Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 16
Chapter 16
ON the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty’s illness and the Shtcherbatskys’
plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was pleased
at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still hope, and still more pleased
that she should be suffering who had made him suffer so much. But when Stepan
Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of Kitty’s illness, and mentioned Vronsky’s
name, Levin cut him short.
“I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the truth, no interest
in them either.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous
change he knew so well in Levin’s face, which had become as gloomy as it had been
bright a minute before.
“Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?” asked Levin.
“Yes, it’s settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand. Eight straight
away, and the rest in six years. I’ve been bothering about it for ever so long. No one
would give more.”
“Then you’ve as good as given away your forest for nothing,” said Levin gloomily.
“How do you mean for nothing?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a goodhumored
smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin’s eyes now.
“Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the acre,” answered
Levin.
“Oh, these farmers!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. “Your tone of contempt
for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to business, we do it better than anyone.
I assure you I have reckoned it all out,” he said, “and the forest is fetching a very
good price–so much so that I’m afraid of this fellow’s crying off, in fact. You know
it’s not ‘timber,”’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince
Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts. “And it won’t run to more than
twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he’s giving me at the rate of seventy roubles
the acre.”
Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that fashion not only in him,
but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two
or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that
they know all about it. ‘Timber, run to so many yards the acre.’ He says those words
without understanding them himself.”
“I wouldn’t attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,” said he,
“and if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But you’re so positive you
know all the lore of the forest. It’s difficult. Have you counted the trees?”
“How count the trees?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still trying to draw
his friend out of his ill-temper. “Count the sands of the sea, number the stars. Some
higher power might do it.”
“Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever buys a
forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them for nothing, as you’re
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