“But can I believe in all the church teaches?” he thought, trying himself,
and thinking of everything that could destroy his present peace of mind.
Intentionally he recalled all those doctrines of the church which had always
seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling block to him.
“The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By
nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?… The atonement?…
“But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been
told to me and all men.”
And it seemed to him that there was not a single article of faith of the
church which could destroy the chief thing—faith in God, in goodness, as
the one goal of man’s destiny.
Under every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the
service of truth instead of one’s desires. And each doctrine did not simply
leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that
great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for
each man and millions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles,
old men and children—all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and kings to
understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of
the soul which alone is worth living, and which alone is precious to us.
Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. “Do I
not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But,
however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round
and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am
incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right than when
I strain my eyes to see beyond it.”
Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to mysterious voices
that seemed talking joyfully and earnestly within him.
“Can this be faith?” he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. “My
God, I thank Thee!” he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands
brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.
Chapter 14
Levin looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight of
his trap with Raven in the shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up to the
herd, said something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of the wheels
and the snort of the sleek horse close by him. But he was so buried in his
thoughts that he did not even wonder why the coachman had come for him.
He only thought of that when the coachman had driven quite up to him
and shouted to him. “The mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and
some gentleman with him.”
Levin got into the trap and took the reins. As though just roused out of
sleep, for a long while Levin could not collect his faculties. He stared at the
sleek horse flecked with lather between his haunches and on his neck,
where the harness rubbed, stared at Ivan the coachman sitting beside him,
and remembered that he was expecting his brother, thought that his wife
was most likely uneasy at his long absence, and tried to guess who was the
visitor who had come with his brother. And his brother and his wife and the
unknown guest seemed to him now quite different from before. He fancied
that now his relations with all men would be different.
“With my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used
to be between us, there will be no disputes; with Kitty there shall never be
quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice;
with the servants, with Ivan, it will all be different.”
Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with
impatience and seemed begging to be let go, Levin looked round at Ivan
sitting beside him, not knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand,
continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he tried to find
something to start a conversation about with him. He would have said that
Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was like blame, and he
longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.
“Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,” said the
coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.
“Please don’t touch and don’t teach me!” said Levin, angered by this
interference. Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt
sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual
condition could immediately change him in contact with reality.
He was not a quarter of a mile from home when he saw Grisha and Tanya
running to meet him.
“Uncle Kostya! mamma’s coming, and grandfather, and Sergey
Ivanovitch, and someone else,” they said, clambering up into the trap.
“Who is he?”
“An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms,” said
Tanya, getting up in the trap and mimicking Katavasov.
“Old or young?” asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not
know whom, by Tanya’s performance.
“Oh, I hope it’s not a tiresome person!” thought Levin.
As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming,
Levin recognized Katavasov in a straw hat, walking along swinging his
arms just as Tanya had shown him. Katavasov was very fond of discussing
metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who
had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin had had many
arguments with him of late.
And one of these arguments, in which Katavasov had obviously
considered that he came off victorious, was the first thing Levin thought of
as he recognized him.
“No, whatever I do, I won’t argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,”
he thought.
Getting out of the trap and greeting his brother and Katavasov, Levin
asked about his wife.
“She has taken Mitya to Kolok” (a copse near the house). “She meant to
have him out there because it’s so hot indoors,” said Dolly. Levin had
always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe,
and he was not pleased to hear this.
“She rushes about from place to place with him,” said the prince, smiling.
“I advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar.”
“She meant to come to the bee-house. She thought you would be there.
We are going there,” said Dolly.
“Well, and what are you doing?” said Sergey Ivanovitch, falling back
from the rest and walking beside him.
“Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,” answered Levin.
“Well, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you
for such a long time.”
“Only for a fortnight. I’ve a great deal to do in Moscow.”
At these words the brothers’ eyes met, and Levin, in spite of the desire he
always had, stronger than ever just now, to be on affectionate and still more
open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He
dropped his eyes and did not know what to say.
Casting over the subjects of conversation that would be pleasant to
Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off the subject of the Servian war
and the Slavonic question, at which he had hinted by the allusion to what he
had to do in Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch’s book.
“Well, have there been reviews of your book?” he asked.
Sergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of the question.
“No one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone,” he said. “Just
look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have a shower,” he added, pointing
with a sunshade at the white rain clouds that showed above the aspen tree-
tops.
And these words were enough to re-establish again between the brothers
that tone—hardly hostile, but chilly—which Levin had been so longing to
avoid.
Levin went up to Katavasov.
“It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,” he said to him.
“I’ve been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion,
we’ll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?”
“No, I’ve not finished reading him,” said Levin. “But I don’t need him
now.”
“How’s that? that’s interesting. Why so?”
“I mean that I’m fully convinced that the solution of the problems that
interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now….”
But Katavasov’s serene and good-humored expression suddenly struck
him, and he felt such tenderness for his own happy mood, which he was
unmistakably disturbing by this conversation, that he remembered his
resolution and stopped short.
“But we’ll talk later on,” he added. “If we’re going to the bee-house, it’s
this way, along this little path,” he said, addressing them all.
Going along the narrow path to a little uncut meadow covered on one
side with thick clumps of brilliant heart’s-ease among which stood up here
and there tall, dark green tufts of hellebore, Levin settled his guests in the
dense, cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps
purposely put there for visitors to the bee-house who might be afraid of the
bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh
honey, to regale them with.
Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible, and listening to
the bees that buzzed more and more frequently past him, he walked along
the little path to the hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught
in his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the shady outer room,
he took down from the wall his veil, that hung on a peg, and putting it on,
and thrusting his hands into his pockets, he went into the fenced-in bee-
garden, where there stood in the midst of a closely mown space in regular
rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the hives he knew so well, the old
stocks, each with its own history, and along the fences the younger swarms
hived that year. In front of the openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy
to watch the bees and drones whirling round and round about the same spot,
while among them the working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search
of them, always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime
trees and back to the hives.
His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various notes, now the
busy hum of the working bee flying quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy
drone, and the excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their property
from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of the fence the
old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did not see Levin.
Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives and did not call him.
He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the influence of
ordinary actual life, which had already depressed his happy mood. He
thought that he had already had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show
coolness to his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov.
“Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no
trace?” he thought. But the same instant, going back to his mood, he felt
with delight that something new and important had happened to him. Real
life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was
still untouched within him.
