ANNA KARENINA
PART 8
Chapter 22
The ball
was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the great staircase,
flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red coats.
From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of
movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last touches to
their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the
careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first
waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before
another mirror, and diffusing an odour of scent, stumbled against them on the
stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A
beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky
called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white
tie as he went, bowed to them, and after running by, came back to ask Kitty for
a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had
to promise this youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside
in the doorway, and stroking his moustache, admired rosy Kitty.
Although
her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty
great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in
her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all
the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her
or her family a moment’s attention, as though she had been born in that tulle
and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on
the top of it.
When, just
before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother, tried to turn right
side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn back a little. She felt
that everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and nothing could need
setting straight.
It was one
of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable anywhere; her lace berthe
did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not crushed nor torn off; her pink
slippers with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch, but gladdened her feet;
and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own
hair. All the three buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that
covered her hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket
nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious; at
home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Kitty had felt that that velvet
was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt, but the velvet was
delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the
glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a
feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not
keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had
scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle,
ribbons, lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to dance—Kitty was never one of
that throng—when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner, the
first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned director of dances, a
married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just
left the Countess Bonina, with whom he had danced the first half of the waltz,
and, scanning his kingdom—that is to say, a few couples who had started
dancing—he caught sight of Kitty, entering, and flew up to her with that
peculiar, easy amble which is confined to directors of balls. Without even
asking her if she cared to dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender
waist. She looked round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess,
smiling to her, took it.
“How nice
you’ve come in good time,” he said to her, embracing her waist; “such a bad
habit to be late.” Bending her left hand, she laid it on his shoulder, and her
little feet in their pink slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically
moving over the slippery floor in time to the music.
“It’s a
rest to waltz with you,” he said to her, as they fell into the first slow steps
of the waltz. “It’s exquisite—such lightness, precision.” He said to her the
same thing he said to almost all his partners whom he knew well.
She smiled
at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his shoulder. She was
not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into
one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round of
balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in
the middle stage between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she
had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the
ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together. There—incredibly
naked—was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky’s wife; there was the lady of the house;
there shone the bald head of Krivin, always to be found where the best people
were. In that direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There,
too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of
Anna in a black velvet gown. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him
since the evening she refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him
at once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.
“Another
turn, eh? You’re not tired?” said Korsunsky, a little out of breath.
“No, thank
you!”
“Where
shall I take you?”
“Madame
Karenina’s here, I think ... take me to her.”
“Wherever
you command.”
And Korsunsky
began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the group in the left
corner, continually saying, “Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames”; and
steering his course through the sea of lace, tulle, and ribbon, and not
disarranging a feather, he turned his partner sharply round, so that her slim
ankles, in light transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and her train
floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin’s knees. Korsunsky bowed, set
straight his open shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna
Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin’s knees, and, a little
giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had so
urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her full throat and
shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded arms,
with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On
her head, among her black hair—her own, with no false additions—was a little
wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash
among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was
the little wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about
her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.
Kitty had
been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured her invariably in
lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she had not fully seen her
charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and surprising to her. Now she
understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was just
that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress could never be
noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous lace, was not noticeable
on her; it was only the frame, and all that was seen was she—simple, natural,
elegant, and at the same time gay and eager.
She was
standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when Kitty drew near the
group she was speaking to the master of the house, her head slightly turned
towards him.
“No, I
don’t throw stones,” she was saying, in answer to something, “though I can’t
understand it,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders, and she turned at once
with a soft smile of protection towards Kitty. With a flying, feminine glance
she scanned her attire, and made a movement of her head, hardly perceptible,
but understood by Kitty, signifying approval of her dress and her looks. “You
came into the room dancing,” she added.
“This is
one of my most faithful supporters,” said Korsunsky, bowing to Anna Arkadyevna,
whom he had not yet seen. “The princess helps to make balls happy and
successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?” he said, bending down to her.
“Why, have
you met?” inquired their host.
“Is there
anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white wolves—everyone knows us,”
answered Korsunsky. “A waltz, Anna Arkadyevna?”
“I don’t
dance when it’s possible not to dance,” she said.
“But
tonight it’s impossible,” answered Korsunsky.
At that
instant Vronsky came up.
“Well,
since it’s impossible tonight, let us start,” she said, not noticing Vronsky’s
bow, and she hastily put her hand on Korsunsky’s shoulder.
“What is
she vexed with him about?” thought Kitty, discerning that Anna had intentionally
not responded to Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky went up to Kitty reminding her of the
first quadrille, and expressing his regret that he had not seen her all this
time. Kitty gazed in admiration at Anna waltzing, and listened to him. She
expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced
wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but
he had only just put his arm round her waist and taken the first step when the
music suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her
own, and long afterwards—for several years after—that look, full of love, to
which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.
“Pardon!
pardon! Waltz! waltz!” shouted Korsunsky from the other side of the room,
and seizing the first young lady he came across he began dancing himself.
Chapter 23
Vronsky
and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first waltz Kitty
went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Countess
Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille. During the
quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was disjointed talk
between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very
amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future town theatre; and
only once the conversation touched her to the quick, when he asked her about
Levin, whether he was here, and added that he liked him so much. But Kitty did
not expect much from the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her
heart to the mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything must be
decided. The fact that he did not during the quadrille ask her for the mazurka
did not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance the mazurka with him as she
had done at former balls, and refused five young men, saying she was engaged
for the mazurka. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty an
enchanted vision of delightful colours, sounds, and motions. She only sat down
when she felt too tired and begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last
quadrille with one of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she
chanced to be vis-à-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near
Anna again since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw her
suddenly quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of that excitement
of success she knew so well in herself; she saw that she was intoxicated with
the delighted admiration she was exciting. She knew that feeling and knew its
signs, and saw them in Anna; saw the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and
the smile of happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on her lips, and
the deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of her movements.
“Who?” she
asked herself. “All or one?” And not assisting the harassed young man she was
dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which he had lost and could not
pick up again, she obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of
Korsunsky starting them all into the grand rond, and then into the chaîne,
and at the same time she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart. “No, it’s
not the admiration of the crowd has intoxicated her, but the adoration of one.
And that one? can it be he?” Every time he spoke to Anna the joyous light
flashed into her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red lips. she
seemed to make an effort to control herself, to try not to show these signs of
delight, but they came out on her face of themselves. “But what of him?” Kitty
looked at him and was filled with terror. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty
in the mirror of Anna’s face she saw in him. What had become of his always
self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly serene expression of his
face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would
have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble
submission and dread. “I would not offend you,” his eyes seemed every time to
be saying, “but I want to save myself, and I don’t know how.” On his face was a
look such as Kitty had never seen before.
They were
speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial conversation, but
to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was determining their fate and
hers. And strange it was that they were actually talking of how absurd Ivan
Ivanovitch was with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a
better match, yet these words had all the while consequence for them, and they
were feeling just as Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything
seemed lost in fog in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her
bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was expected of her, that
is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka,
when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few couples moved out of
the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of despair and horror came for
Kitty. She had refused five partners, and now she was not dancing the mazurka.
She had not even a hope of being asked for it, because she was so successful in
society that the idea would never occur to anyone that she had remained
disengaged till now. She would have to tell her mother she felt ill and go
home, but she had not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She went to
the furthest end of the little drawing-room and sank into a low chair. Her
light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender waist; one bare,
thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink
tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her
burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of
grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart
ached with a horrible despair.
“But
perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?” And again she recalled all she had
seen.
“Kitty,
what is it?” said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly over the carpet
towards her. “I don’t understand it.”
Kitty’s
lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.
“Kitty,
you’re not dancing the mazurka?”
“No, no,”
said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.
“He asked
her for the mazurka before me,” said Countess Nordston, knowing Kitty would
understand who were “he” and “her.” “She said: ‘Why, aren’t you going to dance
it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?’”
“Oh, I
don’t care!” answered Kitty.
No one but
she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just refused the
man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in
another.
Countess
Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and told him
to ask Kitty.
Kitty
danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to talk, because
Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the figure. Vronsky and Anna
sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and saw them,
too, close by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them the
more convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they
felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And on Vronsky’s face, always so
firm and independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment
and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it
has done wrong.
Anna
smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became
serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to Anna’s face. She was
fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with
their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of pearls,
fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the graceful,
light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that lovely face
in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her
fascination.
Kitty
admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her suffering. Kitty
felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky saw her, coming across
her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize her, she was so changed.
“Delightful
ball!” he said to her, for the sake of saying something.
“Yes,” she
answered.
In the
middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly invented by
Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the centre of the circle, chose two
gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty. Kitty gazed at her in dismay as she
went up. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her
hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of despair
and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily talking to the other
lady.
“Yes,
there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,” Kitty said to
herself.
Anna did
not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to press her to
do so.
“Nonsense,
Anna Arkadyevna,” said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under the sleeve of his
dress coat, “I’ve such an idea for a cotillion! Un bijou!”
And he
moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host smiled
approvingly.
“No, I am
not going to stay,” answered Anna, smiling, but in spite of her smile, both
Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her resolute tone that she would
not stay.
“No; why,
as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I have all the winter
in Petersburg,” said Anna, looking round at Vronsky, who stood near her. “I
must rest a little before my journey.”
“Are you
certainly going tomorrow then?” asked Vronsky.
“Yes, I
suppose so,” answered Anna, as it were wondering at the boldness of his
question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile
set him on fire as she said it.
Anna
Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.
Chapter 24
“Yes,
there is something in me hateful, repulsive,” thought Levin, as he came away
from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of his brother’s
lodgings. “And I don’t get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no
pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.”
And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and
self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in which he had
been that evening. “Yes, she was bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I
cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I
to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A
nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.” And he recalled his brother
Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. “Isn’t he right that
everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment
of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in
a torn cloak and tipsy, he’s a despicable person. But I know him differently. I
know his soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek
him out, went out to dinner, and came here.” Levin walked up to a lamppost,
read his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge.
All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all the facts
familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life. He remembered how his brother,
while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers
of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites,
services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And
afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most
horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered
later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring up,
and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that proceedings were brought
against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he recalled the scandal with a
sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and against
whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him.
(This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had
spent a night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered
the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his brother Sergey
Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mother’s
fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western province in an
official capacity, and there had got into trouble for assaulting a village
elder.... It was all horribly disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared not at all
in the same disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know
Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.
Levin
remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the period of fasts
and monks and church services, when he was seeking in religion a support and a
curb for his passionate temperament, everyone, far from encouraging him, had
jeered at him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called him
Noah, and monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but
everyone had turned away from him with horror and disgust.
Levin felt
that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolay, in his
soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the people
who despised him. He was not to blame for having been born with his unbridled
temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always wanted to
be good. “I will tell him everything, without reserve, and I will make him
speak without reserve, too, and I’ll show him that I love him, and so understand
him,” Levin resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o’clock, he reached the
hotel of which he had the address.
“At the
top, 12 and 13,” the porter answered Levin’s inquiry.
“At home?”
“Sure to
be at home.”
The door
of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of light thick
fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice, unknown to Levin; but
he knew at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.
As he went
in the door, the unknown voice was saying:
“It all
depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing’s done.”
Konstantin
Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a young man with an
immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in
a woollen gown, without collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother
was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the thought of
the strange company in which his brother spent his life. No one had heard him,
and Konstantin, taking off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the
jerkin was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.
“Well, the
devil flay them, the privileged classes,” his brother’s voice responded, with a
cough. “Masha! get us some supper and some wine if there’s any left; or else go
and get some.”
The woman
rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.
“There’s
some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” she said.
“Whom do
you want?” said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.
“It’s I,”
answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.
“Who’s I?”
Nikolay’s voice said again, still more angrily. He could be heard getting up
hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin saw, facing him in the
doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his
brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.
He was
even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had seen him last.
He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than
ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight moustaches hid his lips,
the same eyes gazed strangely and naïvely at his visitor.
“Ah,
Kostya!” he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up
with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young man, and gave the
nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as if his
neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression, wild, suffering, and
cruel, rested on his emaciated face.
“I wrote
to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t know you and don’t want to know
you. What is it you want?”
He was not
at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The worst and most
tiresome part of his character, what made all relations with him so difficult,
had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he
saw his face, and especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered
it all.
“I didn’t
want to see you for anything,” he answered timidly. “I’ve simply come to see
you.”
His
brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.
“Oh, so
that’s it?” he said. “Well, come in; sit down. Like some supper? Masha, bring
supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know who this is?” he said,
addressing his brother, and indicating the gentleman in the jerkin: “This is
Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the
police, of course, because he’s not a scoundrel.”
And he
looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room. Seeing that the
woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her, “Wait a
minute, I said.” And with the inability to express himself, the incoherence
that Konstantin knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to
tell his brother Kritsky’s story: how he had been expelled from the university
for starting a benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools; and
how he had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been driven
out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.
“You’re of
the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to break the awkward
silence that followed.
“Yes, I
was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.
“And this
woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, “is the partner of my
life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad house,” and he jerked his neck
saying this; “but I love her and respect her, and anyone who wants to know me,”
he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and
respect her. She’s just the same as my wife, just the same. So now you know
whom you’ve to do with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s
the floor, there’s the door.”
And again
his eyes travelled inquiringly over all of them.
“Why I
should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”
“Then,
Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and wine.... No, wait
a minute.... No, it doesn’t matter.... Go along.”
To be continued
