Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
As she entered Kitty's pretty little rosy boudoir, with figurines in vieux saxe, a room as youthful, as rosy, as gay as Kitty herself had been two months before, Dolly remembered with what pleasure and interest the two had decorated it the year before; how happy and gay they were then! She felt a chill at her heart as she saw her sister sitting on a low chair near the door, her motionless eyes fixed on a corner of the carpet. Kitty glanced up at her sister, but the cold and rather stern expression of her face underwent no change.
"I am going now, and I may be confined at home, and it will be impossible for you to see me," said Darya Aleksandrovna, sitting down near her sister; "I wanted to have a little talk with you."
"What about?" asked Kitty, quickly raising her head in alarm.
"What else than about your sorrow?"
"I have no sorrow."
"That'll do, Kitty. "Do you really imagine that I don't know? I know everything; and believe me, this is such a trifle .... All of us have been through this."
Kitty said nothing, and her face resumed its severe expression.
"He is not worth the trouble that you have given yourself because of him," continued Darya Aleksandrovna, coming right to the point.
"Yes! because he jilted me!" murmured Kitty, with trembling voice. "Don't speak of it, please don't speak of it!"
"But who said that to you? No one said such a thing! I am sure that he was in love with you,—that he is still in love with you; but ...."
"Ah! nothing exasperates me so as compassion," cried Kitty, in a sudden rage. She turned around in her chair, flushed scarlet, and moved her belt-buckle back and forth from one hand to the other, clutching it in her fingers.
Dolly well knew this habit of her sister when she was provoked. She knew that she was capable of forgetting herself, and saying harsh and cruel things in moments of petulance, and she tried to calm her; but it was too late.
"What, what do you wish me to understand? what is it?" cried Kitty, talking fast:—"that I was in love with a man who did not care for me, and that I am dying of love for him? And it is my sister who says this to me!—my sister who thinks that .... that .... that .... she is showing me her sympathy! .... I hate such sympathy and such hypocrisy!"
"Kitty, you are unjust."
"Why do you torment me?"
"Why, on the contrary .... I saw that you were sad ...."
Kitty in her anger did not heed her.
"I have nothing to break my heart over, and need no consolation. I am too proud ever to love a man who does not love me."
"Well! I do not say .... I say only one thing .... Tell me the truth," added Darya Aleksandrovna, taking her hand. "Tell me, did Levin speak to you?"....
At the name of Levin, Kitty lost all control of herself; she sprang up from her chair, threw the buckle on the floor, and with quick, indignant gestures cried:—
"Why do you speak to me of Levin? I don't see why you need to torment me. I have already said, and I repeat it, that I am proud, and never, never would I do what you have done,—go back to a man who had been false to me, who had made love to another woman. I do not understand this; you can, but I cannot!"
As she said these words, she looked at her sister, and seeing that Dolly bent her head sadly without answering, she sat down near the door again, and hid her face in her handkerchief instead of leaving the room as she had intended to do.
The silence lasted several minutes. Dolly was thinking of herself. Her humiliation, of which she was always conscious, appeared to her more cruel than ever, thus recalled by her sister. She did not expect such bitterness from her sister, and it made her angry. But suddenly she heard the rustling of a dress, a broken sob, and some one's arms were thrown around her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.
"Dolinka, I am so unhappy!" she murmured in exculpation; and her pretty face, wet with tears, was hid in Dolly's skirt.
Those tears were evidently the indispensable lubricant without which the machinery of mutual communion between the two sisters could not work. At all events, after a good cry, they spoke no more on the subject which interested them both, but even while they were talking about irrelevant topics they understood each other. Kitty knew that the cruel words that she had uttered in her anger, about the husband's unfaithfulness—the unfaithfulness of Dolly's husband—and her humiliation, struck deep into her poor sister's heart, but that she forgave her. Dolly, on her side, knew all that she wanted to know, she was convinced that her suspicions were correct, that the pain Kitty felt, the irremediable pain, lay in the fact that Levin had offered himself to her, and that she had refused him, and that Vronsky had played her false, and that she was ready to love Levin and to hate Vronsky. Kitty said not a word about this; she spoke only of the general state of her soul.
"I have no sorrow," she said, regaining her calmness a little; "but you cannot imagine how wretched, disgusting, and vulgar everything seems to me—above all myself. You cannot imagine what evil thoughts come into my mind."
"Yes, but what evil thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, with a smile.
"The most abominable, the most repulsive. I cannot describe them to you. It is not melancholy, and it is not ennui. It is much worse. It is as if all the good that was in me had disappeared, and only the evil was left. Now how can that be, I tell you?" she asked, looking in perplexity into her sister's eyes. "Papa began to say something to me a few minutes ago .... It seems to me he thinks that all I need is a husband. Mamma takes me to the ball. It seems to me that she takes me there for the sole purpose of getting rid of me, of getting me married as soon as possible. I know that it is not true, and yet I cannot drive away these ideas. So-called marriageable young men are unendurable to me. It always seems to me that they are taking my measure. A short time ago, to go anywhere in a ball gown was a simple delight to me; I admired myself, I enjoyed it; now it is a bore to me, and I feel ill at ease. Now, what do you think?.... The doctor.... well .... " Kitty stopped; she wanted to say further that, since she had felt this great change in herself, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become unendurably distasteful to her, that she could not see him without the most repulsive and unbecoming conjectures arising in her mind.
"Indeed, everything takes the most repulsive, disgusting aspect in my sight," she continued. "It is a disease,—perhaps it will pass away."
"But don't for a moment think...."
"I cannot help it. I do not feel at ease except with you and the children."
"What a pity that you can't come home with me now!"
"Well, I will go. I have had scarlatina. I will persuade maman."
Kitty insisted so eagerly, that she was allowed to go to her sister's, and throughout the course of the disease,—which proved to be the scarlatina,—she looked after the children. The two sisters successfully nursed all the six children; but Kitty's health did not improve, and at Lent the Shcherbatskys went abroad.