Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes,
which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The
business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their
shooting had been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the
happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate
the ill-humor that had come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at
supper as pleasantly as it had been begun.
Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be
affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control
his mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had
gradually begun to work upon him.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had
slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had
slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had
the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all
this Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something
in it insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed
him, but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid
sale of the forest, the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in
his house, exasperated him.
“Well, finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. “Would
you like supper?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country!
Wonderful! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something?”
“Oh, damn him!”
“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn’t even shake
hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?”
“Because I don’t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter’s a hundred
times better than he is.”
“What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of
classes?” said Oblonsky.
“Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.”
“You’re a regular reactionist, I see.”
“Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and
nothing else.”
“And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.
“Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because—excuse me—of
your stupid sale....”
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself
teased and attacked for no fault of his own.
“Come, enough about it!” he said. “When did anybody ever sell anything
without being told immediately after the sale, ‘It was worth much
more’? But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything.... No, I
see you’ve a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.”
“Maybe I have. And do you know why? You’ll say again that I’m a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does
annoy and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the
nobility to which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of
classes, I’m glad to belong. And their impoverishment is not due to
extravagance—that would be nothing; living in good style—that’s the
proper thing for noblemen; it’s only the nobles who know how to do it.
Now the peasants about us buy land, and I don’t mind that. The
gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and supplants the idle
man. That’s as it ought to be. And I’m very glad for the peasant. But I
do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a sort of—I don’t
know what to call it—innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for
half its value a magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in
Nice. And there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten
roubles, as security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of
reason, you’ve made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles.”
“Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?”
“Of course, they must be counted. You didn’t count them, but Ryabinin
did. Ryabinin’s children will have means of livelihood and education,
while yours maybe will not!”
“Well, you must excuse me, but there’s something mean in this counting.
We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their
profit. Anyway, the thing’s done, and there’s an end of it. And here
come some poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will
give us that marvelous herb-brandy....”
Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea
Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a
dinner and such a supper.
“Well, you do praise it, anyway,” said Agafea Mihalovna, “but
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, give him what you will—a crust of bread—he’ll
eat it and walk away.”
Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He
wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not
bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment
in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room,
undressed, again washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered
frills, he had got into bed, but Levin still lingered in his room,
talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask what he
wanted to know.
“How wonderfully they make this soap,” he said gazing at a piece of
soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the
visitor but Oblonsky had not used. “Only look; why, it’s a work of
art.”
“Yes, everything’s brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays,”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn. “The theater,
for instance, and the entertainments ... a—a—a!” he yawned. “The
electric light everywhere ... a—a—a!”
“Yes, the electric light,” said Levin. “Yes. Oh, and where’s Vronsky
now?” he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.
“Vronsky?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; “he’s in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he’s not once been in
Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I’ll tell you the truth,” he
went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his
handsome ruddy face, in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes
shone like stars. “It’s your own fault. You took fright at the sight of
your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn’t say which had
the better chance. Why didn’t you fight it out? I told you at the time
that....” He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.
“Does he know, or doesn’t he, that I did make an offer?” Levin
wondered, gazing at him. “Yes, there’s something humbugging, diplomatic
in his face,” and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan
Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking.
“If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a
superficial attraction,” pursued Oblonsky. “His being such a perfect
aristocrat, don’t you know, and his future position in society, had an
influence not with her, but with her mother.”
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart,
as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was
at home, and the walls of home are a support.
“Stay, stay,” he began, interrupting Oblonsky. “You talk of his being
an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that
aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked
down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose
father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother—God
knows whom she wasn’t mixed up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider
myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past
to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest
degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that’s another
matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on
anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many
such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while
you make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you get rents from
your lands and I don’t know what, while I don’t and so I prize what’s
come to me from my ancestors or been won by hard work.... We are
aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful
of this world, and who can be bought for twopence halfpenny.”
“Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the
class of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was
reckoning him too. Levin’s warmth gave him genuine pleasure. “Whom are
you attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about
Vronsky, but I won’t talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I
were you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and....”
“No; I don’t know whether you know it or not, but I don’t care. And I
tell you—I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina
Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating
reminiscence.”
“What ever for? What nonsense!”
“But we won’t talk about it. Please forgive me, if I’ve been nasty,”
said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been
in the morning. “You’re not angry with me, Stiva? Please don’t be
angry,” he said, and smiling, he took his hand.
“Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I’m glad we’ve spoken
openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is unusually
good—why not go? I couldn’t sleep the night anyway, but I might go
straight from shooting to the station.”
“Capital.”