Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 16/119

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up

and stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the

times took out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his

private room. Two of the members of the board, the old veteran

in the service, Nikitin, and the _Kammerjunker Grinevitch_, went

in with him.

"We shall have time to finish after lunch," said Stepan

Arkadyevitch.

"To be sure we shall!" said Nikitin.

"A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be," said Grinevitch of

one of the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch's words, giving him

thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment

prematurely, and made him no reply.

"Who was that came in?" he asked the doorkeeper.

"Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly

my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when

the members come out, then..."

"Where is he?"

"Maybe he's gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway.

That is he," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built,

broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off

his sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn

steps of the stone staircase. One of the members going down--a

lean official with a portfolio--stood out of his way and looked

disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then glanced

inquiringly at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His

good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his

uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming

up.

"Why, it's actually you, Levin, at last!" he said with a friendly

mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. "How is it you

have deigned to look me up in this den?" said Stepan

Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking hands, he kissed his

friend. "Have you been here long?"

"I have just come, and very much wanted to see you," said Levin,

looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.

"Well, let's go into my room," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew

his friend's sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his

arm, he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his

acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian

names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers,

merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate

chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder,

and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had,

through the medium of Oblonsky, something in common. He was the

familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of

champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and

when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he

used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his

subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to

diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was

not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt

that Levin fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with

him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off

into his room.