Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [322]
‘How well you put it, mama! Precisely by looks and smiles,’ Dolly confirmed.
‘But what words did he say?’
‘What did Kostya say to you?’
‘He wrote with chalk. It was amazing ... It seems so long ago!’ she said.
And the three women fell to thinking about the same thing. Kitty was the first to break the silence. She recalled that whole last winter before her marriage and her infatuation with Vronsky.
‘One thing ... that former passion of Varenka’s,’ she said, recalling it by a natural train of thought. ‘I wanted somehow to tell Sergei Ivanovich, to prepare him. They - all men,’ she added, ‘are terribly jealous of our past.’
‘Not all,’ said Dolly. ‘You’re judging by your husband. He still suffers from the memory of Vronsky. Yes? It’s true?’
‘It is,’ Kitty replied, smiling pensively with her eyes.
‘Only I don’t know,’ the princess-mother defended her motherly supervision of her daughter, ‘what past of yours could bother him? That Vronsky courted you? That happens to every girl.’
‘Well, that’s not what we mean,’ Kitty said, blushing.
‘No, excuse me,’ her mother went on, ‘and then you yourself didn’t want to let me have a talk with Vronsky. Remember?’
‘Oh, mama!’ Kitty said with a suffering look.
‘Nowadays there’s no holding you back ... Your relations couldn’t go further than was proper: I myself would have called him out. However, it won’t do for you to get excited, my dear. Please remember that and calm yourself.’
‘I’m perfectly calm, maman.’
‘How happily it turned out for Kitty that Anna came then,’ said Dolly, ‘and how unhappily for her. Precisely the opposite,’ she added, struck by the thought. ‘Anna was so happy then, and Kitty considered herself unhappy. How completely opposite! I often think about her.’
‘A fine one to think about! A vile, disgusting woman, quite heartless,’ said the mother, unable to forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky but Levin.
‘Who wants to talk about that,’ Kitty said in vexation. ‘I don’t think about it and I don’t want to think ... And I don’t want to think,’ she repeated, hearing her husband’s familiar footsteps on the terrace stairs.
‘And I don’t want to think - about what?’ asked Levin, coming out on the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
‘I’m sorry I’ve disturbed your women’s kingdom,’ he said, looking around at them all with displeasure, realizing that they had been talking about something that they would not have talked about in his presence.
For a second he felt that he shared Agafya Mikhailovna’s feeling - displeasure that the raspberry jam had been made without water, and in general with the alien Shcherbatsky influence. He smiled, however, and went over to Kitty.
‘Well, how are you?’ he asked, looking at her with the same expression with which everyone now addressed her.
‘Oh, fine,’ said Kitty, smiling, ‘and you?’
‘They hold three times more than a cart. So, shall we go for the children? I told them to harness up.’
‘What, you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?’ her mother said reproachfully.
‘But at a walk, Princess.’
Levin never called the princess maman, as sons-in-law do, and that displeased her. But, though he loved and respected the princess very much, Levin could not call her that without profaning his feelings for his dead mother.
‘Come with us, maman,’ said Kitty.
‘I don’t want to witness this folly.’
‘I’ll go on foot, then. It’s good for me.’ Kitty got up, went over to her husband and took him by the hand.
‘Good, but everything in moderation,’ said the princess.
‘Well, Agafya Mikhailovna, is the jam done?’ said Levin, smiling at Agafya Mikhailovna and wishing to cheer her up. ‘Is it good the new way?’
‘Must be good. We’d say it’s overcooked.’
‘So much the better, Agafya Mikhailovna, it won’t get mouldy. Our ice has all melted by now and there’s nowhere to keep it,’ said Kitty, understanding her husband’s intention at once and addressing the old woman with the same feeling. ‘Besides, your pickling is so good, my mama says she’s never tasted the like anywhere,’ she added, smiling