THIRTY-SIX

 

 

Chapter 23

 

 

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ON Monday the usual meeting of the Committee of the Second of July took place. Karenin entered the Council room, greeted the members and the president as usual, and took his seat, his hand lying ready on the papers before him. Among these papers were the statistics that he needed and a draft of the statement he was going to make. But he did not really require the figures. He remembered them all and did not even consider it necessary to go over in his mind what he was going to say. He knew that when the time came, and he saw his opponent before him vainly trying to look indifferent, his speech would naturally be far more fluent and better than if he prepared it beforehand. He felt that the contents of his speech would be so important that every word would be significant. Yet as he listened to the general reports his face wore a most innocent and artless look. Looking at his white hands with the thick veins and the delicate long fingers toying with, the two edges of a white sheet of paper before him, and at his head wearily bent to one side, no one would have expected that words would flow from his lips which would raise a terrible storm and make the members shout each other down, forcing the president to call them to order. When the Reports had been heard, Karenin in his quiet thin voice informed the meeting that he wished to bring to their notice some considerations of his own on the question of the settlement of the native races, and the attention of the meeting turned to him. Karenin cleared his throat, and, as was his wont when making a speech, without looking at his opponent he fixed his eyes on the first man opposite him — a quiet little old man who never had any views in connection with the Special Committee — and began to explain his considerations. When he came to the Fundamental and Organic Law his opponent jumped up and began to raise objections. Stremov (who was also on the Special Committee), stung to the quick, began justifying himself, and the meeting became quite a stormy one. But Karenin triumphed and his motion was carried; three new Special Committees were formed, and the next day nothing was talked about in a certain Petersburg set but that meeting. Karenin’s success was even greater than he had expected.

 

When he woke on the Tuesday morning he recalled with pleasure his victory of the previous day, and could not help smiling, even while wishing to appear indifferent, when the secretary, with a desire to flatter him, reported the rumours that had reached him concerning what had happened at the meeting.

 

Busy with the secretary, Karenin quite forgot that it was Tuesday, the day fixed for Anna’s return, and was surprised and unpleasantly startled when the footman came in to inform him of her arrival.

 

Anna returned to Petersburg early in the morning, and as she had wired that the carriage should be sent for her he might have expected her. But he did not come out to meet her when she arrived. She was told that he had not yet come out of his study, where he was busy with his secretary. She sent word to her husband that she had arrived and went to her boudoir, where she set to work sorting her things, expecting that he would come in to see her. But an hour passed and he did not come. She went down into the dining-room on a plea of giving orders and purposely spoke in a loud voice, thinking that he would come; but although she heard him go out of the study door to take leave of the secretary, he did not come to her. She knew that according to his habit he would soon go away to his work and she wished to see him first.

 

She passed through the ball-room to his study and resolutely went in. When she entered he was sitting in his official uniform evidently ready to start, with his elbows on a little table, looking wearily in front of him. She saw him before he saw her and knew that he was thinking about her.

 

When he saw her he was about to rise, but changed his mind as his face flushed — a thing Anna had never seen it do before. However, he quickly rose and came toward her looking not at her eyes but at her forehead and hair. He came up, took her hand, and asked her to sit down.

 

‘I am very glad you have come,’ he said, sitting down beside her. He evidently wished to say something, but faltered. Several times he tried to speak, but stopped. Although while preparing for this interview she had been teaching herself to despise and blame him, she did not know what to say, and pitied him. There was silence for some time.

 

‘Is Serezha well?’ he asked; and without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘I am not dining at home to-day and must be going at once.’

 

‘I meant to go away to Moscow,’ she said.

 

‘Oh no, you were quite right to come,’ he replied, and again became silent. Seeing that he had not the strength to begin, she began for him.

 

‘Alexis Alexandrovich!’ she said, studying his face and without dropping her eyes under his gaze fixed on her hair, ‘I am a guilty woman and a bad one, but I am what I was before, as I then told you. I have come to tell you now I cannot make any change.’

 

‘I am not questioning you about it,’ he replied suddenly in a firm tone and looking with hatred straight into her eyes. ‘I had expected it.’ Under the influence of anger he had evidently regained perfect self-possession. ‘But I repeat again what I then told you and subsequently wrote,’ he went on in a shrill thin voice, ‘I again repeat that I will not know it; I ignore it as long as it is not known to the rest of the world, as long as my name is not dishonoured. Therefore I warn you that our relations must remain what they have been, and that if you let yourself be compromised I shall be obliged to take measures to safeguard my honour.’

 

‘But our relations cannot be what they were before,’ Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with frightened eyes.

 

When she saw his quiet gestures, heard his shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her repulsion toward him destroyed the pity she had felt for him, and she now experienced nothing but fear and anxiety to clear up the situation at any cost.

 

‘I cannot be your wife, since I . . .’ she began.

 

He laughed in a cruel, cold manner. ‘I suppose the kind of life you have chosen has affected your principles. I respect or despise both so much — I respect your past and despise your present — that the interpretation you give to my words was far from my thoughts!’

 

Anna sighed and hung her head.

 

‘I cannot understand, however, that with your independent mind,’ he went on, getting heated, ‘informing your husband of your infidelity and appearing to see nothing unseemly in it, you should consider it unseemly to continue to fulfil a wife’s duties to your husband!’

 

‘Alexis Alexandrovich, what do you want of me?’

 

‘What I want, is not to meet that person here, and for you to behave in such a way that neither Society nor the servants shall be able to accuse you, — for you not to see that man. I think that is not much to ask! And in return you will enjoy all the advantages of a wife without fulfilling her duties. That is all I have to say! Now I must be going. . . . And I shan’t be back to dinner.’ He rose and went toward the door. Anna too rose. He stopped and let her pass first.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 24

 

 

 

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THE night Levin had spent on the haycock had not passed without leaving its mark: he became disgusted with the agricultural pursuits on which he was engaged and lost all interest in them. In spite of the splendid harvest he had never, or thought he had never, encountered so many failures, or so much hostility from the peasants, as that year; and the cause of those failures and that hostility was now quite plain to him. The delight he had felt in the labour itself, occasioned by his having drawn nearer to the peasants, his jealousy of them, his envy of their life, his desire to adopt that kind of life (which had not been a mere desire that night but a real intention, the details of which he had considered), all these things together had so changed his outlook on the working of his estate that he could no longer feel his former interest in the work, or help noticing the unpleasant relation to the labourer on which it was all based. Herds of cattle of an improved breed like Pava, the tilled land ploughed with good ploughs, the nine fields surrounded with willows, the hundreds of acres of deeply manured land, the seed drills and all such things, were splendid if they could be worked by himself alone or with the help of friends and people in sympathy with him. But now he clearly saw (the book on agriculture which he was writing, in which the labourer was the chief factor in farming, helped much in this direction) that the agricultural work he was carrying on was founded on a bitter and obstinate struggle between himself and his labourers, in which on the one side — his — there was a continual and strenuous attempt to bring everything into accord with what were considered the best models, while on the other side there was the natural order of things. And he saw that in his struggle, in spite of extreme efforts on his part, and without any effort or even intention on the part of others, the only results achieved were that neither side was the winner, and that fine tools and splendid cattle and soil were quite uselessly damaged. But the chief point was that not only was the energy expended on the work wasted, but he could not help feeling now, when he saw the meaning of his pursuit laid bare before him, that the aim of his efforts was a most unworthy one. What was the essential cause of that hostility? He struggled to get every penny he could, and had to do so or he would not have been able to pay his labourers their wages, and they struggled to be allowed to work quietly, pleasantly, and just as they were used to work. It was to his interest that every labourer should get through as much work as possible and at the same time give his mind to it, not injuring the winnowing machine, the horse-rake, or the threshing machine, but working intelligently. The labourer wished to work in the pleasantest way possible, with intervals of rest, and especially to think unconcernedly about other things without having to reason. During that summer Levin noticed this continually.

 

He gave orders to mow the clover for hay, choosing the inferior fields overgrown with grass and hemlock and not fit for seed; and they cut down all the best seed clover, defended themselves by saying that the foreman ordered them to do it, and comforted him with the assurance that he would get splendid hay; while he knew that they had done it simply because that clover was easiest to mow. He sent out the horse-rake to turn the hay and it got broken while tossing the first few rows, because the peasant found it dull to sit in the seat under the rotating wings; and Levin was told: ‘Don’t worry, sir! The women will toss it all in no time!’

 

The English ploughs turned out useless, because it never entered the peasant’s head to lower the upturned ploughshare, and as he forced it through at the turning he spoiled the ground and strained the horses; and Levin was told not to worry! The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat-field because not one of the peasants wanted to be watchman, and in spite of its having been forbidden the labourers took turns to watch the horses at night; so Vanka, who had been at work all day, fell asleep, and confessed his guilt, saying, ‘I am in your hands, sir!’

 

Three of the best calves had been overfed by being turned into the meadow where the clover had been cut, without any water to drink, and the peasants would on no account admit that the clover had injured them. To comfort Levin he was told that his neighbour had lost a hundred head of cattle in three days. All this happened not because anyone wished to harm Levin or his farming; on the contrary he well knew that they liked him and considered him a homely gentleman — high praise from a peasant. It was done simply because the labourers wished to work merrily and without care, while his interests were not only foreign and incomprehensible to them but flatly opposed to their own just interests. Levin had long felt dissatisfied with his relation to the work on his estate. He had seen that the boat was leaking but had not found or looked for the leak, and perhaps had purposely deceived himself, for had he been disillusioned in that work, he would have had nothing left. But now he could deceive himself no longer.

 

His agricultural pursuits had not only ceased to interest him but had become repulsive, and he could no longer give his mind to them.

 

Added to this there was Kitty Shcherbatskaya not more than twenty miles away, and he wanted to meet her, yet could not. When he called on Dolly, she had asked him to come again and come with the object of once more proposing to her sister, letting him feel that her sister would now accept him. Levin himself having seen Kitty Shcherbatskaya knew that he had not ceased to love her, yet he could not go to the Oblonskys’ house while she was there. That he had proposed and she had refused him had put an impossible barrier between them.

 

‘I cannot ask her to be my wife just because she cannot be the wife of the man she wanted,’ he said to himself, and this thought rendered him cold and hostile toward her.

 

‘I shall not have the strength to speak to her without reproach or to look at her without ill-will, and she will only hate me all the more — as it is only right she should! Besides, how can I go there now after what Darya Alexandrovna told me? Can I help betraying what she told me? And I should come magnanimously to forgive her, to show mercy to her! I — stand before her in the rôle of one who forgives her and honours her with his love! Why did Darya Alexandrovna tell me this? I might have met her accidentally and then all would have come naturally, but now it is impossible!’

 

Dolly sent to him to ask for a side-saddle for Kitty.

 

‘I have been told,’ she wrote, ‘that you have a side-saddle. I hope you will bring it yourself.’

 

That was more than he could stand. ‘How can an intelligent woman with any delicacy so humiliate a sister? He wrote ten notes and tore them all up, sending the saddle at last without any reply. To say that he would come was impossible, because he could not come; to say that something prevented him from coming, or that he was leaving home, was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer, conscious of doing something shameful; and next day, putting the disagreeable management of the estate into the hands of the steward, he went away to a distant district to visit his friend Sviyazhsky, who had splendid shooting and had long been asking him to come and stay with him.

 

The snipe marshes in the Surovsky district had for a long time appeared tempting to Levin, but he had put off his visit because of his farm-work. But now he was glad to go away from the proximity of Kitty and from his farm, and especially to go shooting, an occupation which served him as the best solace in all his troubles.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 25

 

 

 

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THERE was no railway or stage-coach to the Surovsky district, and Levin went in his own tarantas [a four-wheeled Russian carriage without springs on a long flexible wooden chassis, suitable for bad roads].

 

Half-way he stopped to feed his horses at a well-to-do peasant’s house. The bald-headed, fresh-faced old man, with a red beard which was growing grey round the cheeks, opened the gates and pressed close to the post to let the three-horsed vehicle enter. After showing the coachman to a place in a lean-to, in a large, clean, tidy, newly-constructed yard where stood some charred wooden ploughs, the old man invited Levin to enter the house. A cleanly-dressed young woman with goloshes on her stockingless feet was washing the floor in the passage. The dog that followed Levin frightened her, but when she was told that it would not hurt her she at once began to laugh at her own alarm. After pointing to the door with her bare arm she again stooped, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

 

‘Want a samovar?’ she asked.

 

‘Yes, please.’

 

The room Levin entered was a large one with a tiled stove and a partition. Under the shelf with the icons stood a table decorated with a painted pattern, a bench, and two chairs. By the door stood a little cupboard with crockery. The shutters were closed and there were not many flies in the room, which was so clean that Levin took care to keep Laska (who had been bathing in the puddles on the way) from trampling on the floor, telling her to lie down in a corner by the door. Having looked round the room, he went out into the backyard. The good-looking woman in goloshes, with two empty pails swinging from a wooden yoke, ran down before him to fetch water from the well.

 

‘Look alive!’ the old man called merrily after, and approached Levin. ‘Is it to Nicholas Ivanich Sviyazhsky you are going, sir? He too stops at our place,’ he began garrulously, leaning on the banisters of the porch. In the midst of his conversation about his acquaintanceship with Sviyazhsky the gates creaked again, and the labourers returning from the fields came into the yard with their ploughs and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were big and well-fed. The labourers evidently belonged to the household. Two young fellows wore print shirts and peaked caps, two others were hired men and wore home-spun shirts; one of these was old and the other young.

 

The old master of the house left the porch and went to unharness the horses.

 

‘What have they been ploughing?’ asked Levin.

 

‘Between the potatoes. We too rent a little land. Don’t let the gelding out, Fedof, lead him to the trough. We’ll harness another.’

 

‘I say, father! have those ploughshares I ordered been brought?’ asked a tall, robust young fellow, evidently the old man’s son.

 

‘There in the passage,’ answered the old man, winding the reins into a ring and throwing them on the ground. ‘Fix them in before we finish dinner.’

 

The good-looking woman returned, her shoulders pressed down by the weight of the full pails, and went into the house. Other women, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and plain, some with children, others without, appeared from somewhere.

 

The chimney of the samovar began to hum. The labourers and the family, having attended to the horses, went in to dinner.

 

Levin took his provisions out of the tarantas and invited the old man to have tea with him.

 

‘Why, I don’t know! We have had tea once to-day,’ said he, evidently pleased to accept the invitation. ‘Well, just for company!’

 

Over their tea Levin heard the whole history of the old man’s farm. Ten years previously he had rented about four hundred acres from the landowner, and the year before he had bought them outright and rented another nine hundred from a neighbouring proprietor. A small part of the land — the worst — he let, and with the aid of his family and two hired men cultivated about a hundred and twenty acres. The old man complained that his affairs were in a bad way. But Levin knew that he only did so for propriety’s sake and that in reality his farm was flourishing. Had his affairs been in a bad way he would not have bought land at thirty-five roubles an acre, would not have married three of his sons and a nephew, and would not have twice rebuilt his homestead after fires, nor rebuilt it better each time. In spite of the old peasant’s grumbling one could see that he was justly proud of his property, of his sons, his nephew, his daughters-in-law, his horses, his cows, and especially of the fact that his whole household and farm held together. From their conversation Levin gathered that he was not against new methods either. He had planted many potatoes which had already flowered and were forming fruit, as Levin had noticed when passing the fields on the way, while Levin’s own potatoes were just beginning to flower. He ploughed the land for the potatoes with an English plough, which he had borrowed from a landowner. He also sowed wheat. Levin was struck especially by one little detail. The old peasant used the thinnings of the rye as fodder for the horses. Many a time when Levin had seen this valuable food wasted he had wanted to have it gathered up, but had found this impossible. On this peasant’s fields this was being done, and he could not find words enough to praise this fodder.

 

‘What is there for the young women to do? They carry the heaps out on to the road and a cart comes and fetches them.’

 

‘There now! We landlords don’t get on well because of the labourers,’ said Levin, handing him a tumbler of tea.

 

‘Thank you,’ said the old man as he took the tea, but he refused sugar, pointing to a bit he still had left. [Russian peasants seldom put sugar in their tea, but frugally nibble a lump between drinks.] ‘How can one rely on work with hired labourers?’ he said, ‘it is ruination! Take Sviyazhsky now. We know what sort of soil his is, black as poppy-seed, but he cannot boast of his harvests either. It’s want of attention.’

 

‘And yet you too use hired labour on your farm?’

 

‘Ours is peasant’s business; we look after everything ourselves. If a labourer is no good, let him go! We can manage for ourselves.’

 

‘Father, Finnigan wants some tar fetched,’ said the woman with the goloshes, coming in.

 

‘That’s how it is, sir,’ said the old man, rising; and after crossing himself several times he thanked Levin and went out. When Levin went into the back room to call his coachman he found the whole peasant family at dinner. The women served standing. The vigorous young son with his mouth full of buckwheat porridge was saying something funny, and everybody laughed heartily — the woman with the goloshes laughing more merrily than anyone as she refilled the bowl with cabbage soup.

 

The handsome face of this woman with the goloshes might very well have had something to do with the impression of welfare that this peasant household produced on Levin; that impression was anyhow so strong that he never lost it. And all the rest of the way to Sviyazhsky’s he every now and then recalled that household, as if the impression it had left on him demanded special attention.