Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [97]
Levin went home at a trot, so as to arrive in time to have dinner and prepare a gun for the evening.
XIV
Approaching his house in the cheerfullest spirits, Levin heard a bell from the direction of the main entrance.
‘Yes, it’s from the railway station,’ he thought, ‘exactly the time of the Moscow train ... Who could it be? What if it’s my brother Nikolai? He did say, “Maybe I’ll go to a watering-place, or maybe I’ll come to you.” ’ He found it frightening and unpleasant in the first moment that the presence of his brother might spoil this happy spring mood of his. Then he became ashamed of this feeling, and at once opened, as it were, his inner embrace and with tender joy now expected and wished it to be his brother. He urged the horse on and, passing the acacia tree, saw the hired troika driving up from the railway station with a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. ‘Ah, if only it’s someone pleasant that I can talk with,’ he thought.
‘Ah!’ Levin cried joyfully, raising both arms high. ‘What a delightful guest! Oh, I’m so glad it’s you!’ he called out, recognizing Stepan Arkadyich.
‘I’ll find out for certain whether she’s married or when she’s going to be,’ he thought.
And on that beautiful spring day he felt that the memory of her was not painful for him at all.
‘What, you didn’t expect me?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, getting out of the sledge with flecks of mud on the bridge of his nose, his cheek and his eyebrow, but radiating health and good cheer. ‘I’ve come - one - to see you,’ he said, embracing and kissing him, ‘and - two - to do some fowling, and - three - to sell a wood in Yergushovo.’
‘Splendid! And what a spring, eh? How did you make it by sledge?’
‘It’s even worse by cart, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ replied the coachman, whom he knew.
‘Well, I’m very, very glad you’ve come,’ Levin said with a sincere and childishly joyful smile.
Levin led his guest to the visitors’ bedroom, where Stepan Arkadyich’s belongings were also brought - a bag, a gun in a case, a pouch for cigars - and, leaving him to wash and change, went meanwhile to the office to give orders about the ploughing and the clover. Agafya Mikhailovna, always very concerned for the honour of the house, met him in the front hall with questions about dinner.
‘Do as you like, only be quick,’ he said and went to the steward.
When he returned, Stepan Arkadyich, washed, combed, with a radiant smile, was coming out of his door, and together they went upstairs.
‘Well, how glad I am that I got to you! Now I’ll understand what these mysteries are that you perform here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! Bright, cheerful!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, forgetting that it was not always spring and a clear day like that day. ‘And your nanny’s such a dear! A pretty maid in a little apron would be preferable, but with your monasticism and strict style - it’s quite all right.’
Stepan Arkadyich brought much interesting news, and one piece of news especially interesting for Levin - that his brother Sergei Ivanovich was going to come to him in the country for the summer.
Stepan Arkadyich did not say a single word about Kitty or generally about the Shcherbatskys, he only gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy, and was very glad of his guest. As always during his time of solitude, he had accumulated a mass of thoughts and feelings that he could not share with anyone around him, and now he poured into Stepan Arkadyich his poetic joy of spring, his failures and plans for the estate, his thoughts and observations about the books he was reading, and in particular the idea of his own book, which was based, though he did