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Chapter 14.
As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin
heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.
“Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,” he thought, “just
the time to be here from the Moscow train...Who could it be? What if
it’s brother Nikolay? He did say: ‘Maybe I’ll go to the waters, or maybe
I’ll come down to you.’” He felt dismayed and vexed for the first
minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence should come to disturb his
happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once
he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling
of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his
brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the
acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and
a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. “Oh, if it were only
some nice person one could talk to a little!” he thought.
“Ah,” cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. “Here’s a
delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!” he shouted, recogniz-
ing Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“In shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or when she’s
going to be married,” he thought. And on that delicious spring day he
felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.
“Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, get-
ting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on
his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good
spirits. “I’ve come to see you in the first place,” he said, embracing and
kissing him, “to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest
at Ergushovo third.”
“Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did you get
along in a sledge?”
“In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,”
answered the driver, who knew him.
“Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,” said Levin, with a genuine
smile of childlike delight.
Levin let his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also—a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel
for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin
went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and
clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the
house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.
“Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,” he said, and
went to the bailiff.
When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed,
came out of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs
together.
“Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall
understand what the mysterious business is that you are always ab-
sorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is!
So bright, so cheerful!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was
not always spring and fine weather like that day. “And your nurse is
simply charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even more
agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe monastic style it does very