Chapter 17
Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes,
which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business
of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been
excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and
so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon
Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been
begun.
Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be
affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his
mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had
gradually begun to work upon him.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had
slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had
slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had
the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this
Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it
insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but
he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest,
the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated
him.
“Well, finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. “Would
you like supper?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country!
Wonderful! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something?”
“Oh, damn him!”
“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn’t even shake
hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?”
“Because I don’t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter’s a hundred
times better than he is.”
“What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of
classes?” said Oblonsky.
“Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.”
“You’re a regular reactionist, I see.”
“Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and
nothing else.”
“And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.
“Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because—excuse me—
of your stupid sale….”
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels
himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own.
“Come, enough about it!” he said. “When did anybody ever sell anything
without being told immediately after the sale, ‘It was worth much more’?
But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything…. No, I see you’ve a
grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.”
“Maybe I have. And do you know why? You’ll say again that I’m a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy and
anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to which I
belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I’m glad to belong.
And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance—that would be
nothing; living in good style—that’s the proper thing for noblemen; it’s only
the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy land, and
I don’t mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and
supplants the idle man. That’s as it ought to be. And I’m very glad for the
peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a sort of
—I don’t know what to call it—innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought
for half its value a magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice.
And there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles, as
security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you’ve
made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles.”
“Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?”
“Of course, they must be counted. You didn’t count them, but Ryabinin
did. Ryabinin’s children will have means of livelihood and education, while
yours maybe will not!”
“Well, you must excuse me, but there’s something mean in this counting.
We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their profit.
Anyway, the thing’s done, and there’s an end of it. And here come some
poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give us that
marvelous herb-brandy….”
Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea
Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a dinner
and such a supper.
“Well, you do praise it, anyway,” said Agafea Mihalovna, “but
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, give him what you will—a crust of bread—he’ll
eat it and walk away.”
Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He
wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not bring
himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment in which
to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room, undressed, again
washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed,
but Levin still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and
not daring to ask what he wanted to know.
“How wonderfully they make this soap,” he said gazing at a piece of
soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the
visitor but Oblonsky had not used. “Only look; why, it’s a work of art.”
“Yes, everything’s brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn. “The theater, for
instance, and the entertainments … a—a—a!” he yawned. “The electric light
everywhere … a—a—a!”
“Yes, the electric light,” said Levin. “Yes. Oh, and where’s Vronsky
now?” he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.
“Vronsky?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; “he’s in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he’s not once been in Moscow
since. And do you know, Kostya, I’ll tell you the truth,” he went on, leaning
his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his handsome ruddy face,
in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. “It’s your
own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the
time, I couldn’t say which had the better chance. Why didn’t you fight it
out? I told you at the time that….” He yawned inwardly, without opening his
mouth.
“Does he know, or doesn’t he, that I did make an offer?” Levin
wondered, gazing at him. “Yes, there’s something humbugging, diplomatic
in his face,” and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan Arkadyevitch
straight in the face without speaking.
“If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a
superficial attraction,” pursued Oblonsky. “His being such a perfect
aristocrat, don’t you know, and his future position in society, had an
influence not with her, but with her mother.”
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as
though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at
home, and the walls of home are a support.
“Stay, stay,” he began, interrupting Oblonsky. “You talk of his being an
aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of
Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You
consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose father crawled up
from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother—God knows whom she
wasn’t mixed up with…. No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic,
and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four
honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding
(talent and intellect, of course that’s another matter), and have never curried
favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father
and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to
count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty
thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don’t know what, while I
don’t and so I prize what’s come to me from my ancestors or been won by
hard work…. We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor
of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence
halfpenny.”
“Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class
of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was reckoning
him too. Levin’s warmth gave him genuine pleasure. “Whom are you
attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about Vronsky, but I
won’t talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back
with me to Moscow, and….”
“No; I don’t know whether you know it or not, but I don’t care. And I tell
you—I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina Alexandrovna is
nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating reminiscence.”
