Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 7
Chapter 7
LEVIN reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were driving
up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for a very long while–not since
he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university and going into society. He
remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, but he had completely
forgotten the impression it had made on him in old days. But as soon as, driving
into the wide semicircular court and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps,
and the hall porter, adorned with a crossway scarf, noiselessly opened the door to
him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the porter’s room the cloaks and galoshes of
members who thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard
the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the easy, carpeted
staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third porter at the top doors,
a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the door without haste or
delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in–Levin felt the old impression of
the club come back in a rush, an impression of repose, comfort, and propriety.
“Your hat, please,” the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule to leave his
hat in the porter’s room. “Long time since you’ve been. The prince put your name
down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is not here yet.”
The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and relationships, and so
immediately mentioned his intimate friends.
Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room partitioned
on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet, Levin overtook an old man walking
slowly in, and entered the dining room full of noise and people.
He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors. He saw people
of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some intimate friends. There
was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares
and anxieties in the porter’s room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting
ready to enjoy the material blessings of life. Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky,
Nevyedovsky and the old prince, and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Ah! why are you late?” the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand over his
own shoulder. “How’s Kitty?” he added, smoothing out the napkin he had tucked
in at his waistcoat buttons.
“All right; they are dining at home, all the three of them.”
“Ah, ‘Aline-Nadine,’ to be sure! There’s no room with us. Go to that table, and
make haste and take a seat,” said the prince, and turning away he carefully took a
plate of eel soup.
“Levin, this way!” a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on. It was Turovtsin.
He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them were two chairs turned
upside down. Levin gladly went up to them. He had always liked the good-hearted
rake, Turovtsin–he was associated in his mind with memories of his courtship–and
at that moment, after the strain of intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin’s
good-natured face was particularly welcome.
“For you and Oblonsky. He’ll be here directly.”
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