‘Let’s try it now, Countess,’ he began. But Levin wanted to finish saying what he thought.
‘I think,’ he continued, ‘that this attempt by the spiritualists to explain their wonders by some new force is a most unfortunate one. They speak directly about spiritual force and want to subject it to material experiment.’
They were all waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.
‘And I think that you’d make an excellent medium,’ said Countess Nordston, ‘there’s something ecstatic in you.’
Levin opened his mouth, wanted to say something, turned red, and said nothing.
‘Let’s try the tables now, Princess, if you please,’ said Vronsky. ‘With your permission, Madame?’ He turned to the old princess.
And Vronsky stood up, his eyes searching for a table.
Kitty got up from her little table and, as she passed by, her eyes met Levin’s. She pitied him with all her heart, the more so as she was the cause of his unhappiness. ‘If I can be forgiven, forgive me,’ her eyes said, ‘I’m so happy.’
‘I hate everybody, including you and myself,’ his eyes answered, and he picked up his hat. But he was not fated to leave yet. They were just settling around the little table, and Levin was on the point of leaving, when the old prince came in and, after greeting the ladies, turned to him.
‘Ah!’ he began joyfully. ‘Been here long? And I didn’t know you were here. Very glad to see you, sir.’
The old prince sometimes addressed Levin formally, sometimes informally. He embraced Levin, talking to him and not noticing Vronsky, who rose and waited calmly for the prince to turn to him.
Kitty sensed that, after what had happened, her father’s cordiality would be oppressive for Levin. She also saw how coldly her father finally responded to Vronsky’s bow and how Vronsky looked at her father with friendly perplexity, trying but failing to understand how and why it was possible to have an unfriendly attitude towards him, and she blushed.
‘Prince, give us Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said Countess Nordston. ‘We want to make an experiment.’
‘What experiment? Table-turning? Well, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I think it’s more fun to play the ring game,’ said the old prince, looking at Vronsky and guessing that he had started it. ‘The ring game still has some sense to it.’
Vronsky gave the prince a surprised look with his firm eyes and, smiling slightly, immediately began talking with Countess Nordston about a big ball that was to take place in a week.
‘I hope you’ll be there?’ he turned to Kitty.
As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Levin went out unobserved, and the last impression he took away with him from that evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky’s question about the ball.
XV
When the evening was over, Kitty told her mother about her conversation with Levin, and, despite all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had been proposed to. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But when she went to bed, she could not fall asleep for a long time. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin’s face with its scowling eyebrows and his kind eyes looking out from under them with gloomy sullenness, as he stood listening to her father and glancing at her and Vronsky. And she felt such pity for him that tears came to her eyes. But she immediately thought of the one she had exchanged him for. She vividly recalled that manly, firm face, the noble calm and the kindness towards all that shone in him; she recalled the love for her of the one she loved, and again she felt joy in her soul, and with a smile of happiness she lay back on the pillow. ‘It’s a pity, a pity, but what to do? It’s not my fault,’ she kept saying to herself; yet her inner voice was saying something else. Whether she repented of having led Levin on, or of having rejected him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts. ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’ she kept saying to herself till she fell asleep.
Just then, downstairs in the prince’s small study, one of those so often repeated scenes was taking place between the parents over their favourite daughter.
‘What? Here’s what!’ the prince shouted, waving his arms and at once closing his squirrel-skin dressing gown. ‘That you have no pride, no dignity, that you disgrace and ruin your daughter with this mean, foolish matchmaking!’
‘But, please, for the love of God, Prince, what have I done?’ the princess said, almost in tears.
Happy and pleased after talking with her daughter, she had come to say good night to the prince as usual, and though she had not intended to tell him about Levin’s proposal and Kitty’s refusal, she had hinted to her husband that she thought the matter with Vronsky quite concluded, that it would be decided as soon as his mother came. And here, at these words, the prince had suddenly flared up and begun shouting unseemly things.
‘What have you done? Here’s what: in the first place, you lure a suitor, and all Moscow is going to be talking, and with reason. If you give soirees, invite everybody, and not some chosen little suitors. Invite all those twits’ (so the prince called the young men of Moscow), ‘invite a pianist and let them dance, but not like tonight - suitors and matchmaking. It’s loathsome, loathsome to look at, and you’ve succeeded, you’ve turned the silly girl’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. And this little fop from Petersburg - they’re made by machine, they’re all the same sort, and all trash. Even if he was a prince of the blood, my daughter doesn’t need anybody!’
‘But what have I done?’
‘Here’s what...’ the prince cried out wrathfully.
‘I know that if we listen to you,’ the princess interrupted, ‘we’ll never get our daughter married. In that case, we’ll have to move to the country.’
‘Better to move.’
‘Wait. Am I pursuing anyone? Not at all. But a young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love, and it seems that she ...’
‘Yes, to you it seems! And what if she really falls in love, and he has as much thought of marrying as I do? ... Oh! I can’t stand the sight of it! ... “Ah, spiritualism, ah, Nice, ah, the next ball ...”’ And the prince, imagining he was imitating his wife, curtsied at each word. ‘And what if we arrange for Katenka’s unhappiness, what if she really takes it into her head ...’
‘But why do you think that?’
‘I don’t think, I know. It’s we who have eyes for that, not women. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s Levin; and I see a popinjay like this whippersnapper, who is only amusing himself.’
‘Well, once you’ve taken it into your head ...’
‘And you’ll remember, but it will be too late, just as with Dashenka.’
‘Well, all right, all right, let’s not talk about it.’ The princess stopped him, remembering about the unfortunate Dolly.
‘Excellent. Good-bye.’
And having crossed each other and kissed each other, yet sensing that each remained of the same opinion, the spouses parted.
The princess was firmly convinced at first that that evening had decided Kitty’s fate and there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s intentions; but her husband’s words troubled her. And, returning to her room, in terror before the unknown future, just like Kitty, she repeated several times in her heart: ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!’
XVI
Vronsky had never known family life. His mother in her youth had been a brilliant society woman who, during her marriage and especially after it, had had many love affairs, known to all the world. He barely remembered his father and had been brought up in the Corps of Pages.28