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_ "Go, please, go then and call on the Bols," Kitty said to her
husband, when he came in to see her at eleven o'clock before
going out. "I know you are dining at the club; papa put down your
name. But what are you going to do in the morning?"
"I am only going to Katavasov," answered Levin.
"Why so early?"
"He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him
about my work. He's a distinguished scientific man from
Petersburg," said Levin.
"Yes; wasn't it his article you were praising so? Well, and after
that?" said Kitty.
"I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister's business."
"And the concert?" she queried.
"I shan't go there all alone."
"No? do go; there are going to be some new things.... That
interested you so. I should certainly go."
"Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner," he said, looking
at his watch.
"Put on your frock-coat, so that you can go straight to call on
Countess Bola."
"But is it absolutely necessary?"
"Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go
in, sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go
away."
"Oh, you wouldn't believe it! I've got so out of the way of all
this that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It's such a
horrible thing to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down,
stays on with nothing to do, wastes their time and worries
himself, and walks away!"
Kitty laughed.
"Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married,
didn't you?"
"Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so out of the
way of it that, by Jove! I'd sooner go two days running without
my dinner than pay this call! One's so ashamed! I feel all the
while that they're annoyed, that they're saying, 'What has he
come for?' "
"No, they won't. I'll answer for that," said Kitty, looking into
his face with a laugh. She took his hand. "Well, good-bye.... Do
go, please."
He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she
stopped him.
"Kostya, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?"
"Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?" he
said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.
"No, wait a minute." She held his hand. "Let's talk about it, it
worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems
to fly away simply. We don't manage well, somehow."
"Oh, it's all right," he said with a little cough, looking at her
from under his brows.
That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense
dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was
displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being
reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted
to forget.
"I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance
on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case."
"Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether . . ."
"Oh, it's all right, all right," he repeated. "Well, good-bye,
darling."
"No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How
nice it would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying
you all, and we're wasting our money."
"Not at all, not at all. Not once since I've been married have I
said that things could have been better than they are.
"Truly?" she said, looking into his eyes.
He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when
he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened
questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. "I was
positively forgetting her," he thought. And he remembered what
was before them, so soon to come.
"Will it be soon? How do you feel?" he whispered, taking her two
hands.
"I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it or
know anything about it."
"And you're not frightened?"
She smiled contemptuously.
"Not the least little bit," she said.
"Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavasov's."
"No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for
a walk on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I
shall expect you before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly's
position is becoming utterly impossible? She's in debt all round;
she hasn't a penny. We were talking yesterday with mamma and
Arseny" (this was her sister's husband Lvov), "and we determined
to send you with him to talk to Stiva. It's really unbearable.
One can't speak to papa about it.... But if you and he . . ."
"Why, what can we do?" said Levin.
"You'll be at Arseny's, anyway; talk to him, he will tell what we
decided."
"Oh, I agree to everything Arseny thinks beforehand. I'll go and
see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I'll go with
Natalia. Well, good- bye."
On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had
been with-him before his marriage, and now looked after their
household in town.
"Beauty" (that was the left shaft-horse brought up from the
country) "has been badly shod and is quite lame," he said. "What
does your honor wish to be done?"
During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his
own horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange
this part of their expenses in the best and cheapest way
possible; but it appeared that their own horses came dearer than
hired horses, and they still hired too.
"Send for the veterinary, there may be a bruise."
"And for Katerina Alexandrovna?" asked Konzma.
Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact
that to get from one end of Moscow to the other he had to have
two powerful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the
carriage three miles through the snowy slush and to keep it
standing there four hours, paying five roubles every time.
Now it seemed quite natural.
"Hire a pair for our carriage from the jobmaster," said he.
"Yes, sir."
And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life,
Levin settled a question which, in the country, would have called
for so much personal trouble and exertion, and going out onto the
steps, he called a sledge, sat down, and drove to Nikitsky. On
the way he thought no more of money, but mused on the
introduction that awaited him to the Petersburg savant, a writer
on sociology, and what he would say to him about his book.
Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been
struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country,
unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every
side. But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to
him in this matter which is said to happen to drunkards--the
first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a
hawk, but after the third they're like tiny little birds. When
Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for
liveries for his footmen and hall-porter he could not help
reflecting that these liveries were of no use to any one--but
they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the amazement of the
princess and Kitty when he suggested that they might do without
liveries,--that these liveries would cost the wages of two
laborers for the summer, that is, would pay for about three
hundred working days from Easter to Ash Wednesday, and each a day
of hard work from early morning to late evening--and that
hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the next note,
changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations, that
cost twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin the
reflection that twenty-eight roubles meant nine measures of oats,
which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and
thrashed and winnowed and sifted and sown,--this next one he
parted with more easily. And now the notes he changed no longer
aroused such reflections, and they flew off like little birds.
Whether the labor devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to
the pleasure given by what was bought with it, was a
consideration he had long ago dismissed. His business calculation
that there divas a certain price below which he could not sell
certain grain was for gotten too. The rye, for the price of which
he had so long held out, had been sold for fifty kopecks a
measure cheaper than it had been fetching a month ago. Even the
consideration that with such an expenditure he could not go on
living for a year without debt, that even had no force. Only one
thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without inquiring
where it came from, so as to know that one had the wherewithal to
buy meat for to-morrow. And this condition had hitherto been
fulfilled; he had always had the money in the bank. But now the
money in the bank had gone, and he could not quite tell where to
get the next installment. And this it was which, at the moment
when Kitty had mentioned money, had disturbed hirn; but he had no
time to think about it. He drove off, thinking of Katavasov and
the meeting with Metrov that was before him. _
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