Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [279]
As a bachelor, seeing the married life of others, their trifling cares, quarrels, jealousy, he used only to smile scornfully to himself. In his own future married life, he was convinced, there not only could be nothing like that, but even all its external forms, it seemed to him, were bound to be in every way completely unlike other people’s lives. And suddenly, instead of that, his life with his wife did not form itself in any special way, but was, on the contrary, formed entirely of those insignificant trifles he had scorned so much before, but which now, against his will, acquired an extraordinary and irrefutable significance. And Levin saw that to arrange all those trifles was by no means as easy as it had seemed to him before. Though he had thought that he had the most precise notions of family life, he had, like all men, involuntarily pictured it to himself only as the enjoyment of love, which nothing should hinder and from which trifling cares should not detract. He was supposed, as he understood it, to do his work and to rest from it in the happiness of love. She was supposed to be loved and only that. But, like all men, he had forgotten that she also needed to work. And he was surprised at how she, this poetic, lovely Kitty, in the very first, not weeks, but days of married life, could think, remember and fuss about tablecloths, furniture, mattresses for guests, about a tray, the cook, the dinner and so on. While still her fiance, he had been struck by the definitiveness with which she had renounced going abroad and decided to go to the country, as if she knew something necessary and, besides her love, could still think of extraneous things. This had offended him then, and now, too, her petty fussing and cares several times offended him. But he saw that she needed it. And loving her as he did, though he did not understand why, though he chuckled at those cares, he could not help admiring them. He chuckled at her arranging the furniture brought from Moscow, decorating her room and his in a new way, hanging curtains, assigning future quarters for guests, for Dolly, setting up quarters for her new maid, giving the old cook orders for dinner, getting into arguments with Agafya Mikhailovna, dismissing her from her charge of the provisions. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders; he saw how Agafya Mikhailovna thoughtfully and gently shook her head at the young mistress’s new instructions in the pantry; he saw how extraordinarily sweet Kitty was when she came to him, laughing and crying, to tell him that the maid Masha kept treating her like a young girl and because of it no one listened to her. It seemed sweet to him but strange, and he thought it would have been better without it.
He did not know that feeling of change she was experiencing after living at home, where she would sometimes want cabbage with kvass or sweets, and could not have either, while now she could order whatever she liked, buy heaps of sweets, spend any amount of money and order any pastry she wanted.
She now dreamed joyfully of Dolly’s coming with the children, especially because she was going to order each child’s favourite pastry, and Dolly would appreciate all her new arrangements. She did not know why or what for, but housekeeping attracted her irresistibly. Instinctively sensing the approach of spring and knowing there would also be bad weather,