Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII
The particulars which the princess learned about Varenka's past life, and her relations with Madame Stahl, and about Madame Stahl herself, were as follows:—
Madame Stahl had always been a sickly and excitable woman, who was said by some to have tormented the life out of her husband, and by others to have been tormented by his unnatural behavior. After she was divorced from her husband, she gave birth to her first child, which did not live; and Madame Stahl's parents, knowing her sensitiveness, and fearing that the shock would kill her, substituted for the dead child the daughter of a court cook, born on the same night, and in the same house at Petersburg. This was Varenka. Madame Stahl afterwards learned that the child was not her own, but continued to take charge of her, the more willingly as the true parents shortly after died.
For more than ten years Madame Stahl lived abroad, in the South, never leaving her bed. Some said that she was a woman who had made a public show of her piety and good works; others said that she was at heart the most highly moral of women, and that she lived only for the good of her neighbor, that she was really what she pretended to be.
No one knew whether she was Catholic, Protestant, or orthodox; one thing alone was certain,—that she had friendly relations with the high dignitaries of all the churches and of all communions.
Varenka always lived with Madame Stahl abroad; and all who knew Madame Stahl knew Mademoiselle Varenka also, and loved her. When she had learned all the particulars, the princess found nothing objectionable in her daughter's acquaintance with Varenka; the more because Varenka had the most cultivated manners and a fine education; she spoke French and English admirably, and chief of all she brought from Madame Stahl her regrets that, owing to her illness, she was deprived of the pleasure of making the princess's acquaintance.
After she had once made Varenka's acquaintance, Kitty became more and more attached to her friend, and each day discovered some new charm in her. The princess, having discovered that Varenka sang well, invited her to come and give them an evening of music.
"Kitty plays, and we have a piano; not a very good instrument, to be sure, but you would give us a great pleasure," said the princess, with her hypocritical smile which was displeasing to Kitty, especially as she knew that Varenka did not want to sing. But Varenka came, that same evening, and brought her music. The princess had invited Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter, and the colonel.
Varenka seemed perfectly indifferent to the presence of these people, who were strangers to her, and she went to the piano without being urged. She could not accompany herself, but in singing she read the notes perfectly. Kitty, who played very well, accompanied her.
"You have a remarkable talent," said the princess, after the first song, which Varenka sang beautifully.
Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter added their compliments and their thanks.
"See," said the colonel, looking out of the window, "what an audience you have attracted."
In fact, a large number of people had gathered in front of the house.
"I am very glad to have given you pleasure," said Varenka, without affectation.
Kitty looked at her friend proudly; she admired her art and her voice and her face, and, more than all, she was enthusiastic over the way in which Varenka made it evident that she took little account of her singing, and was perfectly indifferent to compliments. She simply seemed to say, "Shall I sing some more, or is that enough?"
"If I were in her place, how proud I should be! How happy I should be to see that crowd under the window! But she seems perfectly unconscious of it. All that she seemed to want was not to refuse, but to please maman. What is there about her? What is it that gives her this power of indifference, this calmness and independence? How I should like to learn this of her!" thought Kitty, as she looked into her peaceful face.
The princess asked Varenka to sing again; and she sang this time as well as the first, with the same care and the same perfection, standing erect near the piano, and beating time with her thin brown hand.
The next piece in her music-roll was an Italian aria. Kitty played the introduction, and looked at Varenka.
"Let us not do that one," said she, blushing.
Kitty, in alarm and wonder, fixed her eyes on Varenka's face.
"Well! another one," she said, hastily turning the pages, and somehow feeling an intuition that the Italian song brought back to her friend some painful association.
"No," replied Varenka, putting her hand on the notes and smiling, "let us sing this." And she sang it as calmly and coolly as the one before.
After the singing was over, they all thanked her again, and went out into the dining-room to drink tea. Kitty and Varenka went down into the little garden next the house.
"You had some association with that song, did you not?" asked Kitty. "You need not tell me about it," she hastened to add; "simply say, 'Yes, I have.'"
"Why should I not tell you about it? Yes, there is an association," said Varenka, calmly, and not waiting for Kitty to say anything, "and it is a painful one, I once loved a man, and used to sing that piece to him."
Kitty with wide-open eyes looked at Varenka meekly, but did not speak.
"I loved him, and he loved me also; but his mother was unwilling, and he married some one else. He does not live very far from us now, and I sometimes see him. You did n't think that I also had my romance, did you?"
And her face lighted up with a rare beauty, and a fire such as Kitty imagined might have been habitual in other days.
"Why should n't I have thought so? If I were a man I could never have loved any one else after knowing you," said Kitty. "What I cannot conceive is, that he was able to forget you, and make you unhappy for the sake of obeying his mother. He could n't have had any heart."
"Oh, no, he was an excellent man; and I am not unhappy; on the contrary, I am very happy. .... Well, shall we sing anymore this evening?" she added, starting to go toward the house.
"How good you are! how good you are!" cried Kitty, and stopping her, she kissed her, "If I could only be a bit like you!"
"Why should you resemble any one else besides yourself? You are a good girl as you are," said Varenka, with her sweet and melancholy smile.
"No, I am not good at all. Now, tell me.... Stay, stay; let us sit down a little while," said Kitty, drawing her down to a settee near by. "Tell me how it can be other than a pain to think of a man who has scorned your love, who has jilted you...."
'But no, he did not scorn it at all; I am sure that he loved me. But he was a dutiful son, and...."
"Yes, but suppose it had not been for his mother's sake, but simply of his own free will," said Kitty, feeling that she was betraying her secret, and her face, glowing red with mortification, convicted her.
"Then he would not have behaved honorably, and I should not mourn for him," replied Varenka, perceiving that the supposition concerned, not herself, but Kitty.
"But the insult!" cried Kitty. "One cannot forget the insult. It is impossible," said she, remembering her own look when the music stopped at the last ball.
"Whose insult? You did n't act badly?"
"Worse than badly,—shamefully!"
Varenka shook her head, and laid her hand on Kitty's.
"Well, but why shamefully?" she asked. "You surely did not tell a man who showed indifference to you that you loved him?"
"Certainly not; I never uttered a word. But he knew it. There are looks, there are ways .... no, no! not if I lived a hundred years should I ever forget it."
"Now, what is it? I don't understand you. The question is solely this: do you love him now or not?"said Varenka, who liked to call things by their right names.
"I hate him. I cannot forgive myself."
"But what for?"
"The shame, the insult."
"Akh! if every one were as sensitive as you! There is never a young girl who does not sometimes feel the same way. It is all such a trifling thing!"
"But what, then, is important?" asked Kitty, looking at Varenka with astonishment and curiosity.
"Oh! many things are important," replied Varenka, with a smile.
"Yes; but what?"
"Oh! there are many things more important," replied Varenka, not knowing what to say; but at that moment the voice of the princess was heard from the window:—
"Kitty, it is getting cool; put on your shawl, or come in."
"It is time to go," said Varenka, getting up. "I must go and see Madame Berthe; she asked me to come."
Kitty held her by the hand, and her eyes, full of passionate, almost supplicating, curiosity, asked her:—
"What is it that is so important that can give such calm? You know; tell me."
But Varenka did not understand the meaning of Kitty's look. She remembered only that she had still to go to see Madame Berthe, and to get home at midnight for tea with maman. She went back to the room, picked up her music, and, having said good-night to all, started to go.
"Allow me; I will escort you," said the colonel.
"Certainly," said the princess. "How could you go home alone at night? I was going to send Parasha with you."
Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly keep from smiling at the idea that she needed any one to go home with her.
"No; I always go home alone, and nothing ever happens to me," said she, taking her hat, and after kissing Kitty again, though she did not tell her "the one important thing," she hurried away with firm steps, her music-roll under her arm, and disappeared in the semi-darkness of the summer night, carrying with her her secret of "what is important" and what gave her her enviable calmness and dignity.