Anna Karenina
Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all
laughing. Vronsky particularly laughed with such simplehearted
amusement that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.
“Well, have we finished?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up with a
smile. “Let us go.”
Chapter 8
Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gagin through the lofty
room to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he walked with a
peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room, he came upon
his father-in-law.
“Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?” said the prince,
taking his arm. “Come along, come along!”
“Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It’s interesting.”
“Yes, it’s interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite
different. You look at those little old men now,” he said, pointing to
a club member with bent back and projecting lip, shuffling towards them
in his soft boots, “and imagine that they were _shlupiks_ like that
from their birth up.”
“How _shlupiks_?”
“I see you don’t know that name. That’s our club designation. You know
the game of rolling eggs: when one’s rolled a long while it becomes a
_shlupik_. So it is with us; one goes on coming and coming to the club,
and ends by becoming a _shlupik_. Ah, you laugh! but we look out, for
fear of dropping into it ourselves. You know Prince Tchetchensky?”
inquired the prince; and Levin saw by his face that he was just going
to relate something funny.
“No, I don’t know him.”
“You don’t say so! Well, Prince Tchetchensky is a well-known figure. No
matter, though. He’s always playing billiards here. Only three years
ago he was not a _shlupik_ and kept up his spirits and even used to
call other people _shlupiks_. But one day he turns up, and our porter
... you know Vassily? Why, that fat one; he’s famous for his _bon
mots_. And so Prince Tchetchensky asks him, ‘Come, Vassily, who’s here?
Any _shlupiks_ here yet?’ And he says, ‘You’re the third.’ Yes, my dear
boy, that he did!”
Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the prince walked
through all the rooms: the great room where tables had already been
set, and the usual partners were playing for small stakes; the divan
room, where they were playing chess, and Sergey Ivanovitch was sitting
talking to somebody; the billiard room, where, about a sofa in a
recess, there was a lively party drinking champagne—Gagin was one of
them. They peeped into the “infernal regions,” where a good many men
were crowding round one table, at which Yashvin was sitting. Trying not
to make a noise, they walked into the dark reading room, where under
the shaded lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance,
turning over one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a
book. They went, too, into what the prince called the intellectual
room, where three gentlemen were engaged in a heated discussion of the
latest political news.
“Prince, please come, we’re ready,” said one of his card party, who had
come to look for him, and the prince went off. Levin sat down and
listened, but recalling all the conversation of the morning he felt all
of a sudden fearfully bored. He got up hurriedly, and went to look for
Oblonsky and Turovtsin, with whom it had been so pleasant.
Turovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the billiard room, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch was talking with Vronsky near the door at the
farther corner of the room.
“It’s not that she’s dull; but this undefined, this unsettled
position,” Levin caught, and he was hurrying away, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch called to him.
“Levin,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and Levin noticed that his eyes were
not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always happened when he had
been drinking, or when he was touched. Just now it was due to both
causes. “Levin, don’t go,” he said, and he warmly squeezed his arm
above the elbow, obviously not at all wishing to let him go.
“This is a true friend of mine—almost my greatest friend,” he said to
Vronsky. “You have become even closer and dearer to me. And I want you,
and I know you ought, to be friends, and great friends, because you’re
both splendid fellows.”
“Well, there’s nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends,” Vronsky
said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his hand.
Levin quickly took the offered hand, and pressed it warmly.
“I’m very, very glad,” said Levin.
“Waiter, a bottle of champagne,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“And I’m very glad,” said Vronsky.
But in spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s desire, and their own desire,
they had nothing to talk about, and both felt it.
“Do you know, he has never met Anna?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
Vronsky. “And I want above everything to take him to see her. Let us
go, Levin!”
“Really?” said Vronsky. “She will be very glad to see you. I should be
going home at once,” he added, “but I’m worried about Yashvin, and I
want to stay on till he finishes.”
“Why, is he losing?”
“He keeps losing, and I’m the only friend that can restrain him.”
“Well, what do you say to pyramids? Levin, will you play? Capital!”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Get the table ready,” he said to the marker.
“It has been ready a long while,” answered the marker, who had already
set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one about for his
own diversion.
“Well, let us begin.”
After the game Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin’s table, and at
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s suggestion Levin took a hand in the game.
Vronsky sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were
incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the
“infernal” to keep an eye on Yashvin. Levin was enjoying a delightful
sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He was glad
that all hostility was at an end with Vronsky, and the sense of peace,
decorum, and comfort never left him.
When the game was over, Stepan Arkadyevitch took Levin’s arm.
“Well, let us go to Anna’s, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I
promised her long ago to bring you. Where were you meaning to spend the
evening?”
“Oh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviazhsky to go to the Society of
Agriculture. By all means, let us go,” said Levin.
“Very good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here,” Stepan
Arkadyevitch said to the waiter.
Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid
his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained by
the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms
he walked through all the rooms to the way out.
Chapter 9
“Oblonsky’s carriage!” the porter shouted in an angry bass. The
carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few
moments, while the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates,
that Levin was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of
repose, comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the
carriage drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the
uneven road, heard the angry shout of a sledge driver coming towards
them, saw in the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the
shops, this impression was dissipated, and he began to think over his
actions, and to wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Anna.
What would Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevitch gave him no time for
reflection, and, as though divining his doubts, he scattered them.
“How glad I am,” he said, “that you should know her! You know Dolly has
long wished for it. And Lvov’s been to see her, and often goes. Though
she is my sister,” Stepan Arkadyevitch pursued, “I don’t hesitate to
say that she’s a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her position is
very painful, especially now.”
“Why especially now?”
“We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce. And
he’s agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son, and the
business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been dragging
on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she will
marry Vronsky. How stupid these old ceremonies are, that no one
believes in, and which only prevent people being comfortable!” Stepan
Arkadyevitch put in. “Well, then their position will be as regular as
mine, as yours.”
“What is the difficulty?” said Levin.
“Oh, it’s a long and tedious story! The whole business is in such an
anomalous position with us. But the point is she has been for three
months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the divorce;
she goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Dolly, because, do you
understand, she doesn’t care to have people come as a favor. That fool
Princess Varvara, even she has left her, considering this a breach of
propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other woman would not
have found resources in herself. But you’ll see how she has arranged
her life—how calm, how dignified she is. To the left, in the crescent
opposite the church!” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, leaning out of the
window. “Phew! how hot it is!” he said, in spite of twelve degrees of
frost, flinging his open overcoat still wider open.
“But she has a daughter: no doubt she’s busy looking after her?” said
Levin.
“I believe you picture every woman simply as a female, _une couveuse,_”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “If she’s occupied, it must be with her
children. No, she brings her up capitally, I believe, but one doesn’t
hear about her. She’s busy, in the first place, with what she writes. I
see you’re smiling ironically, but you’re wrong. She’s writing a
children’s book, and doesn’t talk about it to anyone, but she read it
to me and I gave the manuscript to Vorkuev ... you know the publisher
... and he’s an author himself too, I fancy. He understands those
things, and he says it’s a remarkable piece of work. But are you
fancying she’s an authoress?—not a bit of it. She’s a woman with a
heart, before everything, but you’ll see. Now she has a little English
girl with her, and a whole family she’s looking after.”
“Oh, something in a philanthropic way?”
“Why, you will look at everything in the worst light. It’s not from
philanthropy, it’s from the heart. They—that is, Vronsky—had a trainer,
an Englishman, first-rate in his own line, but a drunkard. He’s
completely given up to drink—delirium tremens—and the family were cast
on the world. She saw them, helped them, got more and more interested
in them, and now the whole family is on her hands. But not by way of
patronage, you know, helping with money; she’s herself preparing the
boys in Russian for the high school, and she’s taken the little girl to
live with her. But you’ll see her for yourself.”
The carriage drove into the courtyard, and Stepan Arkadyevitch rang
loudly at the entrance where sledges were standing.
And without asking the servant who opened the door whether the lady
were at home, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked into the hall. Levin followed
him, more and more doubtful whether he was doing right or wrong.
Looking at himself in the glass, Levin noticed that he was red in the
face, but he felt certain he was not drunk, and he followed Stepan
Arkadyevitch up the carpeted stairs. At the top Stepan Arkadyevitch
inquired of the footman, who bowed to him as to an intimate friend, who
was with Anna Arkadyevna, and received the answer that it was M.
Vorkuev.
“Where are they?”
“In the study.”
Passing through the dining-room, a room not very large, with dark,
paneled walls, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin walked over the soft
carpet to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a big
dark shade. Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall,
lighting up a big full-length portrait of a woman, which Levin could
not help looking at. It was the portrait of Anna, painted in Italy by