Anna Karenina
next, everyone was just as delighted at meeting him again.
After filling for three years the post of president of one of the
government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the respect,
as well as the liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and
superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal
qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal
respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme
indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own
shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism—not the liberalism he
read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in
virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the
same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly—the most
important point—his complete indifference to the business in which he
was engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and
never made mistakes.
On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by
a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private
room, put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and
copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan
Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his
colleagues, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as
much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew
better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between
freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable
conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference
common to everyone in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with
papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been
introduced by Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“We have succeeded in getting the information from the government
department of Penza. Here, would you care?...”
“You’ve got them at last?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his finger
on the paper. “Now, gentlemen....”
And the sitting of the board began.
“If they knew,” he thought, bending his head with a significant air as
he listened to the report, “what a guilty little boy their president
was half an hour ago.” And his eyes were laughing during the reading of
the report. Till two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break,
and at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon.
It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom
suddenly opened and someone came in.
All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the
Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the
door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the
intruder, and closed the glass door after him.
When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and
stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took
out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of
the members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and
the _Kammerjunker_ Grinevitch, went in with him.
“We shall have time to finish after lunch,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“To be sure we shall!” said Nikitin.
“A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,” said Grinevitch of one of
the persons taking part in the case they were examining.
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words, giving him thereby
to understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and
made him no reply.
“Who was that came in?” he asked the doorkeeper.
“Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back
was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come
out, then....”
“Where is he?”
“Maybe he’s gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That is
he,” said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built,
broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his
sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the
stone staircase. One of the members going down—a lean official with a
portfolio—stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of
the stranger, then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His
good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform
beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.
“Why, it’s actually you, Levin, at last!” he said with a friendly
mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. “How is it you have
deigned to look me up in this den?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not
content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. “Have you been here
long?”
“I have just come, and very much wanted to see you,” said Levin,
looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.
“Well, let’s go into my room,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew his
friend’s sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew
him along, as though guiding him through dangers.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his
acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names:
old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and
adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found
at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much
surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky,
something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom
he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with
everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums,
as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his
subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to
diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was not a
disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt that Levin
fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with him before his
subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his room.
Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not
rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of
his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the
difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one
another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this,
each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of
different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other’s
career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the
life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his
friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight
mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up
to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what
precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he
took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited
and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of
ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of
things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same
way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend,
and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling.
But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as
everyone did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin
laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.
“We have long been expecting you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going into
his room and letting Levin’s hand go as though to show that here all
danger was over. “I am very, very glad to see you,” he went on. “Well,
how are you? Eh? When did you come?”
Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky’s two
companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which
had such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and
such huge shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they
absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought.
Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.
“Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you,” he said. “My colleagues: Philip
Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch”—and turning to
Levin—“a district councilor, a modern district councilman, a gymnast
who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman,
and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of Sergey
Ivanovitch Koznishev.”
“Delighted,” said the veteran.
“I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,” said
Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky.
Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well
known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not
as Konstantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.
“No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them
all, and don’t go to the meetings any more,” he said, turning to
Oblonsky.
“You’ve been quick about it!” said Oblonsky with a smile. “But how?
why?”
“It’s a long story. I will tell you some time,” said Levin, but he
began telling him at once. “Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced
that nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could
be,” he began, as though someone had just insulted him. “On one side
it’s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I’m neither
young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the
other side” (he stammered) “it’s a means for the coterie of the
district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice,
now they have the district council—not in the form of bribes, but in
the form of unearned salary,” he said, as hotly as though someone of
those present had opposed his opinion.
“Aha! You’re in a new phase again, I see—a conservative,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. “However, we can go into that later.”
“Yes, later. But I wanted to see you,” said Levin, looking with hatred
at Grinevitch’s hand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.
“How was it you used to say you would never wear European dress again?”
he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor. “Ah!
I see: a new phase.”
Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being
themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are
ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and
blushing still more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so
strange to see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight,
that Oblonsky left off looking at him.
“Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,”
said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to ponder.
“I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and there we can
talk. I am free till three.”
“No,” answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, “I have got to go on
somewhere else.”
“All right, then, let’s dine together.”
“Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to
say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk
afterwards.”
“Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll gossip after
dinner.”
“Well, it’s this,” said Levin; “but it’s of no importance, though.”
His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was
making to surmount his shyness.
“What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?” he
said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his
sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes
sparkled merrily.