Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
"Perhaps they are not receiving?" asked Levin, as he entered the vestibule of Count Bohl's house.
"Oh, yes! permit me!" answered the Swiss, resolutely taking the visitor's shuba.
"What a nuisance!" thought Levin, drawing off one of his gloves with a sigh, and turning his hat in his hands. "Now, why did I come? Now, what am I going to say to them?"
Passing through the first drawing-room, he met the Countess Bohl at the door, who, with a perplexed and severe face, was giving orders to a servant. When she saw Levin, she smiled, and invited him to walk into a small parlor, where voices were heard. In this room were sitting her two daughters and a Muscovite colonel whom Levin knew. Levin joined them, passed the usual compliments, and sat down near a divan, holding his hat on his knee.
"How is your wife? Have you been to the concert? We were not able to go. Mamma had to attend the requiem," said one of the young ladies.
"Yes, I heard about it—what a sudden death!"— said Levin.
The countess came in, sat down on the divan, and asked also about his wife and the concert.
Levin replied, and asked some questions about the sudden death of Madame Apraksin.
"But then, she was always in delicate health."
"Were you at the opera yesterday?"
"Yes, I was."
"Lucca was very good."
"Yes, very good," he said; and he began, seeing that it was entirely immaterial to him what they thought about him, to repeat what he had heard a hundred times about the singer's extraordinary talent. The Countess Bohl pretended that she was listening. Then, when he had said all he had to say, and relapsed into silence, the colonel, who had hitherto held his peace, began also to speak. The colonel also talked about the opera and about an illumination. Then, saying something about a supposititious folle journée at Turin, the colonel, laughing, got up, and took his departure. Levin also got up, but a look of surprise on the countess's face told him that it was not yet time for him to go. Two minutes more at least were necessary. He sat down.
But, as he thought what a foolish figure he was cutting, he was more and more incapable of finding a subject of conversation.
"Are you going to the public meeting?" asked the countess. "They say it will be very interesting."
"No, but I promised my belle-soeur that I would call for her there," replied Levin.
Silence again ensued; the mother exchanged a look with her daughter.
"Now it must be time to go," thought Levin; and he rose. The ladies shook hands with him, and charged him with mille choses for his wife.
The Swiss, as he put on his shuba for him, asked his address, and wrote it gravely in a large, handsomely bound book.
"Of course, it's all the same to me; but how useless and ridiculous it all is!" thought Levin, comforting himself with the thought that every one did the same thing, and he went to the public meeting of the committee, where he was to find his sister-in-law to bring her home with him.
At the public meeting of the committee there was a great throng of people, and society was well represented. Levin reached the place just in time to hear a sketch which all said was very interesting. When the reading of the sketch was finished, society came together, and Levin met Sviazhsky, who invited him to come that very evening to a meeting of the Society of Rural Economy, [1] at which a very important report was to be read. He also met Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just returned from the races, and many other acquaintances, and Levin talked much and heard many opinions relating to the meeting and the new piece and the lawsuit. But apparently in consequence of his weariness and the strain which he began to feel, he made a blunder in speaking of a certain lawsuit, and this blunder he afterward remembered with annoyance. Speaking of the recent punishment of a foreigner who had been tried in Russia, and that it would have been irregular to punish him by exile. Levin repeated what he had heard the evening before in a conversation with a friend of his.
"I think that to send him abroad is just the same as to punish a fish by throwing it into the water," said Levin.
Too late he remembered that this comparison which he put forth to express his thought, though he had heard his friend use it, was really taken from a fable by Kruilof , and that his friend had taken it from the feuilleton of a newspaper.
Returning home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty well and happy. Levin went to the club.
CHAPTER VII
Levin reached the club very punctually. A number of the guests and members arrived there at the same time as he did. Levin had not been at the club very recently, indeed, not since the time when, having finished his studies at the university, he passed a winter at Moscow, and went into society. He remembered the club in a general sort of way, but had entirely forgotten the impressions which, in former days, it had made upon him. But as soon as he entered the great semicircular dvor, or court, sent away his izvoshchik, and mounted the steps and saw the liveried Swiss noiselessly open the door for him, and bow as he ushered him in; as soon as he saw in the cloak-room the galoshes and shubas of the members, who felt that it was less work to take them off down-stairs, and leave them with the Swiss, than to wear them up-stairs; as soon as he heard the well-known mysterious sound of the bell, and as soon as he mounted the easy flight of carpeted stairs and saw the statue on the landing, and on the upper floor recognized the third Swiss in his club livery, who, having grown older, displayed neither dilatoriness nor haste in opening the door for him, he once more felt the old-time impression of the club—the atmosphere of comfort, ease, and good- breeding.
"Your hat, if you please," said the Swiss to Levin, who had forgotten the rule of the club to leave hats at the cloak-room.
"It's a long time since you were here," said the Swiss. "The prince wrote to you yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch has not come yet."
The Swiss knew not only Levin, but all his connec- tions and family, and took pleasure in reminding him of his relationships.
Passing through the first connecting "hall" and the conversation-room at the right where the fruit-dealer sits, Levin, who walked faster than the old attendant, entered the dining-room, which was filled with a noisy throng. He made his way along by the tables, almost all of which were occupied. As he looked about him on all sides, he saw men of the most heterogeneous types, old and young, most of them acquaintances and many of them friends. It seemed as if all of them had left their cares and worries with their hats in the cloak-room, and had collected together to make the most of the material advantages of life. There were Sviazhsky and Shcherbatsky and Nevyedovsky and the old prince and Vronsky and Sergyeï Ivanovitch.
"Ah, why are you late?" said the prince, with a smile, extending his hand to his son-in-law over his shoulder. "How is Kitty?" added he, putting a corner of his napkin into the button-hole of his waistcoat.
"She is well, and is dining with her sisters."
"Ah! the old gossips! Well, there's no room with us. Go to that table there and get a seat as quickly as you can...." said the prince, taking with care a plate of ukha, or soup made of lotes.
"Here, Levin," cried a jovial voice from a table a little farther away.
- ↑ Obshchestvo sielskava khozyaïstva.