The doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that "he had been up late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon." The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed very busy about them. This concentration of the footman upon his lamps, and his indifference1 to what was passing in Levin, at first astounded2 him, but immediately on considering the question he 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 resolutely4 to get through this wall of indifference and attain5 his aim.
"Don't be in a hurry or let anything slip," Levin said to himself, feeling a greater and greater flow of physical energy and attention to all that lay before him to do.
Having ascertained6 that the doctor was not getting up, Levin considered various plans, and decided7 on the following one: that Konzma should go for another doctor, while he himself should go to the chemist's for opium8, and if when he came back the doctor had not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping the footman, or by force, wake the doctor at all hazards.
At the chemist's the lank9 shopman sealed up a packet of powders for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the same callousness10 with which the doctor's footman had cleaned his lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper, Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took out a bottle and a funnel11, deliberately12 poured the opium from a bigger 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 was about 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 big glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at once.
The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the waiting room.
Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Levin that more than an hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer.
"Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" he said in an imploring13 voice at the open door. "For God's sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It's been going on more than two hours already."
"I a minute; in a minute!" answered a voice, and to his amazement14 Levin heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke15.
"For one instant."
"In a minute."
Two minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on his boots, and two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair.
"Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" Levin was beginning again in a plaintive16 voice, just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. "These people have no conscience," thought Levin. "Combing his hair, while we're dying!"
"Good morning!" the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as it were, teasing him with his composure. "There's no hurry. Well now?"
Trying to be as accurate as possible Levin began to tell him every unnecessary detail of his wife's condition, interrupting his account repeatedly with entreaties17 that the doctor would come with him at once.
"Oh, you needn't be in any hurry. You don't understand, you know. I'm certain I'm not wanted, still I've promised, and if you 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 laughing at him; but the doctor had no notion of making fun of him.
"I know, I know," the doctor said, smiling; "I'm a married man myself; and at these moments we husbands are very much to be pitied. I've a patient whose husband always takes refuge in the stables on such occasions."
"But what do you think, Pyotr Dmitrievitch? Do you suppose it may go all right?"
"Everything points to a favorable issue."
"So you'll come immediately?" said Levin, looking wrathfully at the 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 read yesterday's telegrams?" said the doctor, munching18 some roll.
"No, I can't stand it!" said Levin, jumping up. "So you'll be with 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 the princess, and they went up to the bedroom door together. The princess 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 queried20, clasping the hand of the midwife, who came out to meet them with a beaming and anxious face.
"She's going on well," she said; "persuade her to lie down. She will be easier so."
From the moment when he had waked up and understood what was going on, Levin had prepared his mind to bear resolutely what was before him, and without considering or anticipating anything, to avoid upsetting his wife, and on the contrary to soothe21 her and keep up her courage. Without allowing himself even to think of what was to come, of how it would end, judging from his inquiries22 as to the usual duration of these ordeals23, Levin had in his imagination braced19 himself to bear up and to keep a tight rein24 on his feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he could do this. But when he came back from the doctor's and saw her sufferings again, he fell to repeating more and more frequently: "Lord, have mercy on us, and succor25 us!" He sighed, and flung his head up, and began to feel afraid he could not bear it, that he would 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 fixed26 as the furthest limit of his sufferings, and the position was still unchanged; and he was still bearing it because there was nothing to be done but bear it; every instant feeling that he had reached the utmost limits of his endurance, and that his heart would break with sympathy and pain.
But still the minutes passed by and the hours, and still hours more, and his misery27 and horror grew and were more and more intense.
All the ordinary conditions of life, without which one can form no conception of anything, had ceased to exist for Levin. He lost all sense of time. Minutes--those minutes when she sent for him and he held her moist hand, that would squeeze his hand with extraordinary violence and then push it away--seemed to him hours, and hours seemed to him minutes. He was surprised when Lizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a candle behind a screen, and he found that it was five o'clock in the afternoon. If he had been told it was only ten o'clock in the morning he would not have been more surprised. Where he was all this time, he knew as little as the time of anything. He saw her swollen28 face, sometimes bewildered and in agony, sometimes smiling and trying to reassure29 him. He saw the old princess too, flushed and overwrought, with her gray curls in disorder30, forcing herself to gulp31 down her tears, biting her lips; he saw Dolly too and the doctor, smoking fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta Petrovna with a firm, resolute3, reassuring32 face, and the old prince walking up and down the hall with a frowning face. But why they came in and went out, where they were, he did not know. The princess was with the doctor in the bedroom, then in the study, where a table set for dinner suddenly appeared; then she was not there, but Dolly was. Then Levin remembered he had been sent somewhere. Once he had been sent to move a table and sofa. He had done this eagerly, thinking it had to be done for her sake, and only later on he found it was his own bed he had been getting ready. Then he had been sent to the study to ask the doctor something. The doctor had answered and then had said something about the irregularities in the municipal council. Then he had been sent to the bedroom to help the old princess to move the holy picture in its silver and gold setting, and with the princess's old waiting maid he had clambered on a shelf to reach it and had broken the little lamp, and the old servant had tried to reassure him about the lamp and about his wife, and he carried the holy picture and set it at Kitty's head, carefully tucking it in behind the pillow. But where, when, and why all this had happened, he could not tell. He did not understand why the old princess took his hand, and looking compassionately33 at him, begged him not to worry himself, and Dolly persuaded him to eat something and led him out of the room, and even the doctor looked seriously and with commiseration34 at him and offered him a drop of something.
All he knew and felt was that what was happening was what had happened nearly a year before in the hotel of the country town at the deathbed of his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief-- this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime35. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted36 to inconceivable heights of which it 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 himself incessantly37, feeling, in spite of his long and, as it seemed, complete alienation38 from religion, that he turned to God just as trustfully and simply as he had in his childhood and first youth.
All this time he had two distinct spiritual conditions. One was away from her, with the doctor, who kept smoking one fat cigarette after another and extinguishing them on the edge of a full ash tray, with Dolly, and with the old prince, where there was talk about dinner, about politics, about Marya Petrovna's illness, and where Levin suddenly forgot for a minute what was happening, and felt as though he had waked up from sleep; the other was in her presence, at her pillow, where his heart seemed breaking and still did not break from sympathetic suffering, and he prayed to God without ceasing. And every time he was brought back from a moment of oblivion by a scream reaching him from the bedroom, he fell into the same strange terror that had come upon him the first minute. Every time he heard a shriek39, he jumped up, ran to justify40 himself, remembered on the way that he was not to blame, and he longed to defend her, to help her. But as he looked at her, he saw again that help was impossible, and he was filled with terror and prayed: "Lord, have mercy on us, and help us!" And as time went on, both these conditions became more intense; the calmer he became away from her, completely forgetting her, the more agonizing41 became both her sufferings and his feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, would have liked to run away, but ran to her.
Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamed her; but seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words, "I am worrying you," he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at once he fell to beseeching42 God to forgive him and have mercy.
收听单词发音 |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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callousness
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funnel
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| n.漏斗；烟囱；v.汇集 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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ordeals
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| n.严峻的考验，苦难的经历( ordeal的名词复数 ) | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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succor
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| n.援助，帮助；v.给予帮助 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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gulp
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| vt.吞咽，大口地吸（气）；vi.哽住；n.吞咽 | |
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reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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compassionately
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| adv.表示怜悯地，有同情心地 | |
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commiseration
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| n.怜悯，同情 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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agonizing
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| adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式) | |
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beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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