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Anna
Karennina
by
Leo Tolstoy
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Sergei Ivanovich Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and instead of
going abroad as he usually did, he came toward the end of May to stay in the
country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of life was a country
life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin
was very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his brother Nikolai
that summer. But in spite of his affection and respect for Sergei Ivanovich,
Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him
uncomfortable, and it even annoyed him, to see his brother's attitude to the
country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of life- that is of
pleasures, endeavors, labor; to Sergei Ivanovich the country meant on one hand
rest from work, on the other a valuable antidote to laxness- an antidote which
he took with satisfaction and a sense of its salutariness. To Konstantin Levin
the country was good because it afforded a field for labor, of the usefulness of
which there could be no doubt; to Sergei Ivanovich the country was particularly
good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing. Moreover, Sergei
Ivanovich's attitude toward "the people" rather piqued Konstantin.
Sergei Ivanovich used to say that he knew and liked "the people," and
he often talked to the peasants, which he knew how to do without affectation or
condescension, and from every such conversation he would deduce general
conclusions in favor of "the people" and in confirmation of his
knowing them. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude toward "the
people." To Konstantin "the people" was simply the chief partner
in the common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like
that of kinship, he had for the peasant (sucked in probably, as he said himself,
with the milk of his peasant nurse), Konstantin as a fellow worker with them,
while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these
men, was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities,
exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, slovenliness, drunkenness and
lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn't like "the
people," Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to
reply. He liked and did not like "the people," just as he liked and
did not like men in general. Of course, being a goodhearted man, he liked men
more than he disliked them, and so too with "the people." But like or
dislike "the people" as something peculiar he could not, not only
because he lived with "the people," and all his interests were bound
up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of "the
people," did not see any peculiar qualities or failings distinguishing
himself from "the people," and could not contrast himself with them.
Moreover, although he had lived so long in the closest relations with the
peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser (the peasants
trusted him, and for forty verstas round they would come to ask his advice), he
had no definite views of "the people," and would have been as much at
a loss to answer the question whether he knew "the people" as the
question whether he liked them. For him to say he knew "the people"
would have been the same as to say he knew men. He was continually watching and
getting to know people of all sorts, and among them peasants, whom he regarded
as good and interesting people, and he was continually observing new points in
them, altering his former views of them and forming new ones. |
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With Sergei Ivanovich it was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and
praised a country life in comparison with the life he did not like, so too he
liked "the people" in contradistinction to the class of men he did not
like, and so too he knew "the people" as something distinct from, and
opposed to, men in general. In his methodical brain there were distinctly
formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from that life
itself, but chiefly from contrast with other modes of life. He never changed his
opinion of "the people" and his sympathetic attitude toward them. |
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In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views of
"the people," Sergei Ivanovich always got the better of his brother,
precisely because Sergei Ivanovich had definite ideas about the peasant- his
character, his qualities, and his tastes; Konstantin Levin had no definite and
unalterable idea on the subject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was
readily convicted of contradicting himself. |
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In Sergei Ivanovich's eyes his younger brother was a capital fellow, with
his heart in the right place (as he expressed it in French), but with a mind
which, though fairly quick, was too much influenced by the impressions of the
moment, and consequently filled with contradictions. With all the condescension
of an elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of things, but
he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him because he got the better
of him too easily. |
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Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and
culture, as generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of a
special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of his heart,
the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and
more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of working for the
public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a
quality as a lack of something- not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and
tastes, but a lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse
which drives a man to choose some one out of the innumerable paths of life, and
to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed
that Sergei Ivanovich, and many other people who worked for the public welfare,
were not led by any impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but
reasoned from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take an
interest in public affairs, and consequently took an interest in them. Levin was
confirmed in this conjecture by observing that his brother did not take
questions affecting the public welfare or the question of the immortality of the
soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious
construction of a new machine. |
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Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his brother,
because in the country, especially in summertime, Levin was continually busy
with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long enough for him to
get through all he had to do, while Sergei Ivanovich was merely taking a
holiday. But though he was taking a holiday now- that is to say, he was doing no
writing- he was so used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into
concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to have
someone listen to him. His most usual and natural listener was his brother. And
so, in spite of the friendliness and directness of their relations, Konstantin
felt an awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergei Ivanovich liked to stretch
himself on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily. |
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"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what
a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain- as empty as
a drum!" |
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But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,
especially when he knew that while he was away manure would be carted into
fields not plowed ready for it, and heaped up God knows how; and the shares in
the plows would not be screwed in, so that they would come off, and then his men
would say the new plows were a silly invention, and there was nothing like the
old wooden plow, and so on. |
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"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," Sergei
Ivanovich would say to him. |
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"No, I must just run round to the countinghouse for a minute,"
Levin would answer, and would run off to the fields. |
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Early in June Agathya Mikhailovna, the old nurse and housekeeper, in
carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just pickled, happened to
slip, fall and sprain her wrist. The district doctor, a talkative young medico
who had just finished his studies, came to see her. He examined the wrist, said
it was not luxated, bandaged it, and being asked to dinner evidently was
delighted at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergei Ivanovich Koznishev,
and to show his advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the
district, complaining of the poor state into which the Zemstvo affairs had
fallen. Sergei Ivanovich listened attentively, asked him questions, and, roused
by a new listener, he talked fluently, uttered a few keen and weighty
observations, respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and was soon in that
animated frame of mind his brother knew so well, which always, with him,
followed a brilliant and animated conversation. After the departure of the
doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing rod to the river. Sergei Ivanovich was
fond of angling, and was, it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a
stupid occupation. |
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Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plowland and the
meadows, had come to take his brother in the cabriolet. |
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It was that time of the year, the turning point of summer, when the crops
of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of the sowing for
next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is all in ear, though its
ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the
wind; when the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and there
among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat
is already out and hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as
stone by the cattle, are half-plowed over, with paths left untouched by the
plow; when the odor from the dry manure heaps carted into the fields mingles at
sunset with the smell of meadowsweet, and on the low-lying lands the preserved
meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of
sorrel stalks among it. |
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It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the fields
before the beginning of the labors of harvest- every year recurring, every year
claiming all the peasant's thews. The crop was a splendid one, and bright, hot
summer days had set in with short, dewy nights. |
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The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows. Sergei
Ivanovich was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods, which were a
tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an old lime tree on the
point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and brightly spotted with yellow
stipules, now the young shoots of this year's saplings brilliant with emerald.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature.
Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his
brother said, but could not help thinking of other things. When they came out of
the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow land on the
upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and checkered with
furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of manure, and in parts even plowed. A
string of telegas was moving across it. Levin counted the telegas, and was
pleased that all that were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the
meadows his thoughts passed to the mowing. He always felt something peculiar
moving him to the quick at haymaking. On reaching the meadow Levin stopped the
horse. |
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The
morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass, and, that he
might not get his feet wet, Sergei Ivanovich asked his brother to drive him in
the cabriolet up to the willow tree from which the perch were caught. Sorry as
Konstantin Levin was to crush down his mowing grass, he drove him into the
meadow. The high grass softly turned about the wheels and the horse's legs,
leaving its seeds clinging to the wet axles and spokes of the wheels. |
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His brother seated himself under a bush, arranging his tackle, while
Levin led the horse away, tied him up and walked into the vast gray-green sea of
grass unstirred by the wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to
his waist in the riverside spots. |
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Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out on the road, and met an
old man with a swollen eye, carrying a swarming basket with bees. |
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"What? Taken a stray swarm, Fomich?" he asked. |
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"No, indeed, Konstantin Mitrich! All we can do to keep our own! This
is the second new swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught them.
They were plowing your field. They unyoked the horses and galloped after
them." |
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"Well, what do you say, Fomich- start mowing or wait a bit?" |
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"Well, now! Our way's to wait till St. Peter's Day. But you always
mow sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay's good. There'll be plenty for
the beasts." |
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"What do you think about the weather?" |
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"That's in God's hands. Maybe even the weather will favor us." |
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Levin walked up to his brother. |
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Sergei Ivanovich had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed in
the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that, stimulated by his conversation
with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Levin, on the other hand, would have liked
to get home as soon as possible, to give orders about getting together the
mowers for next day, and to set at rest his doubts about the mowing, which
greatly absorbed him. |
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"Well, let's be going," he said. |
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"Why be in such a hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you are!
Even though one catches nothing, it's fine. That's the best thing about every
part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this steely water
is!" said Sergei Ivanovich. "These riverside banks always remind me of
the riddle- do you know it? 'The grass says to the river: we quiver and we
quiver.'" |
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"I don't know the riddle," answered Levin cheerlessly. |
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"Do you know I've been thinking about you," said Sergei
Ivanovich. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the district,
according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very intelligent fellow. And as
I've told you before, I tell you again: it's not right for you not to go to the
meetings, and to keep out of the Zemstvo affairs entirely. If decent people
won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it
all goes in salaries, and there are no schools, nor district dressers, nor
midwives, nor pharmacies- nothing." |
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"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said gently and unwillingly.
"I can't! And so there's no help for it." |
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"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out. Indifference,
incapacity- I won't admit; surely it's not simply laziness?" |
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"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"
said Levin. |
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He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking toward the
plowland across the river, he made out something black, but he could not
distinguish whether it was a horse or the bailiff on horseback. |
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"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn't
succeed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have so little
ambition?" |
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"Ambition!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's
words; "I don't understand. If they'd told me at college that other people
understood the integral calculus, and I didn't, then ambition would have come
in. But in this case one wants first to be convinced that one has certain
abilities for this sort of business, and especially that all this business is of
great importance." |
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"What! Do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said Sergei
Ivanovich, stung to the quick in his turn by his brother's considering of no
importance anything that interested him, and still more at his obviously paying
little attention to what he was saying. |
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"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me- I can't
help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was the bailiff, and
that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants go off the plowed land. They
were turning the plow over. "Can they have finished plowing?" he
wondered. |
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"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on
his handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's very well
to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything hypocritical- I know all
about that; but really, what you're saying either has no meaning, or it has a
very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter of no importance whether 'the
people,' whom you love as you assert..." |
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"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin. |
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"...die without help? The ignorant peasant women starve the
children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of
every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping them,
and don't help them because to your mind it's of no importance!" |
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And Sergei Ivanovich put before him the dilemma: Either you are so
undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your
ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it. |
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Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to submit,
or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And this mortified him and
hurt his feelings. |
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"It's both," he said resolutely; "I don't see that it is
possible..." |
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"What! Is it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to
provide medical aid?" |
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"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the four thousand square
verstas of our district, what with our undersnow waters, and the storms, and the
work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible to provide medical aid all
over. And besides, I don't believe in medicine." |
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"Oh, well, that's unfair.... I can quote to you thousands of
instances.... But the schools, at least?" |
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"Why have schools?" |
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"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of
education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for everyone." |
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Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and so he
became heated, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of his indifference
to public business. |
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"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself
about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools to
which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants don't want to
send their children, and to which I've no very firm faith that they ought to
send them?" said he. |
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Sergei Ivanovich was for a minute surprised at this unexpected view of
the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack. |
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He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again, and
turned to his brother smiling. |
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"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We
ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agathya Mikhailovna." |
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"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again." |
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"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read and
write is as a workman of more use and value to you." |
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"No; you can ask anyone you like," Konstantin Levin answered
with decision, "the man that can read and write is much inferior as a
workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and as soon as they put
up bridges they're stolen." |
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"Still, that's not the point," said Sergei Ivanovich, frowning.
He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually
skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so
that there was no knowing to which to reply. "Let me say. Do you admit that
education is a benefit for the people?" |
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"Yes, I admit it," said Levin without thinking, and he was
conscious immediately that he had said what he did not think. He felt that if he
admitted that, it would be proved that he had been talking meaningless rubbish.
How it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew that this would inevitably
be logically proved to him, and he awaited the proofs. |
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The argument turned out to be far simpler than Konstantin Levin had
expected. |
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"If you admit that it is a benefit," said Sergei Ivanovich,
"then, as an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and sympathizing
with the movement, and so wishing to work for it." |
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"But I still do not admit this movement to be good," said
Konstantin Levin, reddening. |
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"What! But you just said now..." |
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"That's to say, I don't admit it's being either good or
possible." |
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"That you can't tell without making the trial." |
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"Well, supposing that is so," said Levin, though he did not
suppose so at all, "supposing that is so, still I don't see, all the same,
why I should worry myself about it." |
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"How so?" |
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"No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the philosophical
point of view," said Levin. |
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"I can't see where philosophy comes in," said Sergei Ivanovich,
in a tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit his brother's right to talk
about philosophy. And that irritated Levin. |
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"I'll tell you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine the
mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the Zemstvo
institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my prosperity.
The roads are not better and could not be better; my horses carry me well enough
over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are of no use to me. A justice of the
peace is of no use to me- I never appeal to him, and never shall appeal to him.
The schools are of no good to me, but positively harmful, as I told you. For me
the Zemstvo institutions simply mean the liability of paying eighteen kopecks
for every dessiatina, of driving into the town, sleeping with bedbugs, and
listening to all sorts of idiocy and blather, and self-interest offers me no
inducement." |
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"Excuse me," Sergei Ivanovich interposed with a smile,
"self-interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation of the serfs,
yet we did work for it." |
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"No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat;
"the emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There self-interest
did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us- all the decent
people among us. But to be a member of the Zemstvo and discuss how many street
cleaners are needed, and how sewers shall be constructed in the town in which I
don't live- to serve on a jury and try a peasant who has stolen a flitch of
bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the
counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining
my old simpleton Alioshka: 'Do you admit, prisoner at the bar, the fact of the
removal of the bacon'- 'Eh?'" |
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Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking the
president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that it was all to the
point. |
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But Sergei Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders. |
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"Well, what do you mean to say, then?" |
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"I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me... my
interest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that when raids were
made on us students, and the police read our letters, I was ready to defend
those rights to the utmost, to defend my rights to education and freedom. I can
understand compulsory military service, which affects my children, my brothers,
and myself- I am ready to deliberate on what concerns me; but deliberating on
how to spend forty thousand roubles of Zemstvo's money, or judging the
half-witted Alioshka- that I don't understand, and I can't do it." |
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Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had burst
open. Sergei Ivanovich smiled. |
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"But tomorrow it'll be your turn to be tried; would it have suited
your tastes better to be tried in the old criminal court?" |
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"I'm not going to be tried. I shan't murder anybody, and I've no
need of it. Well, I tell you what," he went on, flying off again to a
subject quite beside the point, "our district self-government and all the
rest of it- it's just like the birch saplings we stick in the ground, as we
would do it on Trinity Day, to look like a copse which has grown up of itself in
Europe, and I can't gush over these birch saplings and believe in them." |
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Sergei Ivanovich merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to express his
wonder how the birch saplings had come into their argument at that point, though
he did really understand at once what his brother meant. |
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"Excuse me, but you know one really can't argue in that way,"
he observed. |
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But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing, of which
he was conscious, of a lack of zeal for the public welfare, and he went on. |
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"I imagine," Konstantin said, "that no sort of activity is
likely to be lasting if it is not founded on self-interest- that's a universal
principle, a philosophical principle," he said, repeating the word
"philosophical" with determination, as though wishing to show that he
had as much right as anyone else to talk of philosophy. |
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Sergei Ivanovich smiled. "He too has a philosophy of his own at the
service of his natural tendencies," he thought. |
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"Come, you'd better let philosophy alone," he said. "The
chief problem of the philosophy of all ages consists precisely in finding that
indispensable connection which exists between individual and social interests.
But that's not to the point; what is to the point is a correction I must make in
your comparison. The birches are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some
are planted, and one must deal carefully with them. It's only those peoples that
have an intuitive sense of what's of importance and significance in their
institutions, and know how to value them, who have a future before them- it's
only those peoples that one can truly call historical." |
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And Sergei Ivanovich carried the subject into the regions of
philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow him, and showed
him all the incorrectness of his outlook. |
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"As for your dislike of it- excuse my saying so- that's simply our
Russian sloth and old serfowners' ways, and I'm convinced that in you it's a
temporary error and will pass." |
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Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides, but he
felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was unintelligible to his
brother. Only he could not make up his mind whether it was unintelligible
because he was not capable of expressing his meaning clearly, or because his
brother would not or could not understand him. But he did not pursue the
speculation, and, without replying, he fell to musing on a quite different and
personal matter. |
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Sergei Ivanovich wound up the last line, unhitched the horse, and they
drove off. |
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The personal matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation with his
brother was this. Once, the year previous, he had gone to look at the mowing,
and being made very angry by the bailiff he had had recourse to his favorite
means for regaining his temper- he had taken a scythe from a peasant and begun
mowing. |
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He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at
mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house, and this
year, ever since the early spring, he had cherished a plan for mowing for whole
days together with the peasants. Ever since his brother's arrival he had been in
doubt as to whether to mow or not. He was loath to leave his brother alone all
day long, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him about it. But as he
drove into the meadow, and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near
deciding that he would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his
brother, he pondered over this intention again. |
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"I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be
ruined," he thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward
he might feel about it with his brother or the peasants. |
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Toward evening Konstantin Levin went to his countinghouse, gave
directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to summon the
mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the largest and best of
his grasslands. |
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"And send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring it
round tomorrow. I may do some mowing myself, too," he said, trying not to
be embarrassed. |
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The bailiff smiled and said: |
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"Yes, sir." |
|
|
At tea the same evening Levin said to his brother too. |
|
|
"I fancy the fine weather will last," said he. "Tomorrow I
shall start mowing." |
|
|
"I'm so fond of that form of field labor," said Sergei
Ivanovich. |
|
|
"I'm awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the peasants,
and tomorrow I want to try mowing the whole day." |
|
|
Sergei Ivanovich lifted his head, and looked with curiosity at his
brother. |
|
|
"How do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?" |
|
|
"Yes, it's very pleasant," said Levin. |
|
|
"It's splendid as exercise, only you'll hardly be able to stand
it," said Sergei Ivanovich, without a shade of irony. |
|
|
"I've tried it. It's hard work at first, but you get into it. I dare
say I shall manage to keep it up...." |
|
|
"Oh, so that's it! But tell me, how do the peasants look at it? I
suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master's being such a queer
fish?" |
|
|
"No, I don't think so; but it's so delightful, and at the same time
such hard work, that one has no time to think about it." |
|
|
"But how will you do about dining with them? To send you a bottle of
Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little awkward." |
|
|
"No, I'll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest." |
|
|
Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was
detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached the mowing grass the
mowers were already at their second swath. |
|
|
From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of the meadow
below, with the grayish swaths and the black heaps of coats, taken off by the
mowers at the place from which they had started cutting. |
|
|
Gradually, as he rode toward the meadow, the peasants came into sight,
some in coats, some in their shirts, mowing, one behind another in a long
string, each swinging his scythe in his own way. He counted forty-two of them. |
|
|
They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the meadow,
where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some of his own men. Here was
old Iermil in a very long white smock, bending forward to swing a scythe; there
was a young fellow, Vaska, who had been a coachman of Levin's, taking every
swath with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, Levin's preceptor in the art of
mowing, a thin little peasant. He went on ahead, and cut his wide swath without
bending, as though playing with his scythe. |
|
|
Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went to meet
Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it him. |
|
|
"It's ready, sir; it's like a razor- it cuts of itself," said
Tit, taking off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe. |
|
|
Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished their
swaths, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the road one after
another, and smirking, greeted the master. They all stared at him, but no one
made any remark, till a tall old man, with a wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a
short sheepskin jacket, came out into the road and accosted him. |
|
|
"Look'ee now, master, once take hold of the rope, there's no letting
go!" he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among the mowers. |
|
|
"I'll try not to let it go," he said, taking his stand behind
Tit, and waiting for the time to begin. |
|
|
"Mind'ee," repeated the old man. |
|
|
Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close to
the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was
disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments,
though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he heard voices: |
|
|
"It's not set right; handle's too high; see how he has to stoop to
it," said one. |
|
|
"Press more on the heel of the scythe," said another. |
|
|
"Never mind, he'll get on all right," the old man resumed.
"See, he's made a start.... You swing it too wide, you'll tire yourself
out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass missed
out! For such work us fellows would catch it!" |
|
|
The grass became lusher, and Levin, listening without answering, followed
Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred paces. Tit kept moving
on, without stopping, nor showing the slightest weariness, but Levin was already
beginning to fear he would not be able to keep it up- so tired was he. |
|
|
He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his
strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that very moment
Tit stopped of his own accord, and, stooping down, picked up some grass, rubbed
his scythe, and began whetting it. Levin straightened himself, and drawing a
deep breath looked round. Behind him came a peasant, and he too was evidently
tired, for he stopped at once without waiting to mow up to Levin, and began
whetting his scythe. Tit sharpened his scythe and Levin's, and they went on. |
|
|
The next time it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep
of his scythe, without stopping or showing signs of weariness. Levin followed
him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the
moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit
stopped and whetted the scythes. |
|
|
So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed particularly hard
work to Levin; but when the end was reached, and Tit, shouldering his scythe,
began with deliberate stride returning on the tracks left by his heels in the
cut grass, and Levin walked back in the same way over the space he had cut, in
spite of the sweat that ran in streams over his face and fell in drops down his
nose, and drenched his back as though he had been soaked in water, he felt very
happy. What delighted him particularly was that now he knew he would be able to
hold out. |
|
|
His pleasure was only disturbed by his swath not being well cut. "I
will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body," he thought,
comparing Tit's swath, which looked as if it had been cut along a surveyor's
cord, with his own scattered and irregularly lying grass. |
|
|
The first swath, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed especially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the swath happened to be a
long one. The next swaths were easier, but still Levin had to strain every nerve
not to drop behind the peasants. |
|
|
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, save not to be left behind the
peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing save the
swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's upright figure mowing away, the
crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flowers slowly and
rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of
the swath, where would come the rest. |
|
|
Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or
whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist
shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the scythes. A
heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops were falling. Some
of the peasants went to their coats and put them on; others- just like Levin
himself- merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant coolness of it. |
|
|
Another swath, and yet another swath followed- long swaths and short
swaths, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and
could not have told whether it were late or early now. A change began to come
over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil
there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it all came
easy to him, and at those same moments his swath was almost as smooth and well
cut as Tit's. But as soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying
to do better, he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and
the swath was badly mown. |
|
|
On finishing yet another swath he would have gone back to the top of the
meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the old man
said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the sun. "What
are they talking about, and why doesn't he go back?" thought Levin, without
guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four hours without
stopping, and that it was time for their lunch. |
|
|
"Lunch, sir," said the old man. |
|
|
"Is it really time? Lunch it is, then." |
|
|
Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and, together with the peasants, who were
crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled with rain, to get
their bread from the heap of coats, he went toward his horse. Only then did he
suddenly awake to the fact that he had been wrong about the weather and that the
rain was drenching his hay. |
|
|
"The hay will be spoiled," he said. |
|
|
"Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you'll rake in fine
weather!" said the old man. |
|
|
Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. |
|
|
Sergei Ivanovich was just getting up. When he had drunk his coffee, Levin
rode back again to the mowing before Sergei Ivanovich had had time to dress and
come down to the dining room. |
|
|
|
|
|
After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of mowers as
before, but stood between the old man who had accosted him jocosely, and now
invited him to be his neighbor, and a young peasant, who had only been married
in the autumn, and who was mowing this summer for the first time. |
|
|
The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet turned
out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and regular action which
seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging one's arms in walking, as though
it were in play, he laid down the high, even swath of grass. It was as though it
were not he but the sharp scythe of itself swishing through the juicy grass. |
|
|
Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His comely, youthful face, with a twist
of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with effort; but whenever
anyone looked at him he smiled. He would clearly have died sooner than own it
was hard work for him. |
|
|
Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing did not
seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched cooled
him, while the sun, that burned his back, his head, and his arms, bare to the
elbow, gave a vigor and dogged energy to his labor; and more and more often now
came those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to think of what
one was doing. The scythe cut of itself. These were happy moments. Still more
delightful were the moments when they reached the stream where the swaths ended,
and the old man rubbed his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in
the fresh water of the stream, ladled out a little in a whetstone case, and
offered Levin a drink. |
|
|
"What do you say to my kvass, eh? Good, eh?" he would say,
winking. |
|
|
And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor as good as this warm water
with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin whetstone case.
And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter, with his hand on
the scythe, during which he could wipe away the streaming sweat, take deep
breaths of air, and look about at the long string of mowers, and at what was
happening around in the forest and the field. |
|
|
The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of
unconsciousness in which it seemed that it was not his hands which swung the
scythe, but that the scythe was moving together with itself a body full of life
and consciousness of its own; and as though by magic, without thinking of it,
the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most
blissful moments. |
|
|
It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which had
become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a hummock or an
unweeded tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a hummock came he
changed his action, and at one time with the heel, and at another with the tip
of his scythe, clipped the hummock round both sides with short strokes. And
while he did this he kept looking about and watching what came into his view: at
one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or offered it to Levin, then he
flung away a twig with the blade of the scythe, then he looked at a quail's
nest, from which the bird flew just under the scythe, or caught a snake that
crossed his path, and lifting it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to
Levin and threw it away. |
|
|
For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of position
were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over again the same strained
movement, were in a perfect frenzy of toil, and were incapable of shifting their
position and at the same time watching what was before them. |
|
|
Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked how long
he had been working he would have said half an hour- yet it was getting on to
dinnertime. As they were walking back over the cut grass, the old man called
Levin's attention to the little girls and boys who were coming from different
directions, hardly visible through the long grass, and along the road toward the
mowers, carrying sacks of bread that stretched their little arms, and lugging
small pitchers of kvass, stopped up with rags. |
|
|
"Look'ee at the little doodlebugs crawling!" he said, pointing
to them, and he shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. |
|
|
They mowed two more swaths; the old man stopped. |
|
|
"Come, master, dinnertime!" he said decidedly. And on reaching
the stream the mowers moved off across the swaths toward their pile of coats,
where the children who had brought their dinners were sitting waiting for them.
The peasants gathered- those who came from afar under their telegas, those who
lived near under a willow bush, covered with grass. |
|
|
Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away. |
|
|
All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The peasants got
ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed in the stream, others made
a place comfortable for a rest, untied their sacks of bread, and uncovered the
pitchers of kvass. The old man crumbled up some bread in a cup, stirred it with
the handle of a spoon, poured water on it from his whetstone case, broke up some
more bread, and having seasoned it with salt, he turned to the east to say his
prayer. |
|
|
"Come, master, taste my sop," said he, kneeling down before the
cup. |
|
|
The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home for dinner.
He ate with the old man, and talked to him about his family affairs, taking the
keenest interest in them, and told him about his own affairs and all the
circumstances that could be of interest to the old man. He felt much nearer to
him than to his brother, and could not help smiling at the affection he felt for
this man. When the old man got up again, said his prayer, and lay down under a
bush, putting some grass under his head for a pillow, Levin did the same, and,
in spite of the clinging flies that were so persistent in the sunshine, and the
midges that tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at once and only waked
when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush and reached him. The old
man had been awake a long while, and was sitting up whetting the scythes of the
younger lads. |
|
|
Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place, everything was so
changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been mown and was sparkling with a
peculiar fresh brilliance, with its lines of already sweet-smelling grass in the
slanting rays of the evening sun. And the bushes about the river, mowed around,
and the river itself, not visible before, now gleaming, like steel in its bends,
and the moving, ascending peasants, and the sharp wall of grass of the unmown
part of the meadow, and the hawks hovering over the stripped meadow- all was
perfectly new. Raising himself, Levin began considering how much had been cut
and how much more could still be done that day. |
|
|
The work done was exceptionally great for forty-two men. They had cut the
whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of corvee, taken thirty scythes
two days to mow. Only the corners remained to do, where the swaths were short.
But Levin felt a longing to get as much mowing done that day as possible, and
was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no weariness; all
he wanted was to get his work done more and more quickly, and as much of it as
possible. |
|
|
"Could we cut the Mashkin Upland too?- what do you think?" he
said to the old man. |
|
|
"As God wills- the sun's not high. A little vodka for the
lads?" |
|
|
At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and those who
smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the men that "the Mashkin
Upland's to be cut- there'll be vodka." |
|
|
"Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We'll look sharp! We can eat at
night. Come on!" voices cried out, and eating up their bread, the mowers
went back to work. |
|
|
"Come, lads, keep it up!" said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at
a trot. |
|
|
"Get along, get along!" said the old man, hurrying after him
and easily overtaking him, "I'll mow thee down, look out!" |
|
|
And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one
another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass, and the
swaths were laid just as neatly and exactly. The little piece left uncut in the
corner was mown in five minutes. The last of the mowers were just ending their
swaths while the foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders, and
crossed the road toward the Mashkin Upland. |
|
|
The sun was already sinking among the trees when they went with their
jingling whetstone cases into the wooded ravine of the Mashkin Upland. The grass
was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, lush, tender, and feathery,
spotted here and there among the trees with wild heartsease. |
|
|
After a brief consultation- whether to take the swaths lengthwise or
diagonally- Prokhor Iermilin, also a doughty mower, a huge, black-haired
peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top, turned back again and started
mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him, going downhill
through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of the forest. The sun sank
behind the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the sun only
on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and on the opposite side,
they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The work went rapidly. |
|
|
The spicily fragrant grass cut with a succulent sound, was at once laid
in high swaths. The mowers from all sides, brought closer together in the short
swath, kept urging one another on to the sound of jingling whetstone cases, and
clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and
good-humored shouts. |
|
|
Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The old man,
who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as good-humored, jocose, and
free in his movements. Among the trees they were continually cutting with their
scythes the so-called "birch mushrooms," swollen fat in the succulent
grass. But the old man bent down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it
up and put it in his bosom. "Another present for my old woman," he
would say as he did so. |
|
|
Easy as it was to mow the wet, lush grass, it was hard work going up and
down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not trouble the old man.
Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big, plaited bast
sandals, with firm short steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though
his breeches hanging out below his smock, and his whole frame, trembled with
effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or one mushroom on his way, and kept
making jokes with the peasants and Levin. Levin walked after him and often
thought he must fall, as he climbed with a scythe up a steep hillock, where it
would have been hard work to clamber even without the scythe. But he climbed up
and did what he had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving
him. |
|
|
|
|
|
The Mashkin Upland was mown, the last swaths finished, the peasants had
put on their coats and were gaily trudging home. Levin got on his horse, and,
parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homeward. On the hillside he looked
back; he could not see them in the mist that had risen from the valley; he could
only hear their rough, good-humored voices, their laughter, and the sound of
clanking scythes. |
|
|
Sergei Ivanovich had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking iced
lemonade in his own room, looking through the reviews and papers which he had
just received by post, when Levin rushed into the room, talking merrily, with
his wet and matted hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed
and moist. |
|
|
"We mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is fine, wonderful! And how have
you been getting on?" said Levin, completely forgetting the disagreeable
conversation of the previous day. |
|
|
"Dear me! What you look like!" said Sergei Ivanovich, for the
first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. "And the door- do
shut the door!" he cried. "You must have let in a dozen at
least." |
|
|
Sergei Ivanovich could not endure flies, and in his own room he never
opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the door shut. |
|
|
"Not one, on my honor. But if I have, I'll catch them. You wouldn't
believe what a pleasure mowing is! How have you spent the day?" |
|
|
"Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I expect
you're as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything ready for you." |
|
|
"No, I don't feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But
I'll go and wash." |
|
|
"Yes, go along, go along, and I'll come to you directly," said
Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. "Go along,
make haste," he added smiling, and, gathering up his books, he prepared to
go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored and disinclined to leave his
brother's side. "But what did you do while it was raining?" |
|
|
"Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I'll come directly. So you
had a good day too? That's first-rate." And Levin went off to change his
clothes. |
|
|
Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining room. Although it
seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to dinner simply so as
not to hurt Kouzma's feelings, yet when he began to eat the dinner struck him as
extraordinarily good. Sergei Ivanovich watched him with a smile. |
|
|
"Oh, by the way, there's a letter for you," said he.
"Kouzma, bring it from below, please. And mind you shut the doors." |
|
|
The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky wrote to him
from Peterburg: "I have had a letter from Dolly; she's at Ergushovo, and
everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over and see her, please; help her
with advice; you know all about it. She will be so glad to see you. She's quite
alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of them are still abroad." |
|
|
"That's capital! I will certainly ride over to her," said
Levin. "Or we'll go together. She's such a good woman, isn't she?" |
|
|
"They're not far from here, then?" |
|
|
"Thirty verstas. Or perhaps forty. But a capital road. It will be a
capital drive." |
|
|
"I shall be delighted," said Sergei Ivanovich, still smiling. |
|
|
The sight of his younger brother's appearance had immediately put him in
a good humor. |
|
|
"Well, you have an appetite!" he said, looking at his dark-red,
sunburned face and neck bent over the plate. |
|
|
"Splendid! You can't imagine what an effective remedy it is for
every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word:
Arbeitskur." |
|
|
"Well, but you don't need it, I should fancy." |
|
|
"No- but for all sorts of nervous invalids." |
|
|
"Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to
look at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further than the forest.
I sat there a little, and went on by the forest to the village, met your old
nurse, and sounded her as to the peasant's view of you. As far as I can make
out, they don't approve of this. She said: 'It's not a gentleman's work.'
Altogether, I fancy that in the people's ideas there are very clear and definite
notions of certain, as they call it, 'gentlemanly' lines of action. And they
don't sanction the gentlefolk's moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their
ideas." |
|
|
"Maybe so; but anyway, it's a pleasure such as I have never known in
my life. And there's no harm in it, you know. Is there?" answered Levin.
"I can't help it if they don't like it. Though I do believe it's all right.
Eh?" |
|
|
"Altogether," pursued Sergei Ivanovich, "you're satisfied
with your day?" |
|
|
"Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And I made friends with
such a splendid old man there! You can't fancy how delightful he was!" |
|
|
"Well, so you're satisfied with your day. And so am I. First, I
solved two chess problems, and one a very pretty one- a pawn opening. I'll show
it to you. And then- I thought over our conversation of yesterday." |
|
|
"Eh! Our conversation of yesterday?" said Levin, blissfully
dropping his eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner, and
absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation of yesterday had been
about. |
|
|
"I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to
this: that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I contend that interest
in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of
advancement. Possibly you are right too- that action founded on material
interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as the French say, too
prime-sautiere a nature; you must have intense, energetic action, or
nothing." |
|
|
Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single word, and
did not want to understand. He was only afraid his brother might ask him some
question which would make it evident he had not heard. |
|
|
"So that's what I think it is, my dear boy," said Sergei
Ivanovich, touching him on the shoulder. |
|
|
"Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won't stand up for my
view," answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. "Whatever was
it I was disputing about?" he wondered. "Of course, I'm right, and
he's right, and it's all first-rate. Only I must go round to the countinghouse
and see to things." He got up, stretching and smiling. |
|
|
Sergei Ivanovich smiled too. |
|
|
"If you want to go out, let's go together," he said,
disinclined to be parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing out
freshness and energy. "Come, we'll go to the countinghouse, if you have to
go there." |
|
|
"Oh, heavens!" shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergei Ivanovich
was quite frightened. |
|
|
"What, what is the matter? |
|
|
"How's Agathya Mikhailovna's hand?" said Levin, slapping
himself on the head. "I'd positively forgotten her." |
|
|
"It's much better." |
|
|
"Well, anyway, I'll run down to her. Before you've time to get your
hat on, I'll be back." |
|
|
And he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a spring rattle. |
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Stepan Arkadyevich had gone to Peterburg to perform the most natural and
essential official duty- so familiar to everyone in the government service,
though incomprehensible to outsiders- that duty but for which one could hardly
be in government service: of reminding the ministry of his existence; and
having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from
home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer
villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the children had moved into the country, to cut down
expenses as much as possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had
been her dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It was
nearly fifty verstas from Levin's Pokrovskoe. |
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The big old house at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old
Prince had had the wing done up and added to. Twenty years before, when Dolly
was a child, the wing had been roomy and comfortable, though, like all wings, it
stood sideways to the entrance avenue, and to the south. But by now this wing
was old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevich had gone down in the spring to
sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to look over the house and order what
repairs might be needed. Stepan Arkadyevich, like an unfaithful husbands indeed,
was very solicitous for his wife's comfort, and he had himself looked over the
house, and given instructions about everything that he considered necessary.
What he considered necessary was to cover all the furniture with new cretonne,
to put up curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the pond, and
to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters, the want of which
greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on. |
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In spite of Stepan Arkadyevich's efforts to be an attentive father and
husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children. He had
bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them that he shaped his life. On
his return to Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready,
that the house would be a pretty toy, and that he most certainly advised her to
go. His wife's staying away in the country was very agreeable to Stepan
Arkadyevich from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased
expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying
in the country for the summer as essential for the children, especially for the
little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her strength after the
scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the petty humiliations, the little
bills owing to the wood merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her
miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the country because she
was dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be
back from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed
for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the summer
with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childhood associations for both of them. |
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The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for Dolly.
She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression she had retained
of it was that the country was a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town,
that life there, though not luxurious- Dolly could easily make up her mind to
that- was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of everything, everything
was cheap, everything could be got, and children were happy. But now, coming to
the country as the head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly
unlike what she had fancied. |
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The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain and in the
night the water came through in the corridor and in the nursery, so that the
beds had to be carried into the drawing room. There was no kitchenmaid to be
found; of the nine cows, it appeared from the words of the cowherd woman that
some were about to calve, others had just calved, others were old, and others
again hard-uddered; there was neither butter nor milk enough even for the
children. There were no eggs. They could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy
roosters were all they had for roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to
scrub the floors- all were potato hoeing. Driving was out of the question,
because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no
place where they could bathe; the whole of the riverbank was trampled by the
cattle and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle strayed
into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one terrible bull, who
bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore somebody. There were no proper
cupboards for their clothes; what cupboards there were either would not close at
all, or flew open whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and
kettles; there was no boiler in the washhouse, nor even an ironing board in the
maids' room. |
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Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view,
fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in despair. She exerted
herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position, and was every
instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired
quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevich had taken a fancy to and had appointed
bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful appearance as a hall porter,
showed no sympathy for Darya Alexandrovna's woes. He would say respectfully,
"Nothing can be done, the peasants are such a wretched lot," and did
nothing to help her. |
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The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys' household, as in all
families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful
person- Matriona Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that
everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvei had borrowed it
from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. |
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She had immediately made friends with the bailiff's wife, and on the very
first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed
all the circumstances of the position. Very soon Matriona Philimonovna had
established her club, so to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this
club, consisting of the bailiff's wife, the village elder, and the countinghouse
clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in a
week's time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a
kitchenmaid was found- a crony of the village elder's- hens were bought, the
cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the
carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to fly
open spontaneously and an ironing board covered with army cloth was placed
across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of
flatirons in the maids' room. |
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"Just see, now, and you were quite in despair," said Matriona
Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing board. |
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They even rigged up a bathing shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe,
and Darya Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations, if
not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country. Peaceful with
six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would fall ill, another might
easily become so, a third would be without something necessary, a fourth would
show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the brief
periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the
sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she would have been left
alone to brood over her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though
it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves,
and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children- the children
themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her pains. Those joys
were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments
she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good
moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold. |
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Now, in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make every
possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that she as a mother
was partial to her children. All the same, she could not help saying to herself
that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of
children such as is not often to be met with- and she was happy in them, and
proud of them. |
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Toward the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's answer to her complaints of
the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote begging her
forgiveness for not having thought of everything before, and promised to come
down at the first chance. This chance did not present itself, and till the
beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna stayed alone in the country. |
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On the Sunday in St. Peter's week Darya Alexandrovna drove to mass to
have all her children take the sacrament. Darya Alexandrovna in her intimate,
philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her friends very often
astonished them by the freedom of her views in regard to religion. She had a
strange religion, all her own, of the transmigration of souls, in which she had
firm faith, troubling herself little about the dogmas of the Church. But in her
family she was strict in carrying out all that was required by the Church- and
not merely in order to set an example, but with all her heart. The fact that the
children had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried her extremely,
and with the full approval and sympathy of Matriona Philimonovna she decided
that this should take place now, in the summer. |
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For several days before Darya Alexandrovna was busily deliberating on how
to dress all the children. Frocks were made, or altered and washed, seams and
flounces were let out, buttons were sewn on and ribbons got ready. One dress,
Tania's, which the English governess had undertaken, cost Darya Alexandrovna
much loss of temper. The English governess in altering it had made the seams in
the wrong place, had taken up the sleeves too much, and altogether spoiled the
dress. It was so narrow on Tania's shoulders that it was quite painful to look
at her. But Matriona Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets,
and adding a little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but there was nearly
a quarrel with the English governess. In the morning, however, all was happily
arranged, and about nine o'clock- the time at which they had asked the priest to
wait for them for the mass- the children in their new dresses stood with beaming
faces on the step before the carriage, waiting for their mother. |
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In the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had harnessed, thanks
to the representations of Matriona Philimonovna, the bailiff's horse, Brownie,
and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by anxiety over her own attire, came out and got
in, dressed in a white muslin gown. |
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Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and
excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake, to look pretty and
be admired; later on, as she got older, dress became more and more distasteful
to her; she saw that she was losing her good looks. But now she began to feel
pleasure and interest in dress again. Now she did not dress for her own sake,
nor for the sake of her own beauty, but simply that, as the mother of those
exquisite creatures, she might not spoil the general effect. And looking at
herself for the last time in the looking glass she was satisfied with herself.
She looked well. Not as well as she wished to look in the old days, at a ball,
but well for the object she now had in view. |
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In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants, and their
womenfolk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she saw, the sensation
produced by her children and herself. The children were not only beautiful to
look at in their smart little dresses, but they were charming in the way they
behaved. Aliosha, it is true, did not stand quite correctly; he kept turning
round, trying to look at his little jacket from behind; but all the same he was
wonderfully sweet. Tania behaved like a grown-up person, and looked after the
little ones. And the smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naive astonishment at
everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament,
she said in English, "Please, some more." |
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On the way home the children felt that something solemn had happened, and
were very sedate. |
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Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began whistling,
and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English governess, and was forbidden
to have any tart. Darya Alexandrovna would not have let things go as far as the
punishment on such a day had she been present; but she had to support the
English governess's authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha should
have no tart. This rather spoiled the general good humor. |
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Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled too, yet was not
punished, and that he wasn't crying for the tart- he didn't care- but at being
unjustly treated. This was really too tragic, and Darya Alexandrovna made up her
mind to persuade the English governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak
to her. But on her way, as she passed the drawing room, she beheld a scene,
filling her heart with such pleasure that the tears came into her eyes, and she
forgave the delinquent herself. |
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The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the drawing room;
beside him was standing Tania with a plate. On the pretext of wanting to give
some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the governess's permission to take her
share of tart to the nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While
still weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the tart, and
kept saying through his sobs, "Eat yourself; let's eat it together...
together." |
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Tania had at first been under the influence of her pity for Grisha, then
of a sense of her noble action, and tears were standing in her eyes too; but she
did not refuse, and ate her share. |
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On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but, looking into
her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They burst out laughing, and, with
their mouths full of tart, they began wiping their smiling lips with their
hands, and smearing their radiant faces all over with tears and jam. |
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"Mercy! Your new white frock- Tania! Grisha!" said their
mother, trying to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes, smiling a
blissful, rapturous smile. |
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The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the little girls
to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old jackets, and the wide
droshky to be harnessed- with Brownie, to the bailiff's annoyance, again in the
shafts- to drive out for mushroom picking and bathing. A roar of delighted
shrieks arose in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the
bathing place. |
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They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch
mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and pointed
them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite by herself, and there
was a general scream of delight; "Lily has found a mushroom!" |
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Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch trees, and
went to the bathing place. The coachman, Terentii, hitched the horses, who kept
whisking away the horseflies, to a tree, and, treading down the grass, lay down
in the shade of a birch and smoked his shag, while the never-ceasing shrieks of
delight of the children floated across to him from the bathing place. |
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Though it was hard work to look after all the children and restrain their
pranks, though it was difficult, too, to keep one's head and not mix up all the
stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to
do up again all the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always liked
bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed
nothing so much as bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat
little legs, pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those
little naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the
breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her splashing
cherubs, was a great pleasure to her. |
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When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in holiday
dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing shed and stopped shyly.
Matriona Philimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet and a shirt that
had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to
talk to the women. At first they laughed behind their hands and did not
understand her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk, winning
Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by the genuine admiration of the children
that they showed. |
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"My, what a beauty! As white as sugar," said one, admiring
Tanechka, and shaking her head, "but thin...." |
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"Yes, she has been ill." |
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"Lookee, they've been bathing him too," said another, pointing
to the breast baby. |
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"No; he's only three months old," answered Darya Alexandrovna
with pride. |
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"You see!" |
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"And have you any children?" |
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"I've had four; I've two living- a boy and a girl. I weaned her last
carnival." |
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"How old is she?" |
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"Why, more than one year old." |
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"Why did you nurse her so long?" |
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"It's our custom; for three fasts...." |
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And the conversation became most interesting to Darya Alexandrovna. What
sort of time did she have? What was the matter with the boy? Where was her
husband? Did it often happen? |
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Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women, so
interesting to her was their conversation, so completely identical were all
their interests. What pleased her most of all was that she saw clearly what all
the women admired more than anything was her having so many children, and such
fine ones. The peasant women even made Darya Alexandrovna laugh, and offended
the English governess, because she was the cause of the laughter she did not
understand. One of the younger women kept staring at the Englishwoman, who was
dressing after all the rest, and when she put on her third petticoat she could
not refrain from the remark, "My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and
she'll never have done!" she said, and they all went off into peals of
laughter. |
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On the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children round
her, their heads still wet from their baths, and a kerchief tied over her own
head, was getting near the house, the coachman said: "There's some
gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I do believe." |
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Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when she
recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure of Levin walking to
meet them. She was glad to see him at any time, but at this moment she was
specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No one was better able to
appreciate her grandeur than Levin. |
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Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of his
daydream of family life. |
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"You're like a hen with your brood, Darya Alexandrovna." |
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"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, holding out her hand
to him. |
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"Glad to see me- but you didn't let me know. My brother's staying
with me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here." |
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"From Stiva?" Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise. |
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"Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might
allow me to be of use to you," said Levin, and as he said it he became
suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence by the
droshky, snapping off the buds of the lime trees and nibbling them. He was
embarrassed through a sense that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by
receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have come from her own
husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little way of Stepan
Arkadyevich's of foisting his domestic duties on others. And she was at once
aware that Levin was aware of this. It was just for this fineness of perception,
for this delicacy, that Darya Alexandrovna liked Levin. |
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"I know, of course," said Levin, "that this simply means
that you would like to see me, and I'm exceedingly glad. Though I can fancy
that, used to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel you are in the wilds
here, and if there's anything wanted, I'm altogether at your disposal." |
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"Oh, no!" said Dolly. "At first things were rather
uncomfortable, but now we've settled everything capitally- thanks to my old
nurse," she said, indicating Matriona Philimonovna, who, seeing that they
were speaking of her, smiled brightly and cordially to Levin. She knew him, and
knew that he would be a good match for her young lady, and was very keen to see
the matter settled. |
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"Won't you get in, sir, we'll make room on this side!" she said
to him. |
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"No, I'll walk. Children, who'd like to race the horses with
me?" |
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The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had
seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange feeling of
shyness and hostility which children so often experience toward hypocritical,
grown-up people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished.
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating
man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it,
however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was
not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same
friendliness that they saw in their mother's face. On his invitation, the two
elder ones at once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would
have done with their nurse, or Miss Hoole, or their mother. Lily, too, began
begging to go to him, and her mother handed her over to him; he sat her on his
shoulder and ran along with her. |
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"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!" he
said, smiling good-humoredly to the mother; "there's no chance of my
hurting or dropping her." |
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And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and extremely
strained movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and
approvingly as she watched him. |
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Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna, with
whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent with him, of
childlike lightheartedness that she particularly liked in him. As he ran with
the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole laughing with his
queer English accent, and talked to Darya Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the
country. |
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After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the balcony,
began to speak of Kitty. |
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"You know, Kitty's coming here, and is going to spend the summer
with me." |
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"Really," he said, flushing; and at once, to change the
conversation, he said: "Then I'll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist
on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month- if you aren't ashamed." |
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"No, thank you. We can manage very well now." |
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"Oh, well, then, I'll have a look at your cows, and if you'll allow
me, I'll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their
food." |
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And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the
theory of cowkeeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a machine
for the transformation of food into milk, and so on. |
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He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at
the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the
inward peace he had gained with such effort. |
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|
"Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to
look after it?" Darya Alexandrovna responded reluctantly. |
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|
She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged,
thanks to Matriona Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any change in
them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's knowledge of farming. General
principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of milk, she looked
on with suspicion. It seemed to her that such principles could only be a
hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter: all
that was needed, as Matriona Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and
Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen
slops to the laundrymaid's cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to
feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most
important, she wanted to talk about Kitty. |
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"Kitty writes to me that there's nothing she longs for so much as
quiet and solitude," Dolly said after the silence that had followed. |
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|
"And how is she- better?" Levin asked in agitation. |
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|
"Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs were
affected." |
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|
"Oh, I'm very glad!" said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw
something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently
into her face. |
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|
"Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievich," said Darya
Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, "why are you
angry with Kitty?" |
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|
"I? I'm not angry with her," said Levin. |
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|
"Yes, you are. Why was it you did not come to see us or them when
you were in Moscow?" |
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|
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, blushing up to the roots of his
hair, "I wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel this. How
it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know..." |
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"What do I know?" |
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|
"You know that I proposed and was refused," said Levin, and all
| | | |
