Chapter 3

More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off their kepis or black hats, kept walking into the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the icons. The golden nimbus on the red ground of the ikonostasis, and the gilt relief on the icons and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the floor-flags, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the ambo, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and surplices - all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm church, in the crowd of evening dresses and white ties, of uniforms, and of silk, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, of bare shoulders and arms and long gloves, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or some spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation.

At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late. Then they began to look more and more often toward the door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom at all, but were engrossed in conversation.

The protodeacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time, coughed impatiently, making the windowpanes rattle in their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the church clerk and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, `It really is strange, though!' and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom's best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and, in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms, was standing in the drawing room of the Shcherbatskys' house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her bridal mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from her best man that her bridegroom was at the church.

Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his head out of door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came back in despair, and waving his hands addressed Stepan Arkadyevich, who was smoking serenely.

`Was ever a man in such a fearful fool's position?' he said.

`Yes, it is stupid,' Stepan Arkadyevich assented, smiling soothingly. `But don't worry, it'll be brought directly.'

`No, what is to be done!' said Levin, with smothered fury. `And these fool open waistcoats! Out of the question!' he said, looking at the crumpled front of his shirt. `And what if the things have been taken on to the railway station!' he roared in desperation.

`Then you must put on mine.'