Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 14
Chapter 14
AS he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the bell
ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.
“Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,” he thought, “just the time to be
here from the Moscow train...Who could it be? What if it’s brother Nikolay? He did
say: ‘Maybe I’ll go to the waters, or maybe I’ll come down to you.”’ He felt dismayed
and vexed for the first minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence should come to
disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once
he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and
expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He pricked up
his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge
from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. “Oh,
if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little!” he thought.
“Ah,” cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. “Here’s a delightful visitor!
Ah, how glad I am to see you!” he shouted, recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“I shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or when she’s going to be married,”
he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her
did not hurt him at all.
“Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the
sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows,
but radiant with health and good spirits. “I’ve come to see you in the first
place,” he said, embracing and kissing him, “to have some stand-shooting second,
and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.”
“Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did you get along in a
sledge?”
“In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” answered the
driver, who knew him.
“Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,” said Levin, with a genuine smile of childlike
delight.
Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
things were carried also–a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there
to wash and
change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak about the
ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the
house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.
“Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,” he said, and went to the
bailiff.
When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out of his
room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.
“Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand what the
mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you.
What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
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