circles.
Just then a young man, the best of the new skaters, with a cigarette in his mouth and skates on, came out of the coffee-room and taking a run, descended the steps leading to the lake, clattering with his skates as he jumped from step to step. He then flew down the slope and glided along the ice without so much as changing the easy position of his arms.
‘Oh, that’s a new trick!’ said Levin, and at once ran up to try that new trick.
‘Don’t hurt yourself — it needs practice!’ Nicholas Shcherbatsky called out.
Levin went up the path as far back as he could to get up speed, and then slid downwards, balancing himself with his arms in this unaccustomed movement. He caught his foot on the last step, but, scarcely touching the ice with his hand, made a violent effort, regained his balance, and skated away laughing.
‘Good! Dear man!’ thought Kitty who at that moment was just coming out of the little house with Mlle Linon, looking at him with a smile of gentle tenderness as at a dear brother. ‘Can I really be guilty — have I really done anything wrong? They say it’s coquetting… . I know it’s not him I love, but still I feel happy with him, he is so charming! Only why did he say that?’ she thought.
When he saw Kitty who was going away, and her mother who had met her on the steps, Levin, flushed with the violent exercise, stood still and considered. He then took off his skates and overtook mother and daughter at the gates of the Gardens.
‘Very pleased to see you,’ said the Princess. ‘We are at home on Thursdays, as usual.’
‘And to-day is Thursday!’
‘We shall be glad to see you,’ said the Princess drily.
Kitty was sorry to hear that dry tone and could not resist the desire to counteract her mother’s coldness. She turned her head and said smilingly:
‘Au revoir!’
Just then Oblonsky, his hat tilted on one side, with radiant face and eyes, walked into the Gardens like a joyous conqueror. But on approaching his motherin-law he answered her questions about Dolly’s health with a sorrowful and guilty air. After a few words with her in a subdued and mournful tone, he expanded his chest and took Levin’s arm.
‘Well, shall we go?’ he asked. ‘I kept thinking about you, and am very, very glad you’ve come,’ he went on, looking significantly into Levin’s eyes.
‘Yes, yes! Let’s go,’ answered the happy Levin, still hearing the voice saying: ‘Au revoir!’ and still seeing the smile with which it had been said.
‘The Angleterre, or the Hermitage?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Well then, the Angleterre,’ said Oblonsky, choosing the Angleterre because he was deeper in debt to that restaurant than to the Hermitage, and therefore considered it wrong to avoid it. ‘Have you a sledge? … That’s a good thing, because I’ve sent my coachman home.’
The two friends were silent all the way. Levin was considering what the change in Kitty’s face meant; now persuading himself that there was hope, now in despair, seeing clearly that such hope was madness; but yet feeling an altogether different being from what he had been before her smile and the words ‘Au revoir!’
Oblonsky during the drive was composing the menu of their dinner.
‘You like turbot, don’t you?’ he asked, as they drove up to the restaurant.
‘What?’ said Levin. ‘Turbot? Oh yes, I am awfully fond of turbot!’
Chapter 10
WHEN they entered the restaurant Levin could not help noticing something peculiar in his friend’s expression, a kind of suppressed radiance in his face and whole figure. Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat on one side walked into the dining-room, giving his orders to the Tartar waiters, in their swallowtail coats, with napkins under their arms, who attached themselves to him. Bowing right and left to his acquaintances who, here as elsewhere, greeted him joyfully, he passed on to the buffet, drank a glass of vodka and ate a bit of fish as hors d’œuvre, and said something to the painted Frenchwoman, bedecked with ribbons and lace, who sat at a little counter — something that made even this Frenchwoman burst into frank laughter.
Levin did not take any vodka, simply because that Frenchwoman — made up, as it seemed to him, of false hair, powder, and toilet vinegar — was offensive to him. He moved away from her as from some dirty place. His whole soul was filled with Kitty’s image, and his eyes shone with a smile of triumph and happiness.
‘This way, please your Excellency! This way — no one will disturb your Excellency here,’ said a specially officious waiter, an old white-headed Tartar, so wide in the hips that the tails of his coat separated behind.
‘If you please, your Excellency,’ he said, turning to Levin and as a mark of respect to Oblonsky paying attention to his guest. In a moment he had spread a fresh cloth on a round table already covered with a cloth beneath a bronze chandelier, moved two velvet chairs to the table, and stood with a napkin and menu awaiting the order.
‘If your Excellency would like a private room, one will be vacant in a few moments. Prince Golitzin is there with a lady. We’ve some fresh oysters in, sir.’
‘Ah — oysters!’ Oblonsky paused and considered.
‘Shall we change our plan, Levin?’ he said, with his finger on the bill of fare and his face expressing serious perplexity. ‘But are the oysters really good? Now be careful …’
‘Real Flensburg, your Excellency! We’ve no Ostend ones.’
‘They may be Flensburg, but are they fresh?’
‘They only arrived yesterday.’
‘Well then, shall we begin with oysters and change the plan of our dinner, eh?’
‘I don’t mind. I like buckwheat porridge and cabbage-soup best, but they don’t have those things here.’
‘Would you like Buckwheat à la Russe?’ said the Tartar, stooping over Levin like a nurse over a child.
‘No — joking apart, whatever you choose will suit me, I’ve been skating and I’m hungry! Don’t think that I do not appreciate your choice,’ he added, noticing a dissatisfied look on Oblonsky’s face. ‘I shall be glad of a good dinner.’
‘I should think so! Say what you like, it is one of the pleasures of life!’ said Oblonsky. ‘Well then, my good fellow, bring us two — or that will be too little, … three dozen oysters, and vegetable soup …’
‘Printanier,’ chimed in the waiter.
But Oblonsky evidently did not wish to give him the pleasure of calling the dishes by their French names.
‘…
