Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
On leaving the table Levin, in company with Gagin, walked through the lofty rooms to the billiard-room, and he felt that his walk was singularly straight, and that his hands moved easily. In the large "hall" he met his father-in-law.
"Well! How do you like our Temple of Indolence?" asked the old prince, taking his son-in-law by the arm. "Come, take a turn."
"I should like to look around. It is interesting."
"Yes, to you; but my interest in it is different from yours. When you see old men like that," said he, indicating a member of the club who, with stooping shoulders and falling lip, was slowly shuffling along in soft boots across the hall, "you would think that they were born shliupiks."
"Why do you call them 'little sloops'?""Here you are, and don't know what that means! That is our club term. You know how eggs roll. Well, when any one goes with a gait like that, he becomes a shliupik. And so when any one of us goes stumbling through the club, he becomes a shliupik. You laugh, do you? but one has to look out else he finds himself one. Do you know Prince Chechensky?" he asked; and Levin saw by his face that he was going to tell some ridiculous yarn.
"No, I don't know him."
"Well, no matter. Prince Chechensky is famous. Well, that is neither here nor there. He's always playing billiards. Three years ago he wasn't among the shliupiks, but was a great galliard! He himself called other people shliupiks. Only he came one time .... but our Swiss—you know Vasili, our tall one?—he is a great bonmotist. Prince Chechensky asks him, "Well, Vasili, is any one here yet? have any shliupiks come?' And Vasili answers, 'You are the third.' Now, brother! how is that?"
The two men walked on, chatting, and greeting their friends, and passed through all the rooms,—the main room, where men accustomed to one another as partners were playing cards for small stakes; the divan-room, where others were having games of chess, and Sergyeï Ivanovitch was talking with some one; the billiard-room, where, in the bay of the room, around a divan, a gay party, among them Gagin, had gathered and were drinking champagne. They glanced in also at the Infernalnaya, where, at the gambling-table, Yashvin, surrounded by men betting, was already established. With hushed voices, they entered the reading-room, where, under a shaded lamp, a young man with a stern face was turning over the leaves of one journal after another, while near by was a bald-headed general absorbed in reading. They passed quietly into a room which the prince called the Hall of the Wits,[1] and there they found three gentlemen talking politics.
"Prince, we're all ready, if you please," said one of his partners, finding him there. And the prince joined them.
Levin sat down, and listened to the three gentlemen, but, as he recalled all the conversations of the same kind he had heard since morning, he felt excessively bored. He got up, and went off to find Turovtsuin and Oblonsky, who were sure to be gay.
Turovtsuin was with the champagne-drinkers on the high divan in the billiard-room, and Stepan Arkadyevitch and Vronsky were talking in a corner near the door.
"Not that she finds it tedious," Levin heard in passing; "but it's the uncertainty, the indefiniteness of her position."
He was about to pass on discreetly, but Stepan Arkadyevitch called him.
"Levin," said he; and Levin saw that there were in his eyes, not exactly tears, but moisture, as was always the case, either after he had been drinking, or when he was touched; and just now it was both. "Levin, don't go;" and he took him by the arm, and detained him. "He is my sincere, if not my best, friend," said he, addressing Vronsky. "You, too, are more like a kinsman and a friend to me. I want to bring you together, and see you friends. You ought to be good friends, because you are both good men."
"There's nothing left for us but to give the kiss of friendship," said Vronsky, gayly, offering his hand to Levin, who pressed it cordially.
"I am very, very glad," said Levin.
"Waiter, a bottle of champagne!" cried Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"I am also very glad," said Vronsky.
But, in spite of Oblonsky's desires, and their mutual satisfaction, they had nothing to say, and both knew it.
"Do you know, he doesn't know Anna?" remarked Oblonsky; "and I want to introduce him to her. Come on, Levin."
"Is it possible?" said Vronsky. "She will be very much pleased. I should beg you to come at once, but I am troubled about Yashvin, and I want to stay here till he has finished playing."
"Is he going to lose?"
"All he has. I am the only one who has any influence over him," said Vronsky.
"What do you say, Levin, shall we have a game of pool? First-rate," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Place the pyramid," said he, addressing the marker.
"It is all ready," replied the marker, who had some time before put the balls in the triangular frame, and had placed the red ball in readiness to break the pyramid.
"Well, then, go ahead."
After their game, Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin's table, and Levin, at Stepan Arkadyevitch's instance, began to bet on the aces. Vronsky sat down for a time at the same table, where his acquaintances kept coming up and joining him; then, after a time, he went to the Infernalnaya to find out how Yashvin was getting along. Levin felt a pleasant sense of exhilaration after the intellectual weariness of the morning. He was pleased to have his unfriendly feehngs toward Vronsky ended, and the impression of restfulness, good-fellowship, and comfort still remained by him.
When the game was ended, Stepan Arkadyevitch took Levin's arm, saying:—
"Well! let us go to see Anna. We need n't wait for Vronsky. What say you? She is at home. I promised her to bring you a long time ago. Where were you going this evening?"
"Nowhere in particular. I only told Sviazhsky I would go to the Society of Rural Economy. But I'll go with you, if you wish."
"Excellent! let us go, then. See if my carriage has come," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, addressing a lackey.
Levin went to the desk, paid the forty rubles which he had lost at cards, in some mysterious way gave his fee to the old lackey who was standing by the door, and went through the long rooms down to the entrance.
- ↑ Umnaya Komnata, the intellectual room