bound. Altogether their honeymoon—that is to say, the month after their
wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not
merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the
bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in
later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful
incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of
mind, both were rarely quite themselves.
It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from
Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to
go more smoothly.
Chapter 15
They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He
was sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She, wearing the dark
lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married life, and put
on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved by him, was
sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa which had always
stood in the study in Levin’s father’s and grandfather’s days. She was
sewing at broderie anglaise. He thought and wrote, never losing the happy
consciousness of her presence. His work, both on the land and on the book,
in which the principles of the new land system were to be laid down, had
not been abandoned; but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had
seemed to him petty and trivial in comparison with the darkness that
overspread all life, now they seemed as unimportant and petty in
comparison with the life that lay before him suffused with the brilliant light
of happiness. He went on with his work, but he felt now that the center of
gravity of his attention had passed to something else, and that consequently
he looked at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work
had been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without this
work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were necessary for
him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his manuscript,
reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure that the work
was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed to him superfluous
and extreme, but many blanks became distinct to him when he reviewed the
whole thing in his memory. He was writing now a new chapter on the
causes of the present disastrous condition of agriculture in Russia. He
maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous
distribution of landed property and misdirected reforms, but that what had
contributed of late years to this result was the civilization from without
abnormally grafted upon Russia, especially facilities of communication, as
railways, leading to centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and
the consequent development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment
of speculation—all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that in
a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise
only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture,
when it had come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that the
wealth of a country ought to increase proportionally, and especially in such
a way that other sources of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in
harmony with a certain stage of agriculture there should be means of
communication corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of
the land, railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs,
were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected of
them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the development
of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress; and that just as the
one-sided and premature development of one organ in an animal would
hinder its general development, so in the general development of wealth in
Russia, credit, facilities of communication, manufacturing activity,
indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had arisen in their proper time,
had with us only done harm, by throwing into the background the chief
question calling for settlement—the question of the organization of
agriculture.
While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial
her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want
of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s jealous,” she
thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s jealous of me! If he
knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr the cook,” she thought,
looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to
herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from his work (but he has plenty of
time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d
turn round … I’ll will him to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to
intensify the influence of her gaze.
“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was
looking at him and smiling, he looked round.
“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.
“He looked round,” she thought.
“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and
trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.
“How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going up to
her with a radiant smile of happiness.
“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.”
“And what were you thinking about?”
“I? I was thinking…. No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break off,”
she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little holes now, do
you see?”
She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.
“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and watching
the tiny scissors moving round.
“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the
back of your head.”
“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too
good,” he said, kissing her hand.
“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems
to me.”
“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her head
round.
“A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!”
Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another
like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.
“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.
“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”
“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else I
shall read your letters without you.”
Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio
bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant
fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his
own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a
feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful,
effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life.
“It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought. “It’ll soon be three months,
and I’m doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work
seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw it aside.
Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given up. On the land I scarcely
walk or drive about at all to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her,
or I see she’s dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was
nothing much, somehow didn’t count, but that after marriage, life began in
earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my
time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won’t do; I must begin. Of course,
it’s not her fault. She’s not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer,
to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into
such ways, and she’ll get used to them too…. Of course she’s not to blame,”
he told himself.
But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else,
and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his
dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin’s mind that she herself was
not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was to
blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. (“That fool
Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn’t know how to.”) “Yes,
apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and
broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in her work, in
the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she’s rather good at it, nor
in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly satisfied.” Levin, in his heart,
censured this, and did not as yet understand that she was preparing for that
period of activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the
wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse,
and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this,
and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself
for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed
now while gaily building her nest for the future.
