Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [328]
‘What is it, Agafya Mikhailovna?’ Kitty suddenly asked Agafya Mikhailovna, who stood there with a mysterious look and an important face.
‘About supper.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ said Dolly. ‘You go and give the orders, and I’ll go with Grisha to hear his lesson. Otherwise he’ll have done nothing today.’
‘That’s a lesson for me! No, Dolly, I’ll go,’ said Levin, jumping up.
Grisha, already enrolled in school, had to go over his lessons during the summer. Darya Alexandrovna, who had studied Latin with her son while still in Moscow, had made it a rule when she came to the Levins’ to go over the most difficult lessons in arithmetic and Latin with him at least once a day. Levin had volunteered to replace her; but the mother had heard Levin’s lesson once and, noticing that he did not do it in the same way as the teacher in Moscow, embarrassed and trying not to offend him, had told him resolutely that it was necessary to go by the book, as the teacher did, and that she had better do it again herself. Levin was vexed both with Stepan Arkadyich, who in his carelessness left it to the mother to look after the teaching, of which she understood nothing, instead of doing it himself, and with the teachers for teaching children so poorly; but he promised his sister-in-law that he would conduct the lessons as she wished. And he went on tutoring Grisha, not in his own way now but by the book, and therefore did it reluctantly and often missed the time of the lesson. So it happened that day.
‘No, I’ll go, Dolly, and you sit,’ he said. ‘We’ll do everything properly, by the book. Only when Stiva comes and we go hunting, then I’ll skip.’
And Levin went to Grisha.
Varenka said the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy, comfortable home of the Levins, Varenka was able to be useful.
‘I’ll order supper, and you sit,’ she said and got up to go with Agafya Mikhailovna.
‘Yes, yes, they probably couldn’t find any chickens. Our own, then...’ Kitty said.
‘We’ll decide, Agafya Mikhailovna and I.’ And Varenka disappeared with her.
‘What a dear girl!’ said the princess.
‘Not dear, maman, but as lovely as can be.’
‘So you’re expecting Stepan Arkadyich today?’ asked Sergei Ivanovich, obviously unwilling to continue the conversation about Varenka. ‘It’s hard to find two brothers-in-law less alike than your husbands,’ he said with a subtle smile. ‘One all movement, living in society like a fish in water, the other, our Kostya, alive, quick, sensitive to everything, but the moment he’s in society, he either freezes or thrashes about senselessly like a fish on dry land.’
‘Yes, he’s very light-minded,’ said the princess, turning to Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I precisely wanted you to tell him that it’s impossible for her, for Kitty, to stay here, that she must come to Moscow. He talks of sending for a doctor...’
‘Maman, he’ll do everything, he’ll agree to everything,’ said Kitty, vexed with her mother for inviting Sergei Ivanovich to judge in the matter.
In the midst of their conversation they heard a snorting of horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel of the drive.
Before Dolly had time to get up and go to meet her husband, Levin jumped out the window of the downstairs room where Grisha studied and helped Grisha out.
‘It’s Stiva!’ Levin shouted from under the balcony. ‘We finished, Dolly, don’t worry!’ he added and, like a boy, went running to meet the carriage.
‘Is, ea, id, ejus, ejus, ejus,’ay cried Grisha, skipping down the drive.
‘And somebody else. Must be papa!’ Levin cried out, stopping at the entrance to the drive. ‘Kitty, don’t go down the steep stairs, go around.’
But Levin was mistaken in taking the one sitting in the carriage with Oblonsky for the old prince. When he got close to the carriage, he saw beside Stepan Arkadyich not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap with long ribbons hanging down behind. This was Vasenka Veslovsky, the Shcherbatskys’ cousin twice removed, a brilliant man around Petersburg and Moscow - ‘a most excellent fellow and a passionate hunter’, as