第 二十六 章 · 第26章

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 licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling,

poked her nose under her mother’s udder, and stiffened her tail out

straight.

“Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,” said Levin, examining the

calf. “Like the mother! though the color takes after the father; but

that’s nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily

Fedorovitch, isn’t she splendid?” he said to the bailiff, quite

forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in

the calf.

“How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after

you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said the

bailiff. “I did inform you about the machine.”

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his

work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He

went straight from the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a

little conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went

back to the house and straight upstairs to the drawing-room.