Anna Karenina (Louise Maude's Translation) - Leo Tolstoy

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happy smiling face as she answered Vronsky’s question about the ball.

      Chapter 15

      AFTER the guests had gone Kitty told her mother of her conversation with Levin, and in spite of all her pity for him she was pleased by the thought that she had had a proposal. She did not doubt that she had acted rightly, yet for a long time she lay in bed unable to sleep. One image pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face with his kind eyes looking mournfully from under his knit brows as he stood listening to her father and glancing at her and at Vronsky, and she felt so sorry for him that tears rose to her eyes. But she immediately remembered for whom she had exchanged him. She vividly pictured to herself that strong manly face, that well-bred calm and the kindness toward everybody he always showed: she remembered the love the man she loved bore her, and again became joyful and with a happy smile put her head on her pillow. ‘It is a pity, a pity, but I am not to blame,’ she said to herself, but an inner voice said something different. Whether she repented of having drawn Levin on or of having rejected him she did not know, but her happiness was troubled by doubts.

      ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,’ she repeated to herself till she fell asleep.

      Meanwhile below in the Prince’s little study her parents were having one of their frequent scenes about their favourite daughter.

      ‘What? I’ll tell you what!’ shouted the Prince, flourishing his arms and immediately again wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown around him. ‘You have no pride, no dignity, you disgrace and ruin your daughter by this vile idiotic matchmaking.’

      ‘For goodness’ sake, Prince, what in heaven’s own name have I done?’ said the Princess almost in tears.

      After her talk with her daughter she had come in, happy and contented, to say good-night to the Prince as usual, and though she did not intend to speak to him about Levin’s proposal and Kitty’s refusal she hinted to him that she thought the matter with Vronsky was quite settled and would probably be definitely decided as soon as his mother arrived. And when she said that, the Prince suddenly flared up and began to shout rudely: ‘What have you done? Why this: first of all you entice a suitor. All Moscow will talk about it and with reason. If you give a party invite everybody and not only selected suitors. Invite all the young puppies,’ so the Prince called the Moscow young men, ‘have a pianist and let them dance; but don’t have the sort of thing we had tonight — these suitors and this pairing off. It makes me sick to see it, simply sick, and you have had your way and have turned the child’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. This one is a little Petersburg fop. They are machine-made by the dozen, all to one pattern, and all mere rubbish. But even if he were a Prince of the blood my daughter does not need him.’

      ‘But what have I done?’

      ‘Just this …’ exclaimed the Prince angrily.

      ‘I know this much,’ the Princess interrupted him, ‘that if I were to listen to what you say we should never see our daughter married, and we had better go and live in the country.’

      ‘So we had!’

      ‘Wait a bit! Do I draw them on? No, certainly not, but a young man and an excellent young man falls in love with Kitty, and she too seems …’

      ‘Seems indeed! And suppose she really falls in love with him while he intends to marry about as much as I do… . Oh, I wish my eyes had never seen it … “Ah spiritualism! Ah how nice! Ah the ball!” ’ And the Prince imagining himself to be impersonating his wife curtsied at each word. ‘And then if we really ruin Kitty’s happiness, if she really gets it into her head …’

      ‘But why do you suppose such a thing?’

      ‘I don’t suppose, I know! We have eyes for those things, and women haven’t. I can recognize a man who has serious intentions — such as Levin — and I can see through a weathercock like that popinjay who only wishes to amuse himself.’

      ‘Oh well, when you once get a thing into your head …’

      ‘And you’ll find it out, but too late, just as with poor Dolly.’

      ‘All right. All right, don’t let’s talk,’ said the Princess, interrupting him and remembering the unfortunate Dolly.

      ‘Very well then, good-night.’

      And having made the sign of the cross over one another and kissed, feeling that each of them retained their individual opinions, the couple separated for the night.

      The Princess had been at first firmly convinced that this evening had decided Kitty’s fate and that there could be no doubt as to Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words disturbed her, and when she reached her room, in terror of the uncertainty of the future, she mentally repeated, just as Kitty had done: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’

      Chapter 16

      VRONSKY had never known family life. His mother in her youth had been a brilliant Society woman, and during her married life and especially in her widowhood had had many love affairs, known to everybody. He hardly remembered his father, and had been educated in the Cadet Corps.

      On leaving that Corps as a very young and brilliant officer he at once joined the swim of the wealthy military Petersburg set. Though he occasionally went into the highest Petersburg Society, all his love interests lay outside it.

      In Moscow, after this luxurious course of Petersburg life, he experienced for the first time the delight of intimacy with a sweet, innocent Society girl who fell in love with him. It never entered his head that there could be any wrong in his relations with Kitty. At balls he danced chiefly with her and he visited her at her home. He talked with her the usual Society talk: all sorts of rubbish, but rubbish into which involuntarily he put a special meaning for her. Though he never said anything to her which could not have been said before everybody he was conscious that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this the pleasanter it was, and the more tender became his feelings toward her. He did not know that his behaviour toward Kitty had a name of its own, that it was decoying a girl with no intentions of marrying her, and is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men like himself. He thought he was the first to discover this pleasure and he enjoyed his discovery.

      If he could have heard what her parents said that night, if he could have known her family’s point of view and learnt that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been much surprised and would not have believed it. He would not have believed that what gave so much and such excellent pleasure to him, and — what was more — to her, could be wrong. Even less could he have believed that he ought to marry.

      Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. Not only did he dislike family life, but in accordance with the views generally held in the bachelor world in which he lived he regarded the family, and especially a husband, as something alien, hostile, and above all ridiculous. But although Vronsky had no suspicion of what Kitty’s parents were saying, he felt, as he left the Shcherbatskys’ house that night, that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had so strengthened during the evening that some action ought to be taken. But what this should or could be he could not imagine.

      ‘That’s what is so delightful,’ he thought as he left the Shcherbatskys’ house, carrying away from there, as usual, a pleasant feeling of purity and freshness (partly due to the fact that he had not smoked at all that evening) and deeply touched by a new sense of tender joy in the consciousness of her love for him. ‘That is what is so delightful, that nothing was said either by me or by her, yet we so well understand one another in that subtle language of looks and tones that to-day more plainly than ever she has told me that she loves me. And how sweetly, simply, and above all trustfully! I feel myself better and purer, I feel I have a heart and that there is much that is good in me. Those dear loving eyes! when she said, “and very much”.’

      ‘Well, and what

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