‘A couple of words, you said, but I can’t answer in a couple of words, because ... Excuse me a moment...’
The secretary came in with familiar deference and a certain modest awareness, common to all secretaries, of his superiority to his chief in the knowledge of business, approached Oblonsky with some papers and, in the guise of a question, began explaining some difficulty. Stepan Arkadyich, without listening to the end, placed his hand benignly on the secretary’s sleeve.
‘No, just do as I told you,’ he said, softening the remark with a smile, and after briefly explaining the matter as he understood it, he pushed the papers aside, saying: ‘Do it that way, please, Zakhar Nikitich.’
The abashed secretary withdrew. Levin, who during this conference with the secretary had recovered completely from his embarrassment, stood with both elbows resting on the chair back, a look of mocking attention on his face.
‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘What don’t you understand?’ said Oblonsky, with the same cheerful smile, taking out a cigarette. He expected some strange escapade from Levin.
‘I don’t understand what you do,’ Levin said with a shrug. ‘How can you do it seriously?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why, because there’s nothing to do.’
‘That’s what you think, but we’re buried in work.’
‘Paperwork. Ah, well, you do have a gift for that,’ Levin added.
‘That is, you think I’m lacking in something?’
‘Maybe so,’ said Levin. ‘But all the same I admire your grandeur and am proud that my friend is such a great man. However, you didn’t answer my question,’ he added, with a desperate effort to look straight into Oblonsky’s eyes.
‘Well, all right, all right. Wait a while, and you’ll come round to the same thing. It’s all right so long as you’ve got eight thousand acres in the Karazin district, and those muscles, and the freshness of a twelve-year-old girl- but you’ll join us some day. Yes, as for what you asked about: nothing’s changed, but it’s too bad you haven’t been there for so long.’
‘Why?’ Levin asked timorously.
‘No, nothing,’ Oblonsky replied. ‘We’ll talk. But why in fact did you come?’
‘Oh, we’ll talk about that later as well,’ Levin said, again blushing to the ears.
‘Well, all right. Understood,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘You see, I’d invite you to our place, but my wife is not quite well. You know what: if you want to see them, they’ll certainly be in the Zoological Garden today from four to five. Kitty goes skating there. Go there yourself, and I’ll join you, and we’ll dine together somewhere.’
‘Excellent. See you later, then.’
‘Watch out, I know you, don’t forget or suddenly leave for the country!’ Stepan Arkadyich called out with a laugh.
‘Certainly not.’
And, remembering only at the door that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky’s colleagues, Levin walked out of the office.
‘Must be a very energetic gentleman,’ said Grinevich, after Levin left.
‘Yes, old man,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, nodding, ‘there’s a lucky one! Eight thousand acres in the Karazin district, everything to look forward to, and so much freshness! Not like our sort.’
‘What do you have to complain about, Stepan Arkadyich?’
‘Oh, it’s bad, awful,’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a heavy sigh.
VI
When Oblonsky had asked Levin why in fact he had come, Levin had blushed and became angry with himself for blushing, because he could not answer: ‘I’ve come to propose to your sister-in-law,’ though he had come only for that.
The houses of Levin and Shcherbatsky were old noble Moscow houses and had always been in close and friendly relations with each other. This connection had strengthened still more during Levin’s student days. He had prepared for and entered the university together with the young prince Shcherbatsky, brother of Dolly and Kitty. In those days Levin had frequented the Shcherbatskys’ house and had fallen in love with the family. Strange as it might seem, Konstantin Levin was in love precisely with the house, the family, especially the female side of it. He did not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older than he, so that in the Shcherbatskys’ house he saw for the first time the milieu of an old, noble, educated and honourable family, of which he had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members of this family, especially the female side, seemed to him covered by some mysterious poetic veil, and he not only saw no defects in them, but surmised, behind the cover of this poetic veil, the loftiest feelings and every possible perfection. Why these three young ladies had to speak French and English on alternate days; why at certain hours they took turns playing the piano, the sounds of which were heard in their brother’s rooms upstairs, where the students worked; why all these teachers of French literature, music, drawing and dancing came there; why at certain hours all three young ladies, with Mlle Linon, went in a carriage to Tverskoy Boulevard in their fur-lined satin coats - Dolly in a long one, Natalie in a three-quarter one, and Kitty in a quite short one, so that her shapely legs in tight-fitting red stockings were in full view; why they had to stroll along Tverskoy Boulevard accompanied by a footman with a gold cockade on his hat - all this and much more that went on in their mysterious world he did not understand; but he knew that everything that went on there was beautiful, and he was in love precisely with the mysteriousness of it all.
During his student days he nearly fell in love with the eldest one, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began falling in love with the second one. It was as if he felt that he had to fall in love with one of the sisters, only he could not make out which one. But Natalie, too, as soon as she appeared in society, married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university. The young Shcherbatsky, having gone into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic Sea, and Levin’s contacts with the Shcherbatskys, despite his friendship with Oblonsky, became less frequent. But when, after a year in the country, Levin came to Moscow at the beginning of that winter and saw the Shcherbatskys, he realized which of the three he had really been destined to fall in love with.
Nothing could seem simpler than for him, a man of good stock, rich rather than poor, thirty-two years old, to propose to the young princess Shcherbatsky; in all likelihood he would be acknowledged at once as a good match. But Levin was in love, and therefore it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in all respects, a being so far above everything earthly, while he was such a base earthly being, that it was even unthinkable for others or for Kitty herself to acknowledge him as worthy of her.
After spending two months in Moscow, as if in a daze, seeing Kitty almost every day in society, which he began to frequent in order to meet her, Levin suddenly decided that it could not be and left for the country.
Levin’s conviction that it could not be rested on the idea that in the eyes of her relatives he was an unprofitable, unworthy match for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty could not love him. In their eyes, though he was now thirty-two, he did not have any regular, defined activity or position in society, whereas among his comrades one was already a colonel and imperial aide-de-camp, one a professor, one the director of a bank and a railway or the chief of an office like Oblonsky, while he (he knew very well what he must seem like to others) was a landowner, occupied with breeding cows, shooting snipe, and building things, that is, a giftless fellow who amounted to nothing and was doing, in society’s view, the very thing that good-for-nothing people do.