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FIFTY-FOUR

Chapter 14

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LEVIN had been married three months. He was happy, but in quite a different way from what he had expected. At every step he met disillusionments in his old fancies and new and unexpected enchantments. He was happy, but having embarked on family life he saw at every step that it was not at all what he had anticipated. At every step he took he felt as a man would feel who, after admiring the smooth happy motion of a little boat upon the water, had himself got into the boat. He found that besides sitting quietly without rocking he had to keep a lookout, not for a moment forget where he was going, or that there was water under his feet, and that he had to row, although it hurt his unaccustomed hands; in short, that it only looked easy, but to do it, though very delightful, was very difficult.
As a bachelor seeing the married life of others — their petty cares, their disputes, their jealousies — he used mentally to smile contemptuously. In his future married life he was sure he would have nothing of this kind, and even the external forms of his married life would be quite unlike other people’s. And now, behold! his life with his wife had not shaped itself differently, but was all made up of those petty trifles which he had formerly so despised, but which now, against his will, assumed an unusual and incontestable importance. Levin saw that the arrangement of all those trifles was not at all so easy as he had formerly supposed. Though he had imagined his ideas about family life to be most exact, he, like all men, had involuntarily pictured it to himself as merely the enjoyment of love — which nothing should be allowed to hinder and from which one should not be distracted by petty cares. He should, he thought, do his work, and rest from it in the joys of love. She should be loved — and that was all. But, like all men, he forgot that she too must work; and was surprised how she, the poetic, charming Kitty, could, during the very first weeks and even in the first days of married life, think, remember, and fuss about table-cloths, furniture, spare-room mattresses, a tray, the cook, the dinner, and so forth. During their engagement he had been struck by the definiteness with which she declined a trip abroad and decided to go to the country, as if she knew of something that was necessary, and could think of something besides their love. He had been pained by it then, and now was repeatedly pained by her petty cares. But he saw that this was necessary to her, and, loving her, though he could not understand what it was all about, and laughed at her worries, he could not help admiring them. He laughed at the way she placed the furniture that had been brought from Moscow, and rearranged his and her own rooms, hung up curtains, decided about rooms for future visitors and for Dolly, arranged the room for her new maid, gave orders about dinner to the old cook, and entered into discussions with Agatha Mikhaylovna, taking the commissariat into her own hands. He saw the old cook smile admiringly and listen to her inexperienced and impossible orders; saw that Agatha Mikhaylovna shook her head thoughtfully and kindly at her young mistress’s arrangements in the storeroom; saw that Kitty was peculiarly charming when she came, half laughing and half crying, to report that her maid, Masha, was used to considering her merely as a young lady in her mother’s house, and that therefore no one would obey her. It struck him as very charming, but strange, and he thought it would have been better without all that.
He did not realize the feeling of change that she was experiencing after her life at home. There she had sometimes wished for cabbage with kvas, or sweets, and could not have them; but now she might order whatever she pleased, and could if she liked buy heaps of sweets, spend any amount of money, and order all the puddings she pleased.
She looked forward joyfully to Dolly’s coming with the children, especially because she meant to give each of them their favourite puddings, and because Dolly would appreciate her new arrangements. Without herself knowing why or wherefore, the management of the house attracted her irresistibly. Instinctively feeling the approach of spring, and knowing that there would be wet weather, she built her nest as she could, hastening to build it while yet learning how to do it.
Kitty’s absorption in these trifles, quite contrary to Levin’s early ideal of lofty happiness, was one of his disappointments; yet that sweet absorption, the meaning of which he could not understand but which he could not help liking, was also one of his new enchantments. Another disenchantment and new enchantment was afforded by their quarrels. Levin had never thought it possible that between him and his wife there could ever be any but tender, respectful, and loving relations; and yet from the very beginning they had quarrelled: she had said he did not love her, but only loved himself, and began to cry and wave her arms. This first quarrel arose because Levin had ridden over to see his new farm and returned half an hour late, having attempted a short cut home and lost his way. He rode home thinking only of her, of her love and of his happiness, and the nearer he came the warmer grew his tenderness for her. He ran into the room with the same feelings as, and even stronger ones than, those with which he had gone to the Shcherbatskys’ house to propose — and to his astonishment was met with such a dismal look as he had never seen on her face before. He tried to kiss her but she pushed him away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You seem merry . . .’ she began, wishing to say something calmly stinging.
But directly she opened her mouth, words of reproach, senseless jealousy, and everything else that had been torturing her during the half-hour she had sat motionless waiting at the window, burst from her. Then it was that he first clearly understood what he did not realize when leading her out of church after the wedding: that she was not only very close to him but that he could not now tell where she ended and he began. He understood this by a tormenting sensation of cleavage which he experienced at that moment. For an instant he was offended, but immediately knew he could not be offended with her because she was himself. For a moment he felt like a man who, receiving a blow from behind, angrily and revengefully turns round to find his assailant and realizes that he has accidentally knocked himself, that there is no one to be angry with and that he must endure and try to still the pain.
Never again did he feel this so strongly as this first time, and for a long time he could not recover his balance. His natural feelings prompted him to justify himself and prove that she was in the wrong; but to prove her in the wrong would mean irritating her still more, and widening the breach which was the cause of all the trouble. One impulse, an habitual one, drew him to shift the blame from himself and lay it upon her; but another, and more powerful one, drew him to smooth over the breach as quickly as possible and not allow it to widen. To remain under so unjust an accusation was painful, but to justify himself and hurt her would be still worse. Like a man half-asleep and oppressed with pain, he wanted to tear off the aching part and cast it from him, but found on waking that the aching part was — himself. All he could do was to try to soothe the ache and endure it, and this he did.
They made it up. Having realized that she was in the wrong, though she did not acknowledge it, she became more tender to him, and they enjoyed a new and doubled happiness in their love. But this did not prevent such collisions recurring quite frequently, and on very unexpected and trivial provocation. These collisions were often caused by each not realizing what was important to the other, and also by the fact that in those early days they were often in low spirits. When one of them was in good spirits and the other was not, peace was not broken; but if both chanced to be out of sorts, collisions resulted from causes so trifling as to be incomprehensible. Often afterwards they could not remember what they had quarrelled about. However, when both were in good spirits their happiness was doubled — and yet the early days of their married life were very trying.
All that time they were conscious of peculiar strain, as if the chain that bound them were being pulled first one way and then the other. Altogether, the honeymoon — the first month of their marriage, from which Levin had expected so much — was not delightful, but remained in both their recollections as the most oppressive and humiliating time of their lives. They both tried in after life to efface from their memories all the ugly shameful circumstances of this unhealthy time, during which they were rarely in a normal state and rarely themselves. Only in the third month of their married life, after returning from Moscow where they had spent a month, did their life begin to run more smoothly.
Chapter 15
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THEY had just returned from Moscow and were glad of the solitude. He was in his study and sat at the table writing. She, in the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of her marriage and which was specially memorable and dear to him, sat with her embroidery on that same old leather-covered sofa which had stood in the study through his father’s and grandfather’s times. As he sat thinking and writing he was all the while blissfully conscious of her presence. He had not abandoned his work on the estate, or on the book in which the foundations of a new farming system were to be explained; but as those thoughts and that work formerly appeared to him trivial and insignificant in comparison with the gloom that overshadowed all existence, so now they appeared trivial and insignificant in comparison with his future prospects all bathed in the bright sunshine of happiness.
He went on with his work with a feeling that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted, and that he consequently saw the matter differently and with greater clearness. Formerly this work had been his salvation from life. He used to feel that without it life would be too dismal, and now he needed it in order that his life should not be too monotonously bright.
Having set to work again on his manuscript and read over what he had written, he was glad to find that the work seemed worth doing. Many of his former thoughts now appeared superfluous and extreme, but many omissions became clear to him when he went over the matter afresh. He was writing a fresh chapter on why agriculture was not profitable in Russia. He argued that Russia’s poverty was caused not only by a wrong distribution of landed property and a false policy, but that of late years those evils had been fostered by a foreign civilization artificially grafted upon Russia, especially as to ways of communication — viz., the railways, which had conduced to a centralization in the cities, a growth of luxury, and consequently to a development of factories at the expense of agriculture, and, attendant upon this, to credit operations and speculation. It seemed to him that when the growth of a nation’s wealth is normal these things follow only after a considerable amount of labour has been devoted to agriculture, and after the latter has been placed in its rightful — or at any rate in a definite — position: that a nation’s wealth ought to grow proportionately at the same rate in all its branches, and especially in such a way that the other branches should not out-distance agriculture; that means of communication should conform to the agricultural conditions, and that with our wrong methods of using the land, the railways — brought about not by economic but by political necessity — had come prematurely, and instead of promoting agriculture as had been expected, had interfered with it and hindered it by stimulating the development of manufactures and credit. Therefore, as the one-sided and premature development of a single organ in an animal would injure its general development, so credit, railways, and the forced growth of manufacturers — though undoubtedly necessary in Europe, where the time was ripe for them — had in Russia only harmed the general development of wealth by thrusting aside the most important current question, namely, the organization of agriculture.
While he was writing his thoughts, she was thinking about his unnatural attention to young Prince Charsky, who had been very tactlessly paying court to her on the day before their departure from Moscow. ‘Why, he’s jealous!’ she thought. ‘Oh dear! How sweet and silly he is, jealous of me! If he only knew that all the rest of them are no more than Peter the cook to me!’ and she glanced with a feeling of proprietorship, strange to herself, at the nape of his red neck. ‘Though it’s a pity to interrupt him at his work (but he’ll have time enough) I must see his face. Will he feel that I am looking at him? I want him to turn . . . I want it! Well!’ and she opened her eyes wider, trying thereby to increase the force of her look.
‘Yes, they divert all the sap, they produce a false glamour,’ he muttered, pausing, and feeling that she was looking at him he turned round smiling.
‘Well?’ he asked with a smile, and rose.
‘He has turned!’ she thought. ‘Nothing, I only wanted to make you turn round,’ said she, gazing at him and trying to discover whether he was vexed at the interruption.
‘I say, how delightful it is for us to be alone together! For me, I mean . . .’ he said, coming toward her with a beaming smile of happiness.
‘It is delightful for me too! I shan’t go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.’
‘And what were you thinking about?’
‘I? . . . I was thinking. . . . No, no! Go and write, don’t let me distract you,’ she said, puckering her lips. ‘And I must cut out these little holes, you see!’
Taking up her scissors she began cutting.
‘Come, tell me what it was,’ he said, sitting down beside her and watching the circular movement of her tiny scissors.
‘Oh, what was I thinking about? About Moscow, and about the nape of your neck.’
‘Why should such happiness come just to me? It’s not natural. It is too beautiful!’ he said, kissing her hand.
‘To me the more beautiful it is the more natural it seems.’
‘Your hair comes to a point behind,’ he said, carefully turning her head round.
‘A point? Yes, so it does. There! But enough! We are engaged on serious matters!’
But their serious matters did not get on, and they jumped apart guiltily when Kuzma came to say that tea was served.
‘And have they returned from town?’ Levin inquired of Kuzma.
‘They’ve just come and are unpacking.’
‘Be quick and come,’ she said as she left the study, ‘or else I shall read all the letters without you. And after that let’s have a duet.’
Left alone, having put away his papers in the new portfolio she had bought, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the new and elegant utensils that had also appeared through her agency. He smiled at his thought and shook his head disapprovingly at it. A feeling resembling repentance tormented him. There was something contemptible, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it, in his present life. ‘It is not right to live so,’ he thought. ‘Soon it will be three months since I did anything worth mentioning. This is almost the first day that I have really set to work seriously, and what has come of it? Scarcely had I begun when I stopped. Even my usual duties — all almost abandoned! The farm work — why, I hardly even go and see about that! Sometimes I am sorry to part from her, sometimes I can see she is dull. And I used to think that up to the time of my marriage life would go on just so-so, anyhow, and not count for much; but that after marriage real life was going to begin. And now that is nearly three months ago, and I have never spent my days more idly or uselessly! No, this can’t go on. I must make a beginning. Of course it is not her fault; there is nothing to reproach her with. I ought to have been firmer and upheld my independence as a man. This way I shall get into bad habits and teach them to her too. . . . Of course it is not her fault,’ he said to himself.
But it is difficult for a dissatisfied man not to reproach some one else, namely, the person most closely connected with the subject of his dissatisfaction. And Levin dimly felt that though she was not herself in fault — she never could be in fault — it was the fault of her bringing up, which was too superficial and frivolous. ‘That fool Charsky! I know she wanted to stop him but did not know how,’ he thought. ‘Yes, except for the interest she takes in the housekeeping, — that interest she certainly has, — her clothes, and her embroidery, she has no real interests. She takes no interest in our work, in the farm, in the peasants, or in music, though she is quite good at that, or in books. She does nothing and is quite content.’ In his heart he blamed her, but he did not understand that she was preparing herself for a period of activity which was inevitably coming, when at one and the same time she would be her husband’s wife, the mistress of the house, and a bearer, nurturer, and educator of her children. He did not understand that, but she knew it instinctively; and while getting ready for her gigantic task she did not reproach herself for the moments of careless and happy love that she now enjoyed while building her nest for the future.
Chapter 16
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WHEN Levin came upstairs his wife was sitting beside the new silver samovar with a new tea-service before her, reading a letter from Dolly, with whom she kept up a regular and active correspondence. She had made old Agatha Mikhaylovna sit at a little table with a cup of tea she had poured out for her.
‘You see, your lady has made me sit with her,’ said Agatha Mikhaylovna, glancing with a friendly smile at Kitty.
In these words of Agatha Mikhaylovna’s Levin read the conclusion of the drama which had lately been enacted between Agatha Mikhaylovna and Kitty. He perceived that despite Agatha Mikhaylovna’s grief at the advent of the new mistress who had taken the reins of management into her own hands, Kitty had conquered and had made the old woman love her.
‘There! I’ve read your letter,’ said Kitty, handing him a badly written letter. ‘It is from that woman, I think — your brother’s . . . No, I have not read it. . . . These are from home, and from Dolly. Fancy! Dolly took Grisha and Tanya to a children’s party at the Sarmatskys’! Tanya went as a marquise.’
But Levin did not listen. He blushed as he took Mary Nikolavna’s letter. This was the second letter he had received from the woman who had been his brother’s mistress. In the first she wrote that his brother had sent her away for no fault of hers, adding with touching naïveté that, though she was again in want she did not ask or desire anything, but wrote because she was crushed by the thought that Nicholas Dmitrich would perish without her, his health being so bad. She begged Levin to keep watch over his brother. This time she wrote differently: she had found Nicholas Dmitrich, had joined him in Moscow, and had gone with him to a provincial town where he had obtained a post in the Civil Service. But he had quarrelled with his chief, and they had started again for Moscow, when he fell so ill on the way that it was hardly likely he would ever get up again. She wrote: ‘He keeps on thinking of you; besides, there is no money left.’
‘Read it. . . . Dolly writes about you,’ Kitty began with a smile, but paused suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her husband’s face. ‘What’s the matter? What is it?’
‘She writes that my brother Nicholas is on his deathbed. I am going.’
Kitty’s look changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise and of Dolly had quite vanished.
‘When are you going?’ she asked.
‘To-morrow.’
‘I shall go too, may I?’
‘Kitty! What do you mean?’ he said reproachfully.
‘What, indeed?’ she replied, offended that he seemed opposed to and vexed at her offer. ‘Why should I not go? I shan’t be in your way. I . . .’
‘I am going because my brother is dying,’ said Levin, ‘but why should you . . . ?’
‘Why? For the same reason as you.’
‘At such an important time, she thinks only of how dull it will be for her alone here,’ he thought; and this motive in connection with something so important vexed him.
‘It is impossible,’ he replied sternly.
Agatha Mikhaylovna, seeing that a quarrel was imminent, softly put down her cup and went out. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had said these words hurt her, especially as he evidently disbelieved what she had said.
‘And I say that if you go I shall go with you. I will certainly go!’ she said hastily and angrily. ‘Why is it impossible? Why do you say it is impossible?’
‘Because it means going goodness knows where, and by what roads! to what inns! You would be in my way,’ said Levin, endeavouring to keep cool.
‘Not at all! I shan’t want anything, and where you can go I can.’
‘Well, if only because that woman is there, with whom you cannot associate . . .’
‘I don’t know and don’t want to know anything about who and what is there. I know that my husband’s brother is dying, that my husband is going to him, and that I am going with my husband in order . . .’
‘Kitty, don’t be angry! But just think, this matter is so important — -it hurts me to think that you are mixing up with it your weakness, your dislike of remaining alone. Well, if you feel dull alone — well, go to Moscow!’
‘There, you see! You always attribute bad and vile motives to me,’ she began, with tears of anger and resentment. ‘I am all right, not weak, nor anything. . . . I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he is in trouble, but you wish to hurt me on purpose, you purposely don’t want to understand me!’
‘No, this is awful . . . being a sort of slave!’ exclaimed Levin, unable to restrain his annoyance any longer, but immediately conscious that he had dealt a blow to himself.
‘Then why did you marry? You might have been free! Why, since you are repenting?’ she said, and jumped up and ran into the drawing-room.
When he came in after her, she was sobbing. He began speaking, trying to find words not so much to dissuade as to pacify her. But she did not listen and did not agree to anything he said. He stooped and took her resisting hand; he kissed her hand, her hair, and again her hand, but she remained silent. But when he took her face in his hands and said ‘Kitty!’ she suddenly recovered, cried a little, and then they made it up.
It was settled that they would start together the next day. Levin told his wife he believed she only wanted to go that she might be of use, and agreed that Mary Nikolavna’s presence at his brother’s would not make it at all improper; but he was going, dissatisfied in the depths of his heart with both himself and her. He was dissatisfied with her because she could not face letting him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!), and dissatisfied with himself because he had not maintained his authority. Still less could he with conviction agree that the woman who was with his brother did not matter, and he thought with terror of all the encounters that might take place. The single fact that his wife, his Kitty, would be in the same room with a girl off the streets made him shudder with repulsion and horror.