Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 165
931 words | Chapter 165
“Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the
ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have
lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I
sought—in you. I love you, and offer you my hand.”
Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces
from Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard
them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.
“Come here, little ones! There are so many!” she was saying in her
sweet, deep voice.
Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not
change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence
and was glad of it.
“Well, did you find some?” she asked from under the white kerchief,
turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.
“Not one,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Did you?”
She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.
“That one too, near the twig,” she pointed out to little Masha a little
fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under
which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus,
breaking it into two white halves. “This brings back my childhood,” she
added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to
speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had
walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did
not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent.
After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they
wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own
will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:
“So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always
fewer, though.” Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was
annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her
back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after
a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an
observation in response to her last words.
“I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at
the edge of the wood, though I can’t tell them apart.”
Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the
children, and were quite alone. Varenka’s heart throbbed so that she
heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red
again.
To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame
Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was
almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would
have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking
and his not speaking.
Now or never it must be said—that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too.
Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes
of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and
felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a
slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in
support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in
which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some
utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:
“What is the difference between the ‘birch’ mushroom and the ‘white’
mushroom?”
Varenka’s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:
“In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it’s in the stalk.”
And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it
was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their
emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense,
began to subside.
“The birch mushroom’s stalk suggests a dark man’s chin after two days
without shaving,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.
“Yes, that’s true,” answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously the
direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the
children. Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had
a sense of relief.
When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey
Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He
could not be false to the memory of Marie.
“Gently, children, gently!” Levin shouted quite angrily to the
children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of
children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.
Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the
wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and
somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.
“Well?” her husband questioned her as they were going home again.
“It doesn’t bite,” said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking
recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.
“How doesn’t bite?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, taking her husband’s hand, lifting it to her
mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. “Like a kiss on a
priest’s hand.”
“Which didn’t it bite with?” he said, laughing.
“Both. But it should have been like this....”
“There are some peasants coming....”
“Oh, they didn’t see.”
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