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TWENTY-SIX
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 invalids1 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 overdone3. But the Princess saw that her daughter was getting out of bounds and spoke4 to her about it.
‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer’ [‘You should never overdo2 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 overdoing5 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 shameful6 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 consultations7 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 attachment8 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, emaciated9 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 animated10 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 compassion11 and awkwardness, followed by a consciousness of her own benevolence12, 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 affected13 amiability14 and constantly watched her husband and her.
Could his touching15 pleasure when she drew near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coldness?
‘Yes,’ she remembered, ‘there was something unnatural16 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 horrified17; and then, ‘No, it is impossible, it must not be! He is so pathetic.’
Chapter 34
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QUITE toward the end of the season Prince Shcherbatsky, who from Carlsbad had gone on to Baden and Kissingen to see some Russian friends and to ‘inhale some Russian spirit’, as he expressed it, returned to his family.
The views of the Prince and Princess on life abroad were diametrically opposed. The Princess found everything admirable, and, in spite of her firmly-established position in Russian Society, tried when abroad to appear like a European lady, which she was not — being thoroughly Russian. She therefore became somewhat artificial, which made her feel uncomfortable. The Prince, on the contrary, considered everything foreign detestable and life abroad oppressive, and kept to his Russian habits, purposely trying to appear more unlike a European than he really was.
He returned looking thinner, with the skin on his cheeks hanging loose, but in the brightest of spirits. His spirits were still better when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of her friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the information the Princess gave him of the change she had observed in Kitty, disturbed him and aroused in him his usual feelings of jealousy toward anything that drew his daughter away from him and of fear lest she might escape from his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant rumours were soon drowned in that sea of kind-hearted cheerfulness which was always within him and which was increased by the Carlsbad water.
The day after his arrival the Prince, attired in a long overcoat, and with his Russian wrinkles, and his slightly puffy cheeks supported by a stiff collar, went out in the brightest of spirits to the Springs with his daughter.
The morning was lovely: the bright, tidy houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-saturated German housemaids, and the clear sunshine, cheered the heart; but the nearer one came to the Spring the more often one met sick people, whose appearance seemed yet sadder amid these customary well-ordered conditions of German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sunshine, the gay glitter of the green trees, and the sounds of music had become for her the natural framework of all these familiar figures, and of the changes for better or for worse which she watched. But to the Prince the radiance of the June morning, the sounds of the band playing a fashionable and merry valse, and particularly the appearance of the sturdy maid-servants, seemed improper and monstrous in contrast with all those melancholy living corpses collected from all parts of Europe.
In spite of the pride and the sense of renewed youth which he experienced while walking arm-in-arm with his favourite daughter, he felt almost awkward and ashamed of his powerful stride and his large healthy limbs. He had almost the feeling that might be caused by appearing in company without clothes.
‘Introduce me, introduce me to your new friends,’ he said to his daughter, pressing her arm with his elbow. ‘I have even taken a liking to your nasty Soden because it has done you so much good. But it’s sad — this place of yours, very sad. Who is that?’
Kitty told him the names of the acquaintances and others whom they met. Just at the entrance to the gardens they met the blind Madame Berthe with her guide, and the Prince was pleased by the tender look on the old Frenchwoman’s face when she heard Kitty’s voice. With French exaggeration she at once began talking to him, admiring him for having such a delightful daughter, and in Kitty’s presence praised her up to the skies, calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a ministering angel.
‘Then she must be angel No. 2,’ the Prince remarked with a smile. ‘She calls Mlle Varenka angel No. 1.’
‘Oh, Mlle Varenka is a real angel, allez,’ said Madame Berthe.
In the gallery they met Varenka herself. She was walking hurriedly toward them with an elegant little red bag in her hand.
‘See! Papa has come!’ said Kitty to her.
Simply and naturally, as she did everything, Varenka made a movement between a bow and a curtsy and immediately began talking to the Prince just as she talked to everybody, easily and naturally.
‘Of course I know you, I’ve heard all about you,’ the Prince said to her with a smile, by which Kitty saw with joy that her father liked Varenka. ‘Where are you hurrying so to?’
‘Mama is here,’ said she, turning to Kitty. ‘She did not sleep all night and the doctor advised her to go out. I am taking her her work.’
‘So that is angel No. 1!’ said the Prince when Varenka had gone.
Kitty saw that he would have liked to make fun of Varenka, but was unable to do so because he liked her.
‘Well, let us see all your friends,’ he added, ‘including Madame Stahl, if she will condescend to recognize me.’
‘Oh, do you know her, Papa?’ asked Kitty, alarmed by an ironical twinkle in the Prince’s eyes when he mentioned Madame Stahl.
‘I knew her husband and her too, slightly, before she joined the Pietists.’
‘What are Pietists, Papa?’ asked Kitty, frightened by the fact that what she valued so highly in Madame Stahl had a name.
‘I don’t know very well myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, including all misfortunes, . . . and thanks God for her husband’s death. And it seems funny, for they did not get on well together. . . . Who is that? What a pitiful face,’ he said, noticing an invalid of medium height who sat on a bench in a brown coat and white trousers which fell into strange folds over his emaciated legs. The man raised his straw hat above his thin curly hair, uncovering a tall forehead with an unhealthy redness where the hat had pressed it.
‘It is Petrov, an artist,’ Kitty replied, blushing. ‘And that is his wife,’ she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who on their approach went away with apparent intention, following a child who had run along the path.
‘Poor man, what a nice face he has!’ said the Prince. ‘Why did you not go up to him? He looked as if he wished to say something to you.’
‘Well, come back then,’ said Kitty, turning resolutely, ‘How are you to-day?’ she asked Petrov.
Petrov rose with the aid of a stick and looked timidly at the Prince.
‘This is my daughter,’ said the Prince; ‘allow me to introduce myself.’
The artist bowed and smiled, exposing his strangely glistening white teeth.
‘We were expecting you yesterday, Princess,’ he said to Kitty.
He staggered as he said it, and to make it appear as if he had done this intentionally, he repeated the movement.
‘I meant to come, but Varenka told me that Anna Pavlovna sent word that you were not going.’
‘Not going?’ said Petrov, flushing and immediately beginning to cough and looking round for his wife. ‘Annetta, Annetta!’ he said loudly, and the veins in his white neck protruded like thick cords.
Anna Pavlovna drew near.
‘How is it you sent word to the Princess that we were not going?’ he said in an irritable whisper, his voice failing him.
‘Good morning, Princess,’ said Anna Pavlovna with a forced smile, quite unlike her former way of greeting Kitty. ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ she went on, turning to the Prince. ‘You have long been expected, Prince!’
‘How is it you sent to tell the Princess we were not going?’ the painter whispered hoarsely and still more angrily, evidently irritated because his voice failed him and he could not give his words the expression he desired.
‘Oh, dear me! I thought we were not going,’ said his wife with vexation.
‘How so? When . . .’ he was interrupted by a fit of coughing, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand.
The Prince raised his hat and went away with his daughter.
‘Oh, oh!’ he sighed deeply. ‘What poor things!’
‘Yes, Papa,’ replied Kitty. ‘And you know they have three children, no servants, and hardly any means. He receives something from the Academy,’ she explained animatedly, trying to stifle the excitement resulting from the strange alteration in Anna Pavlovna’s manner toward her. ‘And there’s Madame Stahl,’ said Kitty, pointing to a bath-chair on which, under a sunshade, lay something supported by pillows, wrapped up in grey and pale-blue. It was Madame Stahl. Behind her was a sullen-looking, robust German workman who pushed her bath-chair. At her side stood a fair-haired Swedish Count, whom Kitty knew by name. Several patients lingered near by, gazing at this lady as at something out of the common.
The Prince approached her, and Kitty immediately noticed in his eyes that ironical spark which so disturbed her. He went up to Madame Stahl, and spoke to her extremely politely and nicely in that excellent French which so very few people speak nowadays.
‘I do not know whether you will remember me, but I must recall myself to you in order to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,’ he said, raising his hat and not putting it on again.
‘Prince Alexander Shcherbatsky,’ said Madame Stahl, lifting toward him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty detected displeasure. ‘I am very pleased. I have grown very fond of your daughter.’
‘Your health is still not good?’
‘No, but I am accustomed to it,’ said Madame Stahl, and introduced the Swedish Count to the Prince.
‘You are very little changed,’ said the Prince. ‘I have not had the honour of seeing you for ten or eleven years.’
‘Yes, God sends a cross and gives the strength to bear it. It often seems strange to think why this life should drag on. . . . On that side!’ she said irritably to Varenka, who was not wrapping the plaid round her feet the right way.
‘To do good, probably,’ said the Prince, whose eyes were laughing.
‘That is not for us to judge,’ said Madame Stahl, detecting a something hardly perceptible on the Prince’s face. ‘Then you will send me that book, dear Count? Thank you very much,’ she added, turning to the young Swede.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Prince, seeing the Moscow Colonel standing near by, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he moved away with his daughter and with the Moscow Colonel, who had joined them.
‘That is our aristocracy, Prince!’ remarked the Colonel wishing to appear sarcastic. He had a pique against Madame Stahl because she did not wish to be acquainted with him.
‘Always the same,’ answered the Prince.
‘Did you know her before her illness, Prince? I mean before she was laid up?’
‘Yes, I knew her when she first became an invalid.’
‘I hear she has not been up for ten years.’
‘She does not get up, because her legs are too short. She has a very bad figure . . .’
‘Papa, impossible!’ exclaimed Kitty.
‘Evil tongues say so, my love. But your Varenka does get it,’ he added. ‘Oh, those invalid ladies!’
‘Oh no, Papa,’ Kitty objected warmly. ‘Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stahl.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. ‘But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows anything about it.’
Kitty was silent, not because she had nothing to say, but because she did not want to reveal her secret thoughts even to her father. Yet — strange to say — though she had made up her mind not to submit to her father’s opinion and not to let him enter her sanctuary, she felt that the divine image of Madame Stahl which she had carried in her bosom for a whole month had irrevocably vanished, as the figure formed by a cast-off garment vanishes when one realizes how the garment is lying. There remained only a short-legged woman who was always lying down because she had a bad figure, and who tormented poor unresisting Varenka for not tucking her plaid the right way. And by no efforts of imagination could the former Madame Stahl be recalled.
Chapter 35
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THE Prince imparted his good spirits to his household, his friends, and even to his German landlord.
On returning from the Spring with Kitty, the Prince, who had invited the Colonel, Mary Evgenyevna, and Varenka to come and take coffee, had a table and chairs brought out into the garden under a chestnut tree and breakfast laid there. The landlord and the servants brightened up under his influence. They knew his generosity, and in a quarter of an hour the sick Hamburg doctor, who lived upstairs, was looking with envy from his window at the merry party of healthy Russians gathered under the chestnut tree. Beneath the trembling shadow-circles of the leaves, around a table covered with a white cloth and set out with coffee-pot, bread, butter, cheese and cold game, sat the Princess in a cap with lilac ribbons, handing out cups of coffee and sandwiches. At the other end sat the Prince, making a substantial meal and talking loudly and merrily. He spread out his purchases before him: carved caskets, spillikins, and paper-knives of all kinds, of which he had bought quantities at all the different watering-places, and he gave them away to everybody, including Lischen, the maid, and the landlord, with whom he joked in his funny broken German, assuring him that not the waters had cured Kitty but his excellent food, especially his plum soup. The Princess laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but was livelier and brighter than she had ever been during her stay at the watering-place. The Colonel smiled, as he always did at the Prince’s jokes; but with regard to Europe (which he thought he had carefully studied) he sided with the Princess. The good-natured Mary Evgenyevna shook with laughter at everything the amusing Prince said, and even Varenka, in a way new to Kitty, succumbed to the feeble but infectious laughter inspired by the Prince’s jokes.
All this cheered Kitty up, but she could not help being troubled. She could not solve the problem unconsciously set her by her father’s jocular view of her friends and of the life she had begun to love so much. To this problem was added the change in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so clearly and unpleasantly demonstrated that morning. Everybody was merry, but Kitty could not be merry, and this troubled her still more. She felt almost as she used to feel when, as a child, she was locked up in a room for punishment and heard her sister’s merry laughter.
‘Now, why have you bought that mass of things?’ asked the Princess, smiling and passing her husband a cup of coffee.
‘One goes out walking, comes to a shop, and they ask one to buy something. It’s “Erlaucht, Excellenz, Durchlaucht [Eminence, Excellence, Serene Highness].” Well, by the time they get to “Durchlaucht” I can’t resist, and ten thalers are gone.’
‘That’s all because you are bored,’ said the Princess.
‘Bored, of course I am! The time hangs so heavy, my dear, that one does not know what to do with oneself.’
‘How can you be bored, Prince? There is so much that is interesting in Germany now,’ said Mary Evgenyevna.
‘But I know all your interesting things: plum-soup and pea-sausages. I know them. I know it all.’
‘No, say what you please, Prince, their institutions are interesting,’ said the Colonel.
‘What is there interesting about them? They are as self-satisfied as brass farthings; they’ve conquered everybody. Now tell me what am I to be pleased about? I have not conquered anybody, but here I have to take off my own boots and even put them outside the door myself. In the morning I have to get up and dress at once and go down to the dining-room to drink bad tea. Is it like that at home? There one wakes up without any hurry, gets a bit cross about something, grumbles a bit, comes well to one’s senses, and thinks everything well over without hurrying.’
‘But “time is money”, don’t forget that,’ said the Colonel.
TWENTY-SIX
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 invalids1 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 overdone3. But the Princess saw that her daughter was getting out of bounds and spoke4 to her about it.
‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer’ [‘You should never overdo2 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 overdoing5 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 shameful6 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 consultations7 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 attachment8 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, emaciated9 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 animated10 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 compassion11 and awkwardness, followed by a consciousness of her own benevolence12, 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 affected13 amiability14 and constantly watched her husband and her.
Could his touching15 pleasure when she drew near be the cause of Anna Pavlovna’s coldness?
‘Yes,’ she remembered, ‘there was something unnatural16 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 horrified17; and then, ‘No, it is impossible, it must not be! He is so pathetic.’
Chapter 34
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QUITE toward the end of the season Prince Shcherbatsky, who from Carlsbad had gone on to Baden and Kissingen to see some Russian friends and to ‘inhale some Russian spirit’, as he expressed it, returned to his family.
The views of the Prince and Princess on life abroad were diametrically opposed. The Princess found everything admirable, and, in spite of her firmly-established position in Russian Society, tried when abroad to appear like a European lady, which she was not — being thoroughly Russian. She therefore became somewhat artificial, which made her feel uncomfortable. The Prince, on the contrary, considered everything foreign detestable and life abroad oppressive, and kept to his Russian habits, purposely trying to appear more unlike a European than he really was.
He returned looking thinner, with the skin on his cheeks hanging loose, but in the brightest of spirits. His spirits were still better when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of her friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the information the Princess gave him of the change she had observed in Kitty, disturbed him and aroused in him his usual feelings of jealousy toward anything that drew his daughter away from him and of fear lest she might escape from his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant rumours were soon drowned in that sea of kind-hearted cheerfulness which was always within him and which was increased by the Carlsbad water.
The day after his arrival the Prince, attired in a long overcoat, and with his Russian wrinkles, and his slightly puffy cheeks supported by a stiff collar, went out in the brightest of spirits to the Springs with his daughter.
The morning was lovely: the bright, tidy houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-saturated German housemaids, and the clear sunshine, cheered the heart; but the nearer one came to the Spring the more often one met sick people, whose appearance seemed yet sadder amid these customary well-ordered conditions of German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sunshine, the gay glitter of the green trees, and the sounds of music had become for her the natural framework of all these familiar figures, and of the changes for better or for worse which she watched. But to the Prince the radiance of the June morning, the sounds of the band playing a fashionable and merry valse, and particularly the appearance of the sturdy maid-servants, seemed improper and monstrous in contrast with all those melancholy living corpses collected from all parts of Europe.
In spite of the pride and the sense of renewed youth which he experienced while walking arm-in-arm with his favourite daughter, he felt almost awkward and ashamed of his powerful stride and his large healthy limbs. He had almost the feeling that might be caused by appearing in company without clothes.
‘Introduce me, introduce me to your new friends,’ he said to his daughter, pressing her arm with his elbow. ‘I have even taken a liking to your nasty Soden because it has done you so much good. But it’s sad — this place of yours, very sad. Who is that?’
Kitty told him the names of the acquaintances and others whom they met. Just at the entrance to the gardens they met the blind Madame Berthe with her guide, and the Prince was pleased by the tender look on the old Frenchwoman’s face when she heard Kitty’s voice. With French exaggeration she at once began talking to him, admiring him for having such a delightful daughter, and in Kitty’s presence praised her up to the skies, calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a ministering angel.
‘Then she must be angel No. 2,’ the Prince remarked with a smile. ‘She calls Mlle Varenka angel No. 1.’
‘Oh, Mlle Varenka is a real angel, allez,’ said Madame Berthe.
In the gallery they met Varenka herself. She was walking hurriedly toward them with an elegant little red bag in her hand.
‘See! Papa has come!’ said Kitty to her.
Simply and naturally, as she did everything, Varenka made a movement between a bow and a curtsy and immediately began talking to the Prince just as she talked to everybody, easily and naturally.
‘Of course I know you, I’ve heard all about you,’ the Prince said to her with a smile, by which Kitty saw with joy that her father liked Varenka. ‘Where are you hurrying so to?’
‘Mama is here,’ said she, turning to Kitty. ‘She did not sleep all night and the doctor advised her to go out. I am taking her her work.’
‘So that is angel No. 1!’ said the Prince when Varenka had gone.
Kitty saw that he would have liked to make fun of Varenka, but was unable to do so because he liked her.
‘Well, let us see all your friends,’ he added, ‘including Madame Stahl, if she will condescend to recognize me.’
‘Oh, do you know her, Papa?’ asked Kitty, alarmed by an ironical twinkle in the Prince’s eyes when he mentioned Madame Stahl.
‘I knew her husband and her too, slightly, before she joined the Pietists.’
‘What are Pietists, Papa?’ asked Kitty, frightened by the fact that what she valued so highly in Madame Stahl had a name.
‘I don’t know very well myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, including all misfortunes, . . . and thanks God for her husband’s death. And it seems funny, for they did not get on well together. . . . Who is that? What a pitiful face,’ he said, noticing an invalid of medium height who sat on a bench in a brown coat and white trousers which fell into strange folds over his emaciated legs. The man raised his straw hat above his thin curly hair, uncovering a tall forehead with an unhealthy redness where the hat had pressed it.
‘It is Petrov, an artist,’ Kitty replied, blushing. ‘And that is his wife,’ she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who on their approach went away with apparent intention, following a child who had run along the path.
‘Poor man, what a nice face he has!’ said the Prince. ‘Why did you not go up to him? He looked as if he wished to say something to you.’
‘Well, come back then,’ said Kitty, turning resolutely, ‘How are you to-day?’ she asked Petrov.
Petrov rose with the aid of a stick and looked timidly at the Prince.
‘This is my daughter,’ said the Prince; ‘allow me to introduce myself.’
The artist bowed and smiled, exposing his strangely glistening white teeth.
‘We were expecting you yesterday, Princess,’ he said to Kitty.
He staggered as he said it, and to make it appear as if he had done this intentionally, he repeated the movement.
‘I meant to come, but Varenka told me that Anna Pavlovna sent word that you were not going.’
‘Not going?’ said Petrov, flushing and immediately beginning to cough and looking round for his wife. ‘Annetta, Annetta!’ he said loudly, and the veins in his white neck protruded like thick cords.
Anna Pavlovna drew near.
‘How is it you sent word to the Princess that we were not going?’ he said in an irritable whisper, his voice failing him.
‘Good morning, Princess,’ said Anna Pavlovna with a forced smile, quite unlike her former way of greeting Kitty. ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ she went on, turning to the Prince. ‘You have long been expected, Prince!’
‘How is it you sent to tell the Princess we were not going?’ the painter whispered hoarsely and still more angrily, evidently irritated because his voice failed him and he could not give his words the expression he desired.
‘Oh, dear me! I thought we were not going,’ said his wife with vexation.
‘How so? When . . .’ he was interrupted by a fit of coughing, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand.
The Prince raised his hat and went away with his daughter.
‘Oh, oh!’ he sighed deeply. ‘What poor things!’
‘Yes, Papa,’ replied Kitty. ‘And you know they have three children, no servants, and hardly any means. He receives something from the Academy,’ she explained animatedly, trying to stifle the excitement resulting from the strange alteration in Anna Pavlovna’s manner toward her. ‘And there’s Madame Stahl,’ said Kitty, pointing to a bath-chair on which, under a sunshade, lay something supported by pillows, wrapped up in grey and pale-blue. It was Madame Stahl. Behind her was a sullen-looking, robust German workman who pushed her bath-chair. At her side stood a fair-haired Swedish Count, whom Kitty knew by name. Several patients lingered near by, gazing at this lady as at something out of the common.
The Prince approached her, and Kitty immediately noticed in his eyes that ironical spark which so disturbed her. He went up to Madame Stahl, and spoke to her extremely politely and nicely in that excellent French which so very few people speak nowadays.
‘I do not know whether you will remember me, but I must recall myself to you in order to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,’ he said, raising his hat and not putting it on again.
‘Prince Alexander Shcherbatsky,’ said Madame Stahl, lifting toward him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty detected displeasure. ‘I am very pleased. I have grown very fond of your daughter.’
‘Your health is still not good?’
‘No, but I am accustomed to it,’ said Madame Stahl, and introduced the Swedish Count to the Prince.
‘You are very little changed,’ said the Prince. ‘I have not had the honour of seeing you for ten or eleven years.’
‘Yes, God sends a cross and gives the strength to bear it. It often seems strange to think why this life should drag on. . . . On that side!’ she said irritably to Varenka, who was not wrapping the plaid round her feet the right way.
‘To do good, probably,’ said the Prince, whose eyes were laughing.
‘That is not for us to judge,’ said Madame Stahl, detecting a something hardly perceptible on the Prince’s face. ‘Then you will send me that book, dear Count? Thank you very much,’ she added, turning to the young Swede.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Prince, seeing the Moscow Colonel standing near by, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he moved away with his daughter and with the Moscow Colonel, who had joined them.
‘That is our aristocracy, Prince!’ remarked the Colonel wishing to appear sarcastic. He had a pique against Madame Stahl because she did not wish to be acquainted with him.
‘Always the same,’ answered the Prince.
‘Did you know her before her illness, Prince? I mean before she was laid up?’
‘Yes, I knew her when she first became an invalid.’
‘I hear she has not been up for ten years.’
‘She does not get up, because her legs are too short. She has a very bad figure . . .’
‘Papa, impossible!’ exclaimed Kitty.
‘Evil tongues say so, my love. But your Varenka does get it,’ he added. ‘Oh, those invalid ladies!’
‘Oh no, Papa,’ Kitty objected warmly. ‘Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stahl.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. ‘But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows anything about it.’
Kitty was silent, not because she had nothing to say, but because she did not want to reveal her secret thoughts even to her father. Yet — strange to say — though she had made up her mind not to submit to her father’s opinion and not to let him enter her sanctuary, she felt that the divine image of Madame Stahl which she had carried in her bosom for a whole month had irrevocably vanished, as the figure formed by a cast-off garment vanishes when one realizes how the garment is lying. There remained only a short-legged woman who was always lying down because she had a bad figure, and who tormented poor unresisting Varenka for not tucking her plaid the right way. And by no efforts of imagination could the former Madame Stahl be recalled.
Chapter 35
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THE Prince imparted his good spirits to his household, his friends, and even to his German landlord.
On returning from the Spring with Kitty, the Prince, who had invited the Colonel, Mary Evgenyevna, and Varenka to come and take coffee, had a table and chairs brought out into the garden under a chestnut tree and breakfast laid there. The landlord and the servants brightened up under his influence. They knew his generosity, and in a quarter of an hour the sick Hamburg doctor, who lived upstairs, was looking with envy from his window at the merry party of healthy Russians gathered under the chestnut tree. Beneath the trembling shadow-circles of the leaves, around a table covered with a white cloth and set out with coffee-pot, bread, butter, cheese and cold game, sat the Princess in a cap with lilac ribbons, handing out cups of coffee and sandwiches. At the other end sat the Prince, making a substantial meal and talking loudly and merrily. He spread out his purchases before him: carved caskets, spillikins, and paper-knives of all kinds, of which he had bought quantities at all the different watering-places, and he gave them away to everybody, including Lischen, the maid, and the landlord, with whom he joked in his funny broken German, assuring him that not the waters had cured Kitty but his excellent food, especially his plum soup. The Princess laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but was livelier and brighter than she had ever been during her stay at the watering-place. The Colonel smiled, as he always did at the Prince’s jokes; but with regard to Europe (which he thought he had carefully studied) he sided with the Princess. The good-natured Mary Evgenyevna shook with laughter at everything the amusing Prince said, and even Varenka, in a way new to Kitty, succumbed to the feeble but infectious laughter inspired by the Prince’s jokes.
All this cheered Kitty up, but she could not help being troubled. She could not solve the problem unconsciously set her by her father’s jocular view of her friends and of the life she had begun to love so much. To this problem was added the change in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so clearly and unpleasantly demonstrated that morning. Everybody was merry, but Kitty could not be merry, and this troubled her still more. She felt almost as she used to feel when, as a child, she was locked up in a room for punishment and heard her sister’s merry laughter.
‘Now, why have you bought that mass of things?’ asked the Princess, smiling and passing her husband a cup of coffee.
‘One goes out walking, comes to a shop, and they ask one to buy something. It’s “Erlaucht, Excellenz, Durchlaucht [Eminence, Excellence, Serene Highness].” Well, by the time they get to “Durchlaucht” I can’t resist, and ten thalers are gone.’
‘That’s all because you are bored,’ said the Princess.
‘Bored, of course I am! The time hangs so heavy, my dear, that one does not know what to do with oneself.’
‘How can you be bored, Prince? There is so much that is interesting in Germany now,’ said Mary Evgenyevna.
‘But I know all your interesting things: plum-soup and pea-sausages. I know them. I know it all.’
‘No, say what you please, Prince, their institutions are interesting,’ said the Colonel.
‘What is there interesting about them? They are as self-satisfied as brass farthings; they’ve conquered everybody. Now tell me what am I to be pleased about? I have not conquered anybody, but here I have to take off my own boots and even put them outside the door myself. In the morning I have to get up and dress at once and go down to the dining-room to drink bad tea. Is it like that at home? There one wakes up without any hurry, gets a bit cross about something, grumbles a bit, comes well to one’s senses, and thinks everything well over without hurrying.’
‘But “time is money”, don’t forget that,’ said the Colonel.
