He wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevich, but he could not bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevich had gone down to his room, undressed, again washed, and, attired in a nightshirt with goffered frills, had got into bed, but Levin still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask what he wanted to know.
`How wonderfully they make the soap,' he said gazing at a piece of soap he was unwrapping, which Agathya Mikhailovna had placed in readiness for the guest, but a brand which Oblonsky did not use. `Just look - why, it's a work of art.'
`Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays,'
said Stepan Arkadyevich, with a moist and blissful yawn. `The theater, for instance, and the entertainments... A-a-a!' he yawned. `The electric light everywhere... A-a-a!'
`Yes, the electric light,' said Levin. `Yes. Oh, and where's Vronsky now?' he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.
`Vronsky?' said Stepan Arkadyevich, checking his yawn; `he's in Peterburg. He left soon after you did, and hasn't been once in Moscow since.
And, do you know, Kostia, I'll tell you the truth,' he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and, with his hand, propping up his handsome ruddy face, in which his humid, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. `It's your own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn't say which had the better chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told you at the time that...' He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.
`Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did propose?' Levin wondered gazing at him. `Yes, there's something humbugging, something diplomatic in his face.' And, feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan Arkadyevich straight in the face without speaking.
`If there was anything on her side at that time, it was nothing but a superficial attraction,' pursued Oblonsky. `His being such a perfect aristocrat, you know, and his future position in society, had an influence not with her, but with her mother.'
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support.
`Wait, wait,' he began, interrupting Oblonsky. `You talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists of, that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon?
You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother - God knows whom she wasn't mixed up with... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course, are another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you make Riabinin a present of thirty thousand;but you get from the government your liferent, and I don't know what, while I shall not, and so I prize what's come to me from my ancestors, or has been won by hard work... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful ones of this earth, and who can be bought for twenty kopecks.'
`Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class of those who could be bought for twenty kopecks Levin was reckoning him as well. Levin's animation gave him genuine pleasure. `Whom are you attacking?
A good deal of what you say is not true about Vronsky, of course, but Iwon't talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and...'
`No; I don't know whether you know it or not, but I don't care.
And I tell you - I did propose, and was rejected, and Katerina Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating reminiscence.'
`Why? What nonsense!'
`But we won't talk about it. Please forgive me, if I've been nasty,'
said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been in the morning. `You're not angry with me, Stiva? Please don't be angry,'
he said, and, smiling, he took his hand.
`Of course not; not a bit - nor is there any reason to be. I'm glad we've spoken openly. And, do you know, stand shooting in the morning is usually good - why not go? I might go, without sleeping, straight from shooting to the station.'
`Capital.'
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 18[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 18 Although all Vronsky's inner life was absorbed in his passion, his external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the old accustomed lines of his social and regimental ties and interests. The interests of his regiment took an important place in Vronsky's life, both because he was fond of the regiment, and still more because the regiment was fond of him. They were not only fond of Vronsky in his regiment, they respected him too, and were proud of him; proud that this man, with his immense wealth, his brilliant education and abilities, and the path open before him to every kind of success, distinction and ambition, had disregarded all that, and of all the interests of life had the interests of his regiment and his comrades nearest to his heart. Vronsky was aware of his comrades' view of him, and in addition to his liking for that sort of life, he felt bound to keep up that reputation.
It need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of his comrades, nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest drinking bouts (though indeed he was never so drunk as to lose all control of himself).