And getting into bed, she blew out the candle-which the new servant had found in a box in the attic, after a Toy Soldier collected the lumières-lay down and was still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she had said “nothing,” he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman’s life. At seven o’clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed to be struggling between regret at waking him and the desire to talk to him.
“Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s all right. But I fancy… we ought to send for the doctor.”
The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.
“Please, don’t be frightened, it’s all right. I’m not a bit afraid,” she said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to her lips.
He hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as he put on his dressing gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft, curling hair under her nightcap, was radiant with joy and courage.
Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty’s character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from reproaching him, that she loved him for her sufferings. If not I, who is to blame for it? he thought, without even noticing that he was thinking instead of speaking; though thoughts of such importance, touching on life and death, would always in the past have been uttered aloud to his beloved-companion. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.
“I have sent to Mamma. You go quickly to fetch the doctor… Kostya!… Nothing, it’s over. Well, go now. I am all right.”
And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she had brought in during the night and begun working at it again. She was secure, serene, hardly even noticing that Tatiana was not with her. For so long Kitty and Levin had relied on their beloved-companions for support, but in this most human of situations, neither felt their absence.
He dressed, and after sending the new houseboy to prepare the horses-another new habit to get used to-Levin ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe, it seemed to him, but on wings. Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions to the servants.
“I’m going for the doctor.”
She looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying.
“Yes, yes. Do go,” she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to him.
He had just gone into the drawing room, when suddenly a plaintive moan sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a long while he could not understand.
Yes, that is she, he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran downstairs.
The horses were not yet ready, so, feeling a peculiar concentration of his physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off on foot without waiting.
CHAPTER 9
THE DOCTOR WAS NOT yet up, and the footman said that he had been up late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon. The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and making a proper mess of the job.
Levin waited impatiently in the street for the doctor, and finally decided that he could wait no longer, and would burst in on the man and wake him if he had to. He stormed back toward the doctor’s door-but was stopped by a fat little man in a tattered lab coat, who appeared in the shadows holding a small silver box. This man was not Federov, but looked much like him: the same tangled beard, the same beady eyes, the tattered lab coat.
“Rearguard,” the man said gravely.
“Action,” Levin responded immediately.
The man stepped fully from the shadows. “Konstantin Dmitrich, my name is Dmitriev.”
“I cannot speak to you now! I have urgent business this night!”
“Not so urgent as this,” the agent of UnConSciya replied. “Levin, the time has come.”
“No,” Levin protested, his voice rising. “It cannot be tonight!” Levin moved to push past him, and the man who called himself Dmitriev scowled and pressed the button on his little box. Levin yelped in pain as he banged against some sort of radiating, semi-invisible bars, and a small electric shock quivered through his system.
“I am sorry,” said Dmitriev, scratching at his tangled beard. “But I require your complete attention.
His eyes wide with rage, Levin stared at the squat man in his shabby coat. “Why do you encage me? I am with you! And I swear to you that tomorrow I shall offer whatever aid I can. Only you must find me tomorrow.”
“We do not have the luxury of waiting for tomorrow. We have a chance to stop the furnaces, tonight, to halt the melting down of the Class Ills. But we require a man trusted in society, a man beyond suspicion, and we need him tonight.”
“Then you must find another man!” Levin threw himself at the invisible enclosure, and a ripple of fiery pain exploded across his chest.
“Stop it-stop that,” cried Dmitriev. “You will kill yourself.”
“You must free me!” Levin shouted, half mad with his need to fetch the doctor and return to Kitty’s side. He hurled his shoulder once more against the invisible bars that held him, and was thrown down onto the street writhing and clutching at himself.
“No… no… I beg of you to stop,” said Dmitriev with desperation, as Levin stumbled back to his feet.
“Let me free! Ahhh!”
He lunged again, and this time felt the shock in every synapse of his body, jolting up and down his spinal column, pooling at the base of his brain. Levin collapsed on the street, twitching and muttering like a madman. Dmitriev looked nervously around. “You cannot persist in this. Rearguard,” he insisted again. “Rearguard!”
“Kitty.”
Levin groaned, crawled to his feet. On all fours he limped into the barely perceptible bars like a wounded animal, shuddered with pain, and collapsed feebly in the street.
“I cannot let you die, Konstantin Levin,” the man from UnConSciya said at last. “You have a more important part to play. I cannot let you die.” He clicked the button on the box, and with a barely audible whoosh Levin’s invisible prison disappeared. He staggered toward the door of the doctor’s home.
“Only… only think of your country,” said the operative to Levin’s back, now pleading when only a moment ago he had been commanding.
Levin lifted his hand to pull on the makeshift bellpull that the doctor’s household had rigged in place of a Class I Doorchime.