In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin
shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection, he
said to himself: “This was just how I used to shudder and blush,
thinking myself utterly lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not
get my remove; and how I thought myself utterly ruined after I had
mismanaged that affair of my sister’s that was entrusted to me. And
yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could
distress me so much. It will be the same thing too with this trouble.
Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.”
But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it;
and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first
days. He could not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family
life, and feeling himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and
was further than ever from marriage. He was painfully conscious
himself, as were all about him, that at his years it is not well for
man to be alone. He remembered how before starting for Moscow he had
once said to his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he
liked talking to: “Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married,” and how
Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter on which there could be
no possible doubt: “And high time too, Konstantin Dmitrievitch.” But
marriage had now become further off than ever. The place was taken, and
whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in that place, he
felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the
rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with
shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in
it, that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a
similar kind, made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as
in every man’s, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his
conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil
actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but
humiliating reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these
memories was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which
he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and work did
their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the
incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his country life.
Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking
forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married,
hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure
him.
Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays and
treacheries of spring,—one of those rare springs in which plants,
beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Levin still
more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his past
and building up his lonely life firmly and independently. Though many
of the plans with which he had returned to the country had not been
carried out, still his most important resolution—that of purity—had
been kept by him. He was free from that shame, which had usually
harassed him after a fall; and he could look everyone straight in the
face. In February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna
telling him that his brother Nikolay’s health was getting worse, but
that he would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter Levin
went to Moscow to his brother’s and succeeded in persuading him to see
a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in
persuading his brother, and in lending him money for the journey
without irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in that
matter. In addition to his farming, which called for special attention
in spring, and in addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a
work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account
the character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data
of the question, like the climate and the soil, and consequently
deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the
data of soil and climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a
certain unalterable character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his
solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly
full. Only rarely he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate
his stray ideas to someone besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he
not infrequently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of
agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea
Mihalovna’s favorite subject.
Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been
steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but
at night there were even seven degrees of frost. There was such a
frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the
roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday,
a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days
and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday
the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though
hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in
nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and
floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the
following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds
split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the
real spring had come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly
wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the
warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened
earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its
tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the
sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was
humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks
trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered
stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by
the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering
their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had
not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round
their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths,
covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of
peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the
yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real
spring had come.