Chapter 8

 

 

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AT the end of May, when the house was more or less in order, Dolly received from her husband an answer to her letter of complaint. He wrote asking her to forgive his not having seen to everything, and saying that he would come as soon as possible. That possibility, however, had not been fulfilled, and up to the beginning of June Dolly was still living without him in the country.

 

On the Sunday before St Peter’s Day Dolly took all her children to Communion. When talking intimately with her mother and sister Dolly often astonished them by her freedom of thought on religious matters. She had a strange religion of her own, firmly believing in the transmigration of souls, and not caring about Church dogmas. But in her family she fulfilled (not merely to set an example, but with her whole heart) all that the Church demanded, and was very uneasy because for about a year the children had not received Communion. So now, with the entire approval of Matrena Filimonovna, she resolved that this ceremony should be performed.

 

Several days previously she decided how all the children should be dressed. New frocks were made, old ones altered, hems and frills let down, buttons sewn on, and ribbons got ready. One of the frocks, which the English governess had undertaken to alter, was the cause of much bad blood. The governess put the bodice darts in the wrong places, cut out the arm-holes too big, and nearly spoilt the dress. It fitted so tight round Tanya’s shoulders that it was painful to see her; but Matrena Filimonovna was inspired to insert wedge-shaped pieces and to make a fichu to cover the defect. The frock was put right, but it very nearly caused a quarrel with the governess. However, in the morning everything was right; and toward nine o’clock — the hour till which the priest had been asked to defer mass — the children, beaming with joy, stood in all their finery by the carriage at the porch, waiting for their mother.

 

Instead of the restive Raven, the steward’s Brownie had been harnessed to the carriage on Matrena Filimonovna’s authority, and Dolly, who had been detained by the cares of her own toilet, came out in a white muslin dress and took her seat in the carriage.

 

Dolly, somewhat excited, had dressed and done her hair with care. At one time she used to dress for her own sake, in order to look well and be attractive; later on as she grew older dressing became less and less agreeable to her, because it made the loss of her good, looks more apparent; but now it again gave her pleasure and excited her. She was not dressing for her own sake, not for her own beauty, but in order, as the mother of all those charming children, not to spoil the general effect. She gave her mirror a last glance and was satisfied with herself. She looked well: not in the way she had wished to look when going to a ball, but well for the object she had in view at present.

 

There was no one in church except peasants, inn-keepers and their womenfolk; but Dolly saw, or thought she saw, the rapture produced in them by her children and herself. The children were not only beautiful in their fine clothes but were also very sweet in their behaviour. It’s true Alesha did not stand very well: he kept turning round to see the back of his jacket; but nevertheless he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya stood like a grown-up person and looked after the little ones. Little Lily was charming in her naïve wonder at everything around, and it was difficult to repress a smile when, having swallowed the bread and wine, she said in English, ‘More, please!’

 

On the way home the children were very quiet, feeling that something solemn had taken place.

 

At home also all went well, only at lunch Grisha began whistling and — what was still worse — would not obey the governess and had to go without his pudding. Dolly would not have sanctioned any punishment on such a day had she been present, but she was obliged to support the governess and so confirmed the sentence that Grisha was not to have pudding. This rather spoilt the general joyfulness.

 

Grisha cried and said he was being punished although it was Nikolenka that had whistled, and that he was not crying about the pudding (he didn’t mind that!) but because of the injustice. This was too sad, and Dolly decided to speak to the governess and get her to forgive Grisha, and went off to find her. But as she was passing through the dancing-room she saw a scene which filled her heart with such joy that tears came to her eyes and she pardoned the little culprit herself.

 

The little fellow was sitting on the ledge of the corner window of the dancing-room, and beside him stood Tanya with a plate. On the plea of giving her dolls some dinner she had obtained leave from the governess to take her plateful of pudding to the nursery, but had brought it to her brother instead. Still crying over the injustice done him, he ate the pudding, muttering between sobs: ‘Eat some yourself . . . let us both eat . . . together!’

 

Tanya, affected first by pity for Grisha and then by the consciousness of her own virtuous action, also had tears in her eyes, but did not decline to eat her share of the pudding.

 

When they saw their mother they were frightened, but glancing at her face they knew they were acting rightly and, with their mouths full of pudding, began to laugh and wipe their smiling lips with their hands, smearing their beaming faces with tears and jam.

 

‘Dear me! Your nice white frock! Tanya! . . . Grisha!’ cried their mother, trying to save the frock, but smiling a blissful, rapturous smile.

 

The new clothes were taken off, the little girls had their overalls and the boys their old jackets, and orders were given to harness (to the steward’s chagrin) his Brownie again, to take the whole family mushroom-hunting, and later to the bathing-house. The sound of rapturous squealing filled the nursery, and did not cease till they started on their drive.

 

They gathered a basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found one. Previously Miss Hull used to find one and point it out to her; but this time Lily herself found a fine big one and there was a general shout of delight: ‘Lily has found a mushroom!’

 

After that they drove to the river, left the horses under the birch trees, and entered the bathing-house. Terenty the coachman tied to a tree the horses, that were swishing their tails to drive away the flies, stretched himself full length in the shade, pressing down the high grass, and smoked his pipe, while from the bathing-house came the sound of the incessant merry squealing of the children.

 

Although it was troublesome to look after all the children and keep them out of mischief and difficult to remember whose were all those little stockings and drawers, not to mix up the shoes of all those different feet, to untie, unbutton, and then fasten up again all the tapes and buttons, yet Dolly, who had always been fond of bathing and considered it good for the children, knew no greater pleasure than bathing them. To hold in her hands all those plump little legs, to draw on their stockings, to take the naked little bodies in her arms and dip them in the water, to hear them shrieking now with fear and now with delight, and to see her cherubs gasping and splashing, with their frightened yet merry eyes, was a great joy.

 

When half the children were dressed again, some smartly-dressed peasant women who had been gathering herbs came up and halted shyly by the bathing-house. Matrena Filimonovna called to one of these to ask her to dry a bath-sheet and a chemise that had fallen into the water, and Dolly entered into conversation with them. The peasant women, who had begun by laughing behind their hands without comprehending her questions, soon became bolder and more talkative, and at once captivated Dolly by their frank admiration of her children.

 

‘Just look at the little beauty, as white as sugar!’ said one, gazing admiringly at Tanya and stroking her head. ‘But she’s thin.’

 

‘Yes, she’s been ill.’

 

‘Why, you seem to have been bathing that one too!’ said the other woman, looking at the baby.

 

‘No, she is only three months old,’ Dolly answered proudly.

 

‘Dear me!’

 

‘And have you any children?’

 

‘I had four; two are left, a boy and a girl. I weaned her in the spring.’

 

‘How old is she?’

 

‘In her second year.’

 

‘Why did you nurse her so long?’

 

‘It’s our custom.’

 

And the conversation turned upon the topic that interested Dolly more than any other: confinements, children’s illnesses, husbands’ whereabouts, and whether they came home often.

 

Dolly did not want to part from the peasant women; their conversation pleased her so much because their interests were exactly similar to hers. What pleased Dolly most was the women’s evident admiration for the great number of children she had, and their loveliness.

 

The women amused her and offended the English governess, who noticed that she was the object of their laughter, which she did not understand. One of the young women was watching the governess, who was dressing after all the others, and seeing her put on a third petticoat could not refrain from remarking:

 

‘Look at her! She’s wrapping herself up and wrapping herself up, and hasn’t got enough round her yet!’ and all the women burst out laughing.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9

 

 

 

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SURROUNDED by her children, all freshly bathed and with heads still damp, Dolly with a kerchief tied round her own head was nearing home when the coachman said:

 

‘There’s a gentleman coming — I think it’s the Pokrovsk squire.’

 

Dolly leant forward and was pleased to see the familiar figure of Levin, who in a grey hat and coat was walking toward them. She was always glad to see him, but on this day was more pleased than ever because he would now see her in all her glory. No one could understand the dignity of her position better than Levin. On seeing her he found himself confronted by just such a picture of family life as his fancy painted.

 

‘You are like a hen with her chickens, Darya Alexandrovna!’

 

‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ said she, holding out her hand.

 

‘You’re glad, yet you never sent me word. My brother is staying with me. It was from Stephen I heard, at last, that you were here.’

 

‘From Stephen?’ asked Dolly in a surprised tone.

 

‘Yes, he wrote that you had moved here, and he thought I might be of some use to you,’ replied Levin, and having said this grew confused. Without finishing what he was going to say he continued walking beside the trap, breaking off twigs from the lime trees and biting them. He was confused because he imagined that Dolly might not like to accept the help of a stranger in matters that ought to be attended to by her husband. She really did not like the way Oblonsky had of forcing his family affairs upon strangers, and knew at once that Levin understood this. It was for his quick perception and delicacy of feeling that Dolly liked him.

 

‘Of course I understood that this only meant you wanted to see me, and was very pleased. I can well imagine how strange everything here must seem to you, used as you are to managing a town house; and if you require anything I am quite at your disposal.’

 

‘Oh no!’ said Dolly. ‘At first it was inconvenient, but now everything is quite comfortable, thanks to my old nurse,’ she said, indicating the nurse, who, aware that she was being mentioned, looked at Levin with a bright and friendly smile. She knew him, knew that he would be a good match for the young lady, and hoped the affair would come off.

 

‘Won’t you sit down, sir? We’ll move closer together,’ she said to Levin.

 

‘No, I will walk. Children, who will race the horses with me?’

 

Though the children did not know Levin well and did not remember when they had last seen him, they did not feel toward him any of that strange shyness and antagonism so often felt by children toward grown-up people who ‘pretend’, which causes them to suffer so painfully. Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

 

Whatever Levin’s defects may have been, there was not a trace of pretence about him; therefore the children evinced toward him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother’s face. The two eldest, responding to his invitation, at once jumped out to him and ran with him as they would have done with their nurse, Miss Hull, or their mother. Lily wanted to go too, and her mother handed her to him; he put her on his shoulder and ran on.

 

‘Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna! There’s no fear of my hurting or dropping her,’ said he, smiling brightly at the mother.

 

And as she looked at his easy, strong, considerate, careful and ultra-cautious movements, the mother lost her fears and looked at them with a smile of approval.

 

Here in the country among the children, and in the company of Dolly whom he found very congenial, Levin’s spirits rose to that childlike merriment Dolly liked so much in him.

 

He ran about with the children, taught them gymnastics, amused Miss Hull by his broken English, and talked to Dolly about his rural occupations.

 

After dinner, left alone with him on the verandah, Dolly alluded to Kitty.

 

‘Do you know Kitty is coming here to spend the summer with me?’

 

‘Really?’ said he, flushing up; and to change the subject he at once added: ‘Well, then, shall I send you two cows? If you insist on squaring accounts, pay me five roubles a month, if your conscience allows it.’

 

‘No, thank you. We are getting on all right now.’

 

‘Well, then, I will just have a look at your cows and, with your permission, will give directions about the feeding. Everything depends on the feeding.’

 

To change the conversation Levin went on to explain to Dolly a theory of dairy farming which maintained that a cow was only a machine for the transformation of fodder into milk, and so on. While saying all that, he was passionately longing and yet dreading to hear every particular concerning Kitty. He feared that the peace of mind he had acquired with so much effort might be destroyed.

 

‘Yes, but all that has to be looked after, and who is going to do it?’ remarked Dolly unwillingly.

 

Having with Matrena Filimonovna’s help got her household into working order, she did not care to make any change; besides, she had no confidence in Levin’s knowledge of farming. Arguments about cows being milk-producing machines did not commend themselves to her, for she imagined that such arguments were calculated only to interfere with farming. All these matters appeared much simpler to her: all that was necessary, as Matrena Filimonovna said, was to give Spotty and Whiteflank more food and drink, and to see that the cook did not take the kitchen refuse to the laundress for her cow. That was clear. But arguments about cereal and grass feeding were questionable and vague and, above all, she was anxious to talk about Kitty.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

 

 

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‘KITTY writes that she wishes for nothing so much as seclusion and quiet,’ said Dolly after a pause in the conversation.

 

‘And her health! Is she better?’ asked Levin anxiously.

 

‘Yes, thank God! she has quite recovered. I never believed that she had lung trouble.’

 

‘Oh, I am so glad!’ said Levin, and Dolly thought she saw something pathetic and helpless in his face as he said it, and then silently looked at her.

 

‘Tell me, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said Dolly with her kind though slightly ironical smile, ‘why are you angry with Kitty?’

 

‘I? . . . I am not angry,’ said Levin.

 

‘Yes, you are. Why did you not call either on us or on them when you were in Moscow?’

 

‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, blushing to the roots of his hair, ‘I am surprised that one so kind as you are should not feel what the reason was. How is it that you have no pity for me, knowing as you do . . .’

 

‘What do I know?’

 

‘You know I proposed and was rejected,’ muttered Levin, and the tenderness he had a moment ago felt for Kitty was changed into a feeling of anger at the insult.

 

‘Why did you think I knew?’

 

‘Because everybody knows it.’

 

‘In that, at any rate, you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had my suspicions.’

 

‘Well, anyhow you know it now.’

 

‘All I knew was that something had happened that tormented her dreadfully, and she asked me never to speak about it. And since she had not told me, she won’t have told anybody. . . . Well, what did happen between you? Tell me.’

 

‘I have told you what happened.’

 

‘When was it?’

 

‘When I last visited you.’

 

‘Do you know,’ said Dolly, ‘I am terribly, terribly sorry for her! You are suffering only through pride . . .’

 

‘That may be,’ said Levin, ‘but . . .’

 

She interrupted him.

 

‘But for her, poor child, I am terribly, terribly sorry. Now I understand everything.’

 

‘Well, Darya Alexandrovna, please excuse me!’ he said, rising. ‘Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna; au revoir!’

 

‘No, wait a bit,’ she answered, holding him by the sleeve. ‘Wait a bit. Sit down.’

 

‘Please, please don’t let us talk about it!’ said he, sitting down again, conscious as he did so that a hope which he had thought dead and buried was waking and stirring within him.

 

‘If I did not care for you,’ Dolly went on, the tears rising to her eyes, ‘if I did not know you as well as I do . . .’

 

The feeling that seemed dead was coming to life again, rising and taking possession of Levin’s heart.

 

‘Yes, now I understand it all,’ continued Dolly, ‘You can’t understand it, you men who are free and have the choice. You always know for certain whom you love; but a young girl in a state of suspense, with her feminine, maidenly delicacy, a girl who only knows you men from a distance and is obliged to take everything on trust — such a girl may and does sometimes feel that she does not know what to say.’

 

‘Yes, if her heart does not tell her. . . .’

 

‘Oh, no! The heart does tell her; but just imagine: you men, having views on a girl, come to the house, get to know her, observe her and bide your time, and when you are quite certain that you love her you propose . . .’

 

‘Well, it’s not quite like that.’

 

‘Never mind! You propose when your love is ripe, or when the balance falls in favour of one of those between whom your choice lies. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to choose for herself yet she has no choice; she can only say “Yes” or “No”.’

 

‘Yes, a choice between me and Vronsky,’ thought Levin, and the dead hope that had begun to revive in his soul died again and only weighed painfully on his heart.

 

‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, ‘in that way one may choose a dress, or . . . purchases . . . anything . . . but not love. The choice is made, and so much the better . . . a repetition is impossible.’

 

‘Oh, that pride, that pride!’ said Dolly, speaking as if she despised him for the meanness of his feelings compared to those which only women know. ‘When you proposed to Kitty she was just in that state when it was impossible for her to give an answer: she was undecided — undecided between you and Vronsky; she saw him every day, you she had not seen for a long time. I admit that had she been older . . . I, for instance, could not have been undecided in her place. To me he was always repulsive, and so he has proved in the end.’

 

Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said, ‘No, it cannot be.’

 

‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he replied drily, ‘I value your confidence in me, but think you are mistaken. Whether I am right or wrong, that pride which you so despise makes any thought of your sister impossible for me — do you understand me? — perfectly impossible.’

 

‘I will only add just this: you understand that I am speaking about my sister, whom I love as much as my own children. I do not say she loves you; I only wished to tell you that her refusal proves nothing.’

 

‘I don’t know!’ said Levin, jumping up. ‘If you know how you hurt me! It is just as if you had lost a child, and they kept on telling you: “Now he would have been so and so, and might be living and you rejoicing in him, but he is dead, dead, dead. . . !” ’

 

‘How funny you are!’ said Dolly, regarding Levin’s agitation with a sad yet mocking smile. ‘Yes, I understand it more and more,’ she added meditatively. ‘Then you won’t come to see us while Kitty is here?’

 

‘No, I won’t. Of course I will not avoid her, but whenever I can I will try to save her the unpleasantness of meeting me.’

 

‘You are very, very funny!’ Dolly repeated, looking tenderly into his face. ‘All right then! Let it be as if nothing had been said about it.’

 

‘What have you come for, Tanya?’ said Dolly in French to her little girl, who had just come in.

 

‘Where is my spade, Mama?’

 

‘I am speaking French, and you must answer in French.’

 

The little girl had forgotten the French for spade, so her mother told her and went on to say, still in French, where she would find the spade. All this was disagreeable to Levin. Nothing in Dolly’s house, or about her children seemed half as charming as before.

 

‘Why does she talk French with the children?’ he thought. ‘How unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it. Teach them French and deprive them of sincerity,’ thought he, not knowing that Dolly had considered the point over and over again and had decided that even to the detriment of their sincerity the children had to be taught French.

 

‘Where are you hurrying to? Stay a little longer.’

 

So Levin stayed to tea, though his bright spirits had quite vanished and he felt ill at ease.

 

After tea he went out to tell his coachman to harness, and when he returned he found Dolly excited, a worried look on her face and tears in her eyes.

 

In Levin’s absence an event took place which suddenly put an end to the joy and pride that Dolly had been feeling all day. Grisha and Tanya had a fight about a ball. Dolly, hearing their screams, ran up to the nursery, and found them in a dreadful state. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, and he, his face distorted with anger, was hitting her at random with his fists. Dolly’s heart sank when she saw this. A shadow seemed to have fallen on her life; she recognized that these children, of whom she had been so proud, were not only quite ordinary but even bad and ill-bred children, with coarse animal inclinations — in fact, vicious children. She could think and speak of nothing else, and yet could not tell Levin her trouble.

 

Levin saw that she was unhappy, and tried to comfort her by saying that it did not prove that anything was wrong with them, that all children fought; but as he spoke he thought to himself: ‘No, I’ll not humbug my children and won’t speak French with them. But I shan’t have children like these. All that is needed is not to spoil or pervert children, and then they will be splendid. No, my children will not be like these!’

 

He said good-bye and left, and she did not try to detain him any longer.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

 

 

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IN the middle of July the Elder from the village belonging to Levin’s sister (which lay fifteen miles from Pokrovsk) came to see Levin and report on business matters and on the hay-harvest. The chief income from his sister’s estate was derived from the meadows, which were flooded every spring. In former years the peasants used to buy the grass, paying seven roubles per acre for it. When Levin took over the management of the estate he looked into the matter, and, concluding that the grass was worth more, fixed the price at eight roubles. The peasants would not pay so much, and Levin suspected them of keeping other buyers off. Then he went there himself and arranged to have the harvest gathered in partly by hired labourers and partly by peasants paid in kind. The local men opposed this innovation by all the means in their power, but the plan succeeded, and in the first year the meadows brought in almost double. The next and third years the peasants still held out and the harvest was got in by the same means. But this year the peasants had agreed to get the harvest in and take one-third of all the hay in payment. Now the Elder had come to inform Levin that the hay was all made, and that for fear of rain he had asked the steward to come, and in his presence had apportioned the hay and had already stacked eleven stacks of the landlord’s share.

 

From the Elder’s vague replies to Levin’s questions as to how much hay the largest meadow had yielded, from his haste to apportion the hay without waiting for permission, and from the general tone of the peasant, Levin knew that there was something not quite square about the apportionment, and decided to go and investigate the matter himself.