Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
Just as Levin reached home, in the best humor in the world, he heard the jingling of bells at the side entrance.
"There, now! some one from the railroad station," was his first thought; "it 's time for the Moscow train.—Who can have come? brother Nikolaï? Did he not say that instead of going abroad he might perhaps come to see me?"
For a moment it occurred to him disagreeably that his brother Nikolaï's presence might spoil his pleasant plans for the spring; but, disgusted at the selfishness of this thought, his mind, so to speak, instantly received his brother with open arms, and he began to hope, with affectionate joy, that it was really he.
He hurried his horse, and as he came out from behind the acacia, he saw a hired troika from the railway station and a traveler dressed in a shuba.
It was not his brother.
"Akh! if only it is some agreeable man to talk with," he thought.
"Ah!" he cried, lifting up both arms as he recognized Stepan Arkadyevitch, "here is the most delectable of guests! Akh! how glad I am to see you!—I shall certainly learn from him if she is married or when she's going to be," he added to himself.
This splendid spring morning he felt that the memory of Kitty was not at all painful.
"You scarcely expected me, I suppose," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, leaping out of the sledge, with spots of mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheeks, and on his forehead, but radiant with health and pleasure. "I am come, first, to see you," he cried, throwing his arms around Levin and kissing him; "secondly, to shoot a few birds; and thirdly, to sell the forest at Yergushovo."
"Perfect, is n't it? What do you think of this spring? But how could you have got here in a sledge?"
"Traveling is far worse with a telyega, Konstantin Dmitritch," replied the postilion, who was an acquaintance.
"Well! Indeed, I am delighted to see you again," said Levin, with a genuine smile of boyish joy.
He conducted his guest to the room kept in readiness for visitors, and had Stepan Arkadyevitch's things brought up,—a gripsack, a gun in its case, and a box of cigars, and then, leaving him to wash and dress himself, he went down to his office to speak about the clover and the plowing.
Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who had very much at heart the honor of the mansion, met him in the vestibule with questions about dinner,
"Do just as you please," replied Levin, as he went out; "only make haste about it," said he, and went to the overseer.
When he returned, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had washed, and combed his hair, was just coming out of his room with a radiant smile, and together they went up-stairs.
"Well, I am very happy to have got out to your house at last. I shall now learn the mystery of your existence here. Truly, I envy you. What a house! How convenient everything is! how bright and delightful!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that bright days and the springtime were not always there. "And your old nurse,—what a charming old soul! All that's lacking is a pretty little chambermaid with an apron on,—but that does not suit your severe and monastic style; but this is very good."
Stepan Arkadyevitch had much interesting news to tell: especially interesting to Levin was the tidings that his brother Sergyeï Ivanovitch expected to come into the country this summer; but not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say about Kitty or any of the Shcherbatskys, he simply transmitted his wife's greeting. Levin was grateful to him for this delicacy. As usual, he had stored up during his hours of solitude a throng of ideas and impressions which he could not share with any of his domestics, and now he poured into Oblonsky's ears his poetical spring joys, his failures and plans and farming projects, his thoughts and his observations on the books which he had read, and above all the idea of his treatise, the scheme of which consisted—though he himself had not noticed it—of a critique on all former works on farming.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, amiable, and always ready to grasp a point, showed unusual cordiality; and Levin even thought that he noticed a certain flattering consideration and an undertone of tenderness in his treatment of him.
The efforts of Agafya Mikhaïlovna and the cook to get up an especially good dinner resulted in the two friends, who were half starved, betaking themselves to the zakuska, or lunch-table, and devouring bread and butter, cold chicken and salted mushrooms, and finally in Levin calling for the soup without the little pasties which the cook had made in the hope of surprising the guest.
But Stepan Arkadyevitch, though he was used to different kinds of dinners, found everything excellent, the travnik, or herb-beer, the bread, the butter, and especially the cold chicken, the mushrooms, the shchi, or cabbage-soup, the fowl with white sauce, and the white Krimean wine,—everything was admirable, wonderful!
"Perfect! perfect!" he cried, as he lit a big cigarette after the roast. "I feel as if I had escaped the shocks and noise of a ship, and had landed on a peaceful shore. And so you say that the element represented by the working-man ought to be studied above all others, and be taken as a guide in the choice of economy expedients. You see I am a profanus in these questions, but it seems to me that this theory and its applications would have an influence on the working-man...."
"Yes; but hold on. I am not speaking of political economy, but of rural economy considered as a science. You must study the premises, the phenomena, just the same as in the natural sciences; and the working-man, from the economical and ethnographical point of view ...."
But here Agafya Mikhailovna entered with the dessert of preserves.
"Well, now! accept my compliments, Agafya Mikhaïlovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the ends of his hairy fingers. "What nice baked chicken! What delicious beer!—Well, Kostia, is n't it time to go?" he added.
Levin looked out of the window toward the sun, which was sinking behind the tree-tops, still bare and leafless.
"It is time. Kuzma, have the horses hitched up," he cried, as he went down-stairs.
Stepan Arkadyevitch followed him, and carefully removed the canvas covering from the lacquered case, and, having opened it, proceeded to take out his costly gun, which was of the newest pattern.
Kuzma, already scenting a generous fee, gave him assiduous attention, and helped him put on his stockings and his hunting-boots; and Stepan Arkadyevitch accepted his aid complacently.
"If the merchant Rabinin comes while we are gone, Kostia,—I told him to be here to-day,—do me the favor to have him kept till we get back." ....
"Are you going to sell your wood to Rabinin?"
"Yes. Why, do you know him?"
"Oh! certainly I know him. I have done business with him, 'positively and finally.'"
Stepan Arkadyevitch burst into a laugh. "Positively and finally" were the favorite words of the merchant.
"Yes; he is very droll in his speech!—She knows where her master is going," he added, patting Laska, who was jumping and barking around Levin, licking now his hand, now his boots and gun.
A dolgusha, or hunting-wagon, was waiting at the steps as they came out.
"I had the horses put in, although we have but a little distance to go," said Levin; "but would you rather walk?"
"No, I prefer to ride," replied Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he mounted the wagon. He sat down, tucking round his legs a striped plaid, and lighted a cigar. "How can you get along without smoking, Kostia? A cigar ....it is not only a pleasure, it is the very crown and sign of delight. This is life indeed. How delightful! I should like to live like this!"
"What's to prevent?" asked Levin, with a smile.
"Yes; but you are a fortunate man, for you have everything that you like. You like horses, you have them; dogs, you have them; hunting, here it is; an estate, here it is!"
"Perhaps it is because I enjoy what I have, and don't covet what I have not," replied Levin, with Kitty in his mind.
Stepan Arkadyevitch understood, and looked at him without speaking.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky because he avoided speaking about the Shcherbatskys, with his usual tact perceiving that Levin dreaded to speak about them; but now he felt anxious to find out how matters stood, but he did not dare to inquire.
"Well, how go your affairs?" asked Levin, realizing how selfish it was in him to think only of himself.
Oblonsky's eyes glistened with gayety.
"You will not admit that one can want hot rolls when he has his monthly rations; in your eyes it is a crime: but for me, I cannot admit the possibility of living without love," he replied, construing Levin's question in his own fashion. "What 's to be done about it? I am so constituted. And it is a fact, it does so little. harm to any one else, and gives one so much pleasure...."
"What! there is a new one, is there?" asked Levin.
"There is, brother! You know the type of the women in Ossian?.... these women that you see in dreams? .... But they really exist, and are terrible. Woman, you see, is an inexhaustible theme; you can never cease studying her,—she always presents some new phase."
"So much the better not to study her, then."
"Not at all. Some mathematician has said that happiness consisted in searching for truth and never finding it."
Levin listened, and said no more; and, notwithstanding all the efforts which he made, he could not in the least enter into his friend's soul, and understand his feelings and the charm of studying such women.