ANNA KARENINA
PART 65
Chapter 15
“Do you
know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch travelled on his way here?” said
Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; “with Vronsky! He’s
going to Servia.”
“And not
alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,” said Katavasov.
“That’s
the right thing for him,” said Levin. “Are volunteers still going out then?” he
added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.
Sergey
Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife getting a live
bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb.
“I should
think so! You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!”
said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a cucumber.
“Well,
what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do explain to me, Sergey
Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?”
asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had sprung up
in Levin’s absence.
“With the
Turks,” Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he extricated the bee,
dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout
aspen leaf.
“But who
has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?”
“No one
has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbours’ sufferings and
are eager to help them,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“But the
prince is not speaking of help,” said Levin, coming to the assistance of his
father-in-law, “but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take
part in war without the permission of the government.”
“Kostya,
mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!” said Dolly, waving away a wasp.
“But
that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,” said Levin.
“Well now,
well, what’s your own theory?” Katavasov said to Levin with a smile, distinctly
challenging him to a discussion. “Why have not private persons the right to do
so?”
“Oh, my
theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing, that
no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the
responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a government, which
is called upon to do this, and is driven inevitably into war. On the other
hand, both political science and common sense teach us that in matters of
state, and especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their
personal individual will.”
Sergey
Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began speaking at
the same time.
“But the
point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the government does not
carry out the will of the citizens and then the public asserts its will,” said
Katavasov.
But
evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His brows
contracted at Katavasov’s words and he said something else.
“You don’t
put the matter in its true light. There is no question here of a declaration of
war, but simply the expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers, one
with us in religion and in race, are being massacred. Even supposing they were
not our brothers nor fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people,
feeling is aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these
atrocities. Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men
beating a woman or a child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war
had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and protect the
victim.”
“But I
should not kill them,” said Levin.
“Yes, you
would kill them.”
“I don’t
know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the moment, but I can’t
say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot be,
in the case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.”
“Possibly
for you there is not; but for others there is,” said Sergey Ivanovitch,
frowning with displeasure. “There are traditions still extant among the people
of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the yoke of the ‘unclean sons of
Hagar.’ The people have heard of the sufferings of their brethren and have
spoken.”
“Perhaps
so,” said Levin evasively; “but I don’t see it. I’m one of the people myself,
and I don’t feel it.”
“Here am I
too,” said the old prince. “I’ve been staying abroad and reading the papers,
and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian atrocities, I couldn’t make out
why it was all the Russians were all of a sudden so fond of their Slavonic
brethren, while I didn’t feel the slightest affection for them. I was very much
upset, thought I was a monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me.
But since I have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there are
people besides me who’re only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic
brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.”
“Personal
opinions mean nothing in such a case,” said Sergey Ivanovitch; “it’s not a
matter of personal opinions when all Russia—the whole people—has expressed its
will.”
“But
excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t know anything about it, if you
come to that,” said the old prince.
“Oh,
papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church?” said Dolly,
listening to the conversation. “Please give me a cloth,” she said to the old
man, who was looking at the children with a smile. “Why, it’s not possible that
all....”
“But what
was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read that. He read it.
They didn’t understand a word of it. Then they were told that there was to be a
collection for a pious object in church; well, they pulled out their halfpence
and gave them, but what for they couldn’t say.”
“The
people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is always in the
people, and at such moments as the present that sense finds utterance,” said
Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at the old bee-keeper.
The
handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and thick silvery hair, stood
motionless, holding a cup of honey, looking down from the height of his tall
figure with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously understanding
nothing of their conversation and not caring to understand it.
“That’s
so, no doubt,” he said, with a significant shake of his head at Sergey
Ivanovitch’s words.
“Here,
then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing,” said Levin. “Have
you heard about the war, Mihalitch?” he said, turning to him. “What they read
in the church? What do you think about it? Ought we to fight for the
Christians?”
“What
should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought for us; he
thinks for us indeed in all things. It’s clearer for him to see. Shall I bring
a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?” he said addressing Darya
Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had finished his crust.
“I don’t
need to ask,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, “we have seen and are seeing hundreds and
hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a just cause, come from
every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim.
They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say directly what for. What
does it mean?”
“It means,
to my thinking,” said Levin, who was beginning to get warm, “that among eighty
millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of
thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’er-do-wells, who are always ready
to go anywhere—to Pogatchev’s bands, to Khiva, to Serbia....”
“I tell
you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do-wells, but the best
representatives of the people!” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation
as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. “And what of the
subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their
will.”
“That word
‘people’ is so vague,” said Levin. “Parish clerks, teachers, and one in a
thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it’s all about. The rest of the
eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven’t the
faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right
have we to say that this is the people’s will?”
Chapter 16
Sergey
Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at once turned the
conversation to another aspect of the subject.
“Oh, if
you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of
course it’s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced
among us and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the
people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is
felt by the heart. I won’t speak of those deep currents which are astir in the
still ocean of the people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let
us look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the
educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an
end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel the
mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one direction.”
“Yes, all
the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince. “That’s true. But so it
is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing
for them.”
“Frogs or
no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I don’t want to defend them; but I
am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would have answered, but the old
prince interrupted him.
“Well,
about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one may say,” said the prince.
“There’s my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him. He’s got a place now
on the committee of a commission and something or other, I don’t remember. Only
there’s nothing to do in it—why, Dolly, it’s no secret!—and a salary of eight
thousand. You try asking him whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you
that it’s most necessary. And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no refusing
to believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.”
“Yes, he
asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the post,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince’s remark to be ill-timed.
“So it is
with the unanimity of the press. That’s been explained to me: as soon as
there’s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help believing in the
destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and all that?”
“I don’t
care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“I would
only make one condition,” pursued the old prince. “Alphonse Karr said a capital
thing before the war with Prussia: ‘You consider war to be inevitable? Very
good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of
advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them
all!’”
“A nice
lot the editors would make!” said Katavasov, with a loud roar, as he pictured
the editors he knew in this picked legion.
“But
they’d run,” said Dolly, “they’d only be in the way.”
“Oh, if
they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them,”
said the prince.
“But
that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my saying so, prince,” said
Sergey Ivanovitch.
“I don’t
see that it was a joke, that....” Levin was beginning, but Sergey Ivanovitch
interrupted him.
“Every
member of society is called upon to do his own special work,” said he. “And men
of thought are doing their work when they express public opinion. And the
single-hearted and full expression of public opinion is the service of the
press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the same time. Twenty years ago we
should have been silent, but now we have heard the voice of the Russian people,
which is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its
oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a proof of strength.”
“But it’s
not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,” said Levin timidly. “The
people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not
for murder,” he added, instinctively connecting the conversation with the ideas
that had been absorbing his mind.
“For their
soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for a natural science man, do you
understand? What sort of thing is the soul?” said Katavasov, smiling.
“Oh, you
know!”
“No, by
God, I haven’t the faintest idea!” said Katavasov with a loud roar of laughter.
“‘I bring
not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,” Sergey Ivanovitch rejoined for his part,
quoting as simply as though it were the easiest thing to understand the very
passage that had always puzzled Levin most.
“That’s
so, no doubt,” the old man repeated again. He was standing near them and
responded to a chance glance turned in his direction.
“Ah, my
dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!” cried Katavasov good-humouredly.
Levin
reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having failed to control
himself and being drawn into argument.
“No, I
can’t argue with them,” he thought; “they wear impenetrable armour, while I’m
naked.”
He saw
that it was impossible to convince his brother and Katavasov, and he saw even
less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What they advocated was the
very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could not admit that
some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of
what they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the
capital, to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will and
feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and
murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such
feelings in the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and
he could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian
people), and most of all because he, like the people, did not know and could
not know what is for the general good, though he knew beyond a doubt that this
general good could be attained only by the strict observance of that law of
right and wrong which has been revealed to every man, and therefore he could
not wish for war or advocate war for any general objects whatever. He said as
Mihalitch did and the people, who had expressed their feeling in the
traditional invitations of the Varyagi: “Be princes and rule over us. Gladly we
promise complete submission. All the labour, all humiliations, all sacrifices
we take upon ourselves; but we will not judge and decide.” And now, according
to Sergey Ivanovitch’s account, the people had foregone this privilege they had
bought at such a costly price.
He wanted
to say too that if public opinion were an infallible guide, then why were not
revolutions and the commune as lawful as the movement in favour of the Slavonic
peoples? But these were merely thoughts that could settle nothing. One thing
could be seen beyond doubt—that was that at the actual moment the discussion
was irritating Sergey Ivanovitch, and so it was wrong to continue it. And Levin
ceased speaking and then called the attention of his guests to the fact that
the storm clouds were gathering, and that they had better be going home before
it rained.
Chapter 17
The old
prince and Sergey Ivanovitch got into the trap and drove off; the rest of the
party hastened homewards on foot.
But the
storm-clouds, turning white and then black, moved down so quickly that they had
to quicken their pace to get home before the rain. The foremost clouds,
lowering and black as soot-laden smoke, rushed with extraordinary swiftness
over the sky. They were still two hundred paces from home and a gust of wind
had already blown up, and every second the downpour might be looked for.
The
children ran ahead with frightened and gleeful shrieks. Darya Alexandrovna,
struggling painfully with her skirts that clung round her legs, was not
walking, but running, her eyes fixed on the children. The men of the party,
holding their hats on, strode with long steps beside her. They were just at the
steps when a big drop fell splashing on the edge of the iron guttering. The
children and their elders after them ran into the shelter of the house, talking
merrily.
“Katerina
Alexandrovna?” Levin asked of Agafea Mihalovna, who met them with kerchiefs and
rugs in the hall.
“We
thought she was with you,” she said.
“And Mitya?”
“In the
copse, he must be, and the nurse with him.”
Levin
snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.
In that
brief interval of time the storm clouds had moved on, covering the sun so
completely that it was dark as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as though insisting on
its rights, the wind stopped Levin, and tearing the leaves and flowers off the
lime trees and stripping the white birch branches into strange unseemly
nakedness, it twisted everything on one side—acacias, flowers, burdocks, long
grass, and tall tree-tops. The peasant girls working in the garden ran
shrieking into shelter in the servants’ quarters. The streaming rain had
already flung its white veil over all the distant forest and half the fields
close by, and was rapidly swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain
spurting up in tiny drops could be smelt in the air.
Holding
his head bent down before him, and struggling with the wind that strove to tear
the wraps away from him, Levin was moving up to the copse and had just caught sight
of something white behind the oak tree, when there was a sudden flash, the
whole earth seemed on fire, and the vault of heaven seemed crashing overhead.
Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed through the thick veil of rain that
separated him now from the copse, and to his horror the first thing he saw was
the green crest of the familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily
changing its position. “Can it have been struck?” Levin hardly had time to
think when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the
other trees, and he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the others.
The flash
of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the instantaneous chill that ran
through him were all merged for Levin in one sense of terror.
“My God!
my God! not on them!” he said.
And though
he thought at once how senseless was his prayer that they should not have been
killed by the oak which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he could
do nothing better than utter this senseless prayer.
Running up
to the place where they usually went, he did not find them there.
They were
at the other end of the copse under an old lime-tree; they were calling him.
Two figures in dark dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they
started out) were standing bending over something. It was Kitty with the nurse.
The rain was already ceasing, and it was beginning to get light when Levin
reached them. The nurse was not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Kitty
was drenched through, and her soaked clothes clung to her. Though the rain was
over, they still stood in the same position in which they had been standing
when the storm broke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a green
umbrella.
“Alive?
Unhurt? Thank God!” he said, splashing with his soaked boots through the
standing water and running up to them.
Kitty’s
rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she smiled timidly under her
shapeless sopped hat.
“Aren’t
you ashamed of yourself? I can’t think how you can be so reckless!” he said
angrily to his wife.
“It wasn’t
my fault, really. We were just meaning to go, when he made such a to-do that we
had to change him. We were just....” Kitty began defending herself.
Mitya was
unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.
“Well,
thank God! I don’t know what I’m saying!”
They
gathered up the baby’s wet belongings; the nurse picked up the baby and carried
it. Levin walked beside his wife, and, penitent for having been angry, he
squeezed her hand when the nurse was not looking.
Chapter 18
During the
whole of that day, in the extremely different conversations in which he took
part, only as it were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the
disappointment of not finding the change he expected in himself, Levin had been
all the while joyfully conscious of the fulness of his heart.
After the
rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm clouds still hung
about the horizon, and gathered here and there, black and thundery, on the rim
of the sky. The whole party spent the rest of the day in the house.
No more
discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after dinner everyone was in the most
amiable frame of mind.
At first
Katavasov amused the ladies by his original jokes, which always pleased people
on their first acquaintance with him. Then Sergey Ivanovitch induced him to
tell them about the very interesting observations he had made on the habits and
characteristics of common houseflies, and their life. Sergey Ivanovitch, too,
was in good spirits, and at tea his brother drew him on to explain his views of
the future of the Eastern question, and he spoke so simply and so well, that
everyone listened eagerly.
Kitty was
the only one who did not hear it all—she was summoned to give Mitya his bath.
A few
minutes after Kitty had left the room she sent for Levin to come to the
nursery.
Leaving
his tea, and regretfully interrupting the interesting conversation, and at the
same time uneasily wondering why he had been sent for, as this only happened on
important occasions, Levin went to the nursery.
Although
he had been much interested by Sergey Ivanovitch’s views of the new epoch in
history that would be created by the emancipation of forty millions of men of
Slavonic race acting with Russia, a conception quite new to him, and although
he was disturbed by uneasy wonder at being sent for by Kitty, as soon as he
came out of the drawing-room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to the
thoughts of the morning. And all the theories of the significance of the Slav
element in the history of the world seemed to him so trivial compared with what
was passing in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back
into the same frame of mind that he had been in that morning.
He did
not, as he had done at other times, recall the whole train of thought—that he did
not need. He fell back at once into the feeling which had guided him, which was
connected with those thoughts, and he found that feeling in his soul even
stronger and more definite than before. He did not, as he had had to do with
previous attempts to find comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of
thought to find the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace
was keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling.
He walked
across the terrace and looked at two stars that had come out in the darkening
sky, and suddenly he remembered. “Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the
dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked
facing something,” he mused. “But whatever it was, there can be no disproving
it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!”
Just as he
was going into the nursery he remembered what it was he had shirked facing. It
was that if the chief proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is
right, how is it this revelation is confined to the Christian church alone?
What relation to this revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists,
Mohammedans, who preached and did good too?
It seemed
to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate
it to himself before he went into the nursery.
Kitty was
standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath. Hearing her
husband’s footstep, she turned towards him, summoning him to her with her
smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that lay floating and
sprawling on its back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him.
“Come,
look, look!” she said, when her husband came up to her. “Agafea Mihalovna’s
right. He knows us!”
Mitya had
on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of recognizing all his
friends.
As soon as
Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it was completely
successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned
and shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him, he gave her a
beaming smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped, making
such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse
were not alone in their admiration. Levin, too, was surprised and delighted.
The baby
was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in towels, dried, and
after a piercing scream, handed to his mother.
“Well, I
am glad you are beginning to love him,” said Kitty to her husband, when she had
settled herself comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast. “I
am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.”
“No; did I
say that? I only said I was disappointed.”
“What!
disappointed in him?”
“Not
disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected
a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of
that—disgust, pity....”
She
listened attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put back on her
slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving Mitya his bath.
“And most
of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than pleasure. Today, after
that fright during the storm, I understand how I love him.”
Kitty’s
smile was radiant.
“Were you
very much frightened?” she said. “So was I too, but I feel it more now that
it’s over. I’m going to look at the oak. How nice Katavasov is! And what a
happy day we’ve had altogether. And you’re so nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when
you care to be.... Well, go back to them. It’s always so hot and steamy here
after the bath.”
Chapter 19
Going out
of the nursery and being again alone, Levin went back at once to the thought,
in which there was something not clear.
Instead of
going into the drawing-room, where he heard voices, he stopped on the terrace,
and leaning his elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky.
It was
quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds.
The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were
flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin listened to
the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the
triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran
through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the
bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared
in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim.
“Well,
what is it perplexes me?” Levin said to himself, feeling beforehand that the
solution of his difficulties was ready in his soul, though he did not know it
yet. “Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is
the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and
which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which—I don’t make myself,
but whether I will or not—I am made one with other men in one body of
believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the
Confucians, the Buddhists—what of them?” he put to himself the question he had
feared to face. “Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of that
highest blessing without which life has no meaning?” He pondered a moment, but
immediately corrected himself. “But what am I questioning?” he said to himself.
“I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of
all mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the
world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my
heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by
reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason
and words.
“Don’t I
know that the stars don’t move?” he asked himself, gazing at the bright planet
which had shifted its position up to the topmost twig of the birch-tree. “But
looking at the movements of the stars, I can’t picture to myself the rotation
of the earth, and I’m right in saying that the stars move.
“And could
the astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if they had taken into
account all the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the marvellous
conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and
deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of
the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before
me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and
will be always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of
the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on
observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single
horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that
conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which
has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my
soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no
right to decide, and no possibility of deciding.”
“Oh, you
haven’t gone in then?” he heard Kitty’s voice all at once, as she came by the
same way to the drawing-room.
“What is
it? you’re not worried about anything?” she said, looking intently at his face
in the starlight.
But she
could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars
and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm
and happy, she smiled at him.
“She
understands,” he thought; “she knows what I’m thinking about. Shall I tell her
or not? Yes, I’ll tell her.” But at the moment he was about to speak, she began
speaking.
“Kostya!
do something for me,” she said; “go into the corner room and see if they’ve
made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can’t very well. See if they’ve put
the new wash stand in it.”
“Very
well, I’ll go directly,” said Levin, standing up and kissing her.
“No, I’d
better not speak of it,” he thought, when she had gone in before him. “It is a
secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.
“This new
feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a
sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no
surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this
feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm
root in my soul.
“I shall
go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into
angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the
same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife;
I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for
it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I
shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything
that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was
before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to
put into it.”
The End