第192章

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 Shcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up - it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan Arkadyevich's and brought a shirt - it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the Shcherbatskys' 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, without looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.

`You won't help matters like that,' said Stepan Arkadyevich with a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. `It will come round, it will come round - I tell you.'

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]

TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 04[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] 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 Arkadyevich 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 as 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, scalloped de Medici collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, and 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.

What happened to me is so stupid I'm ashamed to speak of it!'

he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergei Ivanovich, who came up to him.

`This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!' said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head and smiling.

`Yes, yes!' answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking about.

`Now, Kostia, you have to decide,' said Stepan Arkadyevich 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 - unused or used candles? - that is the question.'

`Yes, yes, unused ones.'

`Oh, I'm very glad. The question's decided!' said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling. `How silly men become, though, in this situation,' he said to Chirikov, 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 Nordstone, coming up. `You're a fine person!' she said to Levin.

`Aren't you frightened, eh?' said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.

`Are you cold? You're pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,' said Kitty's sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, pretty hands she smilingly set straight the flowers on her head.

Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and then laughed naturally.

Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.

Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the porch of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did not hear what the priest said.

`Take the bride's hand and lead her up,' the best man said to Levin.

It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin again - because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm - till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at last he had taken the bride's hand in the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of trains.

Someone stooped down and straightened out the bride's train. The church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard falling from the candles.

The little old priest in his calotte, with his long silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.

Stepan Arkadyevich approached him cautiously, whispered something, and, giving a wink at Levin, walked back again.

The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the bridal pair. The priest was the same old man who had confessed Levin.