Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 14
Chapter 14
LEVIN had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he
had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and
new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family
life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined.
At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the
smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat.
He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too,
not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under
one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and
that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful,
was very difficult.
As a bachelor, when he had watched other people’s married life, seen the petty
cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart.
In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort;
even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others
in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made
on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest
details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own,
had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against. And
Levin saw that the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had
fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions
of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the happiest
enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as
he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness
of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that
she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty,
could, not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their married life,
think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses
for visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on. While they were
still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the
tour abroad and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she
wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon
him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times.
But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he
did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he
could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the
furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; hung up curtains;
prepared rooms for visitors; a room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid;
ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking
from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her,
and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how mournfully and tenderly
Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young mistress’s new arrangements. He
saw that Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to
tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and
so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it would
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