Читать книгу Anna Karenina - 2 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook (Garnett and Maude translations) - Leo Tolstoy - Страница 86

SURROUNDED by her children, all freshly bathed and with heads still damp, Dolly with a kerchief tied round her own head was nearing home when the coachman said:

‘There’s a gentleman coming — I think it’s the Pokrovsk squire.’

Dolly leant forward and was pleased to see the familiar figure of Levin, who in a grey hat and coat was walking toward them. She was always glad to see him, but on this day was more pleased than ever because he would now see her in all her glory. No one could understand the dignity of her position better than Levin. On seeing her he found himself confronted by just such a picture of family life as his fancy painted.

‘You are like a hen with her chickens, Darya Alexandrovna!’

‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ said she, holding out her hand.

‘You’re glad, yet you never sent me word. My brother is staying with me. It was from Stephen I heard, at last, that you were here.’

‘From Stephen?’ asked Dolly in a surprised tone.

‘Yes, he wrote that you had moved here, and he thought I might be of some use to you,’ replied Levin, and having said this grew confused. Without finishing what he was going to say he continued walking beside the trap, breaking off twigs from the lime trees and biting them. He was confused because he imagined that Dolly might not like to accept the help of a stranger in matters that ought to be attended to by her husband. She really did not like the way Oblonsky had of forcing his family affairs upon strangers, and knew at once that Levin understood this. It was for his quick perception and delicacy of feeling that Dolly liked him.

‘Of course I understood that this only meant you wanted to see me, and was very pleased. I can well imagine how strange everything here must seem to you, used as you are to managing a town house; and if you require anything I am quite at your disposal.’

‘Oh no!’ said Dolly. ‘At first it was inconvenient, but now everything is quite comfortable, thanks to my old nurse,’ she said, indicating the nurse, who, aware that she was being mentioned, looked at Levin with a bright and friendly smile. She knew him, knew that he would be a good match for the young lady, and hoped the affair would come off.

‘Won’t you sit down, sir? We’ll move closer together,’ she said to Levin.

‘No, I will walk. Children, who will race the horses with me?’

Though the children did not know Levin well and did not remember when they had last seen him, they did not feel toward him any of that strange shyness and antagonism so often felt by children toward grown-up people who ‘pretend’, which causes them to suffer so painfully. Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

Whatever Levin’s defects may have been, there was not a trace of pretence about him; therefore the children evinced toward him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother’s face. The two eldest, responding to his invitation, at once jumped out to him and ran with him as they would have done with their nurse, Miss Hull, or their mother. Lily wanted to go too, and her mother handed her to him; he put her on his shoulder and ran on.

‘Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna! There’s no fear of my hurting or dropping her,’ said he, smiling brightly at the mother.

And as she looked at his easy, strong, considerate, careful and ultra-cautious movements, the mother lost her fears and looked at them with a smile of approval.

Here in the country among the children, and in the company of Dolly whom he found very congenial, Levin’s spirits rose to that childlike merriment Dolly liked so much in him.

He ran about with the children, taught them gymnastics, amused Miss Hull by his broken English, and talked to Dolly about his rural occupations.

After dinner, left alone with him on the verandah, Dolly alluded to Kitty.

‘Do you know Kitty is coming here to spend the summer with me?’

‘Really?’ said he, flushing up; and to change the subject he at once added: ‘Well, then, shall I send you two cows? If you insist on squaring accounts, pay me five roubles a month, if your conscience allows it.’

‘No, thank you. We are getting on all right now.’

‘Well, then, I will just have a look at your cows and, with your permission, will give directions about the feeding. Everything depends on the feeding.’

To change the conversation Levin went on to explain to Dolly a theory of dairy farming which maintained that a cow was only a machine for the transformation of fodder into milk, and so on. While saying all that, he was passionately longing and yet dreading to hear every particular concerning Kitty. He feared that the peace of mind he had acquired with so much effort might be destroyed.

‘Yes, but all that has to be looked after, and who is going to do it?’ remarked Dolly unwillingly.

Having with Matrena Filimonovna’s help got her household into working order, she did not care to make any change; besides, she had no confidence in Levin’s knowledge of farming. Arguments about cows being milk-producing machines did not commend themselves to her, for she imagined that such arguments were calculated only to interfere with farming. All these matters appeared much simpler to her: all that was necessary, as Matrena Filimonovna said, was to give Spotty and Whiteflank more food and drink, and to see that the cook did not take the kitchen refuse to the laundress for her cow. That was clear. But arguments about cereal and grass feeding were questionable and vague and, above all, she was anxious to talk about Kitty.