with a help, and that in every family, rich or poor, there are and must be nurses, either paid or belonging to the family.
‘No,’ said Kitty, blushing, but looking all the more boldly at him with her truthful eyes: ‘A girl may be so placed that she cannot enter into a family without humiliation, while she herself. . . .’
He understood the allusion.
‘Oh, yes!’ he said, ‘yes, yes, yes, you are right, you are right!’
And he understood all that Pestsov at dinner had been trying to prove about the freedom of women, simply because he saw in Kitty’s heart fear of the humiliation of being an old maid, and, loving her, he too felt that fear and humiliation, and at once gave up his contention.
There was a pause. She still continued drawing on the table with the chalk. Her eyes shone with a soft light. Submitting to her mood, he felt in his whole being an ever-increasing stress of joy.
‘Oh, I have scribbled over the whole table!’ she said, and putting down the chalk moved as if to get up.
‘How can I remain here alone, without her?’ he thought horror-struck, and took up the chalk. ‘Don’t go,’ he said and sat down at the table.
‘I have long wished to ask you something!’
He looked straight into her kind though frightened eyes.
‘Please do.’
‘There,’ he said, and wrote the following letters, — W, y, a: i, c, n, b; d, y, m, t, o, n? These letters stood for: When you answered: it can not be; did you mean then or never? It was quite unlikely that she would be able to make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her with an expression as if his life depended on her understanding what those letters meant.
She glanced seriously at him and then, leaning her frowning forehead on her hand, began reading. Occasionally she looked up at him, her look asking him:
‘Is it what I think?’
‘I have understood,’ she said with a blush.
‘What word is this?’ he asked pointing to the ‘n’ which stood for never.
‘That word is never,’ she said, ‘but it is not true.’
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, handed her the chalk, and rose.
She wrote: T, I, c, n, a, o.
Dolly’s sorrow, caused by her talk with Karenin, was quite dispelled when she saw those two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, looking up at Levin with a timid, happy smile, and his fine figure bending over the table, with his burning eyes fixed now on the table, now on her. Suddenly his face beamed: he had understood. The letters meant ‘Then I could not answer otherwise.’
He looked at her questioningly, and timidly.
‘Only then?’
‘Yes,’ answered her smile.
‘And n. . . . And now?’ he said.
‘Well, then, read this. I will tell you what I wish, what I very much wish!’ and she wrote these initial letters: T, y, m, f, a, f, w, h. This meant, ‘that you might forgive and forget what happened.’
He seized the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, broke it, and wrote the initial letters of the following: ‘I have nothing to forget or forgive, I never ceased to love you.’
She looked at him with a smile that remained fixed on her lips. ‘I understand,’ she whispered.
He sat down and wrote out a long sentence. She understood it all, and without asking if she was right, took the chalk, and wrote the answer at once.
For a long time he could not make out what she meant and he often looked up in her eyes. He was dazed with happiness. He could not find the words she meant at all; but in her beautiful eyes, radiant with joy, he saw all that he wanted to know. And he wrote down three letters. But before he had finished writing she read it under his hand, finished the sentence herself and wrote the answer: ‘Yes.’
‘Playing “secretary”?’ said the old Prince approaching them. ‘Come now, we must be going, if you mean to come to the theatre.’
Levin rose and accompanied Kitty to the door.
Everything had been said in that conversation. She had said that she loved him, and would tell her father and mother, and he had said that he would call in the morning.