ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy
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Название: ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition)
Автор: Leo Tolstoy
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027218875
isbn:
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.
Chapter 10
‘KITTY writes that she wishes for nothing so much as seclusion and quiet,’ said Dolly after a pause in the conversation.
‘And her health! Is she better?’ asked Levin anxiously.
‘Yes, thank God! she has quite recovered. I never believed that she had lung trouble.’
‘Oh, I am so glad!’ said Levin, and Dolly thought she saw something pathetic and helpless in his face as he said it, and then silently looked at her.
‘Tell me, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said Dolly with her kind though slightly ironical smile, ‘why are you angry with Kitty?’
‘I? … I am not angry,’ said Levin.
‘Yes, you are. Why did you not call either on us or on them when you were in Moscow?’
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, blushing to the roots of his hair, ‘I am surprised that one so kind as you are should not feel what the reason was. How is it that you have no pity for me, knowing as you do …’
‘What do I know?’
‘You know I proposed and was rejected,’ muttered Levin, and the tenderness he had a moment ago felt for Kitty was changed into a feeling of anger at the insult.
‘Why did you think I knew?’
‘Because everybody knows it.’
‘In that, at any rate, you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had my suspicions.’
‘Well, anyhow you know it now.’
‘All I knew was that something had happened that tormented her dreadfully, and she asked me never to speak about it. And since she had not told me, she won’t have told anybody… . Well, what did happen between you? Tell me.’
‘I have told you what happened.’
‘When was it?’
‘When I last visited you.’
‘Do you know,’ said Dolly, ‘I am terribly, terribly sorry for her! You are suffering only through pride …’
‘That may be,’ said Levin, ‘but …’
She interrupted him.
‘But for her, poor child, I am terribly, terribly sorry. Now I understand everything.’
‘Well, Darya Alexandrovna, please excuse me!’ he said, rising. ‘Goodbye, Darya Alexandrovna; au revoir!’
‘No, wait a bit,’ she answered, holding him by the sleeve. ‘Wait a bit. Sit down.’
‘Please, please don’t let us talk about it!’ said he, sitting down again, conscious as he did so that a hope which he had thought dead and buried was waking and stirring within him.
‘If I did not care for you,’ Dolly went on, the tears rising to her eyes, ‘if I did not know you as well as I do …’
The feeling that seemed dead was coming to life again, rising and taking possession of Levin’s heart.
‘Yes, now I understand it all,’ continued Dolly, ‘You can’t understand it, you men who are free and have the choice. You always know for certain whom you love; but a young girl in a state of suspense, with her feminine, maidenly delicacy, a girl who only knows you men from a distance and is obliged to take everything on trust — such a girl may and does sometimes feel that she does not know what to say.’
‘Yes, if her heart does not tell her… .’
‘Oh, no! The heart does tell her; but just imagine: you men, having views on a girl, come СКАЧАТЬ