Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [26]
‘Why don’t you know?’
‘I don’t know. That depends on you,’ he said and at once was horrified at his words.
She did not hear his words, or did not wish to hear, but seemed to stumble, tapped her foot twice, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated over to Mlle Linon, said something to her, and went to the shed where the ladies took off their skates.
‘My God, what have I done! Lord God! Help me, teach me,’ Levin said, praying, and at the same time, feeling a need for strong movement, he speeded up, cutting outer and inner circles.
Just then one of the young men, the best of the new skaters, with skates on and a cigarette in his mouth, came out of the coffee room and, taking a short run, went down the steps on his skates, clattering and jumping. He flew down and, not even changing the free position of his arms, glided away over the ice.
‘Ah, that’s a new stunt!’ said Levin, and immediately ran up to try it.
‘Don’t hurt yourself, it takes practice!’ Nikolai Shcherbatsky called out to him.
Levin got up on the landing, took as much of a run as he could, and raced down, balancing himself with his arms in this unpractised movement. On the last step he caught on something, but, barely touching the ice with his hand, he made a strong movement, righted himself, and, laughing, skated on.
‘A nice man, a dear man,’ Kitty thought just then, coming out of the shed with Mlle Linon and looking at him with a smile of gentle tenderness, as at a beloved brother. ‘And can it be I’m to blame, can it be I did something bad? Coquettishness, they say. I know it’s not him I love; but even so, it’s fun to be with him, and he’s so nice. Only why did he say that?...’ she thought.
When he saw Kitty leaving and her mother meeting her on the steps, Levin, flushed after such quick movement, stopped and considered. He took off his skates and caught up with the mother and daughter at the exit from the garden.
‘Very glad to see you,’ said the princess. ‘We receive on Thursdays, as usual.’
‘Today, then?’
‘We shall be very glad to see you,’ the princess said drily.
This dryness upset Kitty, and she could not hold back the wish to smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned her head and said with a smile:
‘See you soon.’
At that moment Stepan Arkadyich, his hat cocked, his face and eyes shining, came into the garden with a merrily triumphant look. But, coming up to his mother-in-law, he answered her questions about Dolly’s health with a mournful, guilty face. Having spoken softly and glumly with her, he straightened up and took Levin’s arm.
‘Well, then, shall we go?’ he asked. ‘I kept thinking about you, and I’m very, very glad you’ve come,’ he said, looking into his eyes with a significant air.
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ replied the happy Levin, still hearing the sound of the voice saying ‘See you soon’ and picturing the smile with which it had been said.
‘To the Anglia or the Hermitage?’
‘It makes no difference to me.’
‘To the Anglia, then,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, choosing the Anglia because he owed more in the Anglia than in the Hermitage. He therefore considered it not nice to avoid that hotel. ‘Do you have a cab? Excellent, because I dismissed my carriage.’
The friends were silent all the way. Levin thought about the meaning of that change in Kitty’s face, and first assured himself that there was hope, then fell into despair and saw clearly that his hope was mad, and yet he felt himself quite a different man, not like the one he had been before her smile and the words: ‘See you soon’.
Stepan Arkadyich devised the dinner menu on the way.
‘You do like turbot?’ he said to Levin, as they drove up.
‘What?’ asked Levin. ‘Turbot? Yes, I’m terribly fond of turbot.’
X
As Levin entered the hotel with Oblonsky, he could not help noticing a certain special expression, as if of restrained radiance, on the face and in the whole figure of Stepan Arkadyich. Oblonsky took off