Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 33
CHAPTER XXXIII
Kitty also made Madame Stahl's acquaintance, and her relations with this lady and her friendship with Varenka had not only a powerful influence on her, but also soothed her grief.
She found this consolation in the fact that, through this friendship, there opened before her an entirely new world, which had nothing in common with her past,—a beautiful, supernal world, from the lofty heights of which she could look down calmly on her past. She discovered that this world, which was entirely apart from the instinctive life which she had hitherto led, was the spiritual life. This life was reached by religion,—a religion which had nothing in common with the religion to which Kitty had been accustomed since infancy, a religion which consisted of going to morning and evening service, and to the House of Widows,[1] where she met her acquaintances, or of learning by heart Slavonic texts with the parish priest. This was a lofty, mystic religion, united with the purest thoughts and feelings, and believed in not because one was commanded to do so, but through love.
Kitty learned all this, but not by words. Madame Stahl talked to her as to a dear child whom she loved as the type of her own youth, and only once did she make any allusion to the consolation brought by faith and love for human sorrows, and to the compassion of Christ, who looked on no sorrows as insignificant; and she immediately changed the subject.
But in all this lady's motions, in her words, in her heavenly looks, as Kitty called them, and, above all, in the story of her life, which she knew through Varenka, Kitty discovered "the important thing" which till now had been but a sealed book to her.
But, lofty as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was her history, high-minded and affectionate her discourse, Kitty could not help noticing certain peculiarities, which troubled her. One day, for example, when her relatives were mentioned, Madame Stahl smiled disdainfully; it was contrary to Christian charity. Another time Kitty noticed, when she met a Roman Catholic dignitary calling on her, that Madame Stahl kept her face carefully shaded by the curtain, and smiled peculiarly. Insignificant as these two incidents were, they gave her some pain, and caused her to doubt Madame Stahl's sincerity.
Varenka, on the other hand, alone in the world, without family connections, without friends, hoping for naught, harboring no ill-will after her bitter disappointment, seemed to her absolute perfection. Through Varenka she learned how to forget herself, and to love her neighbor, if she wanted to be happy, calm, and good. And Kitty did wish this. And, when once she learned what was the important thing, Kitty was no longer willing simply to admire, but gave herself up with her whole heart to the new life which opened before her. After the stories which Varenka told her of Madame Stahl and others whom she named, Kitty drew up a plan for her coming life. She decided that, following the example of Aline, Madame Stahl's niece, whom Varenka often told her about, she would visit the unhappy, no matter where she might be living, and that she would aid them to the best of her ability; that she would distribute the Gospel, read the New Testament to the sick, to the dying, to criminals: the thought of reading the New Testament to criminals, as this Aline had done, especially appealed to Kitty. But she indulged in these dreams secretly, without telling them to her mother or even to her friend.
However, while she was waiting to be able to carry out her schemes on a wider scale, it was easy for Kitty to put her new principles in practice at the waters, even then and there at the Spa, where the sick and unhappy are easily found, and she did as Varenka did.
The princess swiftly noticed that Kitty had fallen under the powerful influence of her engouement with Madame Stahl (as she called it), and particularly with Varenka. She saw that Kitty imitated Varenka, not only in her deeds of charity, but even in her gait, in her speech, in her ways of shutting her eyes. Later she discovered that her daughter was passing through a sort of crisis of the soul quite independent of the influence of her friends.
The princess saw that Kitty was reading the Gospels evenings in a French Testament loaned her by Madame Stahl,—a thing which she had never done before. She also noticed that she avoided her society friends, and gave her time to the sick under Varenka's care, and particularly to the poor family of a sick painter named Petrof.
Kitty seemed proud to fill, in this household, the functions of a sister of charity. All this was very good; and the princess had no fault to find with it, and opposed it all the less from the fact that Petrof's wife was a woman of good family, and that one day the Fürstin, noticing Kitty's charitable activity, had praised her, and called her the " ministering angel." All would have been very good if it had not been carried to excess. But the princess saw that her daughter was going to extremes, so she spoke to her about it.
"Il ne faut rien outrer—One must never go to extremes," she said to her.
But her daughter made no reply; she only questioned from the bottom of her heart whether one could ever talk about going to extremes in the matter of religion. How could there be any possibility of extremes in following teachings which bid you offer your left cheek when the right has been struck, and to give your shirt when your cloak is taken from you? But the princess was displeased with this tendency to exaggeration, and she was still more displeased to feel that Kitty was unwilling to open her heart to her. In point of fact, Kitty kept secret from her mother her new views and feelings. She kept them secret, not because she lacked affection or respect for her mother, but simply because she was her mother. It would have been easier to confess them to a stranger than to her mother.
"It is a long time since Anna Pavlovna has been to see us," said the princess one day, speaking of Madame Petrof. "I invited her to come, but she seems offended."
"No, I don't think so, maman," reiplied Kitty, with a guilty look.
"You have not been with her lately, have you?"
"We planned a walk on the mountain for to-morrow," said Kitty.
"I see no objection," replied the princess, noticing her daughter's confusion, and trying to fathom the reason.
That same day Varenka came to dinner and announced that Anna Pavlovna had given up the proposed expedition. The princess noticed that Kitty again blushed.
"Kitty, has there been anything unpleasant between you and the Petrofs?" she asked, as soon as they were alone. "Why have they ceased to send their children, or to come themselves?"
Kitty replied that nothing had happened, and that she really did not understand why Anna Pavlovna seemed to be angry with her; and she told the truth. She did not know the reasons for the change in Madame Petrof, but she suspected them, and thus also she suspected a thing which she dared not to confess, even to herself, still less to her mother. This was one of those things which you know, but which are impossible to speak even to yourself, so humiliating and painful would it be if you are mistaken.
Again and again she passed in review all the memories of her relations with this family. She remembered the innocent joy which shone on Anna Pavlovna's honest, round face when they first met; she remembered their secret discussions to find means to distract the invalid, and keep him from the forbidden work, and to get him out of doors; the attachment of the youngest child, who called her Moya Kiti, and would not go to bed without her. How beautiful everything was at that time! Then she remembered Petrof's thin face, his long neck, stretching out from his brown coat; his thin, curly hair; his blue eyes, with their questioning look, which she had feared at first; his painful efforts to seem lively and energetic when she was near; she recalled the effort that she had to make at first to overcome the repugnance which he, as well as all consumptives, caused her to feel; and the trouble which she had in finding something to talk with him about.
She remembered the sick man's humble and timid looks when he saw her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness which came over her at first, followed by the pleasant consciousness of her charitable deeds. How lovely it all had been! but it lasted only for a brief moment. Now and for several days there had been a sudden change. Anna Pavlovna received Kitty with pretended friendliness, and did not cease to watch her and her husband.
Could it be that the invalid's pathetic joy at the sight of her was the cause of Anna Pavlovna's coolness?
"Yes," she said to herself, "there was something unnatural and quite different from her ordinary sweet temper when she said to me, day before yesterday, sharply, 'There! he will not do anything without you; he would not even take his coffee, though he was awfully faint.'
"Yes! perhaps it was not agreeable to her when I gave him his plaid. It was such a simple little thing to do; but he seemed so strange, and thanked me so warmly, that I felt ill at ease. And then that portrait of me which he painted so well; but, above all, his gentle and melancholy look. Yes, yes, it must be so," Kitty repeated with horror. "No, it cannot be, it must not be! He is to be pitied so!" she added, in her secret heart.
This suspicion poisoned the pleasure of her new life.
- ↑ Vdovui Dom.