Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [284]
‘Because to go God knows where, on what roads, with what inns ... You’d be a hindrance to me,’ said Levin, trying to preserve his equanimity.
‘Not in the least. I don’t need anything. Where you can be, I, too...’
‘Well, if only because this woman will be there, with whom you cannot associate.’
‘I do not know or wish to know anything about who or what is there. I know that my husband’s brother is dying, and that my husband is going to him, and I am going with my husband, so that...’
‘Kitty! Don’t be angry. But just think, this is such an important matter that it pains me to think you’re mixing it up with a feeling of weakness, a reluctance to stay by yourself. Well, if it’s boring for you to be alone, then go to Moscow.’
‘There, you always ascribe bad, mean thoughts to me,’ she began, with tears of offence and anger. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, no weakness, nothing... I feel it’s my duty to be with my husband when my husband is in distress, and you purposely want to hurt me, you purposely don’t want to understand...’
‘No, this is terrible. To be some sort of slave!’ Levin cried out, standing up and no longer able to hold back his vexation. But in the same instant he felt that he was striking himself.
‘Why did you get married, then? You could be free. Why, if you regret it now?’ she said, jumped up and ran to the drawing room.
When he went to her there, she was sobbing.
He began talking, wishing to find words that might not so much dissuade her as merely calm her down. But she would not listen and would not agree with anything. He bent down and took her resisting hand. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again - she kept silent. But when he took her face in both his hands and said ‘Kitty!’ she suddenly recovered herself, wept a little more and made peace.
It was decided that they would go together the next day. Levin told his wife that he believed she wanted to go only in order to be of use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna’s presence at his brother’s side did not present any impropriety; but in the depths of his soul he went away displeased with her and with himself. He was displeased with her for being unable to bring herself to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, who so recently had not dared to believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!), and displeased with himself for not standing firm. Still less did he agree in the depths of his soul that she was not concerned about the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the confrontations that might occur. The fact alone that his wife, his Kitty, would be in the same room with a slut already made him shudder with revulsion and horror.
XVII
The hotel in the provincial capital where Nikolai Levin lay was one of those provincial hotels that are set up in accordance with new, improved standards, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort and even elegance, but which, because of their clients, turn extremely quickly into dirty pot-houses with a pretence to modern improvements, and by that very pretence become still worse than the old hotels that were simply dirty. This hotel had already reached that state; the soldier in a dirty uniform, smoking a cigarette at the entrance, who was supposed to represent the doorman, the gloomy and unpleasant wrought-iron stairway, the casual waiter in a dirty tailcoat, the common room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, the dirt, dust and slovenliness everywhere in the hotel, and with that some sort of new, modern-railwayish, smug preoccupation - gave the Levins, after their newlywed life, a most painful feeling, especially as the false impression made by the hotel could not be reconciled with what awaited them.
As always, after the question of how much they wanted to pay for a room, it turned out that there were no good rooms: one of the good rooms was occupied by a railway inspector, another by a lawyer from Moscow, and the third by Princess Astafyev