Читать книгу Anna Karenina - 2 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook (Garnett and Maude translations) - Leo Tolstoy - Страница 75

KITTY also became acquainted with Madame Stahl, and this acquaintanceship, together with Varenka’s friendship, not only had a great influence on Kitty, but comforted her in her sorrow. What comforted her was that a perfectly new world was revealed to her, a world that had nothing in common with her past: an exalted, admirable world, from the heights of which it was possible to regard that past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides that instinctive life she had lived hitherto there was also a spiritual life. That life was revealed by religion, but a religion that had nothing in common with that which Kitty had known since her childhood and which found expression in Mass and vespers at the private chapel of the Widow’s Almshouse where one could meet one’s friends, and in learning Slavonic texts by heart with the priest. This was a lofty, mystical religion connected with a series of beautiful thoughts and feelings, which it was not only possible to believe because one was told to, but even to love.

Kitty did not learn all this from words. Madame Stahl spoke with her as with a dear child who gives one pleasure by reminding one of one’s own past, and only once mentioned that love and faith alone can bring relief in all human sorrows and that no sorrows are too trivial for Christ’s compassion. Then she immediately changed the subject. But in Madame Stahl’s every movement, every word, every ‘heavenly’ look (as Kitty called it), and especially in the whole story of her life, which Kitty learnt from Varenka, she discovered what was important and what she had not known before.

But however lofty may have been Madame Stahl’s character, however touching her story, and however elevated and tender her words, Kitty could not help noticing some perplexing traits in her. She noticed that Madame Stahl, when inquiring about Kitty’s relatives, smiled contemptuously, which did not accord with Christian kindness. And once, when Kitty met a Roman Catholic priest at the house, she observed that Madame Stahl carefully hid her face behind the lampshade and smiled in a peculiar manner. Trifling as these things were they disturbed Kitty, and she felt doubts about Madame Stahl. But Varenka, lonely, without relatives or friends, with her sad disillusionment, wishing for nothing and regretting nothing, personified that perfection of which Kitty only allowed herself to dream. In Varenka she saw that it was only necessary to forget oneself and to love others in order to be at peace, happy, and lovely. And such a person Kitty wished to be. Having now clearly understood what was most important, Kitty was not content merely to delight in it, but immediately with her whole soul devoted herself to this newly-revealed life. She formed a plan for her future life, based on what Varenka told her about the work of Madame Stahl and of others whom she named. Like Madame Stahl’s niece, Aline, of whom Varenka told her a great deal, Kitty determined, wherever she lived, to seek out the unfortunate, help them as much as she could, distribute Gospels, and read the Gospel to the sick, to criminals, and to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospels to criminals, as Aline did, charmed Kitty particularly. But all these were secret dreams, which she did not speak of either to her mother or to Varenka.

However, while waiting for the time when she could put her plans into operation on a larger scale, Kitty, imitating Varenka, here at the watering-place where there were so many sick and unhappy people, easily found opportunities to apply her new rules.

At first the Princess only noticed that Kitty was strongly influenced by her engouement [infatuation], as she called it, for Madame Stahl and especially for Varenka. She noticed that Kitty not only imitated Varenka’s activities, but involuntarily copied her manner of walking, speaking, and blinking her eyes. But afterwards the Princess also noticed that, apart from this infatuation, a serious spiritual change was taking place in her daughter.

She saw that in the evening Kitty read the Gospels in French (given her by Madame Stahl) — which she had not done before — that she avoided her Society acquaintances and made up to the invalids who were under Varenka’s protection, and especially to the family of Petrov, a poor, sick artist. Kitty evidently prided herself on fulfilling the duties of a sister-of-mercy in that family. This was all very well, and the Princess had nothing against it, especially as Petrov’s wife was quite a well-bred woman, and the German Princess, having noticed Kitty’s activities, praised her, calling her a ministering angel. It would have been quite right had it not been overdone. But the Princess saw that her daughter was getting out of bounds and spoke to her about it.

‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer’ [‘You should never overdo anything’], she said to her one day.

But her daughter did not reply; she only felt in her soul that one could not speak of overdoing Christianity. How was it possible to exaggerate, when following the teaching which bids us turn the other cheek when we are struck, and give our coat when our cloak is taken? But the Princess disliked this excess, and disliked it all the more because she felt that Kitty did not wish to open her whole heart to her. And Kitty really did hide her new views and feelings from her mother. She kept them secret not from want of respect and love, but just because her mother was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than to her.

‘It seems a long time since Anna Pavlovna was here,’ said the Princess once, speaking of Mrs. Petrova. ‘I invited her and she did not seem pleased.’

‘I did not notice anything, Mama,’ said Kitty, flushing up.

‘Is it long since you went to see them?’

‘We are all arranging to go for a drive up the mountains to-morrow,’ replied Kitty.

‘Well, go if you like,’ said the Princess, looking intently into her daughter’s confused face and trying to guess the cause of her confusion.

That same day Varenka came to dinner, and said that Anna Pavlovna had changed her mind about going to the mountains to-morrow.

The Princess noticed that Kitty blushed again.

‘Kitty, have you not had some unpleasantness with the Petrovs?’ the Princess asked when they were again alone together. ‘Why has she stopped sending the children here and coming herself?’

Kitty replied that nothing had passed between them and that she did not at all understand why Anna Pavlovna seemed dissatisfied with her. Kitty spoke the truth: she did not know why Anna Pavlovna had changed toward her, but she guessed it. She guessed it to be something that she could not tell her mother and did not even say to herself. It was one of those things which one knows and yet cannot say even to oneself — so dreadful and shameful would it be to make a mistake.

Again and again she went over in memory all the relations she had had with that family. She remembered the naïve pleasure expressed in Anna Pavlovna’s round, good-natured face whenever they met; remembered their secret consultations about the patient, and their plots to draw him away from his work which the doctor had forbidden and to take him for walks, and the attachment to her felt by the youngest boy, who called her ‘my Kitty’, and did not want to go to bed without her. How good it had all been! Then she recalled Petrov’s thin, emaciated figure in his brown coat, with his long neck, his thin, curly hair, his inquiring blue eyes, which had at first seemed to her terrible, — and his sickly efforts to appear vigorous and animated in her presence. She remembered her first efforts to conquer the repulsion she felt for him, as for all consumptives, and her efforts to find something to say to him. She remembered the timid look, full of emotion, with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, followed by a consciousness of her own benevolence, that she had experienced. How good it had all been! But all that had been at first. Now for some days past all had suddenly been spoilt. Anna Pavlovna now met Kitty with affected amiability and constantly watched her husband and her.

Could his touching pleasure when she drew near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coldness?

‘Yes,’ she remembered, ‘there was something unnatural in Anna Pavlovna, quite unlike her usual kindness, when the day before yesterday she said crossly:

‘ “There, he has been waiting for you and would not drink his coffee without you, though he was growing dreadfully weak.”

‘Yes, and perhaps my giving him his plaid may also have been unpleasant to her. It was such a simple thing, but he took it so awkwardly, and thanked me so much that I myself felt awkward. And then that portrait of me, which he did so well! And above all — that look, confused and tender… . Yes, yes, it is so!’ Kitty said to herself quite horrified; and then, ‘No, it is impossible, it must not be! He is so pathetic.’