after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most
charming and sentimental humor. “Look, Kitty,” he said, pointing to the
moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees—“how exquisite!
Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid
voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some
lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara Andreevna and he must sing
some duets.”
When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while
about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing
one of the new songs.
Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife’s
bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what
was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the
question: “Was there perhaps something you disliked about
Veslovsky?”—it all burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated
himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.
He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his
scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as
though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression
of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the
same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were
twitching, and his voice kept breaking.
“You must understand that I’m not jealous, that’s a nasty word. I can’t
be jealous, and believe that.... I can’t say what I feel, but this is
awful.... I’m not jealous, but I’m wounded, humiliated that anybody
dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.”
“Eyes like what?” said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to
recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied
in them.
At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something
precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other
end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would
have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so
increase his suffering.
“And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?...”
“Ah!” he cried, clutching at his head, “you shouldn’t say that!... If
you had been attractive then....”
“Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!” she said, looking
at him with an expression of pained commiseration. “Why, what can you
be thinking about! When for me there’s no one in the world, no one, no
one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?”
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was
angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be
forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely
such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from
the agony he was suffering.
“You must understand the horror and comedy of my position,” he went on
in a desperate whisper; “that he’s in my house, that he’s done nothing
improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits
on his legs. He thinks it’s the best possible form, and so I’m obliged
to be civil to him.”
“But, Kostya, you’re exaggerating,” said Kitty, at the bottom of her
heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his
jealousy.
“The most awful part of it all is that you’re just as you always are,
and especially now when to me you’re something sacred, and we’re so
happy, so particularly happy—and all of a sudden a little wretch....
He’s not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do
with him. But why should my, and your, happiness....”
“Do you know, I understand now what it’s all come from,” Kitty was
beginning.
“Well, what? what?”
“I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.”
“Well, well!” Levin said in dismay.
She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she
was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space, then he
scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his
head.
“Katya, I’ve been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It’s madness!
Katya, I’m a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such
idiocy?”
“Oh, I was sorry for you.”
“For me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It’s
awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness.”
“It’s humiliating too, of course.”
“Oh, then I’ll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him
with civility,” said Levin, kissing her hands. “You shall see.
Tomorrow.... Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow.”
Chapter 8
Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the
shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning
that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and
fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and,
disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which
the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was
Vassenka Veslovsky, in new high boots that reached half-way up his
thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather
cartridge-belt, and in his Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new
English gun without a sling. Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and
jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming
soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of
observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one
ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round
and round and turning over in the air. Stepan Arkadyevitch himself
followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.
“Good dog, good dog, Krak!” he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put
his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Stepan Arkadyevitch
was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short
coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but
his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and
cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best quality.
Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly _chic_
for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of
the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevitch,
radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian
nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he
would certainly adopt the same get-up.
“Well, and what about our host?” he asked.
“A young wife,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
“Yes, and such a charming one!”
“He came down dressed. No doubt he’s run up to her again.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife
to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and,
moreover, to beg her for Christ’s sake to be more careful. The great
thing was for her to keep away from the children—they might any minute
push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she
was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to
be sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to
write him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was
well with her.
Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of
days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big
and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of
sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot
her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him
cheerfully.
“Pardon, gentlemen!” he said, running out onto the steps. “Have you put
the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn’t
matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!”
“Put it with the herd of oxen,” he said to the herdsman, who was
waiting for him at the steps with some question. “Excuse me, here comes
another villain.”
Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his
seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in
his hand.
“You didn’t come to the counting house yesterday, and now you’re
detaining me. Well, what is it?”
“Would your honor let me make another turning? It’s only three steps to
add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more
convenient.”
“You should have listened to me,” Levin answered with annoyance. “I
said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there’s no setting
it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase.”
The point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had
spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the
space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was
put in place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to
add three steps.
“It will be much better.”
“But where’s your staircase coming out with its three steps?”
“Why, upon my word, sir,” the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile.
“It comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak,” he said,
with a persuasive gesture; “it comes down, and comes down, and comes
out.”
“But three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come
out?”
“Why, to be sure, it’ll start from the bottom and go up and go up, and
come out so,” the carpenter said obstinately and convincingly.
“It’ll reach the ceiling and the wall.”
“Upon my word! Why, it’ll go up, and up, and come out like this.”
Levin took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the
dust.
“There, do you see?”
“As your honor likes,” said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in his
eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. “It seems it’ll be
best to make a new one.”
“Well, then, do it as you’re told,” Levin shouted, seating himself in
the wagonette. “Down! Hold the dogs, Philip!”
Levin felt now at leaving behind all his family and household cares
such an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was not
disposed to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of concentrated
excitement that every sportsman experiences as he approaches the scene
of action. If he had anything on his mind at that moment, it was only
the doubt whether they would start anything in the Kolpensky marsh,
whether Laska would show to advantage in comparison with Krak, and
whether he would shoot well that day himself. Not to disgrace himself
before a new spectator—not to be outdone by Oblonsky—that too was a
thought that crossed his brain.
Oblonsky was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative. Vassenka
Veslovsky kept up alone a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter. As he
listened to him now, Levin felt ashamed to think how unfair he had been
to him the day before. Vassenka was really a nice fellow, simple,
good-hearted, and very good-humored. If Levin had met him before he was
married, he would have made friends with him. Levin rather disliked his
holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and easy assumption of
elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree of importance in
himself that could not be disputed, because he had long nails and a
stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but this could be
forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good breeding. Levin liked
him for his good education, for speaking French and English with such
an excellent accent, and for being a man of his world.
Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the
Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. “How fine it must
be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn’t it?” he
said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and
romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity,
particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and
the grace of his movements, was very attractive. Either because his
nature was sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone
for his sins of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was
good in him, anyway he liked his society.
After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at once
felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had
lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were
thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in
uncertainty.
“Do you know what, Levin, I’ll gallop home on that left trace-horse.
That will be splendid. Eh?” he said, preparing to get out.
“No, why should you?” answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could
hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. “I’ll send the coachman.”
The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the
remaining pair.
Chapter 9
“Well, now what’s our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Our plan is this. Now we’re driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov there’s a
grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent
snipe marshes where there are grouse too. It’s hot now, and we’ll get
there—it’s fifteen miles or so—towards evening and have some evening
shooting; we’ll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger
moors.”
“And is there nothing on the way?”
“Yes; but we’ll reserve ourselves; besides it’s hot. There are two nice
little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.”
Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they
were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only
little places—there would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so,
with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to
shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once
detected reeds visible from the road.
“Shan’t we try that?” he said, pointing to the little marsh.
“Levin, do, please! how delightful!” Vassenka Veslovsky began begging,
and Levin could but consent.
Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other
into the marsh.
“Krak! Laska!...”
The dogs came back.
“There won’t be room for three. I’ll stay here,” said Levin, hoping
they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs,
and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the
marsh.
“No! Come along, Levin, let’s go together!” Veslovsky called.
“Really, there’s not room. Laska, back, Laska! You won’t want another
dog, will you?”
Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the
sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little birds and
peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.
“Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,” said
Levin, “only it’s wasting time.”
“Oh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?” said Vassenka
Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his
peewit in his hands. “How splendidly I shot this bird! Didn’t I? Well,
shall we soon be getting to the real place?”
The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against the
stock of someone’s gun, and there was the report of a shot. The gun did
actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Levin. It appeared
that Vassenka Veslovsky had pulled only one trigger, and had left the
other hammer still cocked. The charge flew into the ground without
doing harm to anyone. Stepan Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed
reprovingly at Veslovsky. But Levin had not the heart to reprove him.
In the first place, any reproach would have seemed to be called forth
by the danger he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Levin’s
forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so naïvely distressed,
and then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously at their general
dismay, that one could not but laugh with him.
When they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and would
inevitably take some time to shoot over, Levin tried to persuade them
to pass it by. But Veslovsky again overpersuaded him. Again, as the
marsh was narrow, Levin, like a good host, remained with the carriage.
Krak made straight for some clumps of sedge. Vassenka Veslovsky was the
first to run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come
up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown
meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow up. Krak found it
again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriage.
“Now you go and I’ll stay with the horses,” he said.
Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman’s envy. He handed the
reins to Veslovsky and walked into the marsh.
Laska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the
injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to a hopeful place that
Levin knew well, and that Krak had not yet come upon.
“Why don’t you stop her?” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“She won’t scare them,” answered Levin, sympathizing with his bitch’s
pleasure and hurrying after her.
As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was
more and more earnestness in Laska’s exploration. A little marsh bird
did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one
circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly
quivered with excitement and became motionless.
“Come, come, Stiva!” shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to beat
more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had
been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud,
began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard
the steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the
horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on
which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He
heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could
not explain to himself.
Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.
“Fetch it!”
Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted
his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of
splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of
Veslovsky’s voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw
he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.
When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the
horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.
Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and
got the horses stuck in the mud.
“Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the
carriage that had sunk in the mire. “What did you drive in for?” he
said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the
horses out.
Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses
getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither
Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to
unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the
slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply
to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin
worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But
then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was
tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it
indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of
yesterday’s feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be
particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When
everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back
to the road, Levin had the lunch served.
“_Bon appétit—bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu’au fond de
mes bottes_,” Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the
French saying as he finished his second chicken. “Well, now our
troubles are over, now everything’s going to go well. Only, to atone
for my sins, I’m bound to sit on the box. That’s so? eh? No, no! I’ll
be your Automedon. You shall see how I’ll get you along,” he answered,
not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman
drive. “No, I must atone for my sins, and I’m very comfortable on the
box.” And he drove.
Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the
chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he
fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he
sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he
gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the
very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.
Chapter 10
Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too
early, while it was still hot.
As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their
expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of
Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently
had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety
always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together
with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.
“How shall we go? It’s a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the
reeds. “Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game.”
“Now, gentlemen,” said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the
lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, “do you see those
reeds?” He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown
wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. “The marsh
begins here, straight in front of us, do you see—where it is greener?
From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding
places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that
alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the
pools are? That’s the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe.
We’ll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then
meet over there at the mill.”
“Well, which shall go to left and which to right?” asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch. “It’s wider to the right; you two go that way and I’ll
take the left,” he said with apparent carelessness.
“Capital! we’ll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!”
Vassenka exclaimed.
Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.
As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about
together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Levin knew
Laska’s method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected
a whole covey of snipe.
“Veslovsky, beside me, walk beside me!” he said in a faint voice to his
companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not help
feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that
casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.
“Oh, I won’t get in your way, don’t trouble about me.”
But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kitty’s words at
parting: “Mind you don’t shoot one another.” The dogs came nearer and
nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation
of snipe was so intense that to Levin the squelching sound of his own
heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a
snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun.
“Bang! bang!” sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock
of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment
towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to look
round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some
eight more rose one after another.
Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning
its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud.
Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds,
and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it
could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt
wing showing white beneath.
Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed;
he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant
another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he
missed again.
While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky,
who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the
water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes
looked at Levin.
“Well, now let us separate,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on
his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog,
he walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the
other.
It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure
he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was
that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up
from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen’s legs, and Levin
might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he
felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily
and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed
by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain
himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost
without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this.
She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as
it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots
in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen,
while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three
light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky
alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side
of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shots, not
frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each
they heard “Krak, Krak, _apporte_!”
This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in
the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and
their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the
snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again
before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of
them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.
After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky
reached the place where the peasants’ mowing-grass was divided into
long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the
trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these
strips had already been mown.
Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as
the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and
so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.
“Hi, sportsmen!” shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an
unharnessed cart; “come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of
wine!”
Levin looked round.
“Come along, it’s all right!” shouted a good-humored-looking bearded
peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding
up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.
“_Qu’est-ce qu’ils disent_?” asked Veslovsky.
“They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they’ve been dividing
the meadow into lots. I should have some,” said Levin, not without some
guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go
away to them.
“Why do they offer it?”
“Oh, they’re merry-making. Really, you should join them. You would be
interested.”
“_Allons, c’est curieux_.”
“You go, you go, you’ll find the way to the mill!” cried Levin, and
looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Veslovsky, bent and
stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at arm’s length, was
making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
“You come too!” the peasants shouted to Levin. “Never fear! You taste
our cake!”
Levin felt a strong inclination to drink a little vodka and to eat some
bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his
staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But
Laska was setting. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he
walked lightly through the swamp towards the dog. A snipe flew up at
his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.—“Fetch it!”
Another bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an
unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one
he had shot, he could not find that either. He wandered all about the
reeds, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her
to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really. And in
the absence of Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his failure,
things went no better. There were plenty of snipe still, but Levin made
one miss after another.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked
through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of
water weighed heavily on his leg and squeaked at every step; the sweat
ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of the
bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his
ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not
touch the stock of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short,
rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs
stumbled and staggered over the hillocks and in the swamp, but still he
walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he
flung his gun and his hat on the ground.
“No, I must control myself,” he said to himself. Picking up his gun and
his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got on to
dry ground he sat down, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked
to the marsh, drank some stagnant-tasting water, moistened his burning
hot gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back
to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.
He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the
cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and
worse.
He had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh
towards the alders where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak
darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over
with the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror
sniffed at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the
alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He came to meet
him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the
same way.
“Well? You have been popping away!” he said, smiling good-humoredly.
“How have you got on?” queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for
he had already seen the full game bag.
“Oh, pretty fair.”
He had fourteen birds.
“A splendid marsh! I’ve no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It’s
awkward too, shooting with one dog,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to
soften his triumph.
Chapter 11
When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasant’s hut where
Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting
in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from
which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant’s
wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was
laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.
“I’ve only just come. _Ils ont été charmants_. Just fancy, they gave me
drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! _Délicieux!_ And the
vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for
anything. And they kept saying: ‘Excuse our homely ways.’”
“What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be
sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?” said the soldier,
succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened
stocking.
In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their
boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of
marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives
and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish
only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn
swept ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for
the gentlemen.
Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.
After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and
of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that
interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed
his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant
hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because
the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that
had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their
respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful
shooting party at Malthus’s, where he had stayed the previous summer.
Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by
speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevitch described what
grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they
were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting
party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged
up at the marsh.
“I don’t understand you,” said Levin, sitting up in the hay; “how is it
such people don’t disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is
all very pleasant, but don’t you dislike just that very sumptuousness?
All these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get
their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They
don’t care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains
to buy off the contempt they have deserved.”
“Perfectly true!” chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. “Perfectly! Oblonsky,
of course, goes out of _bonhomie_, but other people say: ‘Well,
Oblonsky stays with them.’...”
“Not a bit of it.” Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as he
spoke. “I simply don’t consider him more dishonest than any other
wealthy merchant or nobleman. They’ve all made their money alike—by
their work and their intelligence.”
“Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and
speculate with them?”
“Of course it’s work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him
and others like him, there would have been no railways.”
“But that’s not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned
profession.”
“Granted, but it’s work in the sense that his activity produces a
result—the railways. But of course you think the railways useless.”
“No, that’s another question; I am prepared to admit that they’re
useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended
is dishonest.”
“But who is to define what is proportionate?”
“Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery,” said Levin, conscious
that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty.
“Such as banking, for instance,” he went on. “It’s an evil—the amassing
of huge fortunes without labor, just the same thing as with the spirit
monopolies, it’s only the form that’s changed. _Le roi est mort, vive
le roi_. No sooner were the spirit monopolies abolished than the
railways came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit without
work.”
“Yes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!” Stepan
Arkadyevitch called to his dog, who was scratching and turning over all
the hay. He was obviously convinced of the correctness of his position,
and so talked serenely and without haste. “But you have not drawn the
line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a bigger salary
than my chief clerk, though he knows more about the work than I
do—that’s dishonest, I suppose?”
“I can’t say.”
“Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, let’s
say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant here,
however hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is just
as dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus
getting more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that
society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which
is utterly baseless, and I fancy there’s envy at the bottom of it....”
“No, that’s unfair,” said Veslovsky; “how could envy come in? There is
something not nice about that sort of business.”
“You say,” Levin went on, “that it’s unjust for me to receive five
thousand, while the peasant has fifty; that’s true. It is unfair, and I
feel it, but....”
“It really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting,
doing nothing, while they are forever at work?” said Vassenka
Veslovsky, obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on the
question, and consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.
“Yes, you feel it, but you don’t give him your property,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.
There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the
two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind
of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life
best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conversation, as it
began to take a personal note.
“I don’t give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I
wanted to, I could not give it away,” answered Levin, “and have no one
to give it to.”
“Give it to this peasant, he would not refuse it.”
“Yes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a deed of
conveyance?”
“I don’t know; but if you are convinced that you have no right....”
“I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to
give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.”
“No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is
it you don’t act accordingly?...”
“Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to
increase the difference of position existing between him and me.”
“No, excuse me, that’s a paradox.”
“Yes, there’s something of a sophistry about that,” Veslovsky agreed.
“Ah! our host; so you’re not asleep yet?” he said to the peasant who
came into the barn, opening the creaking door. “How is it you’re not
asleep?”
“No, how’s one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep, but I
heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won’t bite?”
he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.
“And where are you going to sleep?”
“We are going out for the night with the beasts.”
“Ah, what a night!” said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the hut
and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint light of
the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. “But listen,
there are women’s voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too. Who’s
that singing, my friend?”
“That’s the maids from hard by here.”
“Let’s go, let’s have a walk! We shan’t go to sleep, you know.
Oblonsky, come along!”
“If one could only do both, lie here and go,” answered Oblonsky,
stretching. “It’s capital lying here.”
“Well, I shall go by myself,” said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly, and
putting on his shoes and stockings. “Good-bye, gentlemen. If it’s fun,
I’ll fetch you. You’ve treated me to some good sport, and I won’t
forget you.”
“He really is a capital fellow, isn’t he?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had closed the door after
him.
“Yes, capital,” answered Levin, still thinking of the subject of their
conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly
expressed his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and
yet both of them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one
voice that he was comforting himself with sophistries. This
disconcerted him.
“It’s just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either
admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for
one’s rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust
privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.”
“No, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and be
satisfied—at least I could not. The great thing for me is to feel that
I’m not to blame.”
“What do you say, why not go after all?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
evidently weary of the strain of thought. “We shan’t go to sleep, you
know. Come, let’s go!”
Levin did not answer. What they had said in the conversation, that he
acted justly only in a negative sense, absorbed his thoughts. “Can it
be that it’s only possible to be just negatively?” he was asking
himself.
“How strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, getting up. “There’s not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka
has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughing and his
voice? Hadn’t we better go? Come along!”
“No, I’m not coming,” answered Levin.
“Surely that’s not a matter of principle too,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.
“It’s not a matter of principle, but why should I go?”
“But do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and getting up.
“How so?”
“Do you suppose I don’t see the line you’ve taken up with your wife? I
heard how it’s a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not
you’re to be away for a couple of days’ shooting. That’s all very well
as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won’t answer. A man
must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be
manly,” said Oblonsky, opening the door.
“In what way? To go running after servant girls?” said Levin.
“Why not, if it amuses him? _Ça ne tire pas à conséquence_. It won’t do
my wife any harm, and it’ll amuse me. The great thing is to respect the
sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But don’t
tie your own hands.”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin dryly, and he turned on his side. “Tomorrow,
early, I want to go shooting, and I won’t wake anyone, and shall set
off at daybreak.”
“_Messieurs, venez vite!_” they heard the voice of Veslovsky coming
back. “_Charmante!_ I’ve made such a discovery. _Charmante!_ a perfect
Gretchen, and I’ve already made friends with her. Really, exceedingly
pretty,” he declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been made
pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing his satisfaction
with the entertainment that had been provided for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting on his slippers,
and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their voices
were lost.
For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard the horses
munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting ready
for the night, and going off for the night watch with the beasts, then
he heard the soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn,
with his nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the
boy in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about
the dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking
what the dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky,
sleepy voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to
the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the
boy’s questions, he said, “Go to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep, or you’ll
catch it,” and soon after he began snoring himself, and everything was
still. He could only hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry
of a snipe.
“Is it really only negative?” he repeated to himself. “Well, what of
it? It’s not my fault.” And he began thinking about the next day.
“Tomorrow I’ll go out early, and I’ll make a point of keeping cool.
There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse too. When I come back
there’ll be the note from Kitty. Yes, Stiva may be right, I’m not manly
with her, I’m tied to her apron-strings.... Well, it can’t be helped!
Negative again....”
Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky and
Stepan Arkadyevitch. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon was
up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they
were standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying something of the
freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and
Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably
said to him by a peasant: “Ah, you do your best to get round her!”
Levin, half asleep, said:
“Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!” and fell asleep.
Chapter 12
Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions.
Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out,
was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Oblonsky,
half asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep,
curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and
straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his boots
and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door
of the barn, Levin went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping
in their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating
oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still gray out-of-doors.
“Why are you up so early, my dear?” the old woman, their hostess, said,
coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old
friend.
“Going shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the marsh?”
“Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp
patches; there’s a little footpath.” Stepping carefully with her
sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Levin, and moved back the
fence for him by the threshing floor.
“Straight on and you’ll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the cattle
there yesterday evening.”
Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin followed her
with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the
sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not
delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone
only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one
could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at
all. What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside
could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not
visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin’s legs and his blouse above
his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the
pollen had already fallen out. In the transparent stillness of morning
the smallest sounds were audible. A bee flew by Levin’s ear with the
whizzing sound of a bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a
third. They were all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and
they disappeared over the hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The
path led straight to the marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the
mist which rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another,
so that the reeds and willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist.
At the edge of the marsh and the road, peasant boys and men, who had
been herding for the night, were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep
under their coats. Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of
them clanked a chain. Laska walked beside her master, pressing a little
forward and looking round. Passing the sleeping peasants and reaching
the first reeds, Levin examined his pistols and let his dog off. One of
the horses, a sleek, dark-brown three-year-old, seeing the dog, started
away, switched its tail and snorted. The other horses too were
frightened, and splashing through the water with their hobbled legs,
and drawing their hoofs out of the thick mud with a squelching sound,
they bounded out of the marsh. Laska stopped, looking ironically at the
horses and inquiringly at Levin. Levin patted Laska, and whistled as a
sign that she might begin.
Laska ran joyfully and anxiously through the slush that swayed under
her.
Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh
plants, and slime, and the extraneous smell of horse dung, Laska
detected at once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of
that strong-smelling bird that always excited her more than any other.
Here and there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very
strong, but it was impossible to determine in which direction it grew
stronger or fainter. To find the direction, she had to go farther away
from the wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs, Laska bounded with a
stiff gallop, so that at each bound she could stop short, to the right,
away from the wind that blew from the east before sunrise, and turned
facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated nostrils, she felt at
once that not their tracks only but they themselves were here before
her, and not one, but many. Laska slackened her speed. They were here,
but where precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very spot,
she began to make a circle, when suddenly her master’s voice drew her
off. “Laska! here?” he asked, pointing her to a different direction.
She stopped, asking him if she had better not go on doing as she had
begun. But he repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing to a
spot covered with water, where there could not be anything. She obeyed
him, pretending she was looking, so as to please him, went round it,
and went back to her former position, and was at once aware of the
scent again. Now when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do,
and without looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation
stumbling over a high stump into the water, but righting herself with
her strong, supple legs, she began making the circle which was to make
all clear to her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger,
and more and more defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to
her that one of them was here, behind this tuft of reeds, five paces in
front of her; she stopped, and her whole body was still and rigid. On
her short legs she could see nothing in front of her, but by the scent
she knew it was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood still,
feeling more and more conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation.
Her tail was stretched straight and tense, and only wagging at the
extreme end. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had
been turned wrong side out as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but
warily, and still more warily looked round, but more with her eyes than
her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face she knew so
well, though the eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the
stump as he came, and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily slowly.
She thought he came slowly, but he was running.
Noticing Laska’s special attitude as she crouched on the ground, as it
were, scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her mouth
slightly open, Levin knew she was pointing at grouse, and with an
inward prayer for luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to
her. Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height look beyond
her, and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing with her nose. In a
space between two little thickets, at a couple of yards’ distance, he
could see a grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly
preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a corner with a
clumsy wag of its tail.
“Fetch it, fetch it!” shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove from behind.
“But I can’t go,” thought Laska. “Where am I to go? From here I feel
them, but if I move forward I shall know nothing of where they are or
who they are.” But then he shoved her with his knee, and in an excited
whisper said, “Fetch it, Laska.”
“Well, if that’s what he wishes, I’ll do it, but I can’t answer for
myself now,” she thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs would
carry her between the thick bushes. She scented nothing now; she could
only see and hear, without understanding anything.
Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a guttural cry and
the peculiar round sound of its wings. And immediately after the shot
it splashed heavily with its white breast on the wet mire. Another bird
did not linger, but rose behind Levin without the dog. When Levin
turned towards it, it was already some way off. But his shot caught it.
Flying twenty paces further, the second grouse rose upwards, and
whirling round like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry place.
“Come, this is going to be some good!” thought Levin, packing the warm
and fat grouse into his game bag. “Eh, Laska, will it be good?”
When Levin, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully risen,
though unseen behind the storm-clouds. The moon had lost all of its
luster, and was like a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could
be seen. The sedge, silvery with dew before, now shone like gold. The
stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass had changed
to yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed about the brook
and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A
hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to
side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about
the field, and a bare-legged boy was driving the horses to an old man,
who had got up from under his long coat and was combing his hair. The
smoke from the gun was white as milk over the green of the grass.
One of the boys ran up to Levin.
“Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!” he shouted to him, and he
walked a little way off behind him.
And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his
approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off.
Chapter 13
The sportsman’s saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is
not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct.
At ten o’clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty
miles, returned to his night’s lodging with nineteen head of fine game
and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the
game bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get
hungry and have breakfast.
“Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,” said Levin,
counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much
less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked
aside, than they did when they were flying.
The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitch’s envy pleased Levin.
He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Kitty with a
note was already there.
“I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can
feel easier than ever. I’ve a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,”—this was
the midwife, a new and important personage in Levin’s domestic life.
“She has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we
have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please,
don’t be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay
another day.”
These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife,
were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly
over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had been
unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out
of sorts. The coachman said he was “Overdriven yesterday, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles with no sense!”
The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his
good humor, though later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find
that of all the provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that
one would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left.
On his way back, tired and hungry from shooting, Levin had so distinct
a vision of meat-pies that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell
and taste them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told
Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, nor
even any chicken.
“Well, this fellow’s appetite!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing and
pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. “I never suffer from loss of appetite,
but he’s really marvelous!...”
“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Levin, looking gloomily at Veslovsky.
“Well, Philip, give me some beef, then.”
“The beef’s been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs,” answered
Philip.
Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, “You might have
left me something!” and he felt ready to cry.
“Then put away the game,” he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying
not to look at Vassenka, “and cover them with some nettles. And you
might at least ask for some milk for me.”
But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at having
shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his hungry
mortification.
In the evening they went shooting again, and Veslovsky had several
successful shots, and in the night they drove home.
Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been.
Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the
peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, “Excuse our
homely ways,” and his night’s adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the
servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on
learning that he was not, said to him, “Well, mind you don’t run after
other men’s wives—you’d better get one of your own.” These words had
particularly amused Veslovsky.
“Altogether, I’ve enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?”
“I have, very much,” Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly
delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling
towards Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most
friendly disposition to him.
Chapter 14
Next day at ten o’clock Levin, who had already gone his rounds, knocked
at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.
“_Entrez!_” Veslovsky called to him. “Excuse me, I’ve only just
finished my ablutions,” he said, smiling, standing before him in his
underclothes only.
“Don’t mind me, please.” Levin sat down in the window. “Have you slept
well?”
“Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?”
“What will you take, tea or coffee?”
“Neither. I’ll wait till lunch. I’m really ashamed. I suppose the
ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses.”
After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing
some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin returned
to the house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing-room.
“We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!” said
Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the samovar. “What a
pity ladies are cut off from these delights!”
“Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,” Levin
said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the
all-conquering air with which their guest addressed Kitty....
The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya
Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and began
to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement, and
getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the
trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of
the event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the
approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on their
fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best
patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and
avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles
of linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance. The
birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised
him, but which he still could not believe in—so marvelous it
seemed—presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so
immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so
mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of what would
be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that
did happen to people, jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his
reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference,
and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Stepan Arkadyevitch
to look at a flat, and now she called Levin up.
“I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,” he said.
“You must decide when you will move.”
“I really don’t know. I know millions of children are born away from
Moscow, and doctors ... why....”
“But if so....”
“Oh, no, as Kitty wishes.”
“We can’t talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her? Why,
this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doctor.”
“I will do just what you say,” he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though the
conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was
gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at
the samovar.
“No, it’s impossible,” he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka
bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and
at her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenka’s attitude, in his eyes, in
his smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kitty’s attitude and
look. And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all
of a sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a
pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair,
rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful
to him.
“You do just as you think best, princess,” he said again, looking
round.
“Heavy is the cap of Monomach,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said playfully,
hinting, evidently, not simply at the princess’s conversation, but at
the cause of Levin’s agitation, which he had noticed.
“How late you are today, Dolly!”
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose for an
instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic of the
modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation
again, laughing at something.
“I’ve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is
dreadfully tiresome today,” said Dolly.
The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on the
same lines as on the previous evening, discussing Anna, and whether
love is to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty disliked
the conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the
tone in which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect
it would have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to
know how to cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the
superficial pleasure afforded her by the young man’s very obvious
admiration. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do.
Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her husband, and the
worst interpretation put on it. And, in fact, when she asked Dolly what
was wrong with Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting
conversation was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the
question struck Levin as an unnatural and disgusting piece of
hypocrisy.
“What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?” said
Dolly.
“By all means, please, and I shall come too,” said Kitty, and she
blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would
come, and she did not ask him. “Where are you going, Kostya?” she asked
her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute
step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
“The mechanician came when I was away; I haven’t seen him yet,” he
said, not looking at her.
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard
his wife’s familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him.
“What do you want?” he said to her shortly. “We are busy.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said to the German mechanician; “I want a few
words with my husband.”
The German would have left the room, but Levin said to him:
“Don’t disturb yourself.”
“The train is at three?” queried the German. “I mustn’t be late.”
Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.
“Well, what have you to say to me?” he said to her in French.
He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in
her condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.
“I ... I want to say that we can’t go on like this; that this is
misery....” she said.
“The servants are here at the sideboard,” he said angrily; “don’t make
a scene.”
“Well, let’s go in here!”
They were standing in the passage. Kitty would have gone into the next
room, but there the English governess was giving Tanya a lesson.
“Well, come into the garden.”
In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no longer
considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his
agitated face, that they looked like people fleeing from some disaster,
they went on with rapid steps, feeling that they must speak out and
clear up misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid of
the misery they were both feeling.
“We can’t go on like this! It’s misery! I am wretched; you are
wretched. What for?” she said, when they had at last reached a solitary
garden seat at a turn in the lime tree avenue.
“But tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly, not
nice, humiliatingly horrible?” he said, standing before her again in
the same position with his clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood
before her that night.
“Yes,” she said in a shaking voice; “but, Kostya, surely you see I’m
not to blame? All the morning I’ve been trying to take a tone ... but
such people.... Why did he come? How happy we were!” she said,
breathless with the sobs that shook her.
Although nothing had been pursuing them, and there was nothing to run
away from, and they could not possibly have found anything very
delightful on that garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment that
they passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant faces.
Chapter 15
After escorting his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly’s part of the
house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was in great distress too that
day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a little girl,
who stood in the corner roaring.
“And you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all
alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I won’t make you a new
frock,” she said, not knowing how to punish her.
“Oh, she is a disgusting child!” she turned to Levin. “Where does she
get such wicked propensities?”
“Why, what has she done?” Levin said without much interest, for he had
wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an
unlucky moment.
“Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there ... I can’t tell
you really what she did. It’s a thousand pities Miss Elliot’s not with
us. This one sees to nothing—she’s a machine.... _Figurez-vous que la
petite_?...”
And Darya Alexandrovna described Masha’s crime.
“That proves nothing; it’s not a question of evil propensities at all,
it’s simply mischief,” Levin assured her.
“But you are upset about something? What have you come for?” asked
Dolly. “What’s going on there?”
And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy for
him to say what he had meant to say.
“I’ve not been in there, I’ve been alone in the garden with Kitty.
We’ve had a quarrel for the second time since ... Stiva came.”
Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes.
“Come, tell me, honor bright, has there been ... not in Kitty, but in
that gentleman’s behavior, a tone which might be unpleasant—not
unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?”
“You mean, how shall I say.... Stay, stay in the corner!” she said to
Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her mother’s face, had been
turning round. “The opinion of the world would be that he is behaving
as young men do behave. _Il fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme_,
and a husband who’s a man of the world should only be flattered by it.”
“Yes, yes,” said Levin gloomily; “but you noticed it?”
“Not only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me
in so many words, _Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour à
Kitty_.”
“Well, that’s all right then; now I’m satisfied. I’ll send him away,”
said Levin.
“What do you mean! Are you crazy?” Dolly cried in horror; “nonsense,
Kostya, only think!” she said, laughing. “You can go now to Fanny,” she
said to Masha. “No, if you wish it, I’ll speak to Stiva. He’ll take him
away. He can say you’re expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn’t fit
into the house.”
“No, no, I’ll do it myself.”
“But you’ll quarrel with him?”
“Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it,” Levin said, his eyes flashing with
real enjoyment. “Come, forgive her, Dolly, she won’t do it again,” he
said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was standing
irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her
brows to catch her mother’s eye.
The mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face on
her mother’s lap, and Dolly laid her thin, tender hand on her head.
“And what is there in common between us and him?” thought Levin, and he
went off to look for Veslovsky.
As he passed through the passage he gave orders for the carriage to be
got ready to drive to the station.
“The spring was broken yesterday,” said the footman.
“Well, the covered trap, then, and make haste. Where’s the visitor?”
“The gentleman’s gone to his room.”
Levin came upon Veslovsky at the moment when the latter, having
unpacked his things from his trunk, and laid out some new songs, was
putting on his gaiters to go out riding.
Whether there was something exceptional in Levin’s face, or that
Vassenka was himself conscious that _ce petit brin de cour_ he was
making was out of place in this family, but he was somewhat (as much as
a young man in society can be) disconcerted at Levin’s entrance.
“You ride in gaiters?”
“Yes, it’s much cleaner,” said Vassenka, putting his fat leg on a
chair, fastening the bottom hook, and smiling with simple-hearted good
humor.
He was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Levin felt sorry for him
and ashamed of himself, as his host, when he saw the shy look on
Vassenka’s face.
On the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken together that
morning, trying their strength. Levin took the fragment in his hands
and began smashing it up, breaking bits off the stick, not knowing how
to begin.
“I wanted....” He paused, but suddenly, remembering Kitty and
everything that had happened, he said, looking him resolutely in the
face: “I have ordered the horses to be put-to for you.”
“How so?” Vassenka began in surprise. “To drive where?”
“For you to drive to the station,” Levin said gloomily.
“Are you going away, or has something happened?”
“It happens that I expect visitors,” said Levin, his strong fingers
more and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the split stick. “And
I’m not expecting visitors, and nothing has happened, but I beg you to
go away. You can explain my rudeness as you like.”
Vassenka drew himself up.
“I beg you to explain....” he said with dignity, understanding at last.
“I can’t explain,” Levin said softly and deliberately, trying to
control the trembling of his jaw; “and you’d better not ask.”
And as the split ends were all broken off, Levin clutched the thick
ends in his finger, broke the stick in two, and carefully caught the
end as it fell.
Probably the sight of those nervous fingers, of the muscles he had
proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the soft
voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any words. He
bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.
“Can I not see Oblonsky?”
The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin.
“What else was there for him to do?” he thought.
“I’ll send him to you at once.”
“What madness is this?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing
from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found
Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guest’s
departure. “_Mais c’est ridicule!_ What fly has stung you? _Mais c’est
du dernier ridicule!_ What did you think, if a young man....”
But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for
he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on
the reason, and he himself cut him short.
“Please don’t go into it! I can’t help it. I feel ashamed of how I’m
treating you and him. But it won’t be, I imagine, a great grief to him
to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.”
“But it’s insulting to him! _Et puis c’est ridicule_.”
“And to me it’s both insulting and distressing! And I’m not at fault in
any way, and there’s no need for me to suffer.”
“Well, this I didn’t expect of you! _On peut être jaloux, mais à ce
point, c’est du dernier ridicule!_”
Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the
avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the
rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting
in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap,
was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.
“What’s this?” Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and
stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally
forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky,
then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.
Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Levin’s action.
And he himself felt not only in the highest degree _ridicule_, but also
utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and
his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act
another time, he answered that he should do just the same again.
In spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the
princess, who could not pardon Levin’s action, became extraordinarily
lively and good-humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up
people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening
Vassenka’s dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as
though it were some remote event. And Dolly, who had inherited her
father’s gift of humorous storytelling, made Varenka helpless with
laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with
fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes
for the benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing-room,
heard suddenly the rumble of the trap. And who should be in the trap
but Vassenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his
gaiters, and all, sitting in the hay.
“If only you’d ordered out the carriage! But no! and then I hear:
‘Stop!’ Oh, I thought they’ve relented. I look out, and behold a fat
German being sat down by him and driving away.... And my new shoes all
for nothing!...”
Chapter 16
Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna. She
was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin disliked. She
quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have
anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and
show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change
in her position. That she might be independent of the Levins in this
expedition, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for
the drive; but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.
“What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did
dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my horses,” he
said. “You never told me that you were going for certain. Hiring horses
in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what’s of more importance,
they’ll undertake the job and never get you there. I have horses. And
if you don’t want to wound me, you’ll take mine.”
Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had ready
for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting them
together from the farm and saddle-horses—not at all a smart-looking
set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance in a
single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted for the princess,
who was going, and for the midwife, it was a difficult matter for Levin
to make up the number, but the duties of hospitality would not let him
allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house.
Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked
for the journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna’s
pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state, were
taken to heart by the Levins as if they were their own.
Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin’s advice, started before daybreak. The
road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted along
merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the counting-house
clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groom for greater security.
Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on reaching the inn where
the horses were to be changed.
After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant’s with whom Levin had
stayed on the way to Sviazhsky’s, and chatting with the women about
their children, and with the old man about Count Vronsky, whom the
latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna, at ten o’clock, went on
again. At home, looking after her children, she had no time to think.
So now, after this journey of four hours, all the thoughts she had
suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain, and she thought over
all her life as she never had before, and from the most different
points of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first
she thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although the
princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promised to look
after them. “If only Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha
isn’t kicked by a horse, and Lily’s stomach isn’t upset again!” she
thought. But these questions of the present were succeeded by questions
of the immediate future. She began thinking how she had to get a new
flat in Moscow for the coming winter, to renew the drawing-room
furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the
more remote future occurred to her: how she was to place her children
in the world. “The girls are all right,” she thought; “but the boys?”
“It’s very well that I’m teaching Grisha, but of course that’s only
because I am free myself now, I’m not with child. Stiva, of course,
there’s no counting on. And with the help of good-natured friends I can
bring them up; but if there’s another baby coming?...” And the thought
struck her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman was
that in sorrow she should bring forth children.
“The birth itself, that’s nothing; but the months of carrying the
child—that’s what’s so intolerable,” she thought, picturing to herself
her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. And she recalled
the conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On
being asked whether she had any children, the handsome young woman had
answered cheerfully:
“I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent.”
“Well, did you grieve very much for her?” asked Darya Alexandrovna.
“Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. It was only
a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie.”
This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as revolting in spite of the
good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but now she could
not help recalling these words. In those cynical words there was indeed
a grain of truth.
“Yes, altogether,” thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back over her
whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life,
“pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything,
and most of all—hideousness. Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even
Kitty has lost her looks; and I when I’m with child become hideous, I
know it. The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last moment
... then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful pains....”
Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from
sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child. “Then the
children’s illnesses, that everlasting apprehension; then bringing them
up; evil propensities” (she thought of little Masha’s crime among the
raspberries), “education, Latin—it’s all so incomprehensible and
difficult. And on the top of it all, the death of these children.” And
there rose again before her imagination the cruel memory, that always
tore her mother’s heart, of the death of her last little baby, who had
died of croup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at the
little pink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her lonely anguish at
the sight of the pale little brow with its projecting temples, and the
open, wondering little mouth seen in the coffin at the moment when it
was being covered with the little pink lid with a cross braided on it.
“And all this, what’s it for? What is to come of it all? That I’m
wasting my life, never having a moment’s peace, either with child, or
nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and
worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are
growing up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it
weren’t for spending the summer at the Levins’, I don’t know how we
should be managing to live. Of course Kostya and Kitty have so much
tact that we don’t feel it; but it can’t go on. They’ll have children,
they won’t be able to keep us; it’s a drag on them as it is. How is
papa, who has hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that I
can’t even bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with
the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even if we
suppose the greatest good luck, that the children don’t die, and I
bring them up somehow. At the very best they’ll simply be decent
people. That’s all I can hope for. And to gain simply that—what
agonies, what toil!... One’s whole life ruined!” Again she recalled
what the young peasant woman had said, and again she was revolted at
the thought; but she could not help admitting that there was a grain of
brutal truth in the words.
“Is it far now, Mihail?” Darya Alexandrovna asked the counting-house
clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were frightening her.
“From this village, they say, it’s five miles.” The carriage drove
along the village street and onto a bridge. On the bridge was a crowd
of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders,
gaily and noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring
inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to Darya
Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of
their enjoyment of life. “They’re all living, they’re all enjoying
life,” Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the peasant
women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the
soft springs of the old carriage, “while I, let out, as it were from
prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only
looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women
and my sister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to see—all,
but not I.
“And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a
husband I love—not as I should like to love him, still I do love him,
while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live.
God has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the
same. Even to this day I don’t feel sure I did right in listening to
her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then
to have cast off my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have
loved and have been loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I
don’t respect him. He’s necessary to me,” she thought about her
husband, “and I put up with him. Is that any better? At that time I
could still have been admired, I had beauty left me still,” Darya
Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would have liked to look at
herself in the looking-glass. She had a traveling looking-glass in her
handbag, and she wanted to take it out; but looking at the backs of the
coachman and the swaying counting-house clerk, she felt that she would
be ashamed if either of them were to look round, and she did not take
out the glass.
But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it was not
too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was always
particularly attentive to her, of Stiva’s good-hearted friend,
Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through the
scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone else, a
quite young man, who—her husband had told her it as a joke—thought her
more beautiful than either of her sisters. And the most passionate and
impossible romances rose before Darya Alexandrovna’s imagination. “Anna
did quite right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She
is happy, she makes another person happy, and she’s not broken down as
I am, but most likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to
every impression,” thought Darya Alexandrovna,—and a sly smile curved
her lips, for, as she pondered on Anna’s love affair, Darya
Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love
affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man
who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed the whole affair to
her husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at
this avowal made her smile.
In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led to
Vozdvizhenskoe.
Chapter 17
The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the right,
to a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a cart. The
counting-house clerk was just going to jump down, but on second
thoughts he shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned
to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove,
dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming
horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone
against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the
peasants got up and came towards the carriage.
“Well, you are slow!” the counting-house clerk shouted angrily to the
peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of the
rough dry road. “Come along, do!”
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and his
bent back dark with perspiration, came towards the carriage, quickening
his steps, and took hold of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.
“Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count’s?” he repeated; “go on to
the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight along the avenue
and you’ll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The count
himself?”
“Well, are they at home, my good man?” Darya Alexandrovna said vaguely,
not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.
“At home for sure,” said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to
the other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the
dust. “Sure to be at home,” he repeated, evidently eager to talk. “Only
yesterday visitors arrived. There’s a sight of visitors come. What do
you want?” He turned round and called to a lad, who was shouting
something to him from the cart. “Oh! They all rode by here not long
since, to look at a reaping machine. They’ll be home by now. And who
will you be belonging to?...”
“We’ve come a long way,” said the coachman, climbing onto the box. “So
it’s not far?”
“I tell you, it’s just here. As soon as you get out....” he said,
keeping hold all the while of the carriage.
A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.
“What, is it laborers they want for the harvest?” he asked.
“I don’t know, my boy.”
“So you keep to the left, and you’ll come right on it,” said the
peasant, unmistakably loth to let the travelers go, and eager to
converse.
The coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off
when the peasant shouted: “Stop! Hi, friend! Stop!” called the two
voices. The coachman stopped.
“They’re coming! They’re yonder!” shouted the peasant. “See what a
turn-out!” he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a
_char-à-banc_, coming along the road.
They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky and Anna on horseback, and
Princess Varvara and Sviazhsky in the _char-à-banc_. They had gone out
to look at the working of a new reaping machine.
When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a
walking pace. Anna was in front beside Veslovsky. Anna, quietly walking
her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her
beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her high hat,
her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black riding habit, and
all the ease and grace of her deportment, impressed Dolly.
For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Anna to be on
horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in
Darya Alexandrovna’s mind, associated with ideas of youthful flirtation
and frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Anna’s
position. But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her closer, she was
at once reconciled to her riding. In spite of her elegance, everything
was so simple, quiet, and dignified in the attitude, the dress and the
movements of Anna, that nothing could have been more natural.
Beside Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was Vassenka
Veslovsky in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his stout legs
stretched out in front, obviously pleased with his own appearance.
Darya Alexandrovna could not suppress a good-humored smile as she
recognized him. Behind rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare, obviously
heated from galloping. He was holding her in, pulling at the reins.
After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviazhsky and
Princess Varvara in a new _char-à-banc_ with a big, raven-black
trotting horse, overtook the party on horseback.
Anna’s face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when, in
the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she
recognized Dolly. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set her
horse into a gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off without
assistance, and holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Dolly.
“I thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You can’t
fancy how glad I am!” she said, at one moment pressing her face against
Dolly and kissing her, and at the next holding her off and examining
her with a smile.
“Here’s a delightful surprise, Alexey!” she said, looking round at
Vronsky, who had dismounted, and was walking towards them.
Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.
“You wouldn’t believe how glad we are to see you,” he said, giving
peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth
in a smile.
Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took off his cap and
greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his head.
“That’s Princess Varvara,” Anna said in reply to a glance of inquiry
from Dolly as the _char-à-banc_ drove up.
“Ah!” said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her face betrayed her
dissatisfaction.
Princess Varvara was her husband’s aunt, and she had long known her,
and did not respect her. She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her
whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be
sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on
account of her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed Dolly’s
expression, and was disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her riding
habit, and stumbled over it.
Darya Alexandrovna went up to the _char-à-banc_ and coldly greeted
Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky too she knew. He inquired how his queer
friend with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the
ill-matched horses and the carriage with its patched mud-guards,
proposed to the ladies that they should get into the _char-à-banc_.
“And I’ll get into this vehicle,” he said. “The horse is quiet, and the
princess drives capitally.”
“No, stay as you were,” said Anna, coming up, “and we’ll go in the
carriage,” and taking Dolly’s arm, she drew her away.
Darya Alexandrovna’s eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant carriage
of a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid horses, and the
elegant and gorgeous people surrounding her. But what struck her most
of all was the change that had taken place in Anna, whom she knew so
well and loved. Any other woman, a less close observer, not knowing
Anna before, or not having thought as Darya Alexandrovna had been
thinking on the road, would not have noticed anything special in Anna.
But now Dolly was struck by that temporary beauty, which is only found
in women during the moments of love, and which she saw now in Anna’s
face. Everything in her face, the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks
and chin, the line of her lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered
about her face, the brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of
her movements, the fulness of the notes of her voice, even the manner
in which, with a sort of angry friendliness, she answered Veslovsky
when he asked permission to get on her cob, so as to teach it to gallop
with the right leg foremost—it was all peculiarly fascinating, and it
seemed as if she were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in it.
When both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden embarrassment
came over both of them. Anna was disconcerted by the intent look of
inquiry Dolly fixed upon her. Dolly was embarrassed because after
Sviazhsky’s phrase about “this vehicle,” she could not help feeling
ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was sitting with her.
The coachman Philip and the counting-house clerk were experiencing the
same sensation. The counting-house clerk, to conceal his confusion,
busied himself settling the ladies, but Philip the coachman became
sullen, and was bracing himself not to be overawed in future by this
external superiority. He smiled ironically, looking at the raven horse,
and was already deciding in his own mind that this smart trotter in the
_char-à-banc_ was only good for _promenage_, and wouldn’t do thirty
miles straight off in the heat.
The peasants had all got up from the cart and were inquisitively and
mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their comments
on it.
“They’re pleased, too; haven’t seen each other for a long while,” said
the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.
“I say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to cart
the corn, that ’ud be quick work!”
“Look-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?” said one of them, pointing to
Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a side saddle.
“Nay, a man! See how smartly he’s going it!”
“Eh, lads! seems we’re not going to sleep, then?”
“What chance of sleep today!” said the old man, with a sidelong look at
the sun. “Midday’s past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come along!”
Chapter 18
Anna looked at Dolly’s thin, care-worn face, with its wrinkles filled
with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she
was thinking, that is, that Dolly had got thinner. But, conscious that
she herself had grown handsomer, and that Dolly’s eyes were telling her
so, she sighed and began to speak about herself.
“You are looking at me,” she said, “and wondering how I can be happy in
my position? Well! it’s shameful to confess, but I ... I’m inexcusably
happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you’re
frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the
horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery,
the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since we’ve been
here, I’ve been so happy!...” she said, with a timid smile of inquiry
looking at Dolly.
“How glad I am!” said Dolly smiling, involuntarily speaking more coldly
than she wanted to. “I’m very glad for you. Why haven’t you written to
me?”
“Why?... Because I hadn’t the courage.... You forget my position....”
“To me? Hadn’t the courage? If you knew how I ... I look at....”
Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of the morning, but
for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.
“But of that we’ll talk later. What’s this, what are all these
buildings?” she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing
to the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges
of acacia and lilac. “Quite a little town.”
But Anna did not answer.
“No, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?” she
asked.
“I consider....” Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but at that instant
Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob to gallop with the right leg
foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and down in his short
jacket on the chamois leather of the side saddle. “He’s doing it, Anna
Arkadyevna!” he shouted.
Anna did not even glance at him; but again it seemed to Darya
Alexandrovna out of place to enter upon such a long conversation in the
carriage, and so she cut short her thought.
“I don’t think anything,” she said, “but I always loved you, and if one
loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as
one would like them to be....”
Anna, taking her eyes off her friend’s face and dropping her eyelids
(this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her before), pondered,
trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And obviously
interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at Dolly.
“If you had any sins,” she said, “they would all be forgiven you for
your coming to see me and these words.”
And Dolly saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Anna’s hand in
silence.
“Well, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!” After a
moment’s silence she repeated her question.
“These are the servants’ houses, barns, and stables,” answered Anna.
“And there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but Alexey had
everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and, what I never
expected, he has become intensely interested in looking after it. But
his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does splendidly. So
far from being bored by it, he works with passionate interest. He—with
his temperament as I know it—he has become careful and businesslike, a
first-rate manager, he positively reckons every penny in his management
of the land. But only in that. When it’s a question of tens of
thousands, he doesn’t think of money.” She spoke with that gleefully
sly smile with which women often talk of the secret characteristics
only known to them—of those they love. “Do you see that big building?
that’s the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a hundred
thousand; that’s his hobby just now. And do you know how it all came
about? The peasants asked him for some meadowland, I think it was, at a
cheaper rate, and he refused, and I accused him of being miserly. Of
course it was not really because of that, but everything together, he
began this hospital to prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about
money. _C’est une petitesse_, if you like, but I love him all the more
for it. And now you’ll see the house in a moment. It was his
grandfather’s house, and he has had nothing changed outside.”
“How beautiful!” said Dolly, looking with involuntary admiration at the
handsome house with columns, standing out among the different-colored
greens of the old trees in the garden.
“Isn’t it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is
wonderful.”
They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with flowers,
in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of stones round
the light mould of a flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.
“Ah, they’re here already!” said Anna, looking at the saddle horses,
which were just being led away from the steps. “It is a nice horse,
isn’t it? It’s my cob; my favorite. Lead him here and bring me some
sugar. Where is the count?” she inquired of two smart footmen who
darted out. “Ah, there he is!” she said, seeing Vronsky coming to meet
her with Veslovsky.
“Where are you going to put the princess?” said Vronsky in French,
addressing Anna, and without waiting for a reply, he once more greeted
Darya Alexandrovna, and this time he kissed her hand. “I think the big
balcony room.”
“Oh, no, that’s too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see
each other more. Come, let’s go up,” said Anna, as she gave her
favorite horse the sugar the footman had brought her.
“_Et vous oubliez votre devoir_,” she said to Veslovsky, who came out
too on the steps.
“_Pardon, j’en ai tout plein les poches_,” he answered, smiling,
putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.
“_Mais vous venez trop tard_,” she said, rubbing her handkerchief on
her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar.
Anna turned to Dolly. “You can stay some time? For one day only? That’s
impossible!”
“I promised to be back, and the children....” said Dolly, feeling
embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage,
and because she knew her face must be covered with dust.
“No, Dolly, darling!... Well, we’ll see. Come along, come along!” and
Anna led Dolly to her room.
That room was not the smart guest chamber Vronsky had suggested, but
the one of which Anna had said that Dolly would excuse it. And this
room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in
which Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best
hotels abroad.
“Well, darling, how happy I am!” Anna said, sitting down in her riding
habit for a moment beside Dolly. “Tell me about all of you. Stiva I had
only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my
favorite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?”
“Yes, she’s very tall,” Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly, surprised
herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. “We are
having a delightful stay at the Levins’,” she added.
“Oh, if I had known,” said Anna, “that you do not despise me!... You
might have all come to us. Stiva’s an old friend and a great friend of
Alexey’s, you know,” she added, and suddenly she blushed.
“Yes, but we are all....” Dolly answered in confusion.
“But in my delight I’m talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is
that I am so glad to have you!” said Anna, kissing her again. “You
haven’t told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting
to know. But I’m glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I
shouldn’t like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything.
I don’t want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one
harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven’t I? But it is a
big subject, and we’ll talk over everything properly later. Now I’ll go
and dress and send a maid to you.”
Chapter 19
Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewife’s eye, scanned
her room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through
it, and all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth
and sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which she had
only read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia and in the
country. Everything was new from the new French hangings on the walls
to the carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring
mattress, and a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases on the
little pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing table, the little
sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the chimney piece, the window
curtains, and the _portières_ were all new and expensive.
The smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done
up high, and a gown more fashionable than Dolly’s, was as new and
expensive as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her
deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her.
She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had
unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very
patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At
home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would be
needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen pence the yard, which
was a matter of thirty shillings besides the cutting-out and making,
and these thirty shillings had been saved. But before the maid she
felt, if not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.
Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom she
had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to go to
her mistress, and Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna.
Annushka was obviously much pleased at that lady’s arrival, and began
to chatter away without a pause. Dolly observed that she was longing to
express her opinion in regard to her mistress’s position, especially as
to the love and devotion of the count to Anna Arkadyevna, but Dolly
carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak about this.
“I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my lady’s dearer to me than anything.
Well, it’s not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems so much
love....”
“Kindly pour out the water for me to wash now, please,” Darya
Alexandrovna cut her short.
“Certainly. We’ve two women kept specially for washing small things,
but most of the linen’s done by machinery. The count goes into
everything himself. Ah, what a husband!...”
Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her entrance put a stop to
Annushka’s gossip.
Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly scrutinized that
simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at which
such simplicity was obtained.
“An old friend,” said Anna of Annushka.
Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at ease.
Dolly saw that she had now completely recovered from the impression her
arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless
tone which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which
her deeper feelings and ideas were kept.
“Well, Anna, and how is your little girl?” asked Dolly.
“Annie?” (This was what she called her little daughter Anna.) “Very
well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her? Come, I’ll
show her to you. We had a terrible bother,” she began telling her,
“over nurses. We had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so
stupid! We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her
that we’ve gone on keeping her still.”
“But how have you managed?...” Dolly was beginning a question as to
what name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown on
Anna’s face, she changed the drift of her question.
“How did you manage? have you weaned her yet?”
But Anna had understood.
“You didn’t mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname. Yes?
That worries Alexey. She has no name—that is, she’s a Karenina,” said
Anna, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes
meeting. “But we’ll talk about all that later,” her face suddenly
brightening. “Come, I’ll show you her. _Elle est très gentille_. She
crawls now.”
In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in the whole house
struck her still more. There were little go-carts ordered from England,
and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a
billiard table, purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and
baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English,
solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The room was
large, and very light and lofty.
When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock, was
sitting in a little elbow chair at the table, having her dinner of
broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby was
being fed, and the Russian nursery maid was evidently sharing her meal.
Neither the wet-nurse nor the head-nurse were there; they were in the
next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in the queer
French which was their only means of communication.
Hearing Anna’s voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a disagreeable
face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door, hurriedly
shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to defend herself though
Anna had not found fault with her. At every word Anna said, the English
nurse said hurriedly several times, “Yes, my lady.”
The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red little
body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya Alexandrovna in spite
of the cross expression with which she stared at the stranger. She
positively envied the baby’s healthy appearance. She was delighted,
too, at the baby’s crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled
like that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its little dress
tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming. Looking round like some
little wild animal at the grown-up big people with her bright black
eyes, she smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and
holding her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and
rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step
forward with her little arms.
But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the English
nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only on the
supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a
household as Anna’s that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself
how Anna with her insight into people could take such an
unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child.
Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna saw at
once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no common existence,
and that the mother’s visit was something exceptional. Anna wanted to
get the baby her plaything, and could not find it.
Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many teeth the
baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about the two last
teeth.
“I sometimes feel sorry I’m so superfluous here,” said Anna, going out
of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape the plaything
standing in the doorway. “It was very different with my first child.”
“I expected it to be the other way,” said Darya Alexandrovna shyly.
“Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?” said Anna, screwing
up her eyes, as though looking at something far away. “But we’ll talk
about that later. You wouldn’t believe it, I’m like a hungry beggar
woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what
to begin on first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me
with you, which I could never have with anyone else; and I don’t know
which subject to begin upon first. _Mais je ne vous ferai grâce de
rien_. I must have everything out with you.”
“Oh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with
us,” she went on. “I’ll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara—you
know her, and I know your opinion and Stiva’s about her. Stiva says the
whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie
Katerina Pavlovna: that’s all true; but she’s a good-natured woman, and
I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a
chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But
really she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my
position. I see you don’t understand all the difficulty of my position
... there in Petersburg,” she added. “Here I’m perfectly at ease and
happy. Well, of that later on, though. Then Sviazhsky—he’s the marshal
of the district, and he’s a very good sort of a man, but he wants to
get something out of Alexey. You understand, with his property, now
that we are settled in the country, Alexey can exercise great
influence. Then there’s Tushkevitch—you have seen him, you know—Betsy’s
admirer. Now he’s been thrown over and he’s come to see us. As Alexey
says, he’s one of those people who are very pleasant if one accepts
them for what they try to appear to be, _et puis il est comme il faut_,
as Princess Varvara says. Then Veslovsky ... you know him. A very nice
boy,” she said, and a sly smile curved her lips. “What’s this wild
story about him and the Levins? Veslovsky told Alexey about it, and we
don’t believe it. _Il est très gentil et naïf_,” she said again with
the same smile. “Men need occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I
value all these people. We have to have the house lively and gay, so
that Alexey may not long for any novelty. Then you’ll see the steward—a
German, a very good fellow, and he understands his work. Alexey has a
very high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a
Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his knife ... but a very good
doctor. Then the architect.... _Une petite cour!_”
Chapter 20
“Here’s Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her,” said
Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna onto the stone terrace where
Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame,
working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitch’s easy chair. “She
says she doesn’t want anything before dinner, but please order some
lunch for her, and I’ll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in.”
Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather patronizing reception,
and began at once explaining to her that she was living with Anna
because she had always cared more for her than her sister Katerina
Pavlovna, the aunt that had brought Anna up, and that now, when
everyone had abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help her in
this most difficult period of transition.