ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ Varenka quietly.

      ‘No, please tell me!’

      ‘Shall I tell you everything?’ said Varenka.

      ‘Everything, everything!’ said Kitty.

      ‘There is nothing special to tell, only Petrov used to want to leave sooner but now does not want to go,’ said Varenka smiling.

      ‘Well, go on,’ Kitty hurried her, looking at her with a frown.

      ‘Well, I don’t know why, but Anna Pavlovna says he does not want to go, because you are here. Of course that was tactless, but they quarrelled about you. And you know how excitable such invalids are.’

      Kitty frowned yet more, and remained silent, and only Varenka spoke, trying to soften and soothe Kitty, and foreseeing an approaching explosion of tears or words, she knew not which.

      ‘So it is better for you not to go… . And, you understand, don’t be hurt …’

      ‘It serves me right, it serves me right!’ Kitty began hurriedly, snatching Varenka’s sunshade out of her hands, and looking past her friend’s eyes.

      Varenka felt like smiling at her friend’s childish anger but feared to offend her.

      ‘Why — serves you right? I don’t understand,’ she said.

      ‘It serves me right because it was all pretence, all invented and not heartfelt. What business had I with a stranger? So it comes about that I am the cause of a quarrel, and have been doing what nobody asked me to do. Because it is all pretence, pretence and pretence! …’

      ‘But what motive had you for pretending?’ said Varenka softly.

      ‘Oh, how stupid, how stupid! There was no need at all… . It was all pretence!’ Kitty said, opening and shutting the sunshade.

      ‘But with what object?’

      ‘To appear better than others to myself and to God — to deceive everybody. No, I shall not give in to that again! Let me be bad, but at any rate not false, not a humbug!’

      ‘But who is a “humbug”?’ asked Varenka reproachfully. ‘You speak as if …’

      But Kitty was in one of her fits of passion. She would not let Varenka finish.

      ‘I am not talking about you, not about you at all. You are perfection. Yes, yes, you are all perfection; but how can I help it if I am bad? It would not have happened if I were not bad. So let me be what I am, but not pretend. What is Anna Pavlovna to me? Let them live as they like, and I will live as I like. I cannot be different… . And it’s all not the thing, not the thing!’

      ‘But what is not the thing?’ said Varenka, quite perplexed.

      ‘It’s all not the thing. I can’t live except by my own heart, but you live by principles. I have loved you quite simply, but you, I expect, only in order to save me, to teach me.’

      ‘You are unjust,’ said Varenka.

      ‘But I am not talking about others, only about myself.’

      ‘Kitty!’ came her mother’s voice, ‘come here and show Papa your corals.’

      Kitty took from the table a little box which held the corals, and with a proud look, without having made it up with her friend, went to where her mother was.

      ‘What’s the matter? Why are you so red?’ asked both her mother and father together.

      ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back in a minute,’ and ran away.

      ‘She is still here,’ thought Kitty. ‘What shall I say to her? Oh dear! What have I done, what have I said? Why have I offended her? What am I to do? What shall I say to her?’ thought Kitty and stopped at the door.

      Varenka, with her hat on, sat at the table examining the spring of her sunshade, which Kitty had broken. She looked up.

      ‘Varenka, forgive me, forgive me!’ whispered Kitty, coming close to her. ‘I don’t remember what I said. I …’

      ‘Really, I did not wish to distress you,’ said Varenka with a smile.

      Peace was made. But with her father’s return the world in which she had been living completely changed for Kitty. She did not renounce all she had learnt, but realized that she had deceived herself when thinking that she could be what she wished to be. It was as if she had recovered consciousness; she felt the difficulty of remaining without hypocrisy or boastfulness on the level to which she had wished to rise.

      Moreover, she felt the oppressiveness of that world of sorrow, sickness and death in which she was living. The efforts she had been making to love it now seemed tormenting, and she longed to get away quickly to the fresh air, back to Russia, to Ergushovo, where as she knew from a letter her sister Dolly had moved with the children.

      But her affection for Varenka was not weakened. When taking leave of her, Kitty tried to persuade her to come and stay with them in Russia.

      ‘I will come when you are married,’ said Varenka.

      ‘I shall never marry.’

      ‘Well, then, I shall never come.’

      ‘Then I will marry for that purpose only. Mind now, don’t forget your promise!’ said Kitty.

      The doctor’s prediction was justified. Kitty returned to Russia quite cured! She was not as careless and light-hearted as before, but she was at peace. Her old Moscow sorrows were no more than a memory.

      PART THREE

       TOC

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

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