Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
She advanced to meet him, and did not conceal the pleasure which his visit caused her. With the ease and simplicity which Levin recognized as characteristic of a woman of the best society, she extended to him a small, energetic hand, introduced him to Vorkuyef, and called his attention to a light-complexioned and pretty little girl—her pupil, she said—who was seated with her work near the table.
"I am very, very glad," she repeated; and in these simple words, spoken by her. Levin found an extraordinary significance. "I have known you and liked you for ever so long, both because of your friendship with Stiva and because of your wife. .... I knew her a very short time, but she gave me the impression of a flower, a lovely flower. And to think! she will soon be a mother!"
She talked freely and without haste, occasionally looking from Levin to her brother, and Levin was conscious that the impression which he produced was excellent, and he immediately felt perfectly at his ease with her and on the simplest and most friendly terms, as if he had known her from childhood.
To Oblonsky, who asked if smoking was allowed, she replied:—
"That is why we have taken refuge in Alekseï's study;"and, looking at Levin, instead of asking "Do you smoke?" she held over a tortoise-shell cigar-case to him, and took a cigarette herself.
"How are you to-day?" asked her brother.
"Pretty well; a little nervous, as usual."
"Isn't it extraordinarily good?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, noticing Levin's admiration of the portrait.
"I never saw a better portrait."
"An extraordinary likeness, is n't it?" added Vorkuyef.
Levin looked from the portrait to the original. Anna's face lighted up with a peculiar glow as she felt conscious of his eyes resting on her. He blushed, and, to conceal his confusion, was just going to ask her when she had seen Darya Aleksandrovna. But at that instant Anna said:—
"Ivan Petrovitch and I were talking just now of Vashchenkof's pictures. Do you know them?"
"Yes; I have seen them," answered Levin.
"But I beg your pardon .... you were just going to ask me something?"
Levin asked whether she had seen Dolly lately.
"She was here yesterday. She was indignant at what happened to Grisha at the gymnasium. It seems his Latin teacher was unfair to him."
"Yes; I saw the pictures. They pleased me very much," said Levin, returning to the topic which they had begun to talk about.
What Levin now said was entirely free from the technical formality with which he had talked in the morning. Every word of the conversation with her seemed to be significant. And pleasant as it was to talk with her, it was still pleasanter to listen to her. Anna talked not only naturally and intelligently, but, though intelligently, still without pretense, not arrogating any great importance to her own thoughts but attributing great importance to what her friends said.
The conversation turned on the new tendencies of art and on some new illustrations to the Bible which a French artist had recently made.
Vorkuyef severely criticized the realism which the artist carried to brutality; Levin remarked that the French had carried conventionality in art to greater lengths than any other people, and that, therefore, they found especial merit in the reaction toward realism. They discovered poetry in the fact that they no longer lied.
Never had Levin said a clever thing which gave him anything like the pleasure that this did. Anna's face grew suddenly bright, as the full force of his remark dawned on her. She laughed.
"I am delighted," she said; "just as you are when you see a very lifelike portrait. What you just said is characteristic of all French art at the present time—painting and even literature: Zola, Daudet. But possibly this is always the way that men form their conceptions from imaginary, conventional figures, but afterward—all the combinaisons made, the imaginary figures weary, and people begin to invent more natural and truthful figures."
"That is perfectly true," said Vorkuyef.
"Have you been to the club?" asked Anna, turning to her brother.
"Yes, yes, here is a genuine woman," said Levin to himself, forgetting himself, and gazing steadily into her handsome, mobile face, which now suddenly changed its expression. Levin did not hear what she was talking about as she bent over toward her brother, but he was struck by the change in her expression. Beautiful as it had been before in repose, it now suddenly assumed a mixed expression of curiosity, wrath, and pride. But this lasted for only one minute. She half closed her eyes, as if she were trying to remember something.
"However, this is interesting to no one," said she, and she addressed the English girl in English. "Please order the tea in the drawing-room."
The girl rose and went out.
"Well, has she passed the examination?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Perfectly. She is a very capable girl, and a lovely character.""You will end by loving her better than your own daughter."
"That's just like a man. In love, there is no such a thing as more or less. I love my daughter in one way, and this girl in another."
"I tell Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuyef, "that if she would spend a hundredth part of the activity she devotes to this little English girl for the benefit of Russian children, what a service her energy would render. She would accomplish prodigies."
"Now there! What you want, I can't do! Count Alekseï Kirillovitch"—she glanced with an air of timid inquiry at Levin as she pronounced this name, and he involuntarily responded by a look which was encouraging, and full of admiration—"used to encourage me, when we were in the country, to visit the schools. I went a few times. They were very pleasant, but I could n't get interested in this occupation. You talk of energy; but the foundation of energy is love, and love does not come at will. So I love this little English girl, but I really don't know why."
She looked at Levin again; and her smile and her look all told him that she spoke only with the aim of gaining his approval, though sure in advance that they understood each other.
"I agree with you thoroughly," cried he. "You can't put your heart into schools and such things, and I think that from the same reason philanthropic institutions generally give such small results."
She was silent a moment, then she smiled. "Yes, yes," she replied, "I never could. Je n'ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole asylum of wretched little girls, cela ne ma jamais réussi. Women only do it to win for themselves position sociale. Even now, when I have so much need of occupation," added she with a sad, confiding expression, addressing Levin, though she was speaking to her brother, "even now I cannot." Then, suddenly frowning,—and Levin saw that she frowned because she had begun to speak of herself,—she changed the subject. "I know about you," said she, smiling at Levin; "you have the reputation of being only an indifferent citizen, but I have always defended you as well as I could."
"How have you defended me?"
"That has depended on the attacks. But suppose we have some tea," said she. She rose and took a morocco-bound book which was lying on the table.
"Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuyef, pointing to the book, "it is well worth while."
"No; it's all so unfinished!"
"I have told him about it," remarked Stepan Arkadyevitch, indicating Levin.
"You were wrong. My writings are like those little baskets and carvings made by prisoners, which Liza Myertsalova used to sell. .... She managed the prisons for our society," said she, turning to Levin. "Those unfortunates used to do perfect miracles of patience."
Levin was struck by still a new feature in this remarkable, fascinating woman. Besides wit, grace, beauty, she had sincerity. She did not wish to conceal the thorns of her situation. As she said that she sighed, and her face suddenly assumed a stern expression, as if it were changed to stone. With this expression on her face, she was even more beautiful than before. But that expression was new; it was entirely alien to that which a few moments before had seemed to irradiate happiness, and which the artist had managed to reproduce in the portrait. Levin looked once more at the portrait and at the original of it, while Anna took her brother's arm, and a feeling of tenderness and pity came over him, surprising even himself. She let the two gentlemen pass into the parlor, and remained behind to speak to Stiva.
"What is she talking with him about?—the divorce? Vronsky? what he was doing at the club? about me?" thought Levin; and he was so stirred that he heard nothing that Vorkuyef was saying to him about the merits of the story for children which Anna Arkadyevna had written.
During tea, a pleasant conversation full of ideas was carried on. There seemed to be no lack of subjects at any moment; but it was felt that there was time to say all that any one wanted to say, and each was willing to listen when the other talked. And all that was said, not only by Anna herself, but by Vorkuyef and by Stepan Arkadyevitch, had a special significance, thanks to her interested attention and her pertinent remarks; so at least it seemed to Levin.
All the time they were talking Levin studied her, and admired her beauty and the cultivation of her mind, and not less her perfect simplicity and naturalness. He listened and talked, and all the time thought about her and her inner life, and tried to penetrate her feelings; and he, who had formerly criticized her so severely, now by some strange train of thought justified her and pitied her, and confessed to himself the fear that Vronsky did not wholly understand her.
It was more than eleven o'clock when Stepan Arkadyevitch rose to go. Vorkuyef had already left some time before. Levin rose, too, but with regret. He felt as if he had only just come.
"Prashchaïte—farewell," said Anna to him, holding his hand in hers, and looking into his eyes with a fascinating look. "I am glad que la glace est rompue."
She let go his hand, and her eyes twinkled.
"Tell your wife that I love her as I have always done; and, if she cannot forgive me my position, tell her how I hope she may never pardon me; for to pardon, it is necessary to understand what I have suffered; and God preserve her from that!"
"Yes! I will surely tell her," answered Levin, and the color came into his face.