Anna Karenina

Chapter 17
Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes,
which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The
business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had
been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of
mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had
come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it
had been begun.
Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite off all his desire to be
affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his
mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had
gradually begun to work upon him.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted
her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her,
and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to
despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not
think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him,
and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of
everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud
practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated him.
"Well, finished?" he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. "Would
you like supper?"
"Well, I wouldn't say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country!
Wonderful! Why didn't you offer Ryabinin something?"
"Oh, damn him!"
"Still, how you do treat him!" said Oblonsky. "You didn't even shake hands
with him. Why not shake hands with him?"
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"Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a hundred times
better than he is."
"What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of
classes?" said Oblonsky.
"Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me."
"You're a regular reactionist, I see."
"Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and
nothing else."
"And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.
"Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because--excuse me--of
your stupid sale..."
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself
teased and attacked for no fault of his own.
"Come, enough about it!" he said. "When did anybody ever sell anything
without being told immediately after the sale, 'It was worth much more'?
But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything.... No, I see you've a
grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin."
"Maybe I have. And do you know why? You'll say again that I'm a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy and
anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to which I
belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I'm glad to belong.
And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance--that would be
nothing; living in good style --that's the proper thing for noblemen; it's only
the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy land, and
I don't mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and
supplants the idle man. That's as it ought to be. And I'm very glad for the
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peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a sort
of--I don't know what to call it-- innocence. Here a Polish speculator
bought for half its value a magnificent estate from a young lady who lives
in Nice. And there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten
roubles, as security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason,
you've made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles."
"Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?"
"Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but Ryabinin did.
Ryabinin's children will have means of livelihood and education, while
yours maybe will not!"
"Well, you must excuse me, but there's something mean in this counting.
We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their profit.
Anyway, the thing's done, and there's an end of it. And here come some
poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give us that
marvelous herb-brandy..."
Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea
Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a dinner
and such a supper.
"Well, you do praise it, anyway," said Agafea Mihalovna, "but Konstantin
Dmitrievitch, give him what you will--a crust of bread--he'll eat it and walk
away."
Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He
wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not bring
himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment in which
to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room, undressed, again
washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed,
but Levin still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and
not daring to ask what he wanted to know.
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"How wonderfully they make this soap," he said gazing at a piece of soap
he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the visitor but
Oblonsky had not used. "Only look; why, it's a work of art."
"Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn. "The theater, for
instance, and the entertainments... a--a--a!" he yawned. "The electric light
everywhere...a--a--a!"
"Yes, the electric light," said Levin. "Yes. Oh, and where's Vronsky now?"
he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.
"Vronsky?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; "he's in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he's not once been in Moscow
since. And do you know, Kostya, I'll tell you the truth," he went on, leaning
his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his handsome ruddy face,
in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. "It's your
own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the
time, I couldn't say which had the better chance. Why didn't you fight it
out? I told you at the time that...." He yawned inwardly, without opening
his mouth.
"Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did make an offer?" Levin wondered,
gazing at him. "Yes, there's something humbugging, diplomatic in his
face," and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan Arkadyevitch straight
in the face without speaking.
"If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a
superficial attraction," pursued Oblonsky. "His being such a perfect
aristocrat, don't you know, and his future position in society, had an
influence not with her, but with her mother."
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as
though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at
home, and the walls of home are a support.
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"Stay, stay," he began, interrupting Oblonsky. "You talk of his being an
aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of
Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You
consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled up
from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother--God knows whom she
wasn't mixed up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic,
and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four
honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding
(talent and intellect, of course that's another matter), and have never curried
favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father
and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to
count the trees in my forest, while you may Ryabinin a present of thirty
thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don't know what, while I
don't and so I prize what's come to me from my ancestors or been won by
hard work.... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor
of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence
halfpenny."
"Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class
of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was reckoning
him too. Levin's warmth gave him genuine pleasure. "Whom are you
attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about Vronsky, but I
won't talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back
with me to Moscow, and..."
"No; I don't know whether you know it or not, but I don't care. And I tell
you--I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina Alexandrovna is
nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating reminiscence."
"What ever for? What nonsense!"
"But we won't talk about it. Please forgive me, if I've been nasty," said
Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been in the
morning. "You're not angry with me, Stiva? Please don't be angry," he said,
and smiling, he took his hand.
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"Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I'm glad we've spoken
openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is unusually
good--why not go? I couldn't sleep the night anyway, but I might go
straight from shooting to the station."
"Capital."
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