window-panes quiver in their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the beadle and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, 'It really is strange, though!' and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom's best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing-room of the Shtcherbatskys' house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from her best man that her bridegroom was at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his head out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came back in despair, and frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was smoking serenely.
'Was ever a man in such a fearful fool's position?' he said.
'Yes, it is stupid,' Stepan Arkadyevitch asserted, smiling soothingly. 'But don't worry, it'll be brought directly.'
'No, what is to be done!' said Levin, with smothered fury. 'And these fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!' he said, looking at the crumpled front of his shirt. 'And what if the things have been taken on to the railway station!' he roared in desperation.
'Then you must put on mine.'
'I ought to have done so long ago, if at all.'
'It's not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will come round.'
The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that was wanted.
'But the shirt!' cried Levin.
'You've got a shirt on,' Konzma answered, with a placid smile.
Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the Shtcherbatskys' house, from which the young people were to set out the same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the Shtcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up--it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan Arkadyevitch's and brought a shirt--it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys' to unpack the things. The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.
'Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,' said Kouzma.
Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
'You won't help matters like this,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. 'It will come round, it will come round...I tell you.'
Chapter 4
'They've come!' 'Here he is!' 'Which one?' 'Rather young, eh?' 'Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!' were the comments in the crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her into the church.
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever--not because these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness.
'I was beginning to think you meant to run away,' she said, and smiled to him.
'It's so stupid, what happened to me, I'm ashamed to speak of it!' he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who came up to him.
'This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!' said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.
'Yes, yes!' answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking about.
'Now, Kostya, you have to decide,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air of mock dismay, 'a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been lighted? It's a matter of ten roubles,' he added, relaxing his lips into a smile. 'I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.'
Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.
'Well, how's it to be then?--unlighted or lighted candles? that's the question.'
'Yes, yes, unlighted.'
'Oh, I'm very glad. The question's decided!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. 'How silly men are, though, in this position,' he said to Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to his bride.
'Kitty, mind you're the first to step on the carpet,' said Countess Nordston, coming up. 'You're a nice person!'
