too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life
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always to be undivided—and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light
and shadow.’
Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his
own affairs, and did not hear Oblonsky.
And suddenly both of them felt that though they were
friends, though they had been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them closer, yet each was
thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing to
do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy,
coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such
cases.
‘Bill!’ he called, and he went into the next room where he
promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance
and dropped into conversation with him about an actress
and her protector. And at once in the conversation with the
aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief
after the conversation with Levin, which always put him to
too great a mental and spiritual strain.
When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who
would another time have been horrified, like any one from
the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice
it, paid, and set off homewards to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys’ there to decide his fate.
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Chapter 12
The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It
was the first winter that she had been out in the world. Her
success in society had been greater than that of either of her
elder sisters, and greater even than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who danced at the
Moscow balls being almost all in love with Kitty, two serious
suitors had already this first winter made their appearance:
Levin, and immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky.
Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits, and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first
serious conversations between Kitty’s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them. The prince was on Levin’s
side; he said he wished for nothing better for Kitty. The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner
peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young,
that Levin had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great attraction to him, and other
side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which
was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and
that Levin was not to her liking, and she did not understand
him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the princess was
delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: ‘You see
I was right.’ When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was
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still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was
to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.
In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange
and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society,
founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his queer sort
of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants.
She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with
her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as
though he were waiting for something, inspecting, as though
he were afraid he might be doing them too great an honor by
making an offer, and did not realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young unmarried girl,
is bound to make his intentions clear. And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. ‘It’s as well he’s not attractive
enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,’ thought
the mother.
Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires. Very wealthy,
clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant
career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man.
Nothing better could be wished for.
Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with
her, and came continually to the house, consequently there
could be no doubt of the seriousness of his intentions. But, in
spite of that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter
in a state of terrible anxiety and agitation.
Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty
years ago, her aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about
whom everything was well known before hand, had come,
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looked at his future bride, and been looked at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their
mutual impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day fixed beforehand, the expected offer was
made to her parents, and accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed, at least, to the princess. But over
her own daughters she had felt how far from simple and easy
is the business, apparently so commonplace, of marrying off
one’s daughters. The panics that had been lived through, the
thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had
been wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two elder girls, Darya and Natalia! Now, since the
youngest had come out, she was going through the same terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with
her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince,
like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the
score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was
irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty,
who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the
princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had
grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters,
but now she felt that there was more ground for the prince’s
touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in
the manners of society, that a mother’s duties had become
still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed
some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely
in men’s society; drove about the streets alone, many of them
did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all
the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands
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was their own affair, and not their parents’. ‘Marriages aren’t
made nowadays as they used to be,’ was thought and said
by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how
marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from
any one. The French fashion—of the parents arranging their
children’s future—was not accepted; it was condemned. The
English fashion of the complete independence of girls was
also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The
Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it
was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But
how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry
them, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had
chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: ‘Mercy on
us, it’s high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned
business. It’s the young people have to marry; and not their
parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose.’ It was very easy for anyone to say
that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that
in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter
might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not
care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband.
And, however much it was instilled into the princess that
in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for
themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would
have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the
most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to
be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over
Kitty than she had been over her elder sisters.
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Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself
to simply flirting with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with him, but tried to comfort herself with
the thought that he was an honorable man, and would not do
this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is, with the
freedom of manners of today, to turn a girl’s head, and how
lightly men generally regard such a crime. The week before,
Kitty had told her mother of a conversation she had with
Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the princess; but perfectly at ease she could not be.
Vronsky had told Kitty that both he and his brother were so
used to obeying their mother that they never made up their
minds to any important undertaking without consulting her.
‘And just now, I am impatiently awaiting my mother’s arrival
from Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate,’ he told her.
Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the words. But her mother saw them in a different
light. She knew that the old lady was expected from day to
day, that she would be pleased at her son’s choice, and she
felt it strange that he should not make his offer through fear
of vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the
marriage itself, and still more for relief from her fears, that
she believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the princess to see
the unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point
of leaving her husband, her anxiety over the decision of her
youngest daughter’s fate engrossed all her feelings. Today,
with Levin’s reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose.
She was afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as
she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme sense
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of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin’s arrival might
generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.
‘Why, has he been here long?’ the princess asked about
Levin, as they returned home.
‘He came today, mamma.’
‘There’s one thing I want to say…’ began the princess, and
from her
