Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
All the women were gathered on the terrace. They generally liked to sit there after dinner, but to-day they had a special matter of interest before them. Besides the making of baby-shirts and the knitting of bands, in which all of them were engaged at that time, they were engaged in superintending the cooking of some preserves after a recipe unknown to Agafya Mikhaïlovna. Kitty had brought with her this new process, which had been in use in her own home and required no water. Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who had before been shown how to do it in this way, considering that what had always been done at the Levins' could not be improved on, insisted on pouring water into the berries, declaring it could not be made otherwise. She had been detected doing this, and now the berries were cooking in the presence of them all, and Agafya Mikhaïlovna was to be brought to a realizing sense of the fact that the preserves could be made without the use of water.
Agafya Mikhaïlovna, with flushed and heated face and disheveled hair and with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, was moving a porringer round and round over a portable stove and looking gloomily at it, wishing with all her soul that the berries would thicken and not boil.
The old princess, conscious that Agafya Mikhaïlovna's indignation must be directed against her as the chief adviser in the concoction of the sweetmeat, pretended that she was busy with something else, and was not interested in it; but though she talked of extraneous affairs she occasionally glanced at the cooking out of the corner of her eyes.
"I always buy my girls' dresses at a cheap shop," the princess was saying in regard to something they had been talking about "Hadn't you better take off the scum, my dear?"[1] she added, addressing Agafya Mikhaïlovna. "It is not at all necessary for you to do it, and it is hot," said she, stopping Kitty.
"I will do it," said Kitty, who had got up and was carefully stirring the boiling sugar with a spoon, occasionally pouring out a little on a plate which was already covered with a variegated, yellowish red and sanguine scum, mixed with syrup.
"How they will like to lick it!" she said to herself, thinking of her children and remembering how she herself, when she was a little girl, had wondered that grown-up people did not feed upon that best of all things—scum!
"Stiva says that it is far better to give money," Dolly was saying in regard to the question of making presents, which they had been discussing. "But ...."
"How can one give money?" exclaimed the mother and Kitty, simultaneously. "They despise it."
"Well, for example, last year I bought our Matriona Semyonovna, not a poplin, but some of that kind ...." said the princess.
"I remember she wore it on your name-day."
"A lovely figure! So simple and ladylike. I should have liked one of it myself, if she had not one. Like the kind Varenka wears. So pretty and cheap."
"Now I think it is done," said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the spoon.
"When it crystallizes it is done. Cook it a little more, Agafya Mikhaïlovna."
"What an absurdity!" exclaimed Agafya Mikhaïlovna. "It would be the same anyway," she added.
"Oh! what a beauty he is! Don't scare him!" suddenly exclaimed Kitty, looking at a sparrow which perched on the rail, and, turning the heart of a berry over, began to peck at it.
"Yes, but you ought to be farther away from the charcoal," said her mother.
"À propos de Varenka," said Kitty in French, in which language indeed they had been speaking all the time so that Agafya Mikhaïlovna might not understand them, "do you know, maman, that I somehow expect something decided. You know what I mean. How nice it would be."
"What a master-hand at matchmaking you are," exclaimed Dolly. "How adroitly she has brought them together."
"No, but tell me, maman, what do you think of it?"
"What do I think of it? He can at any time have his choice of all the best in Russia;" by he she meant Sergyeï Ivanovitch. "He is not so young as he was, but still I know many would set their caps for him. She is very good, but he might...."
"No, indeed, you know perfectly well that nothing better could be imagined for either of them. In the first place, she is charming," said Kitty, bending down one finger.
"She pleases him very much, that is true," said Dolly, in confirmation.
"In the next place, he has such a position in the world that it would make no difference to him what his wife's property or social standing was. He needs only one thing — a sweet, pretty, even-tempered wife."
"Yes, he might be very happy with her," said Dolly, in confirmation of this also.
"In the third place, she must love him, and so it is now.... and so it would be perfectly lovely.... I expect when they come in from the woods it will be all decided. I shall read it instantly in their eyes. I should be so glad. .... What do you think about it, Dolly?"
"Do not get so excited. You really must not get so excited," said her mother.
"But I am not excited, mamma. I think that he will surely propose to her to-day."
"Oh, how strange it is how and when a man proposes.—Even if there is an obstacle, it is suddenly swept away," said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling the old days with Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Mamma, how did papa propose to you," asked Kitty, suddenly.
"There was nothing extraordinary about it—very simply," replied the princess; but her face grew all radiant at the remembrance.
"No, but how was it? Did you love him before you allowed him to speak?"
Kitty found a special charm in the fact that now she could talk with her mother, as with an equal, on the most important questions in the lives of women.
"Of course I loved him. He came to visit us in the country."
"But how was it decided, mamma?"
"Do you really think that you young people have invented something new? It is always one and the same thing; it is decided by looks and smiles."
"How well you describe it, mamma. That is just it, 'by looks and smiles,'" said Dolly, confirming what her mother had said.
"But what words did he say?"
"What words did Kostia say to you?"
"He wrote in chalk. .... How long it seems since then," said Kitty.
And the three ladies sat occupied with the same thought.
Kitty was the first to break the silence. She had been thinking about that long-past winter before her marriage, and her infatuation for Vronsky.
"There is one thing—Varenka's first love," said she, remembering this by a natural connection of thought. "I wanted to give Sergyeï Ivanovitch a hint of that to warn him. All men," she added, "are awfully jealous of our past."
"Not all," said Dolly. "You judge by your husband. I believe he is even now tormented by the remembrance of Vronsky; isn't that so?"
"He is!" replied Kitty, with a pensive smile in her eyes.
"Well, I don't know what there is in your past life to disquiet him," exclaimed the princess, her mother, resenting the inference that her maternal vigilance was called in question. "Is it because Vronsky paid you some attention? That happens to every young girl."
"Yes, but we were not talking about that," said Kitty, blushing.
"No, permit me to finish what I was saying," pursued the princess; "and besides, you yourself would not permit me to have an explanation with Vronsky, do you remember?"
"Oh, mamma!" exclaimed Kitty, with an exclamation of pain.
"There is no need of your being vexed. .... Your behavior toward him could never have been anything but perfectly proper. I myself should have challenged him! However, my darling, don't allow yourself to get excited. Please remember this, and calm yourself."
"I am perfectly calm, maman."
"How fortunate it turned out for Kitty that Anna appeared on the scene," said Dolly, "and how unfortunate for her. How their positions are reversed," she added, overwhelmed by her own thought. "Anna was so happy then and Kitty thought herself so miserable. I often think of her. What a complete change!"
"What is the use of thinking about her? She is a vile, disgusting, heartless woman," exclaimed the princess, who could not forget that Kitty had married Levin instead of Vronsky.
"What is the good of speaking about her, anyway!" said Kitty, in disgust. "I do not think about her nor do I wish to think of her at all. .... I do not wish to think about her," she repeated, hearing her husband's well-known step on the steps leading to the terrace.
"Whom do you wish not to think about?" asked Levin, appearing on the terrace.
No one answered, and he did not repeat his question.
"I am sorry that I am disturbing your feminine realm," said he, looking angrily at them all, and perceiving that they were talking about something which they would not talk about in his presence. For an instant he felt that he shared Agafya Mikhaïflovna's sentiments—her dissatisfaction at the Shcherbatsky way of making preserves without water, and especially the alien regime of his wife's family! Nevertheless, he smiled and went up to Kitty. "Well, how is it?" he asked, looking at her with the same expression every one used in addressing her.
"All right," said Kitty, with a smile; "and how is it with you?"
"The three-horse team will take a larger load than we can put on the telyega. Shall we go to meet the children? I have ordered the men to harness."
"What, are you going to take Kitty in the linyeïka[2]?" exclaimed the princess, reproachfully.
"We shall walk the horses, princess."
Levin never called the princess "maman," as his brothers-in-law did, and the princess resented it. But Levin, though he loved and respected her, could not call her so without doing violence to his feelings toward the memory of his own mother.
"Come with us, maman," said Kitty.
"I do not wish to countenance such imprudence!"
"Well, then, I will walk; that is good for me," said Kitty, rising to take her husband's arm.
"Good for you! But there's reason in all things," said the princess.
"Well, Agafya Mikhaïlovna, are your preserves done? Is the new method good?" asked Levin, smiling at the housekeeper in his desire to cheer her.
"Perhaps they're good; but, in my opinion, much overdone."
"There's one thing about them that's better, Agafya Mikhaïlovna, they won't spoil," said Kitty, divining her husband's intention, and with the same feeling addressing the old servant. "And you know the ice in the icehouse is all melted and we can't get any more. As for your spiced meats, mamma assures me that she has never eaten any better," she added, adjusting, with a smile, the housekeeper's loosened neckerchief.
Agafya Mikhaïflovna looked angrily at Kitty. "Do not try to console me, baruinya. To see you with him is enough to content me."
This familiar way of speaking of her master touched Kitty.
"Come and show us the best places to find mushrooms."
The old woman raised her head, smiling, as if to say, "One would gladly guard you from all hatred, if it were possible."
"Follow my advice, please, and put over each pot of jelly a round piece of paper soaked in rum, and you will not need ice in order to preserve them," said the princess.