Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [346]
‘Don’t bother.’
‘The train’s at three?’ asked the German. ‘I don’t want to be late.’
Levin did not reply and stepped out of the room with his wife.
‘Well, what do you have to say to me?’ he said in French.
He was not looking in her face and did not want to see that she, in her condition, stood with her face all trembling and looked pitiful and crushed.
‘I... I want to say that it’s impossible to live this way, that it’s torture...’ she said.
‘There are people in the pantry here,’ he said angrily, ‘kindly do not make a scene.’
‘Let’s go in here then!’
They were standing in a passage. Kitty wanted to go into the next room, but the governess was giving Tanya a lesson there.
‘Then let’s go to the garden!’
In the garden they came upon a muzhik who was weeding the path. And no longer considering that the muzhik might see her tear-stained and his troubled face, not considering that they had the look of people fleeing some disaster, they went on with quick steps, feeling that they had to say everything and reassure each other, to be alone together and rid themselves of the suffering they were both experiencing.
‘It’s impossible to live this way! It’s torture! I’m suffering, you’re suffering. Why?’ she said, when they finally reached a solitary bench at the corner of a linden alley.
‘But tell me yourself: was there something indecent, impure, humiliat ingly terrible in his tone?’ he said, standing before her again, fists on his chest, in the same pose as the other night.
‘There was,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘But don’t you see, Kostya, that it’s not my fault? All morning I wanted to set a certain tone, but these people ... Why did he come? We were so happy!’ she said, choking with sobs that shook her whole filled-out body.
The gardener saw with surprise that, though no one had chased them and there had been nothing to flee from, and though they could not have found anything especially joyful on that bench - they returned home past him with calmed, radiant faces.
XV
After taking his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly’s side of the house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was very upset that day. She was pacing the room and saying angrily to the girl who stood in the corner howling:
‘And you’ll stand in the corner all day, and have dinner alone, and won’t see a single doll, and I won’t make you a new dress,’ she said, not knowing how else to punish her.
‘No, she’s a nasty little girl!’ She turned to Levin. ‘Where did she get these vile inclinations?’
‘But what did she do?’ Levin said rather indifferently. He had wanted to consult her about his own affairs and was therefore vexed that he had come at the wrong moment.
‘She and Grisha went into the raspberry bushes, and there ... I can’t even tell you what she did there. Such nasty things. I’m a thousand times sorry Miss Elliot’s not here. This woman doesn’t look after anything, she’s a machine... Figurez-vous, que la petite ...’bi
And Darya Alexandrovna related Masha’s crime.
‘That doesn’t prove anything. It’s not vile inclinations, it’s simply a prank,’ Levin comforted her.
‘But you’re upset about something? Why did you come?’ asked Dolly. ‘What’s going on there?’
And in the tone of this question Levin heard that it would be easy for him to say what he meant to say.
‘I wasn’t there, I was alone in the garden with Kitty. It’s the second time we’ve quarrelled since ... Stiva arrived.’
Dolly looked at him with intelligent, understanding eyes.
‘Well, tell me, hand on heart, wasn’t there... not in Kitty, but in that gentleman, a tone that could be unpleasant - not unpleasant but terrible, insulting for a husband?’
‘That is, how shall I put it to you ... Stay, stay in the corner,’ she said to Masha, who, seeing a barely noticeable smile on her mother’s lips, had begun to stir. ‘Society’s view would be that he’s behaving as all young men behave. II fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme,bj and a worldly husband should be flattered by it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Levin said gloomily, ‘but you did notice?’
‘Not only I, but Stiva