Chapter 35

The prince communicated his good humor to his own family and his

friends, and even to the German landlord in whose rooms the

Shtcherbatskys were staying.

On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the prince, who had asked

the colonel, and Marya Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come and have

coffee with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to be taken into

the garden under the chestnut tree, and lunch to be laid there. The

landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker under the influence of his

good spirits. They knew his open-handedness; and half an hour later the

invalid doctor from Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked

enviously out of the window at the merry party of healthy Russians

assembled under the chestnut tree. In the trembling circles of shadow

cast by the leaves, at a table, covered with a white cloth, and set

with coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the

princess in a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and

bread-and-butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily, and

talking loudly and merrily. The prince had spread out near him his

purchases, carved boxes, and knick-knacks, paper-knives of all sorts,

of which he bought a heap at every watering-place, and bestowed them

upon everyone, including Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord,

with whom he jested in his comically bad German, assuring him that it

was not the water had cured Kitty, but his splendid cookery, especially

his plum soup. The princess laughed at her husband for his Russian

ways, but she was more lively and good-humored than she had been all

the while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as he always

did, at the prince’s jokes, but as far as regards Europe, of which he

believed himself to be making a careful study, he took the princess’s

side. The simple-hearted Marya Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter

at everything absurd the prince said, and his jokes made Varenka

helpless with feeble but infectious laughter, which was something Kitty

had never seen before.

Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted. She

could not solve the problem her father had unconsciously set her by his

good-humored view of her friends, and of the life that had so attracted

her. To this doubt there was joined the change in her relations with

the Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and unpleasantly marked

that morning. Everyone was good-humored, but Kitty could not feel

good-humored, and this increased her distress. She felt a feeling such

as she had known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a

punishment, and had heard her sisters’ merry laughter outside.

“Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?” said the

princess, smiling, and handing her husband a cup of coffee.

“One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to buy.

‘_Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?_’ Directly they say ‘_Durchlaucht_,’ I can’t

hold out. I lose ten thalers.”

“It’s simply from boredom,” said the princess.

“Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn’t know what to

do with oneself.”

“How can you be bored, prince? There’s so much that’s interesting now

in Germany,” said Marya Yevgenyevna.

“But I know everything that’s interesting: the plum soup I know, and

the pea sausages I know. I know everything.”

“No, you may say what you like, prince, there’s the interest of their

institutions,” said the colonel.

“But what is there interesting about it? They’re all as pleased as

brass halfpence. They’ve conquered everybody, and why am I to be

pleased at that? I haven’t conquered anyone; and I’m obliged to take

off my own boots, yes, and put them away too; in the morning, get up

and dress at once, and go to the dining-room to drink bad tea! How

different it is at home! You get up in no haste, you get cross, grumble

a little, and come round again. You’ve time to think things over, and

no hurry.”

“But time’s money, you forget that,” said the colonel.

“Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there’s time one would give a month

of for sixpence, and time you wouldn’t give half an hour of for any

money. Isn’t that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you so depressed?”

“I’m not depressed.”

“Where are you off to? Stay a little longer,” he said to Varenka.

“I must be going home,” said Varenka, getting up, and again she went

off into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said good-bye, and went

into the house to get her hat.

Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as different. She was not

worse, but different from what she had fancied her before.

“Oh, dear! it’s a long while since I’ve laughed so much!” said Varenka,

gathering up her parasol and her bag. “How nice he is, your father!”

Kitty did not speak.

“When shall I see you again?” asked Varenka.

“Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won’t you be there?” said

Kitty, to try Varenka.

“Yes,” answered Varenka. “They’re getting ready to go away, so I

promised to help them pack.”

“Well, I’ll come too, then.”

“No, why should you?”

“Why not? why not? why not?” said Kitty, opening her eyes wide, and

clutching at Varenka’s parasol, so as not to let her go. “No, wait a

minute; why not?”

“Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel awkward

at your helping.”

“No, tell me why you don’t want me to be often at the Petrovs’. You

don’t want me to—why not?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Varenka quietly.

“No, please tell me!”

“Tell you everything?” asked Varenka.

“Everything, everything!” Kitty assented.

“Well, there’s really nothing of any consequence; only that Mihail

Alexeyevitch” (that was the artist’s name) “had meant to leave earlier,

and now he doesn’t want to go away,” said Varenka, smiling.

“Well, well!” Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at Varenka.

“Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn’t want

to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense; but there was

a dispute over it—over you. You know how irritable these sick people

are.”

Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on

speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a storm

coming—she did not know whether of tears or of words.

“So you’d better not go.... You understand; you won’t be offended?...”

“And it serves me right! And it serves me right!” Kitty cried quickly,

snatching the parasol out of Varenka’s hand, and looking past her

friend’s face.

Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but she

was afraid of wounding her.

“How does it serve you right? I don’t understand,” she said.

“It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done

on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to interfere

with outsiders? And so it’s come about that I’m a cause of quarrel, and

that I’ve done what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! a

sham! a sham!...”

“A sham! with what object?” said Varenka gently.

“Oh, it’s so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need whatever for me....

Nothing but sham!” she said, opening and shutting the parasol.

“But with what object?”

“To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive everyone. No!

now I won’t descend to that. I’ll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a

cheat.”

“But who is a cheat?” said Varenka reproachfully. “You speak as if....”

But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let her

finish.

“I don’t talk about you, not about you at all. You’re perfection. Yes,

yes, I know you’re all perfection; but what am I to do if I’m bad? This

would never have been if I weren’t bad. So let me be what I am. I won’t

be a sham. What have I to do with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their way,

and me go mine. I can’t be different.... And yet it’s not that, it’s

not that.”

“What is not that?” asked Varenka in bewilderment.

“Everything. I can’t act except from the heart, and you act from

principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only wanted to save

me, to improve me.”

“You are unjust,” said Varenka.

“But I’m not speaking of other people, I’m speaking of myself.”

“Kitty,” they heard her mother’s voice, “come here, show papa your

necklace.”

Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend, took

the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her mother.

“What’s the matter? Why are you so red?” her mother and father said to

her with one voice.

“Nothing,” she answered. “I’ll be back directly,” and she ran back.

“She’s still here,” she thought. “What am I to say to her? Oh, dear!

what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her? What am I to

do? What am I to say to her?” thought Kitty, and she stopped in the

doorway.

Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting at the

table examining the spring which Kitty had broken. She lifted her head.

“Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me,” whispered Kitty, going up to her.

“I don’t remember what I said. I....”

“I really didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Varenka, smiling.

Peace was made. But with her father’s coming all the world in which she

had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up

everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived

herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were,

it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself

without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had

wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of

the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been

living. The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable,

and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to

Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly

had already gone with her children.

But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye, Kitty

begged her to come to them in Russia.

“I’ll come when you get married,” said Varenka.

“I shall never marry.”

“Well, then, I shall never come.”

“Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember

your promise,” said Kitty.

The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to Russia

cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was

serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.

PART THREE

Chapter 1

Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and instead

of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the end of May to

stay in the country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of

life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his

brother’s. Konstantin Levin was very glad to have him, especially as he

did not expect his brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his

affection and respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was

uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him

uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see his brother’s

attitude to the country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the

background of life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey

Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the other a

valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took with

satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To Konstantin Levin the

country was good first because it afforded a field for labor, of the

usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the

country was particularly good, because there it was possible and

fitting to do nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch’s attitude to the

peasants rather piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that

he knew and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants,

which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and from

every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions in favor of

the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them. Konstantin Levin

did not like such an attitude to the peasants. To Konstantin the

peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in

spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he

had for the peasant—sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the

milk of his peasant nurse—still as a fellow-worker with him, while

sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these

men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other

qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of

method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked

or didn’t like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been

absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the

peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course,

being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them,

and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike “the people” as

something apart he could not, not only because he lived with “the

people,” and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also

because he regarded himself as a part of “the people,” did not see any

special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and “the people,”

and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover, although he had

lived so long in the closest relations with the peasants, as farmer and

arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser (the peasants trusted him,

and for thirty miles round they would come to ask his advice), he had

no definite views of “the people,” and would have been as much at a

loss to answer the question whether he knew “the people” as the

question whether he liked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry

would have been the same as to say he knew men. He was continually

watching and getting to know people of all sorts, and among them

peasants, whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he was

continually observing new points in them, altering his former views of

them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it was quite the

contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country life in comparison

with the life he did not like, so too he liked the peasantry in

contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he

knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men

generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly formulated

certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from that life itself,

but chiefly from contrast with other modes of life. He never changed

his opinion of the peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.

In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views of

the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his brother,

precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas about the

peasant—his character, his qualities, and his tastes. Konstantin Levin

had no definite and unalterable idea on the subject, and so in their

arguments Konstantin was readily convicted of contradicting himself.

In Sergey Ivanovitch’s eyes his younger brother was a capital fellow,

_with his heart in the right place_ (as he expressed it in French), but

with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much influenced by the

impressions of the moment, and consequently filled with contradictions.

With all the condescension of an elder brother he sometimes explained

to him the true import of things, but he derived little satisfaction

from arguing with him because he got the better of him too easily.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and

culture, as generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of

a special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of

his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his

brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this

faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself

utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of

something—not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a

lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which

drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable paths of life,

and to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the more

he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for

the public welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for

the public good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations that it

was a right thing to take interest in public affairs, and consequently

took interest in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by

observing that his brother did not take questions affecting the public

welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to

heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious construction of a

new machine.

Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his brother,

because in summer in the country Levin was continually busy with work

on the land, and the long summer day was not long enough for him to get

through all he had to do, while Sergey Ivanovitch was taking a holiday.

But though he was taking a holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no

writing, he was so used to intellectual activity that he liked to put

into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and

liked to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural

listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and

directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in

leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the

grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.

“You wouldn’t believe,” he would say to his brother, “what a pleasure

this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one’s brain, as empty as a

drum!”

But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,

especially when he knew that while he was away they would be carting

dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and heaping it all up

anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the ploughs, but would let

them come off and then say that the new ploughs were a silly invention,

and there was nothing like the old Andreevna plough, and so on.

“Come, you’ve done enough trudging about in the heat,” Sergey

Ivanovitch would say to him.

“No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,” Levin

would answer, and he would run off to the fields.

Chapter 2

Early in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse and

housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just

pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The district doctor, a

talkative young medical student, who had just finished his studies,

came to see her. He examined the wrist, said it was not broken, was

delighted at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch

Koznishev, and to show his advanced views of things told him all the

scandal of the district, complaining of the poor state into which the

district council had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively,

asked him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently,

uttered a few keen and weighty observations, respectfully appreciated

by the young doctor, and was soon in that eager frame of mind his

brother knew so well, which always, with him, followed a brilliant and

eager conversation. After the departure of the doctor, he wanted to go

with a fishing rod to the river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling,

and was, it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid

occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough land and

meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.

It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when the

crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of

the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is

all in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves

in gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of

yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over

the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and

hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the

cattle, are half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the

plough; when from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes

at sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the

low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting

for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among it.

It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the

fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest—every year

recurring, every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The crop

was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in with short,

dewy nights.

The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows.

Sergey Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods,

which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an

old lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and

brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now the young shoots of this

year’s saplings brilliant with emerald. Konstantin Levin did not like

talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away

the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he

could not help beginning to think of other things. When they came out

of the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow

land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and

checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of dung, and in

parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving across it. Levin

counted the carts, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been

brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the

mowing. He always felt something special moving him to the quick at the

hay-making. On reaching the meadow Levin stopped the horse.

The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass,

and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch asked his

brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow tree from which the

carp was caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to crush down his mowing

grass, he drove him into the meadow. The high grass softly turned about

the wheels and the horse’s legs, leaving its seeds clinging to the wet

axles and spokes of the wheels. His brother seated himself under a

bush, arranging his tackle, while Levin led the horse away, fastened

him up, and walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by

the wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his waist

in the dampest spots.

Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out onto the road, and met

an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his shoulder.

“What? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?” he asked.

“No, indeed, Konstantin Dmitrich! All we can do to keep our own! This

is the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught

them. They were ploughing your field. They unyoked the horses and

galloped after them.”

“Well, what do you say, Fomitch—start mowing or wait a bit?”

“Eh, well. Our way’s to wait till St. Peter’s Day. But you always mow

sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay’s good. There’ll be

plenty for the beasts.”

“What do you think about the weather?”

“That’s in God’s hands. Maybe it will be fine.”

Levin went up to his brother.

Sergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed

in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that, stimulated by his

conversation with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Levin, on the other

hand, would have liked to get home as soon as possible to give orders

about getting together the mowers for next day, and to set at rest his

doubts about the mowing, which greatly absorbed him.

“Well, let’s be going,” he said.

“Why be in such a hurry? Let’s stay a little. But how wet you are! Even

though one catches nothing, it’s nice. That’s the best thing about

every part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this

steely water is!” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “These riverside banks always

remind me of the riddle—do you know it? ‘The grass says to the water:

we quiver and we quiver.’”

“I don’t know the riddle,” answered Levin wearily.

Chapter 3

“Do you know, I’ve been thinking about you,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.

“It’s beyond everything what’s being done in the district, according to

what this doctor tells me. He’s a very intelligent fellow. And as I’ve

told you before, I tell you again: it’s not right for you not to go to

the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If

decent people won’t go into it, of course it’s bound to go all wrong.

We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no

schools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores—nothing.”

“Well, I did try, you know,” Levin said slowly and unwillingly. “I

can’t! and so there’s no help for it.”

“But why can’t you? I must own I can’t make it out. Indifference,

incapacity—I won’t admit; surely it’s not simply laziness?”

“None of those things. I’ve tried, and I see I can do nothing,” said

Levin.

He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking towards the

plough land across the river, he made out something black, but he could

not distinguish whether it was a horse or the bailiff on horseback.

“Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn’t succeed,

as you think, and you give in. How can you have so little

self-respect?”

“Self-respect!” said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother’s words;

“I don’t understand. If they’d told me at college that other people

understood the integral calculus, and I didn’t, then pride would have

come in. But in this case one wants first to be convinced that one has

certain qualifications for this sort of business, and especially that

all this business is of great importance.”

“What! do you mean to say it’s not of importance?” said Sergey

Ivanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother’s considering

anything of no importance that interested him, and still more at his

obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.

“I don’t think it important; it does not take hold of me, I can’t help

it,” answered Levin, making out that what he saw was the bailiff, and

that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants go off the ploughed

land. They were turning the plough over. “Can they have finished

ploughing?” he wondered.

“Come, really though,” said the elder brother, with a frown on his

handsome, clever face, “there’s a limit to everything. It’s very well

to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything conventional—I

know all about that; but really, what you’re saying either has no

meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter

of no importance whether the peasant, whom you love as you assert....”

“I never did assert it,” thought Konstantin Levin.

“...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the children,

and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of

every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping

them, and don’t help them because to your mind it’s of no importance.”

And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so

undeveloped that you can’t see all that you can do, or you won’t

sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.

Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to

submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And this

mortified him and hurt his feelings.

“It’s both,” he said resolutely: “I don’t see that it was possible....”

“What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to

provide medical aid?”

“Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square miles

of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and the work in

the fields, I don’t see how it is possible to provide medical aid all

over. And besides, I don’t believe in medicine.”

“Oh, well, that’s unfair ... I can quote to you thousands of

instances.... But the schools, anyway.”

“Why have schools?”

“What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of

education? If it’s a good thing for you, it’s a good thing for

everyone.”

Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and so he

got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of his

indifference to public business.

“Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself about

establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools

to which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants

don’t want to send their children, and to which I’ve no very firm faith

that they ought to send them?” said he.

Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected view of

the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack. He was silent

for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again, and turned to his

brother smiling.

“Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We

ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna.”

“Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again.”

“That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read and write

is as a workman of more use and value to you.”

“No, you can ask anyone you like,” Konstantin Levin answered with

decision, “the man that can read and write is much inferior as a

workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and as soon as

they put up bridges they’re stolen.”

“Still, that’s not the point,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning. He

disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually

skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected

points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply. “Do you admit

that education is a benefit for the people?”

“Yes, I admit it,” said Levin without thinking, and he was conscious

immediately that he had said what he did not think. He felt that if he

admitted that, it would be proved that he had been talking meaningless

rubbish. How it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew that

this would inevitably be logically proved to him, and he awaited the

proofs.

The argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.

“If you admit that it is a benefit,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, “then, as

an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and sympathizing with

the movement, and so wishing to work for it.”

“But I still do not admit this movement to be just,” said Konstantin

Levin, reddening a little.

“What! But you said just now....”

“That’s to say, I don’t admit it’s being either good or possible.”

“That you can’t tell without making the trial.”

“Well, supposing that’s so,” said Levin, though he did not suppose so

at all, “supposing that is so, still I don’t see, all the same, what

I’m to worry myself about it for.”

“How so?”

“No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the philosophical

point of view,” said Levin.

“I can’t see where philosophy comes in,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, in a

tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit his brother’s right to

talk about philosophy. And that irritated Levin.

“I’ll tell you, then,” he said with heat, “I imagine the mainspring of

all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local

institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my

prosperity, and the roads are not better and could not be better; my

horses carry me well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are

no use to me. An arbitrator of disputes is no use to me. I never appeal

to him, and never shall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me,

but positively harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions

simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three

acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts

of idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers me no

inducement.”

“Excuse me,” Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile, “self-interest

did not induce us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, but we did

work for it.”

“No!” Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; “the

emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There self-interest

did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us, all

decent people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many

dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town

in which I don’t live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who’s stolen

a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts

of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the

president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, ‘Do you admit,

prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the bacon?’ ‘Eh?’”

Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking the

president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that it was

all to the point.

But Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what do you mean to say, then?”

“I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me ... my interest,

I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that when they made

raids on us students, and the police read our letters, I was ready to

defend those rights to the utmost, to defend my rights to education and

freedom. I can understand compulsory military service, which affects my

children, my brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what

concerns me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of

district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka—I don’t

understand, and I can’t do it.”

Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had burst

open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

“But tomorrow it’ll be your turn to be tried; would it have suited your

tastes better to be tried in the old criminal tribunal?”

“I’m not going to be tried. I shan’t murder anybody, and I’ve no need

of it. Well, I tell you what,” he went on, flying off again to a

subject quite beside the point, “our district self-government and all

the rest of it—it’s just like the birch branches we stick in the ground

on Trinity Day, for instance, to look like a copse which has grown up

of itself in Europe, and I can’t gush over these birch branches and

believe in them.”

Sergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to express

his wonder how the birch branches had come into their argument at that

point, though he did really understand at once what his brother meant.

“Excuse me, but you know one really can’t argue in that way,” he

observed.

But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing, of

which he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the public welfare, and he

went on.

“I imagine,” he said, “that no sort of activity is likely to be lasting

if it is not founded on self-interest, that’s a universal principle, a

philosophical principle,” he said, repeating the word “philosophical”

with determination, as though wishing to show that he had as much right

as anyone else to talk of philosophy.

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled. “He too has a philosophy of his own at the

service of his natural tendencies,” he thought.

“Come, you’d better let philosophy alone,” he said. “The chief problem

of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding the

indispensable connection which exists between individual and social

interests. But that’s not to the point; what is to the point is a

correction I must make in your comparison. The birches are not simply

stuck in, but some are sown and some are planted, and one must deal

carefully with them. It’s only those peoples that have an intuitive

sense of what’s of importance and significance in their institutions,

and know how to value them, that have a future before them—it’s only

those peoples that one can truly call historical.”

And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of

philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow him, and

showed him all the incorrectness of his view.

“As for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that’s simply our

Russian sloth and old serf-owner’s ways, and I’m convinced that in you

it’s a temporary error and will pass.”

Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides, but he

felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was unintelligible to

his brother. Only he could not make up his mind whether it was

unintelligible because he was not capable of expressing his meaning

clearly, or because his brother would not or could not understand him.

But he did not pursue the speculation, and without replying, he fell to

musing on a quite different and personal matter.

Sergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, and they

drove off.

Chapter 4

The personal matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation with

his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to look at

the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he had recourse to

his favorite means for regaining his temper,—he took a scythe from a

peasant and began mowing.

He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at

mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house,

and this year ever since the early spring he had cherished a plan for

mowing for whole days together with the peasants. Ever since his

brother’s arrival, he had been in doubt whether to mow or not. He was

loath to leave his brother alone all day long, and he was afraid his

brother would laugh at him about it. But as he drove into the meadow,

and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he

would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he

pondered over this intention again.

“I must have physical exercise, or my temper’ll certainly be ruined,”

he thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward he

might feel about it with his brother or the peasants.

Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting house, gave

directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to

summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the

largest and best of his grass lands.

“And send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring it

round tomorrow. I shall maybe do some mowing myself too,” he said,

trying not to be embarrassed.

The bailiff smiled and said: “Yes, sir.”

At tea the same evening Levin said to his brother:

“I fancy the fine weather will last. Tomorrow I shall start mowing.”

“I’m so fond of that form of field labor,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.

“I’m awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the peasants, and

tomorrow I want to try mowing the whole day.”

Sergey Ivanovitch lifted his head, and looked with interest at his

brother.

“How do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?”

“Yes, it’s very pleasant,” said Levin.

“It’s splendid as exercise, only you’ll hardly be able to stand it,”

said Sergey Ivanovitch, without a shade of irony.

“I’ve tried it. It’s hard work at first, but you get into it. I dare

say I shall manage to keep it up....”

“Really! what an idea! But tell me, how do the peasants look at it? I

suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master’s being such a

queer fish?”

“No, I don’t think so; but it’s so delightful, and at the same time

such hard work, that one has no time to think about it.”

“But how will you do about dining with them? To send you a bottle of

Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little awkward.”

“No, I’ll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest.”

Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was

detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached the mowing

grass the mowers were already at their second row.

From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of the

meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the black heaps

of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from which they had

started cutting.

Gradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into sight,

some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind another in a

long string, swinging their scythes differently. He counted forty-two

of them.

They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the meadow,

where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some of his own men.

Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock, bending forward to

swing a scythe; there was a young fellow, Vaska, who had been a

coachman of Levin’s, taking every row with a wide sweep. Here, too, was

Tit, Levin’s preceptor in the art of mowing, a thin little peasant. He

was in front of all, and cut his wide row without bending, as though

playing with the scythe.

Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went to

meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it to him.

“It’s ready, sir; it’s like a razor, cuts of itself,” said Tit, taking

off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.

Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished their

rows, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the road one

after another, and, laughing a little, greeted the master. They all

stared at him, but no one made any remark, till a tall old man, with a

wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a short sheepskin jacket, came out

into the road and accosted him.

“Look’ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there’s no letting it

go!” he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among the mowers.

“I’ll try not to let it go,” he said, taking his stand behind Tit, and

waiting for the time to begin.

“Mind’ee,” repeated the old man.

Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close

to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while,

and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the

first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he

heard voices:

“It’s not set right; handle’s too high; see how he has to stoop to it,”

said one.

“Press more on the heel,” said another.

“Never mind, he’ll get on all right,” the old man resumed.

“He’s made a start.... You swing it too wide, you’ll tire yourself

out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass

missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!”

The grass became softer, and Levin, listening without answering,

followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred

paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest

weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be afraid he would not be

able to keep it up: he was so tired.

He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his

strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that

very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down picked up

some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it. Levin

straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind

him came a peasant, and he too was evidently tired, for he stopped at

once without waiting to mow up to Levin, and began whetting his scythe.

Tit sharpened his scythe and Levin’s, and they went on. The next time

it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his

scythe, not stopping nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed

him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder:

the moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very

moment Tit stopped and whetted the scythes.

So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed particularly hard

work to Levin; but when the end was reached and Tit, shouldering his

scythe, began with deliberate stride returning on the tracks left by

his heels in the cut grass, and Levin walked back in the same way over

the space he had cut, in spite of the sweat that ran in streams over

his face and fell in drops down his nose, and drenched his back as

though he had been soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted

him particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.

His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. “I will

swing less with my arm and more with my whole body,” he thought,

comparing Tit’s row, which looked as if it had been cut with a line,

with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.

The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,

probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row happened to

be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still Levin had to strain

every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.

He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind

the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing

but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit’s upright figure

mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and

flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his

scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest.

Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was

or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot,

moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the

scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops

were falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on;

others—just like Levin himself—merely shrugged their shoulders,

enjoying the pleasant coolness of it.

Another row, and yet another row, followed—long rows and short rows,

with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and

could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to

come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst

of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was

doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row

was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit’s. But so soon as he

recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at

once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly

mown.

On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top of the

meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the

old man said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the

sun. “What are they talking about, and why doesn’t he go back?” thought

Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four

hours without stopping, and it was time for their lunch.

“Lunch, sir,” said the old man.

“Is it really time? That’s right; lunch, then.”

Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who were

crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled with rain,

to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went towards his house.

Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been wrong about

the weather and the rain was drenching his hay.

“The hay will be spoiled,” he said.

“Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you’ll rake in fine

weather!” said the old man.

Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey Ivanovitch

was only just getting up. When he had drunk his coffee, Levin rode back

again to the mowing before Sergey Ivanovitch had had time to dress and

come down to the dining-room.

Chapter 5

After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of mowers as

before, but stood between the old man who had accosted him jocosely,

and now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young peasant, who had

only been married in the autumn, and who was mowing this summer for the

first time.

The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet

turned out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and

regular action which seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging

one’s arms in walking, as though it were in play, he laid down the

high, even row of grass. It was as though it were not he but the sharp

scythe of itself swishing through the juicy grass.

Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with a twist

of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with effort; but

whenever anyone looked at him he smiled. He would clearly have died

sooner than own it was hard work for him.

Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing did not

seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched

cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back, his head, and his

arms, bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and dogged energy to his labor;

and more and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when

it was possible not to think what one was doing. The scythe cut of

itself. These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the

moments when they reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old

man rubbed his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in

the fresh water of the stream, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and

offered Levin a drink.

“What do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?” said he, winking.

And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm water

with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin

dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter,

with his hand on the scythe, during which he could wipe away the

streaming sweat, take deep breaths of air, and look about at the long

string of mowers and at what was happening around in the forest and the

country.

The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of

unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe,

but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness

of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work

turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most

blissful moments.

It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which had

become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a hillock or

a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a hillock came he

changed his action, and at one time with the heel, and at another with

the tip of his scythe, clipped the hillock round both sides with short

strokes. And while he did this he kept looking about and watching what

came into his view: at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or

offered it to Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the

scythe, then he looked at a quail’s nest, from which the bird flew just

under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and lifting

it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin and threw it

away.

For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of

position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over again

the same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of toil, and were

incapable of shifting their position and at the same time watching what

was before them.

Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked how

long he had been working he would have said half an hour—and it was

getting on for dinner time. As they were walking back over the cut

grass, the old man called Levin’s attention to the little girls and

boys who were coming from different directions, hardly visible through

the long grass, and along the road towards the mowers, carrying sacks

of bread dragging at their little hands and pitchers of the sour

rye-beer, with cloths wrapped round them.

“Look’ee, the little emmets crawling!” he said, pointing to them, and

he shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They mowed two

more rows; the old man stopped.

“Come, master, dinner time!” he said briskly. And on reaching the

stream the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass towards their

pile of coats, where the children who had brought their dinners were

sitting waiting for them. The peasants gathered into groups—those

further away under a cart, those nearer under a willow bush.

Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.

All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The peasants

got ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed in the stream,

others made a place comfortable for a rest, untied their sacks of

bread, and uncovered the pitchers of rye-beer. The old man crumbled up

some bread in a cup, stirred it with the handle of a spoon, poured

water on it from the dipper, broke up some more bread, and having

seasoned it with salt, he turned to the east to say his prayer.

“Come, master, taste my sop,” said he, kneeling down before the cup.

The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home. He dined

with the old man, and talked to him about his family affairs, taking

the keenest interest in them, and told him about his own affairs and

all the circumstances that could be of interest to the old man. He felt

much nearer to him than to his brother, and could not help smiling at

the affection he felt for this man. When the old man got up again, said

his prayer, and lay down under a bush, putting some grass under his

head for a pillow, Levin did the same, and in spite of the clinging

flies that were so persistent in the sunshine, and the midges that

tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at once and only waked

when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush and reached him.

The old man had been awake a long while, and was sitting up whetting

the scythes of the younger lads.

Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place, everything was

so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been mown and was

sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance, with its lines of already

sweet-smelling grass in the slanting rays of the evening sun. And the

bushes about the river had been cut down, and the river itself, not

visible before, now gleaming like steel in its bends, and the moving,

ascending, peasants, and the sharp wall of grass of the unmown part of

the meadow, and the hawks hovering over the stripped meadow—all was

perfectly new. Raising himself, Levin began considering how much had

been cut and how much more could still be done that day.

The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had cut

the whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf labor,

taken thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners remained to do,

where the rows were short. But Levin felt a longing to get as much

mowing done that day as possible, and was vexed with the sun sinking so

quickly in the sky. He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to get his

work done more and more quickly and as much done as possible.

“Could you cut Mashkin Upland too?—what do you think?” he said to the

old man.

“As God wills, the sun’s not high. A little vodka for the lads?”

At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and those who

smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the men that “Mashkin

Upland’s to be cut—there’ll be some vodka.”

“Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We’ll look sharp! We can eat at night.

Come on!” cried voices, and eating up their bread, the mowers went back

to work.

“Come, lads, keep it up!” said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a trot.

“Get along, get along!” said the old man, hurrying after him and easily

overtaking him, “I’ll mow you down, look out!”

And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one

another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass,

and the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The little piece

left uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes. The last of the

mowers were just ending their rows while the foremost snatched up their

coats onto their shoulders, and crossed the road towards Mashkin

Upland.

The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their

jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland. The grass

was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, soft, tender, and

feathery, spotted here and there among the trees with wild

heart’s-ease.

After a brief consultation—whether to take the rows lengthwise or

diagonally—Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge, black-haired

peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top, turned back again and

started mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him,

going downhill through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of

the forest. The sun sank behind the forest. The dew was falling by now;

the mowers were in the sun only on the hillside, but below, where a

mist was rising, and on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh,

dewy shade. The work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound,

and was at once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides,

brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another on to

the sound of jingling dippers and clanging scythes, and the hiss of the

whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.

Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The old

man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as

good-humored, jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees they

were continually cutting with their scythes the so-called “birch

mushrooms,” swollen fat in the succulent grass. But the old man bent

down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it up and put it in

his bosom. “Another present for my old woman,” he said as he did so.

Easy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going up

and down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not trouble the

old man. Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving his feet in their

big, plaited shoes with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the

steep place, and though his breeches hanging out below his smock, and

his whole frame trembled with effort, he did not miss one blade of

grass or one mushroom on his way, and kept making jokes with the

peasants and Levin. Levin walked after him and often thought he must

fall, as he climbed with a scythe up a steep cliff where it would have

been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did

what he had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving

him.

Chapter 6

Mashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had put on

their coats and were gaily trudging home. Levin got on his horse and,

parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homewards. On the hillside

he looked back; he could not see them in the mist that had risen from

the valley; he could only hear rough, good-humored voices, laughter,

and the sound of clanking scythes.

Sergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking iced

lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews and papers

which he had only just received by post, when Levin rushed into the

room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted hair sticking to his

forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist.

“We mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is nice, delicious! And how have you

been getting on?” said Levin, completely forgetting the disagreeable

conversation of the previous day.

“Mercy! what do you look like!” said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the first

moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. “And the door, do shut

the door!” he cried. “You must have let in a dozen at least.”

Sergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he never

opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the door shut.

“Not one, on my honor. But if I have, I’ll catch them. You wouldn’t

believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?”

“Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I expect

you’re as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything ready for you.”

“No, I don’t feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But I’ll

go and wash.”

“Yes, go along, go along, and I’ll come to you directly,” said Sergey

Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. “Go along,

make haste,” he added smiling, and gathering up his books, he prepared

to go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored and disinclined to leave

his brother’s side. “But what did you do while it was raining?”

“Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I’ll come directly. So you had a

nice day too? That’s first-rate.” And Levin went off to change his

clothes.

Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining-room. Although it

seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to dinner

simply so as not to hurt Kouzma’s feelings, yet when he began to eat

the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good. Sergey Ivanovitch

watched him with a smile.

“Oh, by the way, there’s a letter for you,” said he. “Kouzma, bring it

down, please. And mind you shut the doors.”

The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky wrote to

him from Petersburg: “I have had a letter from Dolly; she’s at

Ergushovo, and everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over and see

her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be

so glad to see you. She’s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and

all of them are still abroad.”

“That’s capital! I will certainly ride over to her,” said Levin. “Or

we’ll go together. She’s such a splendid woman, isn’t she?”

“They’re not far from here, then?”

“Twenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital road.

Capital, we’ll drive over.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling. The

sight of his younger brother’s appearance had immediately put him in a

good humor.

“Well, you have an appetite!” he said, looking at his dark-red,

sunburnt face and neck bent over the plate.

“Splendid! You can’t imagine what an effectual remedy it is for every

sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word:

_Arbeitskur_.”

“Well, but you don’t need it, I should fancy.”

“No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids.”

“Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to look

at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further than the

forest. I sat there a little, and went on by the forest to the village,

met your old nurse, and sounded her as to the peasants’ view of you. As

far as I can make out, they don’t approve of this. She said: ‘It’s not

a gentleman’s work.’ Altogether, I fancy that in the people’s ideas

there are very clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it,

‘gentlemanly’ lines of action. And they don’t sanction the gentry’s

moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas.”

“Maybe so; but anyway it’s a pleasure such as I have never known in my

life. And there’s no harm in it, you know. Is there?” answered Levin.

“I can’t help it if they don’t like it. Though I do believe it’s all

right. Eh?”

“Altogether,” pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, “you’re satisfied with your

day?”

“Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid old man

I made friends with there! You can’t fancy how delightful he was!”

“Well, so you’re content with your day. And so am I. First, I solved

two chess problems, and one a very pretty one—a pawn opening. I’ll show

it you. And then—I thought over our conversation yesterday.”

“Eh! our conversation yesterday?” said Levin, blissfully dropping his

eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner, and

absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation yesterday was

about.

“I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to

this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that

interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain

degree of advancement. Possibly you are right too, that action founded

on material interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as

the French say, too _primesautière_ a nature; you must have intense,

energetic action, or nothing.”

Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single word, and

did not want to understand. He was only afraid his brother might ask

him some question which would make it evident he had not heard.

“So that’s what I think it is, my dear boy,” said Sergey Ivanovitch,

touching him on the shoulder.

“Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won’t stand up for my view,”

answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. “Whatever was it I was

disputing about?” he wondered. “Of course, I’m right, and he’s right,

and it’s all first-rate. Only I must go round to the counting house and

see to things.” He got up, stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch

smiled too.

“If you want to go out, let’s go together,” he said, disinclined to be

parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing out freshness

and energy. “Come, we’ll go to the counting house, if you have to go

there.”

“Oh, heavens!” shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch was

quite frightened.

“What, what is the matter?”

“How’s Agafea Mihalovna’s hand?” said Levin, slapping himself on the

head. “I’d positively forgotten her even.”

“It’s much better.”

“Well, anyway I’ll run down to her. Before you’ve time to get your hat

on, I’ll be back.”

And he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a spring-rattle.

Chapter 7

Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural

and essential official duty—so familiar to everyone in the government

service, though incomprehensible to outsiders—that duty, but for which

one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of

his existence—and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken

all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his

days at the races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the

children had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as

possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been her

dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It was

nearly forty miles from Levin’s Pokrovskoe. The big, old house at

Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old prince had had the

lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years before, when Dolly was a

child, the lodge had been roomy and comfortable, though, like all

lodges, it stood sideways to the entrance avenue, and faced the south.

But by now this lodge was old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch

had gone down in the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to

look over the house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan

Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very solicitous

for his wife’s comfort, and he had himself looked over the house, and

given instructions about everything that he considered necessary. What

he considered necessary was to cover all the furniture with cretonne,

to put up curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the

pond, and to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters,

the want of which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.

In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s efforts to be an attentive father and

husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and

children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them

that he shaped his life. On his return to Moscow he informed his wife

with pride that everything was ready, that the house would be a little

paradise, and that he advised her most certainly to go. His wife’s

staying away in the country was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch

from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased

expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded

staying in the country for the summer as essential for the children,

especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her

strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the

petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the

fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she

was pleased to go away to the country because she was dreaming of

getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be back

from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been

prescribed for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to

spend the summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations

for both of them.

The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for

Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression

she had retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the

unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious—Dolly

could easily make up her mind to that—was cheap and comfortable; that

there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could

be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the

head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she

had fancied.

The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain, and in the

night the water came through in the corridor and in the nursery, so

that the beds had to be carried into the drawing-room. There was no

kitchen maid to be found; of the nine cows, it appeared from the words

of the cowherd-woman that some were about to calve, others had just

calved, others were old, and others again hard-uddered; there was not

butter nor milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They

could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for

roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors—all

were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the

horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place where

they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled by the

cattle and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle

strayed into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one

terrible bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore

somebody. There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what

cupboards there were either would not close at all, or burst open

whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there was

no copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids’

room.

Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view,

fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in despair. She

exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position,

and was every instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes.

The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had

taken a fancy to and had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome

and respectful appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for

Darya Alexandrovna’s woes. He said respectfully, “nothing can be done,

the peasants are such a wretched lot,” and did nothing to help her.

The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys’ household, as in

all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and

useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured

her that everything would _come round_ (it was her expression, and

Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded

to set to work herself. She had immediately made friends with the

bailiff’s wife, and on the very first day she drank tea with her and

the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of

the position. Very soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so

to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting

of the bailiff’s wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk,

that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in

a week’s time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended,

a kitchen maid was found—a crony of the village elder’s—hens were

bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up

with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the

cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an

ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of

a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in

the maids’ room.

“Just see, now, and you were quite in despair,” said Marya

Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a

bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya

Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations, if

not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country.

Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would

fall ill, another might easily become so, a third would be without

something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition,

and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares

and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible.

Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over

her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for

the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and

the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children—the

children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her

sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like

gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain,

nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing

but the joy, nothing but gold.

Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more

frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make

every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that

she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could

not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of

them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to

be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.

Chapter 8

Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less

satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband’s answer to her

complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote

begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before,

and promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not

present itself, and till the beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna

stayed alone in the country.

On the Sunday in St. Peter’s week Darya Alexandrovna drove to mass for

all her children to take the sacrament. Darya Alexandrovna in her

intimate, philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her

friends very often astonished them by the freedom of her views in

regard to religion. She had a strange religion of transmigration of

souls all her own, in which she had firm faith, troubling herself

little about the dogmas of the Church. But in her family she was strict

in carrying out all that was required by the Church—and not merely in

order to set an example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that

the children had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried

her extremely, and with the full approval and sympathy of Marya

Philimonovna she decided that this should take place now in the summer.

For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily deliberating on

how to dress all the children. Frocks were made or altered and washed,

seams and flounces were let out, buttons were sewn on, and ribbons got

ready. One dress, Tanya’s, which the English governess had undertaken,

cost Darya Alexandrovna much loss of temper. The English governess in

altering it had made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the

sleeves too much, and altogether spoilt the dress. It was so narrow on

Tanya’s shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her. But Marya

Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets, and adding a

little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but there was nearly a

quarrel with the English governess. On the morning, however, all was

happily arranged, and towards ten o’clock—the time at which they had

asked the priest to wait for them for the mass—the children in their

new dresses, with beaming faces, stood on the step before the carriage

waiting for their mother.

To the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had harnessed,

thanks to the representations of Marya Philimonovna, the bailiff’s

horse, Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by anxiety over her own

attire, came out and got in, dressed in a white muslin gown.

Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and

excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to look

pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress became more

and more distasteful to her. She saw that she was losing her good

looks. But now she began to feel pleasure and interest in dress again.

Now she did not dress for her own sake, not for the sake of her own

beauty, but simply that as the mother of those exquisite creatures she

might not spoil the general effect. And looking at herself for the last

time in the looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked

nice. Not nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a

ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.

In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and their

women-folk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she saw, the

sensation produced by her children and her. The children were not only

beautiful to look at in their smart little dresses, but they were

charming in the way they behaved. Aliosha, it is true, did not stand

quite correctly; he kept turning round, trying to look at his little

jacket from behind; but all the same he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya

behaved like a grown-up person, and looked after the little ones. And

the smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naïve astonishment at

everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the

sacrament, she said in English, “Please, some more.”

On the way home the children felt that something solemn had happened,

and were very sedate.

Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began

whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English

governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Darya Alexandrovna would

not have let things go so far on such a day had she been present; but

she had to support the English governess’s authority, and she upheld

her decision that Grisha should have no tart. This rather spoiled the

general good humor. Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled

too, and he was not punished, and that he wasn’t crying for the tart—he

didn’t care—but at being unjustly treated. This was really too tragic,

and Darya Alexandrovna made up her mind to persuade the English

governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to her. But on the

way, as she passed the drawing-room, she beheld a scene, filling her

heart with such pleasure that the tears came into her eyes, and she

forgave the delinquent herself.

The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the

drawing-room; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the

pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the

governess’s permission to take her share of tart to the nursery, and

had taken it instead to her brother. While still weeping over the

injustice of his punishment, he was eating the tart, and kept saying

through his sobs, “Eat yourself; let’s eat it together ... together.”

Tanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for Grisha,

then of a sense of her noble action, and tears were standing in her

eyes too; but she did not refuse, and ate her share.

On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but, looking into

her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They burst out laughing,

and, with their mouths full of tart, they began wiping their smiling

lips with their hands, and smearing their radiant faces all over with

tears and jam.

“Mercy! Your new white frock! Tanya! Grisha!” said their mother, trying

to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes, smiling a blissful,

rapturous smile.

The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the little

girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old jackets, and

the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the bailiff’s

annoyance, again in the shafts, to drive out for mushroom picking and

bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose in the nursery, and never

ceased till they had set off for the bathing-place.

They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch

mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and

pointed them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite of

herself, and there was a general scream of delight, “Lily has found a

mushroom!”

Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch trees, and

went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty, fastened the horses,

who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree, and, treading down the

grass, lay down in the shade of a birch and smoked his shag, while the

never-ceasing shrieks of delight of the children floated across to him

from the bathing-place.

Though it was hard work to look after all the children and restrain

their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep in one’s head

and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the

different legs, and to undo and to do up again all the tapes and

buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always liked bathing herself, and

believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much

as bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat little legs,

pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little

naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see

the breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her

splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.

When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in holiday

dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and stopped

shyly. Marya Philimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet and

a shirt that had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and Darya

Alexandrovna began to talk to the women. At first they laughed behind

their hands and did not understand her questions, but soon they grew

bolder and began to talk, winning Darya Alexandrovna’s heart at once by

the genuine admiration of the children that they showed.

“My, what a beauty! as white as sugar,” said one, admiring Tanitchka,

and shaking her head; “but thin....”

“Yes, she has been ill.”

“And so they’ve been bathing you too,” said another to the baby.

“No; he’s only three months old,” answered Darya Alexandrovna with

pride.

“You don’t say so!”

“And have you any children?”

“I’ve had four; I’ve two living—a boy and a girl. I weaned her last

carnival.”

“How old is she?”

“Why, two years old.”

“Why did you nurse her so long?”

“It’s our custom; for three fasts....”

And the conversation became most interesting to Darya Alexandrovna.

What sort of time did she have? What was the matter with the boy? Where

was her husband? Did it often happen?

Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women, so

interesting to her was their conversation, so completely identical were

all their interests. What pleased her most of all was that she saw

clearly what all the women admired more than anything was her having so

many children, and such fine ones. The peasant women even made Darya

Alexandrovna laugh, and offended the English governess, because she was

the cause of the laughter she did not understand. One of the younger

women kept staring at the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the

rest, and when she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain

from the remark, “My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and she’ll

never have done!” she said, and they all went off into roars.

Chapter 9

On the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children round

her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief tied over

her own head, was getting near the house, the coachman said, “There’s

some gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I do believe.”

Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when she

recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure of Levin

walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any time, but at this

moment she was specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No

one was better able to appreciate her grandeur than Levin.

Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of

his daydream of family life.

“You’re like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna.”

“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, holding out her hand to him.

“Glad to see me, but you didn’t let me know. My brother’s staying with

me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here.”

“From Stiva?” Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise.

“Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow

me to be of use to you,” said Levin, and as he said it he became

suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence

by the wagonette, snapping off the buds of the lime trees and nibbling

them. He was embarrassed through a sense that Darya Alexandrovna would

be annoyed by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights

have come from her own husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not

like this little way of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s of foisting his domestic

duties on others. And she was at once aware that Levin was aware of

this. It was just for this fineness of perception, for this delicacy,

that Darya Alexandrovna liked Levin.

“I know, of course,” said Levin, “that that simply means that you would

like to see me, and I’m exceedingly glad. Though I can fancy that, used

to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel in the wilds here, and

if there’s anything wanted, I’m altogether at your disposal.”

“Oh, no!” said Dolly. “At first things were rather uncomfortable, but

now we’ve settled everything capitally—thanks to my old nurse,” she

said, indicating Marya Philimonovna, who, seeing that they were

speaking of her, smiled brightly and cordially to Levin. She knew him,

and knew that he would be a good match for her young lady, and was very

keen to see the matter settled.

“Won’t you get in, sir, we’ll make room this side!” she said to him.

“No, I’ll walk. Children, who’d like to race the horses with me?” The

children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had

seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange

feeling of shyness and hostility which children so often experience

towards hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often

and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the

cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of

children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it

may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of

hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness

that they saw in their mother’s face. On his invitation, the two elder

ones at once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would

have done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too,

began begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat

her on his shoulder and ran along with her.

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!” he said,

smiling good-humoredly to the mother; “there’s no chance of my hurting

or dropping her.”

And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly

wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and

approvingly as she watched him.

Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna, with

whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent with him,

of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. As

he ran with the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss

Hoole laughing with his queer English accent, and talked to Darya

Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the country.

After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the

balcony, began to speak of Kitty.

“You know, Kitty’s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with

me.”

“Really,” he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation,

he said: “Then I’ll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist on a bill

you shall pay me five roubles a month; but it’s really too bad of you.”

“No, thank you. We can manage very well now.”

“Oh, well, then, I’ll have a look at your cows, and if you’ll allow me,

I’ll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their

food.”

And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna

the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is

simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.

He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and,

at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up

of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.

“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to

look after it?” Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest.

She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged,

thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any

change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin’s knowledge of

farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the

production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that

such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all

seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya

Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more

food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to

the laundry maid’s cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to

feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was

most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.

Chapter 10

“Kitty writes to me that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet

and solitude,” Dolly said after the silence that had followed.

“And how is she—better?” Levin asked in agitation.

“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were

affected.”

“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something

touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently

into her face.

“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Darya Alexandrovna,

smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry

with Kitty?”

“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.

“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them

when you were in Moscow?”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I

wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is

you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know....”

“What do I know?”

“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all

the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was

replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

“What makes you suppose I know?”

“Because everybody knows it....”

“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had

guessed it was so.”

“Well, now you know it.”

“All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully

miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she

would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else.

But what did pass between you? Tell me.”

“I have told you.”

“When was it?”

“When I was at their house the last time.”

“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully

sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but....”

She interrupted him.

“But she, poor girl ... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see

it all.”

“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up.

“Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”

“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve. “Wait a

minute, sit down.”

“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and

at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he

had believed to be buried.

“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I

did not know you, as I do know you....”

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and

took possession of Levin’s heart.

“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You can’t

understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s

always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense,

with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from

afar, who takes everything on trust,—a girl may have, and often has,

such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”

“Yes, if the heart does not speak....”

“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about

a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you

wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are

sure you love her, you make an offer....”

“Well, that’s not quite it.”

“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance

has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl

is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot

choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the dead

thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on

his heart and set it aching.

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new dress or

some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much

the better.... And there can be no repeating it.”

“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him

for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling

which only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an offer she

was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt.

Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you

she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older ... I,

for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked

him, and so it has turned out.”

Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said: “_No, that cannot be_....”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in

me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or

wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina

Alexandrovna out of the question for me,—you understand, utterly out of

the question.”

“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my

sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared

for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves

nothing.”

“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are

hurting me. It’s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were

to say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might

have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he’s dead,

dead, dead!...”

“How absurd you are!” said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with mournful

tenderness at Levin’s excitement. “Yes, I see it all more and more

clearly,” she went on musingly. “So you won’t come to see us, then,

when Kitty’s here?”

“No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting Katerina

Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance

of my presence.”

“You are very, very absurd,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with

tenderness into his face. “Very well then, let it be as though we had

not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?” she said in French

to the little girl who had come in.

“Where’s my spade, mamma?”

“I speak French, and you must too.”

The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the

French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French

where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on

Levin.

Everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and children struck him now as

by no means so charming as a little while before. “And what does she

talk French with the children for?” he thought; “how unnatural and

false it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and

unlearning sincerity,” he thought to himself, unaware that Darya

Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty times already, and yet,

even at the cost of some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to

teach her children French in that way.

“But why are you going? Do stay a little.”

Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt ill

at ease.

After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in,

and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly disturbed,

with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Levin had been

outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the

happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children.

Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna,

hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya

was pulling Grisha’s hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was

beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something

snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if

darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children

of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but

positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal

propensities—wicked children.

She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak

to Levin of her misery.

Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it

showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it,

he was thinking in his heart: “No, I won’t be artificial and talk

French with my children; but my children won’t be like that. All one

has to do is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and

they’ll be delightful. No, my children won’t be like that.”

He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.

Chapter 11

In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin’s sister’s

estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on

how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income

on his sister’s estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years

the hay had been bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three

acres. When Levin took over the management of the estate, he thought on

examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the

price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not

give that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.

Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass cut,

partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a certain proportion of

the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they could in the way of

this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first year the

meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year—which was

the third year—the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the

arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the

peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the

village elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut, and

that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-house clerk over, had

divided the crop in his presence, and had raked together eleven stacks

as the owner’s share. From the vague answers to his question how much

hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village

elder who had made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone

of the peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the

division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself to look

into the matter.

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the

cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother’s

wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house, wanting to

find out from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch, a talkative,

comely old man, gave Levin a very warm welcome, showed him all he was

doing, told him everything about his bees and the swarms of that year;

but gave vague and unwilling answers to Levin’s inquiries about the

mowing. This confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to

the hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not

possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants

Levin ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up

directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned

out to be only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village

elder’s assertions about the compressibility of hay, and its having

settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been

done in the fear of God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been

divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not accept

that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged dispute the

matter was decided by the peasants taking these eleven stacks,

reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments and the division of

the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon. When the last of the hay had

been divided, Levin, intrusting the superintendence of the rest to the

counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked off by a stake of

willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved a

bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was being

rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green stubble.

After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from the gray rows

there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks. To the left, carts

were rumbling over the meadow that had been already cleared, and one

after another the haycocks vanished, flung up in huge forkfuls, and in

their place there were rising heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging

over the horses’ hind-quarters.

“What weather for haying! What hay it’ll be!” said an old man,

squatting down beside Levin. “It’s tea, not hay! It’s like scattering

grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!” he added, pointing to the

growing haycocks. “Since dinner time they’ve carried a good half of

it.”

“The last load, eh?” he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by,

standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.

“The last, dad!” the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and,

smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-cheeked peasant girl who sat

in the cart smiling too, and drove on.

“Who’s that? Your son?” asked Levin.

“My baby,” said the old man with a tender smile.

“What a fine fellow!”

“The lad’s all right.”

“Married already?”

“Yes, it’s two years last St. Philip’s day.”

“Any children?”

“Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe

himself, and bashful too,” answered the old man. “Well, the hay! It’s

as fragrant as tea!” he repeated, wishing to change the subject.

Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were

loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan Parmenov was

standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and stamping down the

huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young wife deftly handed up to

him, at first in armfuls, and then on the pitchfork. The young wife

worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not

once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the

fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole

weight of her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the

red belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the

white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung

the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to

save her every minute of unnecessary labor, made haste, opening his

arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together

what was left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay that

had fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had

dropped forward over her white brow, not browned like her face by the

sun, she crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how

to fasten the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he

laughed aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen

vigorous, young, freshly awakened love.

Chapter 12

The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek horse

by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and with a

bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who were

forming a ring for the haymakers’ dance. Ivan drove off to the road and

fell into line with the other loaded carts. The peasant women, with

their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering

with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild

untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a

verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a

hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing

in unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt as

though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment.

The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was

lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads, and the whole

meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the

measures of this wild merry song with its shouts and whistles and

clapping. Levin felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed

to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do

nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with

their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling

of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his

alienation from this world, came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with

him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had

tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him good-humoredly,

and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor

against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to

deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God

gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were

consecrated to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the

labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations—beside

the point.

Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of the

men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under

the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to

his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that

it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and

individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and

socially delightful life.

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone home; the

people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone home, while

those who came from far were gathered into a group for supper, and to

spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unobserved by the peasants, still

lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The

peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept all

the short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and

laughing all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of

heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard

but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and

the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the

morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the haycock, and looking at

the stars, he saw that the night was over.

“Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?” he said to

himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and feelings he

had passed through in that brief night. All the thoughts and feelings

he had passed through fell into three separate trains of thought. One

was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education.

This renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and simple.

Another series of thoughts and mental images related to the life he

longed to live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life

he felt clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,

the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably

conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the question how to

effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing

took clear shape for him. “Have a wife? Have work and the necessity of

work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land? Become a member of a peasant

community? Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set about it?” he asked

himself again, and could not find an answer. “I haven’t slept all

night, though, and I can’t think it out clearly,” he said to himself.

“I’ll work it out later. One thing’s certain, this night has decided my

fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the real thing,”

he told himself. “It’s all ever so much simpler and better....”

“How beautiful!” he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,

mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right over his

head in the middle of the sky. “How exquisite it all is in this

exquisite night! And when was there time for that cloud-shell to form?

Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it—only two

white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!”

He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards the

village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and sullen. The

gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the dawn, the full triumph

of light over darkness.

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the ground.

“What’s that? Someone coming,” he thought, catching the tinkle of

bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a carriage with four

horses harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road

on which he was walking. The shaft-horses were tilted against the

shafts by the ruts, but the dexterous driver sitting on the box held

the shaft over the ruts, so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of

the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he

gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window,

evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in both hands the

ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light and thought, full of

a subtle, complex inner life, that was remote from Levin, she was

gazing beyond him at the glow of the sunrise.

At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the truthful

eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face lighted up with

wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the

world. There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate

for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was

Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the railway

station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that

sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all vanished at once.

He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There

only, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the

road, and was rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the

solution of the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly

upon him of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was no

longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs

showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was

the empty fields all round, the village in front, and he himself

isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely along the deserted

highroad.

He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he had

been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and feelings of

that night. There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell.

There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been

accomplished. There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over

fully half the sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The

sky had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the

same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

“No,” he said to himself, “however good that life of simplicity and

toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love _her_.”

Chapter 13

None but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch knew

that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable of men, he

had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of his character.

Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a child or woman crying

without being moved. The sight of tears threw him into a state of

nervous agitation, and he utterly lost all power of reflection. The

chief secretary of his department and his private secretary were aware

of this, and used to warn women who came with petitions on no account

to give way to tears, if they did not want to ruin their chances. “He

will get angry, and will not listen to you,” they used to say. And as a

fact, in such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey

Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty anger.

“I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!” he would commonly cry in

such cases.

When returning from the races Anna had informed him of her relations

with Vronsky, and immediately afterwards had burst into tears, hiding

her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for all the fury aroused

in him against her, was aware at the same time of a rush of that

emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. Conscious of it,

and conscious that any expression of his feelings at that minute would

be out of keeping with the position, he tried to suppress every

manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at

her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike

rigidity in his face which had so impressed Anna.

When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage,

and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his

usual urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound him to nothing; he

said that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.

His wife’s words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel

pang to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was intensified

by the strange feeling of physical pity for her set up by her tears.

But when he was all alone in the carriage Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his

surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from

the doubts and agonies of jealousy.

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after

suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of

something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw,

the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at

once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his

attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and

take interest in other things besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey

Alexandrovitch was experiencing. The agony had been strange and

terrible, but now it was over; he felt that he could live again and

think of something other than his wife.

“No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and

always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her,” he said

to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it:

he recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen

anything wrong before—now these incidents proved clearly that she had

always been a corrupt woman. “I made a mistake in linking my life to

hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be

unhappy. It’s not I that am to blame,” he told himself, “but she. But I

have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me....”

Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments

were as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only

thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could

best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most

justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered

him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable,

and useful existence.

“I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has

committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of the

difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall find it,” he

said to himself, frowning more and more. “I’m not the first nor the

last.” And to say nothing of historical instances dating from the “Fair

Helen” of Menelaus, recently revived in the memory of all, a whole list

of contemporary examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the

highest society rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch’s imagination.

“Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes,

even Dram, such an honest, capable fellow ... Semyonov, Tchagin,

Sigonin,” Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. “Admitting that a certain

quite irrational _ridicule_ falls to the lot of these men, yet I never

saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt sympathy for it,”

Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though indeed this was not the

fact, and he had never felt sympathy for misfortunes of that kind, but

the more frequently he had heard of instances of unfaithful wives

betraying their husbands, the more highly he had thought of himself.

“It is a misfortune which may befall anyone. And this misfortune has

befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the

position.”