Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 4)

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!” he said, smiling goodhumoredly to the mother; “there’s no chance of my hurting or dropping her.”

And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him.

Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna, with whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. As he ran with the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole laughing with his queer English accent, and talked to Darya Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the country.

After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the balcony, began to speak of Kitty.

“You know, Kitty’s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with me.”

“Really,” he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he said: “Then I’ll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month; but it’s really too bad of you.”

“No, thank you. We can manage very well now.”

“Oh, well, then, I’ll have a look at your cows, and if you’ll allow me, I’ll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their food.”

And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.

He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.

“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?” Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest.

She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged, thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin’s knowledge of farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundry maid’s cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.

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“Kitty writes to me that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,” Dolly said after the silence that had followed.

“And how is she—better?” Levin asked in agitation.

“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.”

“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.

“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry with Kitty?”

“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.

“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them when you were in Moscow?”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know…”

“What do I know?”

“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

“What makes you suppose I know?”

“Because everybody knows it…”

“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though

I had guessed it was so.”

“Well, now you know it.”

“All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.”

“I have told you.”

“When was it?”

“When I was at their house the last time.”

“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride….”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but…”

She interrupted him.

“But she, poor girl…I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.”

“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up. “Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”

“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve.

“Wait a minute, sit down.”

“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had believed to be buried.

“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I did not know you, as I do know you …”

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Levin’s heart.

“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense, with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,— a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”

“Yes, if the heart does not speak…”

“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer….”

“Well, that’s not quite it.”

“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on his heart and set it aching.

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much the better…. And there can be no repeating it.”

“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an offer she was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt. Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older…I, for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it has turned out.”

Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said: “ No, that cannot be …”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,— you understand, utterly out of the question.”

“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”