Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
The next morning the ladies were not yet up when the hunting-traps[1] were waiting at the door, and Laska, who since dawn had realized that hunting was in prospect, and having frisked and barked till she was tired, was sitting up on the katki next the coachman, looking with excitement and disapprobation at the door at which the huntsmen were so provokingly dilatory in making their appearance.
The first to appear was Vasenka Veslovsky, in a green blouse, with a cartridge-belt of fragrant Russia leather, shod in high new boots, which reached half-way up his thighs, his Scotch cap, with ribbons, on his head, and having an English gun of rather recent style, but without strap or bandoleer.
Laska sprang toward him and welcomed him, and asked in her way if the others were coming; but, receiving no answer, she returned to her post, and waited with bent head and one ear pricked up. At last the door opened noisily, and let out Krak, the pointer, circling round and leaping into the air, and after him came his master, Stepan Arkadyevitch, with gun in hand and cigar in mouth.
"Down, Krak, down!"[2] exclaimed Oblonsky, caressingly, to the dog, which leaped up to his breast and caught his paws on his game-pouch. Stepan Arkadyevitch wore pigskin sandals, leggings, torn trousers, and a short overcoat. On his head was the ruin of what had once been a hat; but his gun was of the most modern pattern, and his game-bag as well as his cartridge-box, though worn, were of the finest quality.
Vasenka Veslovsky had never before realized the fact that the height of elegance for a huntsman is to be in rags, but to have the equipment of the very finest quality. He understood this now, as he gazed at Stepan Arkadyevitch, whose elegant, well-nurtured, and aristocratic figure was so gayly brilliant, though in rags, and he made up his mind to profit by this example the next time he should go hunting.
"Well, where is our host?" asked he.
"He has a young wife," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
"And how charming she is!"
"He must have gone in to see her again, for I saw him all ready to start."
Stepan Arkadyevitch was right. Levin had gone back to Kitty to make her say over again that she forgave him for his absurd behavior of the evening before, and to ask her for Christ's sake to be more careful. The most important thing was for her to keep the children at a distance, for they were always likely to run into her. Then he needed once more to receive assurance from her that she would not be angry with him because he was going away for two days, and to reiterate his desire that she should infallibly send him a note the next morning by a mounted courier, if it were only two words, so that he might know that she was comfortable.
Kitty, as always, had regretted the two days' separation from her husband; but as she saw him full of animation, and seeming especially big and strong in his hunting-boots and white blouse, and recognized that, to her incomprehensible, enthusiasm for hunting, she forgot her own regret in her delight in his happiness, and cheerfully bade him good-by.
"Pardon, gentlemen!" cried Levin, hurrying down to the porch. "Has the breakfast been put up? Why is the chestnut horse on the off side? Well, then, it makes no difference. Down, Laska! charge!"
"Put him among the geldings," said he, addressing the cowherd who was waiting for him on the door-steps with a question about the young ram. "It is my blunder that he's become ugly."
Levin jumped down from the katki in which he had already taken his seat, and met a hired carpenter who was just approaching the porch.
"Now, yesterday evening you didn't come to my office and here you are delaying me: well, what is it?"
"You bid me make a new stairway. Three steps will have to be added. And we can get all the lumber at once. It would be much more convenient."
"You should have listened to me," said Levin, in a tone of annoyance. "I said, 'Fix the string-boards, and then cut in the steps.' Now, don't try to mend them. Do as I ordered, make a new one."
The matter in question was this: in the wing which was building, the carpenter had spoiled a staircase by framing it separately, and not taking the slope into account, so that the steps were all at an angle when it was put into its place. But now the carpenter wanted to add three steps and keep the same framework.
"It would be much better...."
"But where would it go, even if you added three steps?"
"Excuse me," said the carpenter, with a disdainful smile. "It would go up to the same landing. Of course you'd pull it out below," said he, with a persuasive gesture. "It will fit, it will surely fit."
"But three steps add to the length of it—how would that improve it?"
After an idle argument in which the carpenter kept obstinately repeating the same words, Levin took his ramrod and proceeded to outline the plan of the stairway in the dust.
"Now do you see?"
"As you command," said the carpenter, with a sudden light flashing into his eyes, and evidently at last comprehending what Levin was driving at. "I see, we shall have to make a new one."
"Well, then, do as you were ordered," cried Levin, taking his place in the katki again. "Let us start! Hold the dogs, Filipp!"
Levin, now that he had left behind him all domestic and business cares, felt such a powerful sense of the joy of living and such expectation that he did not care to talk. Moreover, he experienced that sense of concentrated emotion which every huntsman feels as he approaches the field of his activity. If anything occupied him now, it was the question whether they should find anything in the Kolpensky marshes, and how would Laska come out in comparison with Krak, and what sort of luck he would that day enjoy. Should he do himself credit as a huntsman before this stranger? How would Oblonsky shoot? Better than he?
Oblonsky was occupied with similar thoughts and was not talkative. Vasenka Veslovsky was the only voluble one; and now, as Levin listened to him, he reproached himself for his injustice of the previous evening. He was a capital fellow, simple, good-natured, and very gay. If Levin had known him in his bachelor days, he would have become intimate with him. But Levin rather disliked his holiday view of life and a certain free and easy elegance. He seemed to arrogate to himself a marked and indubitable superiority because of his long finger-nails and his little cap and everything else corresponding; but this could be condoned in view of his good nature and irreproachable manners. He pleased Levin because he was well educated, and spoke French and English admirably, in fact, was a man of his own walk in life.
Vasenka was completely carried away by the Stepnaya Donskaya horse on the left of the three-span. He kept going into raptures over her. "How splendid it would be to gallop over the steppe on a steed of the steppe! Isn't that so?" he cried. He imagined that galloping over the steppe on such a horse was something wild and poetic, with no possibility of disappointment; but his innocence, especially in conjunction with his good looks, his pleasant smile, and his graceful motion, was very captivating. And because he was naturally sympathetic to Levin, or else because Levin, in consequence of his injustice to him the evening before, tried to find all his best qualities, they got on famously.
They had gone scarcely three versts when Veslovsky suddenly remembered his cigars and pocket-book, and could not tell whether he had lost them or left them on his table. There were three hundred and seventy rubles in the pocket-book, and he could not leave them so.
"Do you know, Levin, I could take your Cossack horse and gallop back to the house. It would be elegant!"
"Oh, no," replied Levin, who calculated that Vasenka's weight must be not less than two hundred and forty pounds; "my coachman can easily do the errand."
The coachman was sent back on the Cossack horse, and Levin drove on with the pair.