Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
As soon as he had taken his wife to her room. Levin went to seek Dolly. Darya Aleksandrovna also was in a state of great excitement. She was pacing up and down her chamber, and scolding little Masha, who stood in a corner, crying.
"You shall stay all day in the corner, and eat dinner alone, and you shall not see one of your dolls, and you shall have no new dress," she was saying, though she did not know why she was punishing the child. "This is a naughty little girl," she said to Levin; "where does she get this abominable disposition?"
"Why, what has she done?" asked Levin, rather indifferently, for he was annoyed to find that he had come at the wrong time when he wished some advice regarding his own affairs.
"She and Grisha went into the raspberry bush, and there .... but I can't tell you what she did. I'd a thousand times rather have Miss Elliot. This governess doesn't look after anything .... she's a machine. Figurez vous, que la petite ...."
And Darya Aleksandrovna related Masha's misdeeds.
"There's nothing very bad in that. That doesn't signify a bad disposition. It is only a piece of childish mischief," said Levin, soothingly.
"But what is the matter with you? You look troubled. What has happened down-stairs?" asked Dolly, and by the tone of her questions Levin perceived that it would be easy for him to say what he had in his mind to say.
"I haven't been down-stairs. I have been alone in the garden with Kitty. We have just had a quarrel .... the second since.... Stiva came."
Dolly looked at him with her intelligent, penetrating eyes.
"Now tell me, with your hand on your heart," he said, "tell me, was the conduct, not of Kitty, but of this young man, anything else than unpleasant, not unpleasant, but intolerable, insulting even, to a husband?"
"What shall I say to you?—Stand, stand in the corner!" said she to Masha, who, noticing the scarcely perceptible smile on her mother's face, started to go away. "Society would say that he is only behaving as all young men behave. Il fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme, and her husband, as himself a gentleman of society, should be flattered by it."
"Yes, yes," said Levin, angrily; "but have you noticed it?"
"I noticed it, of course, and so did Stiva. Just after tea he said to me, 'Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour a Kitty.' "[1]
"Well, that settles it. Now I am calm. I am going to send him away," said Levin.
"What! Are you out of your senses?" cried Dolly, alarmed. "What are you thinking about, Kostia?" she went on with a laugh.—"You may go now to Fanny," she said to the child. "No! If you like, I will speak to Stiva. He will get him to leave. He can say you are expecting company. However, it is not our house."
"No, no! I will do it myself."
"You will quarrel." ....
"Not at all, I shall find it amusing," said he, with a happier light shining in his eyes. "There, now, Dolly, forgive her; she won't do it again," he said, pointing to the little culprit, who had not gone to Fanny, but was now standing irresolute beside her mother, and looking askance at her with pleading eyes.
The mother looked at her. The little girl, sobbing, hid her face in her mother's lap, and Dolly laid her thin hand tenderly on her head.
"Is there anything in common between us and that fellow?" thought Levin, and he went to find Veslovsky.
As he passed through the hall he ordered the carriage to be made ready to go to the station.
"The springs were broken yesterday," the servant answered.
"Then bring the tarantas. Only be quick about it. Where is the guest?"
"He went to his room."
Levin found Vasenka in the act of trying on his gaiters in preparation for a ride. He had just taken his things out of his valise, and laid aside some new love-songs.
Either there was something strange in Levin's expression, or Vasenka himself was conscious that ce petit brin de cour which he was making was rather out of place in this family; but at all events, he felt as uncomfortable in Levin's presence as it is possible for an elegant young man to feel.
"Do you ride in gaiters?" asked Levin.
"Yes; it 's much neater," replied Vasenka, putting up one fat leg on a chair, and struggling with the bottom button, and smiling with genuine good humor.
He was really a very good-hearted young fellow, and Levin felt sorry for him and conscience-stricken for himself as his host when he saw the timidity in Vasenka's eyes.
On the table lay a fragment of a stick which they had broken off that morning while trying to prop up the parallel bars for their gymnastic exercises. Levin took this fragment in his hand and began to break off the ragged ends, not knowing how to commence.
"I wanted ...." He stopped for a moment; but suddenly remembering Kitty and all that had taken place, he went on, looking him squarely in the eye. "I have had the horses put in for you."
"What do you mean?" began Vasenka, in surprise. "Where are we going?"
"You are going to the railway station," said Levin, with a frown, breaking off the end of the stick.
"Are you going away? Has anything happened?"
"I happen to be expecting company," Levin went on, breaking off pieces of his stick more and more nervously with his strong fingers. "Or, no, I am not expecting any one, and nothing has happened, but I beg you to go away. You may explain my lack in politeness as you please."
Vasenka drew himself up.
"I beg you to explain to me," said he, with dignity, comprehending at last.
"I cannot explain to you, and you will be wise not to question me," Levin said slowly, trying to remain calm, and to check the tremulous motions of his face.
And as the chipped pieces of the stick were by this time all broken. Levin took the stick in his fingers, split it in two, and picked up the part that fell to the floor.
Apparently the sight of those energetic hands, those very muscles which he had seen tested that morning while they were doing their gymnastics, those flashing eyes, and the quivering face and the subdued sound of his voice impressed Vasenka more than the spoken words. Shrugging his shoulders and smiling disdainfully, he submitted.
"May I not see Oblonsky?"
The shrugging of the shoulders and the smile did not annoy Levin. "What else could he do?" he asked himself.
"I will send him to you immediately."
"What sense is there in such conduct!" exclaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, when he had learned from his friend that he was to be driven from the house, and finding Levin in the garden, where he was walking up and down waiting for his guest's departure. "Mais c'est ridicule! To be stung by such a fly as that! Mais c'est du dernier ridicule! What difference does it make to you if a young man ...."
But the spot where the fly had stung Levin was evidently still sensitive, because he turned pale again and cut short the explanations which Stepan Arkadyevitch tried to give.
"Please don't take the trouble to defend the young man; I can't help it. I am sorry both for you and for him. But I imagine it won't be a great trial for him to go away, and my wife and I both found his presence unpleasant."
"But it was insulting to him. Et puis c'est ridicule."
"Well, it was humiliating and extremely disagreeable to me. I am not to blame toward him, and there is no reason why I should suffer for it."
"Well, I did not expect this of you. On peut être jaloux, mais à ce point c'est du dernier ridicule."
Levin quickly turned away, and entered the thick shrubbery by the driveway, and continued to walk up and down the path.
Soon he heard the rumbling of the tarantas, and through the trees he saw Vasenka riding up the road, sitting on the straw (for unfortunately the tarantas had no seat), the ribbons of his Scotch cap streaming behind his head as he jolted along.
"What now?" thought Levin, as he saw a servant run from the house and stop the cart. It was only to find a place for the machinist, whom Levin had entirely forgotten. The machinist, with a low bow, said something to Veslovsky, and clambered into the tarantas, and they drove off together.
Stepan Arkadyevitch and the old princess were indignant at Levin's conduct. And he himself felt that he had been not only ridiculous in the highest degree, but even blameworthy and disgraceful; but as he remembered all that he and his wife had suffered, he asked himself how he should do another time in similar circumstances, and his answer was that he should do exactly the same thing again.
In spite of all this, toward the end of the day, all of them, with the exception of the old princess, who could not forgive Levin's behavior, became extraordinarily gay and lively, just like children after a punishment or like grown people after a solemn official reception, so that in the evening, in the absence of the old princess, they talked about the dismissal of Vasenka as about something that had taken place long, long before. And Dolly, who had inherited from her father the gift of telling a funny story, made Varenka laugh till she cried, by telling her three and four times, and each time with new amusing details, how she had just put on, in honor of their guest, some new ribbons, and was just going into the drawing-room, when, at that very minute, the rattle of an old tumble-down wagon drew her to the window. Who was in this old tumble-down wagon? Vasenka himself! and his Scotch cap, his love-songs, his romantic airs, and his gaiters, seated on the straw!
"If only a carriage had been given him! But no! Then I hear a shout: 'Hold on!' 'Well,' I say to myself, 'they have taken pity on him;' not in the least; I look and see a fat German,—and off they go! and my ribbons were wasted."
- ↑ I believe Veslovsky is trying to flirt with Kitty.