第339章

TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 8, Chapter 14[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 14 Levin looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight of his wagonette with Black in the shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up to the herd, said something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of the wheels and the snort of the sleek horse close by him. But he was so buried in his thoughts that he did not even wonder why the coachman had come for him.

He only thought of that when the coachman had driven quite up to him and shouted to him.

`The mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman with him.'

Levin got into the wagonette and took the reins.

As though just roused out of sleep, for a long while Levin could not collect his faculties. He stared at the sleek horse flecked with lather between his haunches and on his neck, where the harness rubbed, stared at Ivan the coachman, sitting beside him, and remembered that he was expecting his brother, thought that his wife was most likely uneasy at his long absence, and tried to guess who was the visitor who had come with his brother. And his brother and his wife and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite different from before. He fancied that now his relations with all men would be different.

`With my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used to be between us, there will be no disputes; with Kitty there shall never be quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and amiable; and with the servants, with Ivan - it will all be different.'

Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience and begged to be let go, Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not knowing what to do with his unoccupied hands, continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with him. He would have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle girth up too high, but that was like blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.

`Your Honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,' said the coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.

`Please don't touch anything and don't teach me!' said Levin, angered by this interference. Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could immediately change him in contact with reality.

He was not a quarter of a versta from home when he saw Grisha and Tania running to meet him.

`Uncle Kostia! Mamma's coming, and grandfather, and Sergei Ivanovich, and someone else,' they said, clambering up into the wagonette.

`Who is he?'

`An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms,'

said Tania, getting up in the wagonette and mimicking Katavassov.

`Old or young?' asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not know whom, by Tania's performance.

`Oh, I hope it's not a tiresome person!' thought Levin.

As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming, Levin recognized Katavassov in a straw hat, walking along swinging his arms just as Tania had shown him.

Katavassov was very fond of discussing metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin had had many arguments with him of late.

And one of these arguments, in which Katavassov had obviously considered that he came off victorious, was the first thing Levin thought of as he recognized him.

`No, whatever I do, I won't argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,' he thought.

Getting out of the wagonette and greeting his brother and Katavassov, Levin asked about his wife.

`She has taken Mitia to Kolok' (a copse near the house). `She meant to have him out there because it's so hot indoors,' said Dolly. Levin had always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe, and he was not pleased to hear this.

`She rushes about from place to place with him,' said the Prince, smiling. `I advised her to try putting him in the icehouse.'

`She meant to come to the apiary. She thought you would be there.

We are going there,' said Dolly.

`Well, and what are you doing?' said Sergei Ivanovich, falling back from the rest and walking beside him.

`Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,' answered Levin.

`Well, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you for such a long time.'

`Only for a fortnight. I've a great deal to do in Moscow.'

At these words the brothers' eyes met, and Levin, in spite of the desire he always had, stronger than ever just now, to be on affectionate and still more open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He dropped his eyes and did not know what to say.

Casting over the subjects of conversation that would be pleasant to Sergei Ivanovich, and would keep him off the subject of the Servian war and the Slavonic question, at which he had hinted by alluding to what he had to do in Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergei Ivanovich's book.

`Well, have there been any reviews of your book?' he asked.

Sergei Ivanovich smiled at the intentional character of the question.

`No one is interested in that now, and I least of all,' he said.

`Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have a shower,' he added, pointing with a sunshade at the white rain clouds that showed above the aspen treetops.

And these words were enough to reestablish again between the brothers that tone - hardly hostile, but chilly - which Levin had been so longing to avoid.

Levin went up to Katavassov.

`It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,' he said to him.

`I've been intending to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion - we'll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?'

`No, I've not finished reading him,' said Levin. `But I don't need him now.'

`How's that? That's interesting. Why so?'

`I mean that I'm fully convinced that the solution of the problems that interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now...'