Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
Only when they had sent to tell him supper was ready did Levin go back to the house again. On the stairway Kitty and Agafya Mikhaïlovna were standing holding a consultation over the wines for supper.
"But why do you make such a fuss? Give them what you usually do."
"No, Stiva doesn't drink. .... Kostia, wait, what is the matter with you?" exclaimed Kitty, hastening after him; but he, without heeding her, went with long strides into the dining-room, and immediately began to take part in the lively conversation which Vasenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch were enjoying.
"What do you say? Shall we go hunting to-morrow?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Please let us go," said Veslovsky, changing his seat to another chair, and doubling his fat leg under him.
"I shall be very glad; yes, we will go. Have you had any hunting this year yet?" asked Levin, looking at Veslovsky's leg, but his cordiality was put on, as Kitty could easily see, and it did not become him. "I doubt if we find any woodcock, but snipe are abundant. We shall have to start early. You will not be too tired? Are you tired, Stiva?"
"I tired? I don't know what it is to be tired. I'm ready to stay up all night. We'll go and take a walk."
"Certainly, let us stay up all night. Capital," said Veslovsky.
"Oh, yes, we are agreed on that point, that you can stay up all night and also keep other people awake," said Dolly, in that tone of playful irony which she almost habitually employed in addressing her husband. "In my opinion, I had better be going to bed. I won't eat any supper. I'll go now."
"No, Dollenka, sit down," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going to the other side of the great table and taking a seat near his wife. "I've so many things to tell you about,"
"Probably mighty little!"
"Do you know—Veslovsky has been at Anna's? She lives only seventy versts[1] away from here; he is going there when he leaves us, and I intend to go too. Veslovsky, come here."
Vasenka approached the ladies, and sat down next to Kitty.
"Oh, please tell us about it. Have you really been to Anna Arkadyevna's? How is she?" asked Darya Aleksandrovna.
Levin had remained at the other end of the table, and while he kept on talking with the princess and Varenka, he observed that Stepan Arkadyevitch, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky were having an animated and mysterious conversation. Not only were they talking confidentially, but it seemed to him that his wife's face expressed a deep tenderness, as, without dropping her eyes, she looked into Vasenka's handsome face, while he was talking vivaciously.
"Their establishment is superb," Vasenka Veslovsky was saying in reference to Vronsky and Anna; "of course, I don't take it on myself to pass judgment on them, but when you are there in their house, you feel yourself at home."
"What are their plans?"
"They would like to pass the winter in Moscow, I believe."
"How jolly it would be for us to go there together When shall you be there?" Oblonsky asked Vasenka.
"I am going to spend July with them."
"And are you going?" he asked his wife.
"I have long been wanting to go, and I certainly shall," said Dolly. "I am sorry for her, and I know her. She is a lovely woman. When you have gone away, I shall go alone; that will not disturb any one, and it would be better for me to go without you."
"Just the thing," answered Stepan Arkadyevitch. "And you, Kitty?"
"I? Why should I go to see her?" said Kitty; and, blushing with vexation, she glanced at her husband.
"Do you know Anna Arkadyevna?" asked Veslovsky; "she is a very fascinating woman."
"Yes," answered Kitty, blushing still more, and she rose and joined her husband. "So you are going hunting to-morrow, are you?" she asked him.
Levin's jealousy during those few moments, and especially at the blush which covered her cheeks while she was talking with Veslovsky, had already reached an acute stage. Now, hearing her question, he interpreted it in his own way. Strange as it was afterward for him to remember this, now it seemed clear to him that the reason for her asking him if he was going hunting and for her interest in it was to know if he would give Vasenka Veslovsky that pleasure, and that proved that she was already in love with him!
"Yes, I am thinking of it," he answered, in a voice so unnatural and constrained that he himself was horrified at it.
"Well, you had better stay at home to-morrow; Dolly has hardly seen her husband yet. Go day after tomorrow."
Levin now translated Kitty's words thus:—
"Do not separate me from him. You may go; it is all the same to me; but let me enjoy the society of this attractive young man."
"Oh, if you desire it, we will stay at home to-morrow," answered Levin, with especial pleasantness.
Meantime, Vasenka, not suspecting the effect his presence had produced, rose from the table, and approached Kitty with an affectionate smile.
Levin noticed that smile. He grew pale and for a moment could not get his breath.
"How does he dare to look at my wife in that way?" He was boiling!
"We are to go hunting to-morrow, are we not?" asked Vasenka, and he sat down in a chair and again doubled one leg under him, as his habit was.
Levin's jealousy grew still more intense. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, whom his wife and her lover were plotting to get rid of that they might enjoy each other in peace.
Nevertheless, he asked Veslovsky, with all friendliness and hospitality, about his hunting-gear, his guns and boots, and agreed to go the next day.
To Levin's happiness the old princess put an end to his torture by advising Kitty to go to bed. But even this was accompanied by new suffering for Levin. On bidding his hostess "good night," Vasenka tried to kiss her hand again. But Kitty, blushing and drawing away her hand, said, with a naïve rudeness for which her mother afterward chided her:—
"That is not the custom with us."
In Levin's eyes she was blameworthy for permitting such liberties with her, and still more so for being so awkward in showing her disapprobation.
"Why should you go to bed?" said Oblonsky, who had taken several glasses of wine at dinner, and was in his most genial and poetic mood. "Look, Kitty," said he, pointing to the moon just rising above the lindens, "how lovely! Veslovsky, it is just the time for serenading. You know he has a splendid voice; he and I tried some on the way down. He has brought two new ballads with him. He and Varvara might sing to us."
After they had all left, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Veslovsky still for a long time walked up and down in the avenue, and their voices could be heard as they practised singing over the new ballads.
Hearing these voices, Levin sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife's room, and obstinately refused to answer her questions as to what was the matter with him. But at last Kitty, timidly smiling, asked him: "Is there anything about Veslovsky that has displeased you?"
This question loosened his tongue, and he told her all. What he said filled him with vexation, and so he grew still more excited.
He stood up in front of his wife with his eyes flashing terribly under his contracted brows and his hands pressed against his chest as if exerting all his force to restrain himself. His face would have been harsh and even cruel, had it not expressed also such keen suffering. His cheeks trembled and his voice shook. "Don't think me jealous; the word is disgusting. I could not be jealous and at the same time believe that.... I cannot tell you what I feel, but it is horrible to me .... I am not jealous, but I am hurt, humiliated, that any one should dare to look at you so."....
"Why, look at me how?" asked Kitty, honestly trying to recall all the remarks and incidents of the evening and all their possible significance. In the depth of her heart she had thought that there was something peculiar at the time when Veslovsky followed her to the other end of the table, but she dared not acknowledge it even to herself, and still more she did not wish to say this to him and thus increase his suffering.
"But what could he find attractive in me in my condition?" ....
"Akh!" he cried, clutching his head "You should not have said that That means, if you had been attractive...."
"Now stop, Kostia, and listen to me!" said Kitty, looking at him with a passionately compassionate expression. "What can you be thinking about? You know you are the only person in the world for me. .... But you would not wish me to shut myself up away from everybody?"
At first she had been wounded by this jealousy of his, which spoiled even the slightest and most innocent pleasures; but she was ready now to renounce, not merely the trifling things, but everything, for the sake of calming him so as to cure him of the suffering which he was enduring.
"Try to understand all the horrible absurdity of my position," he went on to say, in a whisper of despair. "He is my guest, and if it were not for his silly gallantry, and his habit of sitting on his leg, he has certainly done nothing unbecoming; he certainly thinks himself irreproachable, and so I am obliged to seem polite."
"But, Kostia, you exaggerate things," said Kitty, glad at heart to see the force of his love for her, which now was expressed in his jealousy.
"But more terrible to me than all this is that, when you are an object of worship to me, and we are so happy, so peculiarly happy, this trashy fellow, .... but why should I call him names? He has done nothing to me. But why should our happiness...."
"Listen, Kostia; I believe I know what has offended you."
"Why is it, why is it?"
"I saw how you were looking when we were at supper."
"Well, well?" asked Levin, excitedly.
She told him what they were talking about. And as she recounted it, she sighed with her emotion. Levin was silent; then, observing his wife's pale, excited face, he clutched his head again.
"Katya," cried he, "I have tired you! Galubchik, forgive me! This is sheer craziness. I am a burden to you, Katya! I am a fool! How could I torture myself over such a trifle!"
"I am sorry for you."
"For me, for me? that I am insane! .... but still it is horrible to think that any stranger might destroy our happiness!"
"Of course, this is outrageous ...."
"No, to disprove this, I will keep him with us all summer, and I'll spread myself in heaping favors on him," said Levin, kissing his wife's hands. "You'll see. And to-morrow—yes, certainly to-morrow, we will go!"
- ↑ 46.41 miles.