第193章

He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom, sighed, and, putting his right hand out from under his vestment, blessed the bridegroom with it, and also, with a shade of solicitous tenderness, laid his crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the candles, and, taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.

`Can it be true?' thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride.

Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the candle.

All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position - all suddenly passed away and he was filled with joy and dread.

The handsome, stately protodeacon wearing a silver robe, and his curly locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward, and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.

`Blessed be the name of the Lord,' the solemn syllables rang out slowly one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.

`Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, as now, and forever and aye,' the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died away.

They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Czar; they prayed, too, for the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their troth.

`Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace, and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee,' the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the protodeacon.

Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. `How did they guess that it is help, just help that one wants?' he thought, recalling all his fears and doubts of late. `What do I know? what can I do in this fearful business,' he thought, `without help? Yes, it is help I want now.'

When the deacon had finished the liturgical prayer, the priest turned to the bridal pair with his book: `Eternal God, who joinest together in love them that were separate,' he read in a gentle, piping voice, `who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant, bless Thou Thy servants, Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works. For gracious and merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and forever and aye.' - `Amen!' the unseen choir sent rolling again through the air.

`'Joinest together in love them that were separate.' What deep meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this moment,' thought Levin. `Is she feeling the same as I?'

And, looking round, he met her eyes. And from their expression he concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her.

On the day when in the drawing room of the house in the Arbat street she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and had given herself to him without a word - on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually going on as before.

Those six weeks had for her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her - to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a thought, nor a wish, apart from life with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold anticipation and uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life - all this was ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have terrors for her by its obscurity;but, terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in her heart.

Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took Kitty's little ring, and, asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first joint of his finger. `The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth to the servant of God, Ekaterina.' And putting his big ring on Kitty's touchingly weak, pink tiny finger, the priest said the same thing.