Levin smiled scornfully. ‘I know that manner,’ he thought, ‘not just his but all city people’s, who come to the country twice in ten years, pick up two or three country words and use them rightly or wrongly, in the firm conviction that they know everything. “Second growth, stand you ten cord”. He says the words but doesn’t understand a thing himself.’
‘I wouldn’t teach you about what you write there in your office,’ he said, ‘and if necessary, I’d ask you. But you are so certain you understand this whole business of selling the wood. It’s hard. Did you count the trees?’
‘How can I count the trees?’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a laugh, still wishing to get his friend out of his bad mood. ‘ “To count the sands, the planets’ rays, a lofty mind well may ...” ’22
‘Well, yes, and Ryabinin’s lofty mind can. And no merchant will buy without counting, unless it’s given away to him, as you’re doing. I know your wood. I go hunting there every year, and your wood is worth two hundred roubles an acre outright, and he’s giving you seventy-five in instalments. That means you’ve made him a gift of thirty thousand.’
‘Come, don’t get so carried away,’ Stepan Arkadyich said pitifully. ‘Why didn’t anyone make an offer?’
‘Because he’s in with the other merchants; he paid them off. I’ve dealt with them all, I know them. They’re not merchants, they’re speculators. He wouldn’t touch a deal where he’d make ten or fifteen per cent, he waits till he gets a rouble for twenty kopecks.’
‘Come, now! You’re out of sorts.’
‘Not in the least,’ Levin said gloomily, as they drove up to the house.
A little gig was already standing by the porch, tightly bound in iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed in broad tugs. In the little gig, tightly filled with blood and tightly girdled, sat Ryabinin’s clerk, who was also his driver. Ryabinin himself was in the house and met the friends in the front room. He was a tall, lean, middle-aged man, with a moustache, a jutting, clean-shaven chin and protruding, dull eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted dark-blue frock coat with buttons below his rear and high boots wrinkled at the ankles and straight on the calves, over which he wore big galoshes. He wiped his face in a circular motion with a handkerchief and, straightening his frock coat, which sat well enough to begin with, greeted the entering men with a smile, holding his hand out to Stepan Arkadyich, as if trying to catch something.
‘So you’ve come.’ Stepan Arkadyich gave him his hand. ‘Splendid.’
‘I dared not disobey your highness’s commands, though the road’s much too bad. I positively walked all the way, but I got here in time. My respects, Konstantin Dmitrich.’ He turned to Levin, trying to catch his hand as well. But Levin, frowning, pretended not to notice and began taking out the woodcock. ‘Had a good time hunting? What bird might that be?’ Ryabinin added, looking with scorn at the woodcock. ‘Must have taste to it.’ And he shook his head disapprovingly, as if doubting very much that the hide was worth the tanning.
‘Want to go to my study?’ Levin, frowning gloomily, said to Stepan Arkadyich in French. ‘Go to my study, you can talk there.’
‘That we can, or wherever you like, sir,’ Ryabinin said with scornful dignity, as if wishing to make it felt that others might have difficulties in dealing with people, but for him there could never be any difficulties in anything.
Going into the study, Ryabinin looked around by habit, as if searching for an icon,23 but when he found one, he did not cross himself. He looked over the bookcases and shelves and, with the same doubt as about the woodcock, smiled scornfully and shook his head disapprovingly, refusing to admit that this hide could be worth the tanning.
‘Well, have you brought the money?’ Oblonsky asked. ‘Sit down.’
‘The money won’t hold us up. I’ve come to see you, to have a talk.’
‘A talk about what? Do sit down.’
‘That I will,’ said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his elbow on the back of the chair in a most painful way for himself. ‘You must come down a little, Prince. It’s sinful otherwise. And the money’s all ready, to the last kopeck. Money won’t ever hold things up.’
Levin, who meanwhile had put his gun away in a cupboard, was going out of the door, but hearing the merchant’s words, he stopped.
‘You got the wood for nothing as it is,’ he said. ‘He was too late coming here, otherwise I’d have set the price.’
Ryabinin rose and with a smile silently looked up at Levin from below.
‘Konstantin Dmitrich is ver-ry stingy,’ he said with a smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyich, ‘there’s finally no dealing with him. I wanted to buy wheat, offered good money.’
‘Why should I give you what’s mine for nothing? I didn’t steal it or find it lying around.’
