‘What have you done? I’ll tell you what: firstly, you are out to trap a husband, so all of Moscow is going to talk, and with good reason. If you are going to hold soirées, then invite everybody, not just hand-picked little suitors. Invite all those young pups (as the Prince called young Muscovites), invite a pianist and let them dance, but not like tonight—little suitors and brokering. It’s vile for me to watch, quite vile, and you have succeeded, as the poor girl’s head has been turned. Levin is a thousand times the better man. And as for that little Petersburg fop, they turn them out on a machine, all from the same mould, and they are all worthless. Even if he was a prince of the blood, my daughter doesn’t need anyone!’
‘But what on earth have I done?’
‘Oh, you’ve …’ shouted the Prince furiously.
‘I know full well that if I listened to you,’ interrupted the Princess, ‘we would never give our daughter away in marriage. And if that’s the case, we should just go to the country.’
‘It would be better if we did.’
‘Now wait a moment. Do you think I am trying curry favour? I am not doing that at all. A fine young man has fallen in love, and she, it seems …’
‘Yes, that is how it seems to you! But what if she really does fall in love, and he has as much thought of marrying as I do? … Ugh! I wish I could have turned away my eyes! … “Ah, spiritualism, ah, Nice, ah, at the ball …”’ And the Prince curtseyed at each word, imagining he was portraying his wife. ‘You’ll see what misfortune we will bring to Katenka if she should really take it into her head …’
‘But why do you think that?’
‘I don’t think that, I know; we are the ones with eyes for that, not you womenfolk. I see a man who has serious intentions, and that is Levin; and I see a popinjay, like this time-waster, who is just having fun.’
‘Well, if you are really going to take it into your head …’
‘And you’ll remember, when it’s too late, like with our Dashenka.’
‘Well, all right, all right, let’s not talk about it.’ The Princess stopped him when she remembered poor, unfortunate Dolly.
‘Fine, and goodnight!’
And after making the sign of the cross over each other and kissing, but sensing that each other’s opinion had not changed, the couple parted.
The Princess had at first been firmly convinced that this evening had decided Kitty’s fate and that there could be no doubts about Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words troubled her. And after returning to her room, terrified by the uncertainty of what the future held, she repeated several times in her heart, just like Kitty: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’
16
VRONSKY had never known family life. In her youth his mother had been a brilliant society woman who had a great many affairs during her marriage, and particularly after it, which all of society knew about. He barely remembered his father, and had been educated in the Corps of Pages.*
Leaving school as a very young and brilliant officer, he had straight away fallen into the lifestyle of rich military men in Petersburg. Although he occasionally went into Petersburg society, all his love interests lay outside society.
In Moscow, after his extravagant and coarse Petersburg life, he had for the first time experienced the delight of getting to know a sweet, innocent society girl who had fallen in love with him. It did not occur to him that there might be anything wrong with the way he behaved towards Kitty. At balls he danced mostly with her; he called on her family at home. He spouted the sort of nonsense to her which is usually spouted in society, but it was nonsense which he unintentionally endowed with a special meaning for her. Despite the fact that he had not said anything to her which could not have been said in front of everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more dependent on him, and the more he felt this, the more pleasant it was for him and the more tender his feelings for her became. He did not know that his pattern of behaviour with regard to Kitty had a specific name, that it was the leading on of young girls without the intention of marrying them, and that this leading on was an example of the bad conduct commonly encountered amongst brilliant young men like himself. He thought he was the first person to have discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents said that evening, if he could have seen things from her family’s point of view and discovered that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been very surprised and would not have believed it. He could not believe that something which gave him, and above all her, such great and sincere pleasure could be bad. Still less could he have believed that he should get married.
Marriage had never seemed a possibility to him. He not only did not like family life, but in keeping with the general outlook of the bachelor world in which he lived, he saw something alien, hostile, and above all ridiculous in families, and particularly husbands. But although Vronsky had no inkling of what her parents were saying, as he left the Shcherbatskys that evening he felt the secret spiritual bond existing between him and Kitty had become so firmly established that some action was called for. But what that action could or ought to be he could not imagine.
‘What is delightful,’ he thought as he returned from the Shcherbatskys, bringing away from them, as always, an agreeable feeling of purity and freshness emanating partly from his not having smoked all evening, and also a new feeling of tenderness engendered by her love for him, ‘what is delightful is that nothing has been said by me or by her, but we understood each other so well in that invisible conversation of looks and intonations that she told me tonight that she loves me more clearly than ever before. And how sweetly, simply, and above all, trustingly! I myself feel better, purer. I feel I have a heart, and that there is a lot of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: and very much …’
‘So what then? So nothing. I’m having a good time, and so is she.’ And he started pondering where to round off the evening.
He weighed up the places he could go to in his mind. ‘The club? A game of bezique,* champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going there. The Château des Fleurs, where I’ll find Oblonsky, songs, the can-can?* No, I’m bored with that. That is exactly why I love the Shcherbatskys, because I am improving myself. I’ll go home.’ He went straight to his room at Dusseaux’s,* ordered supper, and after getting undressed had barely managed to place his head on the pillow before he had fallen, as always, into a deep and peaceful sleep.
17
THE next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Vronsky drove out to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother, and the first person he ran into on the steps of the main staircase was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister on the same train.
‘Ah! Your Excellency!’ shouted Oblonsky. ‘Who are you meeting?’
‘My Mama,’ replied Vronsky, smiling like everyone else who met Oblonsky as he shook his hand and went up the steps with him. ‘She is due to arrive from Petersburg today.’
‘You know, I waited for you until two o’clock. Where did you go from the Shcherbatskys?’
‘Home,’ answered Vronsky. ‘I have to confess, I felt so good after the Shcherbatskys yesterday that I did not feel like going anywhere.’
‘Spirited steeds I recognize by their something-or-other brands, and love-sick youths by their eyes,’ declaimed Stepan Arkadyich, just as he had to Levin before.
Vronsky smiled in a way which suggested he did not deny this, but he immediately changed the topic of conversation.