Kitty’s friend Countess Nordston, who had married the previous winter, came in five minutes later.
She was a brittle, sickly-looking, nervous woman with a sallow complexion and shining black eyes. She was very fond of Kitty, and her affection for her, in keeping with the affection of all married women for young girls, expressed itself in the wish to marry Kitty off according to her own ideal of happiness, so she wished to marry her off to Vronsky. Levin, whom she had often met at the Shcherbatskys’ at the beginning of winter, had never appealed to her. Her perennial and favourite pastime when meeting consisted of poking fun at him.
‘I do like it when he looks down at me from his magisterial height: either he breaks off his clever conversation with me because I am stupid, or he is condescending to me. I love that: condescending to me! I am delighted he cannot stand me,’ she would say about him.
She was right, because Levin really could not stand her, and despised her for what she took pride in and identified as a virtue in herself—her high-strung nature, and her refined contempt and disregard for everything crude and mundane.
Countess Nordston and Levin had established the kind of relationship often encountered in society between two people who outwardly remain on friendly terms, but loathe each other to such an extent that they cannot even address each other seriously and cannot even be insulted by each other.
Countess Nordston immediately pounced on Levin.
‘Ah! Konstantin Dmitrich! You have come to visit our depraved Babylon again,’ she said, offering him her dainty yellow hand and remembering what he had said at some point earlier in the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon. ‘So, has Babylon improved, or have you deteriorated?’ she asked, looking at Kitty with an arch smile.
‘I’m very flattered, Countess, that you should remember my words so well,’ replied Levin, who had managed to recover, and from habit slipped straight away into his jocular but hostile mode of addressing Countess Nordston. ‘They seem to have made a strong impression on you.’
‘Absolutely! I write everything down. So tell me, Kitty, you have been skating again? …’
And she started talking to Kitty. However much of a blunder it would be for Levin to go now, it was nevertheless easier for him to commit that blunder than stay for the whole evening and see Kitty, who was throwing him the occasional glance and avoiding his gaze. He was about to get up, but the Princess, noticing his silence, turned to him.
‘Have you come to Moscow for long? But you are involved in the zemstvo I believe, so you cannot stay for long.’
‘No, Princess, I am no longer involved in the zemstvo,’ he said. ‘I have come for a few days.’
‘There is something odd about him tonight,’ thought Countess Nordston as she peered at his stern, serious face; ‘he is not getting embroiled in one of his diatribes. But I will definitely draw him out. I adore making a fool of him in front of Kitty, and that’s what I am going to do.’
‘Konstantin Dmitrich,’ she said to him, ‘could you explain something to me, please, since you know all about this sort of thing—at our estate in Kaluga,* the peasants and their womenfolk have all spent everything they possess on drink, and now they are not paying us anything. What does this mean? You have always had a good word to say about the peasants.’
Another lady came into the room at that moment, and Levin got up.
‘Forgive me, Countess, but I really don’t know anything about this, and can’t tell you anything,’ he said, and then looked round at the officer who had followed the lady in.
‘That must be Vronsky,’ thought Levin, and he glanced at Kitty to make sure. She had already managed to steal a glance at Vronsky, and she looked round at Levin. And from that one glance of her involuntarily shining eyes, Levin realized that she loved this man, realized it as surely as if she had told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he?
Now—for better or for worse—Levin had no option but to stay; he needed to find out what sort of a person this man was whom she loved.
There are people who, when meeting their victorious rival in whatever sphere, are immediately ready to turn their back on all that is good about him and see only bad things; and then there are people who, on the contrary, take pains to find in this victorious rival the qualities with which he defeated them, and who, with an aching heart, look only for good things about him. Levin belonged to the latter category. But it was not difficult for him to see what was good and attractive about Vronsky. It was immediately apparent. Vronsky was a dark-haired, sturdily built man of medium height, with a good-natured, handsome face which was exceedingly calm and composed. Everything about his face and figure, from his close-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin to his loose-fitting, brand-new uniform, was simple but also elegant. After making way for the lady who was coming in, Vronsky went up to the Princess, and then to Kitty.
As he approached her, his handsome eyes began to shine with a particular tenderness, and with a barely perceptible, happy smile of modest triumph (so it seemed to Levin), he respectfully and solicitously bent over her and held out to her his small but broad hand.
Once he had greeted everybody and said a few words, he sat down, without once glancing at Levin, who had not taken his eyes off him.
‘Allow me to introduce you,’ said the Princess, indicating Levin. ‘Konstantin Dmitrich Levin. Count Alexey Kirillovich Vronsky.’
Vronsky stood up, looked Levin affably in the eye, and shook hands with him.
‘I believe I was to have dined with you earlier this winter,’ he said, smiling his simple and ingenuous smile; ‘but you unexpectedly had to leave for the country.’
‘Konstantin Dmitrich despises and hates the city and us townfolk,’ said Countess Nordston.
‘My words must have made a strong impression on you for you to have remembered them so well,’ said Levin, and realizing he had already said that earlier, he blushed.
Vronsky looked at Levin and at Countess Nordston, and smiled.
‘Are you always in the country?’ he asked. ‘I suppose it’s dull in winter?’
‘It’s not dull if you have things to do, and being on your own isn’t dull,’ snapped Levin.
‘I love the country,’ said Vronsky, noticing and pretending not to notice Levin’s tone.
‘But I hope, Count, that you would not consent to live permanently in the country,’ said Countess Nordston.
‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried it for long. I did once experience a strange feeling,’ he continued. ‘I have never missed the countryside, the Russian countryside with bast shoes* and peasants, so much as I did when I spent a winter in Nice with my mother. Nice is dull in itself you know. And Naples and Sorrento are only all right for a short time. And it is precisely there that one remembers Russia particularly vividly, and precisely the countryside … They are just like …’
He addressed both Kitty and Levin as he spoke, transferring his calm and friendly gaze from one to the other, and clearly saying whatever came into his head.
Noticing that the Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he broke off without finishing his sentence, and listened attentively to her.
Not for one moment did the conversation flag, so that the old Princess, who always kept two heavy weapons in reserve in case of lacking a topic—classical and modern education and universal military service*—had no occasion to deploy them, and Countess Nordston had no occasion to tease Levin.
Levin wanted and was unable to enter the general conversation; constantly telling himself ‘I should leave now,’ he kept not leaving, and waiting for something.