Chapter 14

As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.

‘Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,’ he thought, ‘just the time to be here from the Moscow train…Who could it be? What if it’s brother Nikolay? He did say: ‘Maybe I’ll go to the waters, or maybe I’ll come down to you.’’ He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence should come to disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. ‘Oh, if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little!’ he thought.

‘Ah,’ cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. ‘Here’s a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!’ he shouted, recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

‘I shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or when she’s going to be married,’ he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.

‘Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. ‘I’ve come to see you in the first place,’ he said, embracing and kissing him, ‘to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.’

‘Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?’

‘In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ answered the driver, who knew him.

‘Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,’ said Levin, with a genuine smile of childlike delight.

Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also—a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.

‘Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,’ he said, and went to the bailiff.

When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.

‘Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand what the mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always spring and fine weather like that day. ‘And your nurse is simply charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe monastic style it does very well.’

Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news; especially interesting to Levin was the news that his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, was intending to pay him a visit in the summer.

Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty and the Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As always happened with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had been accumulating within him, which he could not communicate to those about him. And now he poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been reading, and the idea of his own book, the basis of which really was, though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old books on agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming on this visit, and Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as it were, and a new tone of respect that flattered him.

The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner should be particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends attacking the preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter, salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Levin’s finally ordering the soup to be served without the accompaniment of little pies, with which the cook had particularly meant to impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup, and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean wine— everything was superb and delicious.

‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said, lighting a fat cigar after the roast. ‘I feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore after the noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the laborer himself is an element to be studied and to regulate the choice of methods in agriculture. Of course, I’m an ignorant outsider; but I should fancy theory and its application will have its influence on the laborer too.’

‘Yes, but wait a bit. I’m not talking of political economy, I’m talking of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the natural sciences, and to observe given phenomena and the laborer in his economic, ethnographical…’

At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.

‘Oh, Agafea Mihalovna,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, ‘what salt goose, what herb brandy!…What do you think, isn’t it time to start, Kostya?’ he added.

Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare tree-tops of the forest.

‘Yes, it’s time,’ he said. ‘Kouzma, get ready the trap,’ and he ran downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get ready his expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big tip, never left Stepan Arkadyevitch’s side, and put on him both his stockings and boots, a task which Stepan Arkadyevitch readily left him.

‘Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes…I told him to come today, he’s to be brought in and to wait for me…’

‘Why, do you mean to say you’re selling the forest to Ryabinin?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, ‘positively and conclusively.’’

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. ‘Positively and conclusively’ were the merchant’s favorite words.

‘Yes, it’s wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her master’s going!’ he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin, whining and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.

The trap was already at the steps when they went out.

‘I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?’

‘No, we’d better drive,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into the trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a cigar. ‘How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!’

‘Why, who prevents you?’ said Levin, smiling.

‘No, you’re a lucky man! You’ve got everything you like. You like horses—and you have them; dogs—you have them; shooting— you have it; farming—you have it.’

‘Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don’t fret for what I haven’t,’ said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he had not the courage to begin.

‘Come, tell me how things are going with you,’ said Levin, bethinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled merrily.

‘You don’t admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has had one’s rations of bread—to your mind it’s a crime; but I don’t count life as life without love,’ he said, taking Levin’s question his own way. ‘What am I to do? I’m made that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure…’

‘What! is there something new, then?’ queried Levin.

‘Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian’s women…. Women, such as one sees in dreams…. Well, these women are sometimes to be met in reality…and these women are terrible. Woman, don’t you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it’s always perfectly new.’

‘Well, then, it would be better not to study it.’

‘No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.’

Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.

Chapter 15

The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free.

Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting.

From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained, came the faint sound of narrow winding threads of water running away. Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree.

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year’s leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass.

‘Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!’ Levin said to himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down at the wet mossy ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert, sometimes at the sea of bare tree tops that stretched on the slope below him, sometimes at the darkening sky, covered with white streaks of cloud.

A hawk flew high over a forest far away with slow sweep of its wings; another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and putting her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo call, and then gave a hoarse, hurried call and broke down.

‘Imagine! the cuckoo already!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out from behind a bush.

‘Yes, I hear it,’ answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the stillness with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. ‘Now it’s coming!’

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s figure again went behind the bush, and Levin saw nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and blue smoke of a cigarette.

‘Tchk! tchk!’ came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch cocking his gun.

‘What’s that cry?’ asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin’s attention to a prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice, in play.

‘Oh, don’t you know it? That’s the hare. But enough talking! Listen, it’s flying!’ almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.

They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact time, so well known to the sportsman, two seconds later— another, a third, and after the third whistle the hoarse, guttural cry could be heard.

Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground.

‘Can I have missed it?’ shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could not see for the smoke.

‘Here it is!’ said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. ‘Well, I’m glad you were successful,’ said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe.

‘It was a bad shot from the right barrel,’ responded Stepan Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. ‘Sh…it’s flying!’

The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from sight.

The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two more birds and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west behind the birch trees, and high up in the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again. The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky, yet still he waited.

‘Isn’t it time to go home?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

‘Let’s stay a little while,’ answered Levin.

‘As you like.’

They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.

‘Stiva!’ said Levin unexpectedly; ‘how is it you don’t tell me whether your sister-in-law’s married yet, or when she’s going to be?’

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyevitch replied.

‘She’s never thought of being married, and isn’t thinking of it; but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They’re positively afraid she may not live.’

‘What!’ cried Levin. ‘Very ill? What is wrong with her? How has she…?’

While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them.

‘They have chosen a time to talk,’ she was thinking. ‘It’s on the wing…. Here it is, yes, it is. They’ll miss it,’ thought Laska.

But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes gleamed, and two gangs sounded at the very same instant. The snipe flying high above instantly folded its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate shoots.

‘Splendid! Together!’ cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the thicket to look for the snipe.

‘Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?’ he wondered. ‘Yes, Kitty’s ill…. Well, it can’t be helped; I’m very sorry,’ he thought.

‘She’s found it! Isn’t she a clever thing?’ he said, taking the warm bird from Laska’s mouth and packing it into the almost full game bag. ‘I’ve got it, Stiva!’ he shouted.