Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 9
Chapter 9
IT was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the host himself
got home. He went in together with Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov,
who had reached the street door at the same moment. These were the two leading
representatives of the Moscow intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were
men respected for their character and their intelligence. They respected each other,
but were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every subject, not
because they belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because they were of the
same party (their enemies refused to see any distinction between their views); but,
in that party, each had his own special shade of opinion. And since no difference
is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions,
they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer
without anger, each at the other’s incorrigible aberrations.
They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when Stepan Arkadyevitch
overtook them. In the drawing room there were already sitting Prince Alexander
Dmitrievitch Shtcherbatsky, young Shtcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and Karenin.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw immediately that things were not going well in the
drawing-room without him. Darya Alexandrovna, in her best gray silk gown, obviously
worried about the children, who were to have their dinner by themselves in
the nursery, and by her husband’s absence, was not equal to the task of making the
party mix without him. All were sitting like so many priests’ wives on a visit (so the
old prince expressed it), obviously wondering why they were there, and pumping
up remarks simply to avoid being silent. Turovtsin–good, simple man–felt unmistakably
a fish out of water, and the smile with which his thick lips greeted Stepan
Arkadyevitch said, as plainly as words: “Well, old boy, you have popped me down
in a learned set! A drinking party now, or the Château des Fleurs, would be more in my
line!” The old prince sat in silence, his bright little eyes watching Karenin from one
side, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw that he had already formed a phrase to sum up
that politician of whom guests were invited to partake as though he were a sturgeon.
Kitty was looking at the door, calling up all her energies to keep her from blushing
at the entrance of Konstantin Levin. Young Shtcherbatsky, who had not been introduced
to Karenin, was trying to look as though he were not in the least conscious of
it. Karenin himself had followed the Petersburg fashion for a dinner with ladies and
was wearing evening dress and a white tie. Stepan Arkadyevitch saw by his face that
he had come simply to keep his promise, and was performing a disagreeable duty
in being present at this gathering. He was indeed the person chiefly responsible for
the chill benumbing all the guests before Stepan Arkadyevitch came in.
On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevitch apologized, explaining that
he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat for all his
absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made all the guests acquainted
with each other, and, bringing together Alexey Alexandrovitch and Sergey
Koznishev, started them on a discussion of the Russification of Poland, into which
they immediately plunged with Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsin on the shoulder, he
whispered something comic in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old
prince. Then he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening, and presented
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