Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 17
Chapter 17
THE hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying ill was one of
those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest model of modern
improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance,
but owing to the public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity
transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern improvement that only
makes them worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had
already reached that
stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, supposed to stand
for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark, and disagreeable staircase, and
the free and easy waiter in a filthy frock coat, and the common dining room with
a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder
everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent
railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their
fresh young life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the hotel was
so out of keeping with what awaited them.
As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they wanted
rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them; one decent room
had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a
third by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one filthy room,
next to which they promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling
angry with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was
that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to
know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after her, instead
of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted her to the room assigned them.
“Go, do go!” she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.
He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya Nikolaevna,
who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to see him. She
was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare
arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little
plumper.
“Well, how is he? how is he?”
“Very bad. He can’t get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you...with your
wife?”
Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her, but she
immediately enlightened him.
“I’ll go away. I’ll go down to the kitchen,” she brought out. “Nikolay Dmitrievitch
will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady, and remembers her
abroad.”
Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to make.
“Come along, come along to him!” he said.
But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped out.
Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had put herself and
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