“In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I don’t like it,” he
said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother’s eyes. “Here one would
think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one’s own and other
people’s, would be a good thing, and yet I’m afraid of death, awfully afraid
of death.” He shuddered. “But do drink something. Would you like some
champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let’s go to the Gypsies! Do you
know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs.”
His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject
to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go out
anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade
Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.
Chapter 26
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he
reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors about
politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by
a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of
something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his
one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in
the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own
horses with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and
tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the
village news, that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he
felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and
self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat
and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had
sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the
work that lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that
had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the
Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light.
He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was
to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he
would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage
must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he
really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low
passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been
making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother
Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never allow himself to forget
him, that he would follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be
ready to help when things should go ill with him. And that would be soon,
he felt. Then, too, his brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so
lightly at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in
economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own
abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he
determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard
and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still harder,
and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so
easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest
daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached
home before nine o’clock at night.
The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in
the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed
the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep. Kouzma,
waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch,
Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round
about Levin’s knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to put her
forepaws on his chest.
“You’re soon back again, sir,” said Agafea Mihalovna.
“I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at
home, one is better,” he answered, and went into his study.
The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar
details came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the
stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father’s sofa,
a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ashtray, a manuscript
book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an
instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had
been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him,
and to say to him: “No, you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re
not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always
been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to
amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you
won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”
This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him
that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do
anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the corner
where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them like a
gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a creak of steps
at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.
The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well; but
informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been a
little scorched. This piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying machine
had been constructed and partly invented by Levin. The bailiff had always
been against the drying machine, and now it was with suppressed triumph
that he announced that the buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly
convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched, it was only because the
precautions had not been taken, for which he had hundreds of times given
orders. He was annoyed, and reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an
important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought
at a show, had calved.
“Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern. I’ll
come and look at her,” he said to the bailiff.
The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house.
Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into
the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the frozen
door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light of the
lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad,
smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying
down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought better
of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him. Pava, a perfect
beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented
their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over.
Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and spotted
calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing, but when
Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing heavily, began
