Levin got home just as the Princess arrived, and they met at the bedroom door. There were tears in the Princess’s eyes and her hands shook. When she saw Levin she embraced him and began to cry.

 

‘Well, Mary Vlasevna, darling?’ she asked, seizing the hand of the midwife who came toward them with a beaming but preoccupied expression.

 

‘It’s going all right,’ she said. ‘Persuade her to lie down; it will be easier for her.’

 

From the moment when he woke up and understood what was the matter Levin had braced himself to endure what might await him, without reasoning and without anticipating anything — firmly suppressing all his thoughts and feelings, determined not to upset his wife but on the contrary to calm and support her. Not allowing himself even to think of what was about to happen and how it would end, judging by inquiries he had made as to the time such affairs usually lasted, Levin mentally prepared himself to endure and to keep his heart under restraint for something like five hours, which seemed to him within his power. But when he returned from the doctor’s and again saw her sufferings, he began repeating more and more often: ‘God, pardon and help us!’ sighing and lifting his head, afraid lest he should not be able to bear the strain and should either burst into tears or run away, so tormenting was it for him. And only one hour had passed!

 

But after that hour another passed, a second, a third, and all the five hours that he had set himself as the longest term of possible endurance, and still the situation was unchanged; and he went on enduring, for there was nothing else to do but to endure — thinking every moment that he had reached the utmost limit of endurance and that in a moment his heart would burst with pity.

 

But the minutes went by, and the hours, and other hours, and his suffering and terror and strain grew tenser.

 

The ordinary conditions of life, without which nothing can be imagined, no longer existed for Levin. He lost the sense of time. Sometimes minutes — those minutes when she called him to her and he held her moist hand, now pressing his with extraordinary strength and now pushing him away — seemed to him like hours; and then again hours seemed but minutes.

 

He was surprised when Mary Vlasevna asked him to light a candle behind the partition, and he learnt that it was already five o’clock in the evening. Had he been told it was ten in the morning he would not have been more astonished. He had just as little idea of where he was at that time as he had of when it all took place. He saw her burning face, now bewildered and full of suffering, and now smiling and soothing him. He saw the Princess red, overwrought, her grey hair out of curl, and with tears which she energetically swallowed, biting her lips. He saw Dolly, he saw the doctor smoking thick cigarettes, and Mary Vlasevna with a firm, resolute, and tranquillizing look on her face, and the old Prince pacing up and down the ballroom and frowning. But he did not know how they came and went, nor where they were. The Princess was one moment in the bedroom with the doctor, and the next in the study, where a table laid for a meal had made its appearance; and next it was not the Princess, but Dolly. Afterwards Levin remembered being sent somewhere. Once he was told to fetch a table and a sofa. He did it with zeal, believing that it was necessary for her sake, and only later discovered that he had been preparing a sleeping-place for himself. Then he was sent to the study to ask the doctor about something. The doctor answered him, and then began talking about the scenes in the city Duma. Then he was sent to fetch an icon with silver-gilt mounts from the Princess’s bedroom, and he and the Princess’s old lady’s maid climbed on a cupboard to get down the icon, and he broke the little lamp that burned before it, and the old servant tried to comfort him about his wife and about the lamp. He brought the icon back with him, and put it at the head of Kitty’s bed, carefully pushing it in behind the pillows. But where, when, and why all this was done he did not know. Nor did he understand why the Princess took his hand, and looking pitifully at him, entreated him to be calm; nor why Dolly tried to persuade him to eat something and led him out of the room; nor why even the doctor looked seriously and sympathizingly at him, offering him some drops.

 

He only knew and felt that what was happening was similar to what had happened the year before in the hotel of the provincial town on the deathbed of his brother Nicholas. Only that was sorrow and this was joy. But that sorrow and this joy were equally beyond the usual conditions of life: they were like openings in that usual life through which something higher became visible. And, as in that case, what was now being accomplished came harshly, painfully, incomprehensibly; and while watching it, the soul soared, as then, to heights it had never known before, at which reason could not keep up with it.

 

‘Lord, pardon and help us!’ he kept repeating incessantly to himself, appealing to God, in spite of a long period of apparently complete estrangement, just as trustingly and simply as in the days of childhood and early youth.

 

During the whole of that time he was alternately in two different moods. One mood when not in her presence: when with the doctor, who smoked one thick cigarette after another and extinguished them against the rim of the overflowing ashpan; when with Dolly and the Prince, where they talked about dinner, politics, or Mary Petrovna’s illness, and when Levin suddenly quite forgot for an instant what was happening and felt just as if he was waking up; and the other was in her presence, by her pillow, where his heart was ready to burst with pity and yet did not burst, and there he prayed unceasingly to God. And every time when the screams that came from the bedroom roused him from momentary forgetfulness he succumbed to the same strange error that had possessed him in the first moments: every time, on hearing the scream, he jumped up and ran to justify himself but recollected on the way that he was not to blame and that he longed to protect and help her. But when, looking at her, he again saw that to help was impossible, he was seized with horror and said, ‘Lord, pardon and help us!’ And the longer it lasted the stronger grew both his moods: out of her presence he became calmer, quite forgetting her, and at the same time both her sufferings and his feeling of the impossibility of helping her became more and more poignant. He would jump up, wishing to run away somewhere, but ran to her instead.

 

Sometimes when she had called him again and again, he was half-inclined to blame her. But seeing her meek smiling face and hearing her say, ‘I have worn you out,’ he blamed God; but the thought of God made him at once pray for forgiveness and mercy.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 15

 

 

 

—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—

 

 

 

HE did not know whether it was late or early. The candles were all burning low. Dolly had just entered the study and suggested that the doctor should lie down. Levin sat listening to the doctor’s stories of a quack magnetizer and staring at the ash of the doctor’s cigarette. It was an interval of rest and oblivion. He had quite forgotten what was going on. He listened to the doctor’s tale and understood it. Suddenly there was a scream unlike anything he had ever heard. The scream was so terrible that Levin did not even jump up, but looked breathlessly with a frightened and inquiring glance at the doctor, who bent his head on one side to listen and smiled approvingly. Everything was so out of the ordinary that nothing any longer surprised Levin. ‘Probably it had to be so,’ thought he and remained sitting still. ‘But who was it screaming?’ He jumped up and rushed into the bedroom on tiptoe, past Mary Vlasevna and the Princess, and stopped at his place at the head of the bed. The screaming had ceased, but there was a change; what it was he could not make out or understand, nor did he want to understand it; but he read it in Mary Vlasevna’s face. She looked pale and stern, and as resolute as before, though her jaw trembled a little and her eyes were fixed intently on Kitty. Kitty’s burning face, worn with suffering, with a lock of hair clinging to her clammy forehead, was turned toward him trying to catch his eye. Her raised hands asked for his. Seizing his cold hands in her perspiring ones she pressed them to her face.

 

‘Don’t go! Don’t go! I am not afraid, I am not afraid!’ she said rapidly. ‘Mama! Take off my earrings, they are in the way! You are not afraid? Soon, Mary Vlasevna, soon. . . !’

 

She spoke very rapidly and tried to smile, but all at once her face became distorted and she pushed him away.

 

‘No, this is awful! I shall die . . . die! . . . Go! Go!’ she cried, and again he heard that scream unlike any other cry.

 

Levin clasped his head in his hands and ran out of the room.

 

‘It’s all right, it’s all right! All goes well!’ Dolly called after him.

 

But say what they might, he knew that now all was lost. Leaning his head against the door-post he stood in the next room, and heard some one shrieking and moaning in a way he had never heard till then, and he knew that these sounds were produced by what once was Kitty. He had long ceased wishing for a child, and now he hated that child. He did not now even wish her to live, but only longed that these terrible sufferings should end.

 

‘Doctor, what is it? What is it? Oh, my God!’ he cried, grasping the hand of the doctor who had just entered.

 

‘It’s coming to an end,’ said the doctor, with a face so serious that Levin thought that end meant death.

 

Quite beside himself, he rushed into her room. The first thing he saw was Mary Vlasevna’s face. It was still more frowning and stern. Kitty’s face did not exist. In its place was something terrible, both because of its strained expression and because of the sounds which proceeded from it. He let his head drop upon the wood of the bedstead, feeling that his heart was breaking. The terrible screaming did not cease, but grew yet more awful until, as if it had reached the utmost limit of horror, it suddenly ceased. Levin could scarcely believe his ears, but there was no room for doubt. The screaming had ceased, and he heard a sound of movement, of rustling, of accelerated breathing, and her voice, faltering, living, tender, and happy, as it said, ‘It’s over.’

 

He raised his head. With her arms helplessly outstretched upon the quilt, unusually beautiful and calm she lay, gazing silently at him, trying unsuccessfully to smile.

 

And suddenly, out of the mysterious, terrible, and unearthly world in which he had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself instantaneously transported back to the old everyday world, but now radiant with the light of such new joy that it was insupportable. The taut strings snapped, and sobs and tears of joy that he had not in the least anticipated arose within him, with such force that they shook his whole body and long prevented his speaking.

 

Falling on his knees by her bedside he held his wife’s hand to his lips, kissing it, and that hand, by a feeble movement of the fingers, replied to the kisses. And meanwhile at the foot of the bed, like a flame above a lamp, flickered in Mary Vlasevna’s skilful hands the life of a human being who had never before existed: a human being who, with the same right and the same importance to himself, would live and would procreate others like himself.

 

‘Alive! Alive! And a boy! Don’t be anxious,’ Levin heard Mary Vlasevna say, as she slapped the baby’s back with a shaking hand.

 

‘Mama, is it true?’ asked Kitty.

 

The Princess could only sob in reply.

 

And amid the silence, as a positive answer to the mother’s question, a voice quite unlike all the restrained voices that had been speaking in the room made itself heard. It was a bold, insolent voice that had no consideration for anything, it was the cry of the new human being who had so incomprehensibly appeared from some unknown realm.

 

Before that, if Levin had been told that Kitty was dead, and that he had died with her, that they had angel children, and that God was there present with them — he would not have been astonished. But now, having returned to the world of actuality, he had to make great efforts to understand that she was alive and well, and that the creature that was yelling so desperately was his son. Kitty was alive, her sufferings were over; and he was full of unspeakable bliss. This he comprehended, and it rendered him entirely happy. But the child? Whence and why had he come? Who was he? . . . He could not at all accustom himself to the idea. It seemed something superfluous, something overflowing, and for a long time he was unable to get used to it.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

 

 

—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—

 

 

 

TOWARD ten o’clock the old Prince, Koznyshev, and Oblonsky were with Levin, and having talked about the young mother they had begun discussing other matters. Levin listened to them and at the same time involuntarily thought of the past and of what had been going on before that morning, remembering himself as he had been yesterday before this event. A hundred years seemed to have elapsed since then. He felt as if he were on some unattainable height, from which he painstakingly descended in order not to hurt the feelings of those with whom he was conversing. He talked, but never ceased thinking of his wife, of the details of her present condition, and of his son — to the idea of whose existence he painstakingly tried to accustom himself. That feminine world which since his marriage had received a new and unsuspected significance for him, now rose so high in his estimation that his imagination could not grasp it. He heard a conversation about yesterday’s dinner at the club and thought, ‘What is happening to her now? Is she asleep? How is she? What is she thinking about? Is our son, Dmitry, crying?’ And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of a phrase, he suddenly jumped up and left the room.

 

‘Send and let me know whether I may see her,’ said the old Prince.

 

‘All right, directly!’ answered Levin, and, without pausing, went to her room.

 

She was not asleep, but was talking quietly with her mother, making plans for the christening.

 

Made neat, her hair brushed, a smart cap trimmed with something blue on her head, she lay on her back with her arms outside the quilt, and met his look with a look which drew him toward her. That look, already bright, grew still brighter as he approached. On her face was the same change from the earthly to that which was beyond earth, as is seen on the faces of the dead; but in their case it is a farewell, in hers it was a welcome. Again an agitation, similar to that which he had felt at the moment of the birth, gripped his heart. She took his hand and asked whether he had slept. He could not answer and, conscious of his weakness, turned away.

 

‘And I have been dozing, Kostya!’ she said. ‘And now I feel so comfortable.’

 

She was gazing at him, but suddenly her face changed.

 

‘Let me have him,’ said she, hearing the baby’s cry. ‘Let me have him, Mary Vlasevna, and he will see him too!’

 

‘Well then, we’ll let Papa have a look,’ said Mary Vlasevna, lifting something red, strange, and quivering and bringing it nearer. ‘But wait a bit, let’s first get dressed,’ and Mary Vlasevna put the quivering red object on the bed, and began unwrapping it and then swaddling it again, raising and turning it with one finger, and powdering it with something.

 

Levin, gazing at this tiny piteous being, vainly searched his soul for some indications of paternal feeling. He felt nothing for it but repulsion. But when it was stripped and he caught a glimpse of thin, little arms and legs saffron-coloured, but with fingers and toes and even with thumbs distinguishable from the rest; and when he saw how, as though they were soft springs, Mary Vlasevna bent those little arms which stuck up, and encased them in linen garments, he was so filled with pity for that being, and so alarmed lest she should hurt it, that he tried to restrain her hand.

 

Mary Vlasevna laughed.

 

‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid!’

 

When the baby had been swaddled and made into a firm doll, Mary Vlasevna turned it over as if proud of her work, and stepped aside that Levin might see his son in all his beauty.

 

Kitty turned her eyes and gazed fixedly in the same direction. ‘Let me have him, let me have him!’ she said, and was even going to raise herself.

 

‘What are you doing, Catherine Alexandrovna? You must not move like that! Wait a moment, I’ll give him to you. Let’s show Papa what a fine fellow we are!’

 

And Mary Vlasevna held out to Levin on one hand (the other merely supporting the nape of the shaky head) this strange, limp, red creature, that hid its head in its swaddling clothes. But there was also a nose, blinking eyes, and smacking lips.

 

‘A beautiful baby!’ said Mary Vlasevna.

 

Levin sighed bitterly. This beautiful baby only inspired him with a sense of repulsion and pity. These were not at all the feelings he had expected.

 

He turned away while Mary Vlasevna laid the child to the unaccustomed breast.

 

Suddenly a laugh made him lift his head. It was Kitty laughing. The baby had taken the breast.

 

‘Well, that’s enough! That’s enough!’ said Mary Vlasevna; but Kitty would not part with the baby. He fell asleep in her arms.

 

‘Now look at him,’ said Kitty, turning him so that Levin could see him. The odd-looking little face wrinkled up still more and the baby sneezed.

 

Smiling, and hardly able to keep back tears of tenderness, Levin kissed his wife and quitted the darkened room.

 

What he felt toward this little creature was not at all what he had anticipated. There was nothing merry or joyful in it; on the contrary, there was a new and distressing sense of fear. It was the consciousness of another vulnerable region. And this consciousness was at first so painful, the fear lest that helpless being should suffer was so strong, that it quite hid the strange feeling of unreasoning joy and even pride which he experienced when the baby sneezed.