Anna Karennina

by Leo Tolstoy

PART THREE

Chapter XXI.
"I've come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good time today," said Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"
"It's over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought any overbold or rapid movement might disturb it.
"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it," said Petritsky. "I've come from Gritzka" (that was what they called the colonel);- "you're expected there."
Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of something else.
"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the familiar bass sounds of trumpets, of polkas and waltzes, floating across to him. "What's the fete?"
"Serpukhovskoy's come."
"Aha!" said Vronsky. "Why, I didn't know."
The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.
Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that he sacrificed his ambition to it- at any rate, having taken up this role- Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of Serpukhovskoy, or vexed at him for not having come to him first upon coming to the regiment. Serpukhovskoy was a good friend, and he was delighted he had come.
"Ah, I'm very glad!"
The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party was on the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in short white linen jackets, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far as the first step of the balcony and was loudly shouting to drown out the band playing an Offenbach quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster, and several subalterns came up to the balcony with Vronsky. The colonel returned to the table, went out again on the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast, "To the health of our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince Serpukhovskoy. Hurrah!"
The colonel was followed by Serpukhovskoy, who came out on the steps smiling, with a glass in his hand.
"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the rosy-cheeked, smart-looking sergeant standing just before him, still youngish-looking though doing his second term of service.
It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpukhovskoy. He looked more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more striking from their fineness and nobility than their beauty. The only change Vronsky detected in him was that subdued, continual beaming which settles on the faces of men who are successful and are sure of the recognition of their success by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant air, and immediately observed it in Serpukhovskoy.
As Serpukhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upward and waved the glass in his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by the gesture that he could not come to him before kissing the sergeant who stood craning forward his lips ready to be kissed.
"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Iashvin told me you were in one of your gloomy tempers."
Serpukhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the brave sergeant, and, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, walked up to Vronsky.
"How glad I am!" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him to one side.
"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Iashvin, pointing to Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.
"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you there," said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpukhovskoy.
"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and turned to the adjutant: "Please have this distributed from me, each man as much as it comes to."
And he hurriedly took three notes for a hundred roubles each from his pocketbook, and blushed.
"Vronsky! Have a bite or a drink?" asked Iashvin. "Hi, something for the Count to eat! There- drink that."
The spree at the colonel's lasted a long while.
There was a great deal of drinking. They swung Serpukhovskoy and tossed him in the air. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to the accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself danced with Petritsky. Then the colonel, who began to show signs of weakening, sat down on a bench in the courtyard and began demonstrating to Iashvin the superiority of Russia over Prussia, especially in cavalry attack, and there was a lull in the revelry for a moment. Serpukhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to wash his hands and found Vronsky there- Vronsky was sousing his head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his red hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his head with his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by Serpukhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge, and a conversation began which was very interesting to both of them.
"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said Serpukhovskoy. "I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."
"She's friendly with Varia, and they're the only women in Peterburg I care about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He smiled because he foresaw the topic the conversation would turn to, and he was glad of it.
"The only ones?" Serpukhovskoy queried, smiling.
"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife," said Vronsky, checking Serpukhovskoy's hint by assuming a stern expression. "I was greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit surprised. I expected even more."
Serpukhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable to him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.
"Well, I, on the contrary, expected less- I'll own up frankly. But I'm glad, very glad. I'm ambitious- that's my weakness, and I confess to it."
"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been successful," said Vronsky.
"I don't suppose so," said Serpukhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the line I've chosen, and that if there is to be power of any sort in my hands, it will be better than in the hands of a good many people I know," said Serpukhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success; "and so the nearer I get to it, the better pleased I am."
"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think so too, but now I see and think life worth living not only for that."
"There it comes! there it comes!" said Serpukhovskoy laughing. "Ever since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began... Of course, I approved of what you did. But there are ways of doing everything. And I think your action was good in itself, but you didn't do it in quite the way you should have done."
"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on what I've done. And, besides, I'm very well off."
"Very well off- for the time. But you're not satisfied with that. I wouldn't say this to your brother. He's a charming child, like our host here. There he goes!" he added, listening to the roar of a "hurrah!"- "and he's happy; that does not satisfy you."
"I didn't say it did."
"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted."
"By whom?"
"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men, she needs a party, or else everything goes and will go to the dogs."
"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian communists?"
"No," said Serpukhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being suspected of such an absurdity. "Tout ca est une blague. That has always been, and always will be. There are no communists. But intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party. It's an old trick. No, what's wanted is a powerful party of independent men, like you and me."
"But why so?" Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power. "Why aren't they independent men?"
"Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an independent fortune, they've not had a name, they weren't born close to the sun as we were. They can be bought either by money or by favor. And they have to find a support for themselves in inventing a trend. And they bring forward some notion, some trend that they don't believe in, that does harm; and the whole policy is really only a means to a house at the expense of the crown and so much income. Cela n'est pas plus fin que ca, when you get a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them, more stupid perhaps, though I don't see why I should be inferior to them. But you and I have one important, certain advantage over them, in being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed than ever."
Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpukhovskoy, who was already contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and already had his likes and dislikes in that world, while his own interest in his service did not go beyond the interests of his squadron. Vronsky felt, too, how powerful Serpukhovskoy might become through his unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in, through his intelligence and gift of eloquence, so rarely met with in the world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling, he felt envious.
"Still I haven't the one thing of paramount importance for that," he answered; "I haven't the desire for power. I had it once, but it's gone."
"Excuse me, that's not true," said Serpukhovskoy smiling.
"Yes, it's true, it's true- now to be truthful!" Vronsky added.
"Yes, it's true now, that's another thing; but that now won't last forever."
"Perhaps," answered Vronsky.
"You say perhaps," Serpukhovskoy went on, as though guessing his thoughts, "but I say for certain. And that's what I wanted to see you for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see that, but you ought not to persevere in it. I only ask you to give me carte blanche. I'm not going to offer you my protection.... Though, indeed, why shouldn't I protect you?- you've protected me often enough! I should hope our friendship rises above all that sort of thing. Yes," he said, smiling to him as tenderly as a woman, "give me carte blanche, retire from the regiment, and I'll get you in imperceptibly."
"But you must understand that I want nothing," said Vronsky, "except to leave things just as they were."
Serpukhovskoy got up and stood facing him.
"You said, leave things just as they were. I understand what that means. But listen: we're the same age, you've known a greater number of women perhaps than I have." Serpukhovskoy's smile and gestures told Vronsky that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be tender and careful in touching the sore place. "But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know one's wife thoroughly, if one loves her, as someone has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them."
"We're coming directly!" Vronsky shouted to an officer, who looked into the room and called them to the colonel.
Vronsky was longing now to hear Serpukhovskoy to the end, and know what he would say to him.
"And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do anything. There's only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance- that's marriage. Now, how am I to tell you what I mean?" said Serpukhovskoy, who liked similes. "Wait, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a fardeau yet do something with your hands when the fardeau is tied on your back- and that's marriage. And that's what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But if you drag that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov. They've ruined their careers for the sake of women."
"What women!" said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.
"The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is. That's much the same as not merely carrying the fardeau in your arms, but tearing it away from someone else."
"You have never loved," Vronsky said softly, looking straight before him and thinking of Anna.
"Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another thing- women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense out of love, but they are always terre-a-terre."
"Directly, directly!" he cried to a footman who came in. But the footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman brought Vronsky a note.
"A man brought it from Princess Tverskaia."
Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.
"My head's begun to ache; I'm going home," he said to Serpukhovskoy.
"Oh, good-by then. You give me carte blanche!"
"We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Peterburg."
Chapter XXII.
It was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to everyone, Vronsky got into Iashvin's hackney coach and told the coachman to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned coach, with seats for four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into deep thought.
A vague sense of the clearness to which his affairs had been brought, a vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of Serpukhovskoy, who had considered him a man who was needed, and, most of all, the anticipation of the meeting before him- all blended into a general, joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong that he could not help smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg over the other knee, and, taking it in his hand, felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it had been grazed the day before by his fall, and, leaning back he drew several deep breaths.
"I'm happy, very happy!" he said to himself. He had often before had this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day, which had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from the cold water. The scent of brilliantine on his mustaches struck him as particularly pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window, everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines of fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by and carriages that met him now and then, the motionless green of the trees and grass, the fields with evenly drawn furrows of potatoes, and the slanting shadows that fell from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and even from the rows of potatoes- everything was bright like a pretty landscape freshly painted and varnished.
"Get on, get on!" he said to the driver, putting his head out of the window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it to the man as he looked round. The driver's hand fumbled with something at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the coach rolled rapidly along the smooth highroad.
"I want nothing, nothing but this happiness," he thought, staring at the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time. "And as I go on, I love her more and more. Here's the garden of the Vrede's crown villa. Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on this place to meet me, and why does she write in Betsy's letter?" he thought, now for the first time wondering at it. But there was now no time for wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went up the avenue that led to the house. There was no one in the avenue; but, looking round to the right, he caught sight of her. Her face was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of her shoulders, and the setting of her head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran all over him. With fresh force he felt conscious of himself, from the springy movements of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he breathed, and something set his lips twitching.
Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.
"You're not angry because I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you," she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under the veil, transformed his mood at once.
"I angry? But how have you come- where?"
"Never mind," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "come along, I must talk to you."
He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not be a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress unconsciously passing over him.
"What is it? What?" he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow, and trying to read her thoughts in her face.
She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then suddenly she stopped.
"I did not tell you yesterday," she began, breathing quickly and painfully, "that coming home with Alexei Alexandrovich I told him everything... told him I could not be his wife, that... and told him everything."
He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his face.
"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how painful it was," he said. But she was not listening to his words- she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not guess that that arose from the first idea that presented itself to Vronsky- that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation on this passing expression of hardness.
When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at Princess Tverskaia's had confirmed her still more in this. But this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant's wavering: "Throw up everything and come with me! she would give up her son and go away with him. But this news had not produced on him the effect she had expected; he simply seemed resentful of some affront.
"It was not in the least painful for me. It happened of itself," she said irritably, "and see..." She pulled her husband's letter out of her glove.
"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness."
"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt it? If I doubted..."
"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies walking toward them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path.
"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under her veil. "I tell you that's not the point- I can't doubt that; but see what he writes me. Read it." She stood still again.
Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the injured husband. Now, while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment, he would await the injured husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpukhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning- that it was better not to bind himself; and he knew that he could not tell her this thought.
Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no firmness in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been looking for.
"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice; "he..."
"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For God's sake, let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. "I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes."
"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed.
Vronsky meant that after the duel- inevitable, he thought- things could not go on as before, but he said something different.
"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"- he was confused, and reddened- "that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow..." he was beginning.
She did not let him go on.
"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that."
"But, for God's sake, which is better? To leave your child, or keep up this degrading situation?"
"To whom is it degrading?"
"To all, and most of all to you."
"You say degrading... Don't say that. These words have no meaning for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only- your love. If that's mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be degrading to me. I am proud of my position, because... proud of being... proud..." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.
He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so; he felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.
"Isn't a divorce possible?" he said feebly. She shook her head, without answering. "Couldn't you take your son, and still leave him?
"Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him," she said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her.
"On Tuesday I shall be in Peterburg, and everything can be settled."
"Yes," she said. "But don't let us talk any more of it."
Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-by to Vronsky, and drove home.
Chapter XXIII.
On Monday there was the usual session of the Commission of the 2nd of June. Alexei Alexandrovich walked into the hall where the session was held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him. Among those papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexei Alexandrovich announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the organization of the native tribes. All attention was turned upon him. Alexei Alexandrovich cleared his throat, and, without looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound his views. When he reached the point about the basic and organic law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and was also stung to the quick, began defending himself, and an altogether stormy session followed; but Alexei Alexandrovich triumphed, and his motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the next day, in a certain Peterburg circle, nothing else was talked of but this session. Alexei Alexandrovich's success had been even greater than he had anticipated.
Next morning, Tuesday, Alexei Alexandrovich, on awaking, recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the head clerk, anxious to flatter him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning what had happened in the Commission.
Absorbed in business with the head clerk, Alexei Alexandrovich had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a servant came in to inform him of her arrival.
Anna had arrived in Peterburg early in the morning; the carriage had been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexei Alexandrovich might have known of her arrival. But, when she arrived, he did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone out, but was busy with the head clerk. She sent word to her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the dining room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he parted from the head clerk. She knew that he should before long go out to his office as usual, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to one another might be defined.
She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him. When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she knew that he was thinking of her.
On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face flushed hotly- a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them, at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked her to sit down.
"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her, and, obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he attempted to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact, that in preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise and accuse him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt pity for him. And so the silence lasted rather long: "Is Seriozha quite well?" he said, and, without waiting for an answer, he added: "I shan't be dining at home today, and I must go out directly."
"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.
"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent again.
Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began herself.
"Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, looking at him and without dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a guilty woman, I'm a bad woman, yet I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing."
"I haven't asked you about that," he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; "that was as I had supposed." Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties. "But as I told you then, and have written to you," he said in a thin, shrill voice, "I repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands." He laid special emphasis on the word "agreeable." "I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising yourself I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honor."
"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay.
When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childlike and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid; but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position.
"I cannot be your wife while I..." she began.
He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.
"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have so much of both respect and contempt- I respect your past and despise your present- that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words."
Anna sighed and bowed her head.
"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you show," he went on, getting hot, "announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently, you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife's duties in relation to your husband."
"Alexei Alexandrovich! What is it you want of me?"
"I want never to meet that man here, and I want you to conduct yourself so that neither society, nor the servants, could possibly reproach you.... I want you not to see him. That's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That's all I have to say to you. Now it's time for me to go. I'm not dining at home." He got up and moved toward the door.
Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.
Chapter XXIV.
The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without an effect upon him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest, never had there been (or, at least, it had never seemed so to him) so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail- all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the whole land plowed over and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded with willow fences, the ninety dessiatinas heavily manured, drill plows, and all the rest of it- it was all splendid, if only the work had been done by himself, or by himself and his comrades, by people in sympathy with him. But he saw clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which there was on one side- his side- a continual intense effort to change everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that, with immense expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, the sole attainment was that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this work was not merely wasted. He could not help feeling now, since the meaning of his system had become clear to him, that the aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the struggle about? He was struggling for every groat (and he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay his laborers' wages), while they were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably- that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the threshing machines, that he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and, above all, carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out the worst patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they mowed his best dessiatinas of seed clover, justifying themselves by the pretext that the bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance that it would make splendid hay; but he knew that it was because those dessiatinas were so much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay- it was broken at the first row because it was dull work for a peasant to sit on the seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he was told: "Don't trouble- sure, the womenfolks will pitch it quick enough." The plows were practically useless, because it never occurred to the laborer to raise the colter when he turned the plow, and in forcing it round, he tortured the horse and spoiled the ground- and then begged Levin not to mind it. The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer wanted to be night watchman, and, in spite of orders to the contrary, the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty about the horses; and when Vanka, after working all day long, fell asleep, he would say, very penitent for his fault: "Do what you will to me."
Three of the best heifers were allowed to overeat themselves to death, by letting them into the clover aftermath without care as to drenching them, and nothing would make the men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told Levin, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not because anyone felt ill will to Levin or to his farming; on the contrary, he knew that they liked him, thinking him a simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own position in regard to the land. He saw that his boat leaked, but he did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself. But now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him, and he could take no further interest in it.
To this now was joined the presence, only thirty verstas off, of Kitty Shcherbatskaia, whom he longed to see and could not. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaia had invited him, when he was over there, to come; to come with the object of renewing his proposal to her sister, who would, so she gave him to understand, accept it now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty Shcherbatskaia that he had never ceased to love her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys', knowing she was there. The fact that he had proposed to her, and that she had refused him, had placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. "I can't ask her to be my wife merely because she can't be the wife of the man she wanted to marry," he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and hostile to her. "I should not be able to speak to her without a feeling of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more, as she's bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I know what she told me? And I shall come to forgive her magnanimously, and take pity on her! And go through a performance before her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... Why did Darya Alexandrovna tell me that? I might have seen her by chance- then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it's out of the question- out of the question!"
Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a sidesaddle for Kitty's use. "I'm told you have a sidesaddle," she wrote to him; "I hope you will bring it over yourself."
This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and then sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would come was impossible, because he could not come; to write that he could not come because something prevented him, or that he would be away, would be still worse. He sent the saddle without any answer; and with a sense of having done something shameful, he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to his bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his friend Sviiazhsky, who had splendid marshes for double snipes in his neighborhood, and had lately written, asking him to keep a long-standing promise to visit him. The snipe marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on account of his work on the estate. Now he was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the Shcherbatskys, and still more from his farmwork, especially on a shooting expedition, which always served as the best consolation in trouble.
Chapter XXV.
In the Surovsky district there was neither railway nor mail coach, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his tarantass.
He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses. A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, grizzled on his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the troika pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the big, clean, tidy new yard, with charred, wooden plows in it, the old man asked Levin to come into the room. A cleanly dressed young housewife, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was frightened by the dog that ran in after Levin, and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing out to Levin with her bare arm the door into the room, she bent down again, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.
"Would you like a samovar?" she asked.
"Yes, please."
The room was a big one, with a tile stove, and a partition dividing it into two. Under the icons stood a table painted in patterns, a bench and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it was so clean that Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running along the road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the room, Levin went out in the back yard. The comely young housewife in clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to the well for water.
"Look sharp, my girl!" the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly, and he walked up to Levin. "Well, sir, are you going to Nikolai Ivanovich Sviiazhsky? He comes to us too," he began chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the old man's account of his acquaintance with Sviiazhsky, the gates creaked again, and laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden plows and harrows. The horses harnessed to the plows and harrows were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two were young men in cotton-print shirts and caps, the two others were hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the other a young fellow.
Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to the horses and began unharnessing them.
"What have they been plowing?" asked Levin.
"Plowing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don't let out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we'll put another in harness."
"Oh, father, about the plowshares I ordered- has he brought them along?" asked the big, robust fellow, obviously the old man's son.
"There... in the sledge," answered the old man, rolling up the reins he had taken off, and flinging them on the ground. "You can put them right, while they have dinner."
The comely young housewife came into the outer room with the full pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children and without children.
The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with him.
"Well, I have had some today already," said the old man, obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure. "Well, be it so, for company."
Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten years before the old man had rented a hundred and twenty dessiatinas from the lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land- the worst part- he let out for rent, while some forty dessiatinas of arable land he cultivated himself, with his family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that things were going badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have bought land at a hundred and five roubles the dessiatina, he would not have married off his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man's complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons' wives, his horses, and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin realized he was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were already past flowering and beginning to ripen, whereas Levin's were only just coming into flower. He plowed the ground for his potatoes with a modern plow borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses, struck Levin especially. How many times had Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it had turned out to be impossible. This peasant had done so, and he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.
"What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the roadside, and the cart brings it away."
"Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers," said Levin, handing him a glass of tea.
"Thanks," said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused sugar, pointing to a bit he had left. "There's no getting along with them," said he. "They're simple waste. Look at Sviiazhsky, for instance. We know what the land's like- first-rate; yet there's not much of a crop to boast of. It's not looked after enough- that's all it is!"
"But you work your land with hired laborers?"
"We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If a man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves."
"Father Finogen wants some tar," said the young woman in the clogs, coming in.
"Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!" said the old man, getting up, and, crossing himself lingeringly, he thanked Levin and went out.
When Levin went in the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole family of men at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The young, robust son was telling something funny, with his mouth full of buckwheat porridge, and they were all laughing- the woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.
Very probably the comely face of the young woman in the clogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant's to Sviiazhsky's he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were something in this impression demanding his special attention.
Chapter XXVI.
Sviiazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew that Sviiazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it, though he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone; and he also knew that, although he wanted to get married, and although by every token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatskaia, than he could have flown up to the sky. And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to Sviiazhsky.
On getting Sviiazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting, Levin had immediately thought of this; but, in spite of it, he had made up his mind that Sviiazhsky's having such views for him was simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go, notwithstanding. Besides, at the bottom of his heart, he had a desire to try himself, to put himself to the test in regard to this girl. The Sviiazhskys' home life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviiazhsky himself, the best type of Zemstvo man that Levin knew, was very interesting to him.
Sviiazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its course, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to their convictions. Sviiazhsky was an extremely advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their views out of cowardice. He regarded Russia as a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey, and the government of Russia as so bad that he never permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a functionary of that government, and a model marshal of nobility, and when he drove about he always wore his cap with the cockade and red band. He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time he carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture in Russia, and with extreme interest followed everything and knew everything that was being done in Russia. He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the days of Zemstvo election no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the devil, but was much concerned about the question of the improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues, and took special trouble to keep up the church in his village.
On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of complete liberty for women, and especially their right to labor. But he lived with his wife on such terms that their affectionate, childless home life was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his wife's life so that she did nothing and could do nothing but share her husband's preoccupations in spending their time as happily and as agreeably as possible.
If it had not been a characteristic of Levin to put the most favorable interpretation on people, Sviiazhsky's character would have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself, "a fool or a knave," and everything would have seemed clear. But he could not say a fool, because Sviiazhsky was unmistakably clever, and, moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge except when he was compelled to do so. Still less could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviiazhsky was unmistakably an honest, goodhearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his work, which was held in high honor by everyone about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was indeed incapable of doing, anything base.
Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked at him and his life as at a living enigma.
Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to sound Sviiazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviiazhsky's mind, which were hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviiazhsky was slightly disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored rebuff.
Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was particularly glad to stay with Sviiazhsky. Apart from the fact that the sight of this happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone else, and their well-ordered home, had always a cheering effect on Levin, he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to get at that secret in Sviiazhsky which gave him such clarity, definiteness, and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at Sviiazhsky's he would meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take part in those rural conversations concerning crops, laborers' wages, and so on, which, Levin was aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low, but which seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of importance. "It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom, and it may not be of importance in England. In both cases the conditions of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now, when everything has been turned topsy-turvy, and is only just taking shape, the question what form these conditions will take is the one question of importance in Russia," thought Levin.
The shooting turned out to be poorer than Levin expected. The marsh was dry and there were no snipe at all. He walked about the whole day and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that he brought back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which with him always accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, the old man and his family would time and again come to mind, and the impression of them seemed to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some question connected with them.
In the evening, at tea, two landowners who had come about some business connected with a wardship were of the party, and the interesting conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang up.
Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviiazhsky was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get at a solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of a trapeze, at her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the bosom's being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had imposed upon someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to explain it was impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.
"You say," she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, "that my husband cannot be interested in what's Russian. It's quite the contrary; he is in cheerful spirits abroad, but never in such as he is here. Here he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you've not been to see our school, have you?"
"I've seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn't it?"
"Yes; that's Nastia's work," she said, indicating her sister.
"You teach in it yourself?" asked Levin, trying to look above the open neck, but feeling that no matter where he looked in that direction he should see it.
"Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we've started gymnastic exercises."
"No, thank you, I won't have any more tea," said Levin, and conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he got up, blushing. "I hear a very interesting conversation," he added, and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviiazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviiazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were looking directly at the excited country gentleman with gray mustaches, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that Sviiazhsky knew the answer to this gentleman's complaints, which would at once demolish his whole contention, but that in his position he could not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner's comic talk.
The gentleman with the gray mustaches was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in his old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his coherent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, beautiful sunburned hands, with a single old wedding ring on his fourth finger.
Chapter XXVII.
"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going... such a lot of trouble wasted... I'd turn my back on the whole business, sell out, go off like Nikolai Ivanovich... to hear La Belle Helene," said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
"But, you see, you don't throw it up," said Nikolai Ivanovich Sviiazhsky, "so there must be something gained."
"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, believe it or not, there is such drunkenness, such immorality!... They keep making partition of their bits of land; there isn't a horse or a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer- he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace."
"But then, you make complaints to the justice too," said Sviiazhsky.
"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world There's so much talk springs up that one is sorry ever to have complained. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance money and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court and their village elder. He'll flog them in the good old style! But for that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up and run away."
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviiazhsky, who, far from resenting it, was apparently amused by it.
"But, you see, we manage our land without such extreme measures," said he, smiling: "Levin, and I, and this gentleman."
He indicated the other landowner.
"Yes, the thing's done at Mikhail Petrovich's, but ask him how it's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the landowner, obviously rather proud of the word "rational".
"My system's very simple," said Mikhail Petrovich, "thank God. All my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes.... The peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!' Well, the peasants are all one's neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must help me when I need it- whether it's the sowing of the oats, or the hay cutting, or the harvest'; and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer- though there are dishonest ones among them too, it's true."
Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods, exchanged glances with Sviiazhsky and interrupted Mikhail Petrovich, turning again to the gentleman with the gray mustaches.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "What system is one to adopt nowadays?"
"Why, manage like Mikhail Petrovich, or let the land for half the crop or for rent to the peasants; one can do that- only that's just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with serf labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the metayage system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the emancipation!"
Sviiazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner's words absurd; he understood them better than he did Sviiazhsky. A great deal more of what the landowner said to show in what way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke his own individual thought- a thing that rarely happens- and a thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.
"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only made by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show he was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander. Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than anything else- the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plow, too, wasn't always used. It was introduced in the days of appanaged princes, perhaps, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and threshing machines, and carting manure, and all the modern implements- all these we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now, by the abolition of serfdom, we have been deprived of our authority; and so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is bound to sink to the most savage, primitive condition. That's how I see it."
"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the same system with hired labor," said Sviiazhsky.
"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system, allow me to ask?"
"There it is- the labor force- the chief element in agriculture," thought Levin.
"With laborers."
"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk, like a swine, and then ruin everything you give him. He spoils the horses by watering unseasonably, he cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the threshing machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that's not after his fashion. And that's how the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and where millions of chetverts were raised you get a hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with consideration for..."
And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.
This did not interest Levin, but, when he had finished, Levin went back to his first position, and, addressing Sviiazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his serious opinion, said:
"It's perfectly true that the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of farming on a rational system to yield a profit," said he.
"I don't believe it," Sviiazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I see is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don't even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won't be able to tell you which crop's profitable, and which isn't."
"Italian bookkeeping," said the landowner ironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if they spoil everything for you, there won't be any profit."
"Why do they spoil things? A poor threshing machine, or your Russian presser, they will break, but my steam press they don't break. A wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep good percherons or the Russian wagon horses- they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a higher level."
"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolai Ivanovich! It's all very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university, lads to be educated at the high school- how am I going to buy these percherons?"
"Well, that's what the banks are for."
"To get whatever I have left sold by auction? No, thank you."
"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level of agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don't know to whom they're any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I've spent money on in the way of husbandry has been a loss: stock- a loss, machinery- a loss."
"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray mustaches chimed in, even laughing with satisfaction.
"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do- does it pay?" said Levin, and at once in Sviiazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviiazhsky's mind.
Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good faith. Madame Sviiazhsky had just told him at tea that they had that summer invited a German expert accountant from Moscow, who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the management of their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction of a kopeck.
The landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviiazhsky's farming, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.
"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviiazhsky. "That merely proves that either I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my capital for the increase of my rents."
"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it; but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into it- in other words, they're working it out; so there's no question of rent."
"How- no rent? It's a law."
"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?..."
"Will you have some curded milk? Masha, pass us some curded milk or raspberries." He turned to his wife. "The raspberries are lasting extraordinarily late this year."
And in the happiest frame of mind Sviiazhsky got up and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.
Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with the landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out the peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other person's thought, and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden replaced the stick, that served us for a thousand years, with lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.
"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the labor would become productive?"
"That never could be so with the Russian people; we've no authority," answered the landowner.
"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviiazhsky. Having eaten some curded milk and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, the primitive commune with a guarantee for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been abolished- there remains nothing but free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day laborers, farmers- you can't get out of those forms."
"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."
"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability."
"That's just what I meant," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't we seek them for ourselves?"
"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways. They are ready, invented."
"But if they don't suit us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.
And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of Sviiazhsky.
"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse me, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of the organization of labor?"
"No, very little."
"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then, all this enormous literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement.... The Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, as you're probably aware."
"I have some idea of it, but very vague."
"No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do. I'm no professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to study it."
"But what conclusion have they come to?"
"Excuse me..."
The two neighbors had risen, and Sviiazhsky, once more checking Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.
Chapter XXVIII.
Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of things in Russia; that the evolving of some relation of the laborers to the soil which they would work, as with the peasant he had met halfway to the Sviiazhskys', was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try to solve it.
After saying good night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting gap in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to bed, into his host's study to get the books on the labor question that Sviiazhsky had offered him. Sviiazhsky's study was a huge room, by bookcases and with two tables in it- one a massive writing table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round a lamp. On the writing table was a stand of drawers marked with gold labels, and full of papers of various sorts.
Sviiazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking chair.
"What are you looking at there?" he said to Levin, who was standing at the round table looking through the reviews. "Oh, yes, there's a very interesting article here," said Sviiazhsky, pointing to the review Levin was holding in his hand. "It appears," he went on, with eager interest, "that Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved..."
And, with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard Sviiazhsky: "What is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?" When Sviiazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: "Well, and what then?" But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that such and such had been "proved." But Sviiazhsky did not explain, and saw no need of explaining, why it was interesting to him.
"Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor," said Levin, sighing. "He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true."
"Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!" said Sviiazhsky.
"Whose marshal you are."
"Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction," said Sviiazhsky, laughing.
"I'll tell you what interests me very much," said Levin. "He's right that our system, that is to say, of rational farming, doesn't answer; that the only thing that answers is the moneylender system, like that meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very simplest. Whose fault is it?"
"Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't answer. It answers with Vassilchikov."
"A factory..."
"But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The people are at such a low stage of material and moral development, that obviously they're bound to oppose everything that's necessary to them. In Europe, a rational system answers because the people are educated; it follows that we must educate the people- that's all."
"But how are we to educate the people?"
"To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools, and schools."
"But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material development: what help are schools for that?"
"Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the sick man.- You should try purgative medicine. Taken it: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing left but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That's just how it is with us. I say political economy; you say- worse. I say socialism- worse. Education- worse."
"But how do schools help matters?"
"They give the peasant fresh wants."
"Well, that's a thing I've never understood," Levin replied with heat. "In what way are schools going to help the people to improve their material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won't be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could make out. The day before yesterday I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was going to the wisewoman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why, how does the wisewoman cure screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on the hen roost and repeats some charm....'"
"Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her taking her child to the hen roost to cure it of screaming fits is just..." Sviiazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.
"Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant- that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby has fits because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor."
"Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write...."
"Well, then, I'm very glad- or the contrary, very sorry- that I'm in agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more leisure- and then there will be schools."
"Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory."
"And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?" asked Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviiazhsky's eyes, and he said smiling:
"No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it yourself?"
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the thorough bass of all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement. This dear good Sviiazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for public purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a remedy for all this- all was blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and the anticipation of some solution near at hand.
Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress, that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg, Levin did not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation with Sviiazhsky, though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration. Levin could not help recalling every word he had said, and in imagination amending his own replies.
"Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the only system that does answer is when the laborer is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant's land halfway here. Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to blame or the laborers. We have gone our way- the European way- a long while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force but as the Russian mouzhik with his instincts, and let us arrange our system of agriculture in accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and labor's share will be greater too. And to do this one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success. How to do this?- that's a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done."
This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did not sleep half the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into practice. He had not intended to go away next day, but he now determined to go home early in the morning. Besides, the sister-in-law with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and remorse for some utterly base action. Most important of all- he must get back without delay: he would have to make haste to put his new project to the peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat, so that the sowing might be undertaken on a new basis. He had made up his mind to revolutionize his whole system.
Chapter XXIX.
The carrying out of Levin's plan presented many difficulties; but he struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though not what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception, to believe that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in full swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all again from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in motion.
When on the evening of his arrival home he informed the bailiff of his plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what he said, so long as he was pointing out that all that had been done up to that time was stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so a long while ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for the proposal made by Levin- to take a part as shareholder with his laborers in each agricultural undertaking- at this the bailiff simply expressed a profound despondency, and offered no definite opinion, but began immediately talking of the urgent necessity of carrying the remaining sheaves of rye the next day, and of sending the men out for the second plowing, so that Levin felt that this was not the time for discussing it.
On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a proposition to cede them the land on new terms, he came into collision with the same great difficulty- that they were so much absorbed by the current work of the day that they had not time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed scheme.