Part Seven: Chapter 14

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that "he had beenup late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get upsoon." The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemedvery busy about them. This concentration of the footman upon hislamps, and his indifference to what was passing in Levin, atfirst astounded him, but immediately on considering the questionhe realized that no one knew or was bound to know his feelings,and that it was all the more necessary to act calmly, sensibly,and resolutely to get through this wall of indifference andattain his aim.

　　"Don't be in a hurry or let anything slip," Levin said tohimself, feeling a greater and greater flow of physical energyand attention to all that lay before him to do.

　　Having ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Levinconsidered various plans, and decided on the following one: thatKonzma should go for another doctor, while he himself should goto the chemist's for opium, and if when he came back the doctorhad not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping thefootman, or by force, wake the doctor at all hazards.

　　At the chemist's the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powdersfor a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with thesame callousness with which the doctor's footman had cleaned hislamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper,Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, andexplaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him.The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, andreceiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he tookout a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from abigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up,in spite of Levin's request that he would not do so, and wasabout to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could stand;he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the bigglass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and thefootman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him.Levin deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful tospeak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handedhim the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a greatand important personage he seemed to Levin now, this PyotrDmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyesbefore!) had promised to come at any time; that he wouldcertainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him atonce.

　　The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into thewaiting room.

　　Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, movingabout, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; itseemed to Levin that more than an hour had gone by. He could notwait any longer.

　　"Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" he said in an imploringvoice at the open door. "For God's sake, forgive me! See me asyou are. It's been going on more than two hours already."

　　"I a minute; in a minute!" answered a voice, and to hisamazement Levin heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke.

　　"For one instant."

　　"In a minute."

　　Two minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on hisboots, and two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat andcombed his hair.

　　"Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" Levin was beginning again in a plaintivevoice, just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. "Thesepeople have no conscience," thought Levin. "Combing his hair,while we're dying!"

　　"Good morning!" the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as itwere, teasing him with his composure. "There's no hurry. Wellnow?"

　　Trying to be as accurate as possible Levin began to tell himevery unnecessary detail of his wife's condition, interruptinghis account repeatedly with entreaties that the doctor would comewith him at once.

　　"Oh, you needn't be in any hurry. You don't understand, youknow. I'm certain I'm not wanted, still I've promised, and ifyou like, I'll come. But there's no hurry. Please sit down;won't you have some coffee?"

　　Levin stared at him with eyes that asked whether he was laughingat him; but the doctor had no notion of making fun of him.

　　"I know, I know," the doctor said, smiling; "I'm a married manmyself; and at these moments we husbands are very much to bepitied. I've a patient whose husband always takes refuge in thestables on such occasions."

　　"But what do you think, Pyotr Dmitrievitch? Do you suppose itmay go all right?"

　　"Everything points to a favorable issue."

　　"So you'll come immediately?" said Levin, looking wrathfully atthe servant who was bringing in the coffee.

　　"In an hour's time."

　　"Oh, for mercy's sake!"

　　"Well, let me drink my coffee, anyway."

　　The doctor started upon his coffee. Both were silent.

　　"The Turks are really getting beaten, though. Did you readyesterday's telegrams?" said the doctor, munching some roll.

　　"No, I can't stand it!" said Levin, jumping up. "So you'll bewith us in a quarter of an hour."

　　"In half an hour."

　　"On your honor?"

　　When Levin got home, he drove up at the same time as theprincess, and they went up to the bedroom door together. Theprincess had tears in her eyes, and her hands were shaking.Seeing Levin, she embraced him, and burst into tears.

　　"Well, my dear Lizaveta Petrovna?" she queried, clasping the handof the midwife, who came out to meet them with a beaming andanxious face.

　　"She's going on well," she said; "persuade her to lie down. Shewill be easier so."

　　From the moment when he had waked up and understood what wasgoing on, Levin had prepared his mind to bear resolutely what wasbefore him, and without considering or anticipating anything, toavoid upsetting his wife, and on the contrary to soothe her andkeep up her courage. Without allowing himself even to think ofwhat was to come, of how it would end, judging from his inquiriesas to the usual duration of these ordeals, Levin had in hisimagination braced himself to bear up and to keep a tight rein onhis feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he could dothis. But when he came back from the doctor's and saw hersufferings again, he fell to repeating more and more frequently:"Lord, have mercy on us, and succor us!" He sighed, and flung hishead up, and began to feel afraid he could not bear it, that hewould burst into tears or run away. Such agony it was to him.And only one hour had passed.

　　But after that hour there passed another hour, two hours, three,the full five hours he had fixed as the furthest limit of hissufferings, and the position was still unchanged; and he wasstill bearing it because there was nothing to be done but bearit; every instant feeling that he had reached the utmost limitsof his endurance, and that his heart would break with sympathyand pain.

　　But still the minutes passed by and the hours, and still hoursmore, and his misery and horror grew and were more and moreintense.

　　All the ordinary conditions of life, without which one can formno conception of anything, had ceased to exist for Levin. Helost all sense of time. Minutes--those minutes when she sent forhim and he held her moist hand, that would squeeze his hand withextraordinary violence and then push it away--seemed to himhours, and hours seemed to him minutes. He was surprised whenLizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a candle behind a screen,and he found that it was five o'clock in the afternoon. If hehad been told it was only ten o'clock in the morning he would nothave been more surprised. Where he was all this time, he knew aslittle as the time of anything. He saw her swollen face,sometimes bewildered and in agony, sometimes smiling and tryingto reassure him. He saw the old princess too, flushed andoverwrought, with her gray curls in disorder, forcing herself togulp down her tears, biting her lips; he saw Dolly too and thedoctor, smoking fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta Petrovna with afirm, resolute, reassuring face, and the old prince walking upand down the hall with a frowning face. But why they came in andwent out, where they were, he did not know. The princess waswith the doctor in the bedroom, then in the study, where a tableset for dinner suddenly appeared; then she was not there, butDolly was. Then Levin remembered he had been sent somewhere.Once he had been sent to move a table and sofa. He had done thiseagerly, thinking it had to be done for her sake, and only lateron he found it was his own bed he had been getting ready. Thenhe had been sent to the study to ask the doctor something. Thedoctor had answered and then had said something about theirregularities in the municipal council. Then he had been sentto the bedroom to help the old princess to move the holy picturein its silver and gold setting, and with the princess's oldwaiting maid he had clambered on a shelf to reach it and hadbroken the little lamp, and the old servant had tried to reassurehim about the lamp and about his wife, and he carried the holypicture and set it at Kitty's head, carefully tucking it inbehind the pillow. But where, when, and why all this hadhappened, he could not tell. He did not understand why the oldprincess took his hand, and looking compassionately at him,begged him not to worry himself, and Dolly persuaded him to eatsomething and led him out of the room, and even the doctor lookedseriously and with commiseration at him and offered him a drop ofsomething.

　　All he knew and felt was that what was happening was what hadhappened nearly a year before in the hotel of the country town atthe deathbed of his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside allthe ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were,in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses ofsomething sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublimesomething the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of whichit had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind,unable to keep up with it.

　　"Lord, have mercy on us, and succor us!" he repeated to himselfincessantly, feeling, in spite of his long and, as it seemed,complete alienation from religion, that he turned to God just astrustfully and simply as he had in his childhood and first youth.

　　All this time he had two distinct spiritual conditions. One wasaway from her, with the doctor, who kept smoking one fatcigarette after another and extinguishing them on the edge of afull ash tray, with Dolly, and with the old prince, where therewas talk about dinner, about politics, about Marya Petrovna'sillness, and where Levin suddenly forgot for a minute what washappening, and felt as though he had waked up from sleep; theother was in her presence, at her pillow, where his heart seemedbreaking and still did not break from sympathetic suffering, andhe prayed to God without ceasing. And every time he was broughtback from a moment of oblivion by a scream reaching him from thebedroom, he fell into the same strange terror that had come uponhim the first minute. Every time he heard a shriek, he jumpedup, ran to justify himself, remembered on the way that he was notto blame, and he longed to defend her, to help her. But as helooked at her, he saw again that help was impossible, and he wasfilled with terror and prayed: "Lord, have mercy on us, and helpus!" And as time went on, both these conditions became moreintense; the calmer he became away from her, completelyforgetting her, the more agonizing became both her sufferings andhis feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, wouldhave liked to run away, but ran to her.

　　Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamedher; but seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words,"I am worrying you," he threw the blame on God; but thinking ofGod, at once he fell to beseeching God to forgive him and havemercy.