“Let us quickly to this official” he urged in his indoor voice.
“All right; this way.” He hurried along at her side, beard forward, his yellow boots plunging in long rapid strides beneath his voluminously floating overcoat.
She resented the librarian’s official manner; the appearance of the visitor, the little card he promptly produced, should have been enough. Stud. Schtudent, how much more expressive than stewdent .... to be able to go about the world for years, so-and-so, stud ..... all doors open and committed to nothing. She asserted herself by making suggestions in French. Mr. Shatov responded politely, also in French, and she felt the absurdity of her eager interference, holding him a prisoner, hiding his studious command of English, in order to flourish forth her knowledge. “We are not afraid even of Russian, if Mr. Shatov prefers to use his own tongue,” said the librarian. Miriam flashed a suspicious glance. He was smiling a self-conscious superior English smile. It soured into embarrassment under her eye.
“It is no matter” said Mr. Shatov gently, “you shall immediately say me the requisite formules which I shall at once write.” He stood beautiful, the gentle unconsciously reproachful prey of English people unable to resist their desire to be effective. They stood conquered, competing in silent appreciation, as he bent writing his way into their forgotten library.
“Now I am pairfectly happy” he said as he passed through the swing doors of the reading-room. His head was up radiantly singing, he was rushing trustfully forward, looking at nothing, carrying her on, close at his side, till they reached the barrier of the outmost catalogue desk. He pulled up facing her, with wide wild eyes looking at nothing. “We shall at once take Anakarayninna in English” he shouted in an enthusiastic whisper.
“We must choose seats before we get books,” murmured Miriam. There was plenty to do and explain; the revelation of her meagre attack on the riches of the library need not yet come. Were they to read together? Had he reached his goal “midst all those literatures” to spend his time in showing her Tolstoy? He followed her absently about as she filled in the time while they waited for their book, by showing all she knew of the routine of the library. “There shall of course” he said in a gruff explanatory tone, arresting her near the entrance to the central enclosure, “be a quite exhaustive system of catalogue, but I find there is too much formalities; with all these little baskets.” “Ssh,” begged Miriam leading him away. She drifted to the bookshelves, showing him the one shelf she knew on the south side; there was a reader on a ladder at the very shelf. “Carlyle’s French Revolution is up there” she said confidently. “Na, na,” he growled reproachfully, “this is a most purely unreliable fictional history, a tour de force from special individual prejudices. You should take rather Thiers.” She piloted him across to her shelf on the north side to point out the Revue des deux Mondes and the North American Review. He paused, searching along the shelves. “Ah. Here is books.” He drew out and flung open a heavy beautifully printed volume with wide margins on the pages; she would show him the clever little folding arrangements to hold heavy volumes; “You do not know these?” he demanded of her silence; “ah that is a great pity; it is the complete discours de l’Académie française; you shall immediately read them; ah, they are the most perfect modèles.” She glanced at the open page beginning “Messieurs! Le sentiment de fierté avec laquelle je vous”; it was a voice; exactly like the voice of Mr. Shatov. He stood with the heavy open volume, insisting in his dreadfully audible whisper on wonderful French names prefixed to the titles of addresses, fascinating subjects, one of them Mr. Gladstone! He looked French as he spoke; a brilliantly polished Frenchman. Why had he not gone to France? He was German too, with a German education and yet with some impatiently unexplained understanding and contempt—for Germany. Why was he drawn towards England? That was the mysterious thing. What was the secret of the reverence in this man towards England and the English? He was not an anarchist. There he stood, Russian, come from all that far-away beauty, with German and French culture in his mind, longingly to England, coming to Tansley Street; unconsciously bringing her her share in his longed-for arrival and its fulfilments. She watched as he talked, marvelling at the undeserved wealth offered to her in the little figure discoursing so eagerly over the cumbrous volume, and at this moment the strange Russian book was probably waiting for them.
It was a big thick book. Miriam sat down before it. The lights had come on. The book lay in a pool of sharp yellow light; Tolstoy, surrounded by a waiting gloom; the secret of Tolstoy standing at her side, rapidly taking off his overcoat. He drew up the chair from the next place and sat close, flattening out the book at the first chapter and beginning to read at once, bent low over the book. She bent too, stretching her hands out beyond her knees to make herself narrow, and fastening on the title. Her anticipations fell dead. It was the name of a woman...... Anna; of all names. Karenine. The story of a woman told by a man with a man’s ideas about people. But Anna Karenine was not what Tolstoy had written. Behind the ugly feebleness of the substituted word was something quite different, strong and beautiful; a whole legend in itself. Why had the translator altered the surname? Anna Karayninna was a line of Russian poetry. His word was nothing, neither English nor French, and sounded like a face-cream. She scanned sceptically up and down the pages of English words, chilled by the fear of detecting the trail of the translator.
Mr. Shatov read steadily, breathing his enthusiasm in gusts, pausing as each fresh name appeared, to pronounce it in Russian and to explain the three names belonging to each character. They were all expressive; easy to remember because of their expressiveness. The three-fold name, giving each character three faces, each turned towards a different part of his world, was fascinating..... Conversation began almost at once and kept breaking out; strange abrupt conversation different to any she had read elsewhere.... What was it? She wanted to hold the pages and find out; but Mr. Shatov read on and on, steadily turning the leaves. She skipped, fastening upon the patches of dialogue on her side of the open page, reading them backwards and forwards, glancing at the solid intervening portions to snatch an idea of the background. What was the mysterious difference? Why did she feel she could hear the tone of the voices and the pauses between the talk; the curious feeling of things moving and changing in the air that is always there in all conversations? Her excitement grew, drawing her upright to stare her question into the gloom beyond the lamp.
“Well?” demanded Mr. Shatov.
“It’s fascinating.”