Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 14
Chapter 14
THE doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that “he had been up late, and
had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon.” The footman was
cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed very busy about them. This concentration
of the footman upon his lamps, and his indifference to what was passing in Levin, at
first astounded him, but immediately on considering the question he realized that no
one knew or was bound to know his feelings, and that it was all the more necessary
to act calmly, sensibly, and resolutely to get through this wall of indifference and
attain his aim.
“Don’t be in a hurry or let anything slip,” Levin said to himself, feeling a greater
and greater flow of physical energy and attention to all that lay before him to do.
Having ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Levin considered various
plans, and decided on the following one: that Kouzma should go for another doctor,
while he himself should go to the chemist’s for opium, and if when he came back the
doctor had not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping the footman, or by
force, wake the doctor at all hazards.
At the chemist’s the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders for a coachman
who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the same callousness with which
the doctor’s footman had cleaned his lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or
out of temper, Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining
what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant inquired in
German whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from behind
the partition, he took out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from
a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up, in spite of Levin’s
request that he would not do so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more
than Levin could stand; he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big
glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now
in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin deliberately took out a ten
rouble note, and, careful to speak slowly, though losing no time over the business,
he handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and
important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had
been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any time;
that he would certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at once.
The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the waiting room.
Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about, washing,
and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Levin that more than an
hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer.
“Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!” he said in an imploring voice at the
open door. “For God’s sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It’s been going on more
than two hours already.”
“In a minute; in a minute!” answered a voice, and to his amazement Levin heard
that the doctor was smiling as he spoke.
“For one instant.”
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