Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy [books to read in your 30s .txt] 📗

she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. “Well, I’m glad you were successful,” said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe.

“It was a bad shot from the right barrel,” responded Stepan Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. “Sh⁠ ⁠… it’s flying!”

The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from sight.

The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two more birds and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west behind the birch trees, and high up in the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again. The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky, yet still he waited.

“Isn’t it time to go home?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

“Let’s stay a little while,” answered Levin.

“As you like.”

They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.

“Stiva!” said Levin unexpectedly; “how is it you don’t tell me whether your sister-in-law’s married yet, or when she’s going to be?”

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyevitch replied.

“She’s never thought of being married, and isn’t thinking of it; but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They’re positively afraid she may not live.”

“What!” cried Levin. “Very ill? What is wrong with her? How has she⁠ ⁠… ?”

While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them.

“They have chosen a time to talk,” she was thinking. “It’s on the wing.⁠ ⁠… Here it is, yes, it is. They’ll miss it,” thought Laska.

But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same instant. The snipe flying high above instantly folded its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate shoots.

“Splendid! Together!” cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the thicket to look for the snipe.

“Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?” he wondered. “Yes, Kitty’s ill.⁠ ⁠… Well, it can’t be helped; I’m very sorry,” he thought.

“She’s found it! Isn’t she a clever thing?” he said, taking the warm bird from Laska’s mouth and packing it into the almost full game bag. “I’ve got it, Stiva!” he shouted.

XVI

On the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty’s illness and the Shtcherbatskys’ plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still hope, and still more pleased that she should be suffering who had made him suffer so much. But when Stepan Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of Kitty’s illness, and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin cut him short.

“I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the truth, no interest in them either.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin’s face, which had become as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before.

“Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?” asked Levin.

“Yes, it’s settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I’ve been bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give more.”

“Then you’ve as good as given away your forest for nothing,” said Levin gloomily.

“How do you mean for nothing?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin’s eyes now.

“Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the acre,” answered Levin.

“Oh, these farmers!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. “Your tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk!⁠ ⁠… But when it comes to business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all out,” he said, “and the forest is fetching a very good price⁠—so much so that I’m afraid of this fellow’s crying off, in fact. You know it’s not ‘timber,’ ” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts. “And it won’t run to more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he’s giving me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre.”

Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. ‘Timber, run to so many yards the acre.’ He says those words without understanding them himself.”

“I wouldn’t attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,” said he, “and if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But you’re so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It’s difficult. Have you counted the trees?”

“How count the trees?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still trying to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. “Count the sands of the sea, number the stars.