Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 14
Chapter 14
LEVIN looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight of his trap
with Raven in the shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up to the herd, said
something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of the wheels and the snort of
the sleek horse close by him. But he was so buried in his thoughts that he did not
even wonder why the coachman had come for him.
He only thought of that when the coachman had driven quite up to him and
shouted to him. “The mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman
with him.”
Levin got into the trap and took the reins. As though just roused out of sleep, for a
long while Levin could not collect his faculties. He stared at the sleek horse flecked
with lather between his haunches and on his neck, where the harness rubbed, stared
at Ivan the coachman sitting beside him, and remembered that he was expecting his
brother, thought that his wife was most likely uneasy at his long absence, and tried
to guess who was the visitor who had come with his brother. And his brother and
his wife and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite different from before. He
fancied that now his relations with all men would be different.
“With my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used to be
between us, there will be no disputes; with Kitty there shall never be quarrels; with
the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice; with the servants, with
Ivan, it will all be different.”
Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience
and seemed begging to be let go, Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not
knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand, continually pressing down his shirt
as it puffed out, and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with
him. He would have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that
was like blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.
“Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,” said the coachman,
pulling the rein Levin held.
“Please don’t touch and don’t teach me!” said Levin, angered by this interference.
Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how
mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could immediately
change him in contact with reality.
He was not a quarter of a mile from home when he saw Grisha and Tanya running
to meet him.
“Uncle Kostya! mamma’s coming, and grandfather, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and
someone else,” they said, clambering up into the trap.
“Who is he?”
“An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms,” said Tanya,
getting up in the trap and mimicking Katavasov.
“Old or young?” asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not know
whom, by Tanya’s performance.
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