'There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it's not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.'
'I'm perfectly calm, maman.'
'How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then,' said Dolly, 'and how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,' she said, struck by her own ideas. 'Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.'
'A nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman--no heart,' said her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but Levin.
'What do you want to talk of it for?' Kitty said with annoyance. 'I never think about it, and I don't want to think of it.... And I don't want to think of it,' she said, catching the sound of her husband's well-known step on the steps of the terrace.
'What's that you don't want to think about?' inquired Levin, coming onto the terrace.
But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.
'I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine parliament,' he said, looking round on every one discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.
For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up to Kitty.
'Well, how are you?' he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.
'Oh, very well,' said Kitty, smiling, 'and how have things gone with you?'
'The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put in.'
'What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?' her mother said reproachfully.
'Yes, at a walking pace, princess.'
Levin never called the princess 'maman' as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.
'Come with us, maman,' said Kitty.
'I don't like to see such imprudence.'
'Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well.' Kitty got up and went to her husband and took his hand.
'You may be well, but everything in moderation,' said the princess.
'Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?' said Levin, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. 'Is it all right in the new way?'
'I suppose it's all right. For our notions it's boiled too long.'
'It'll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won't mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we've no cool cellar to store it,' said Kitty, at once divining her husband's motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; 'but your pickle's so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,' she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.
Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.
'You needn't try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,' she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him touched Kitty
'Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the nest places.' Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: 'I should like to be angry with you too, but I can't.'
'Do it, please, by my receipt,' said the princess; 'put some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.'
Chapter 3
Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his face--always so quick to reflect every feeling--at the moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer.
When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.
'So you're not tired? Lean more on me,' said he.
'No, I'm so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own, though I'm happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.'
'That was good, but this is even better. Both are better,' he said, squeezing her hand.
'Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?'
'About jam?'
'Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.'
