by Leo Tolstoy
'Right, sir,' said Vassily, and he took hold of the horse's head. 'And the sowing is first rate, Konstantin Dmitrich,' he said, fawning. 'Only the weakling's pretty terrible! You drag ten pounds on each shoe.'
'And why hasn't the soil been sifted?' Levin asked.
'We break it up with our hands,' Vassily answered, taking some seed and rubbing the lump between his hands.
It was not Vassal's fault that they had given him unsifted soil, but it was vexing all the same.
Having already experienced more than once the usefulness of the remedy he knew for stifling his vexation and turning all that seemed bad back to good, Levin employed it here as well. He looked at how Mishka strode along, lugging huge lumps of earth stuck to each foot, got off his horse, took the seed basket from Vassily, and went to sow.
'Where did you stop?'
Vassily pointed to a mark with his foot, and Levin went, as well as he could, scattering the seeds mixed with soil. It was hard walking, as through a swamp, and having gone one row, Levin became sweaty, stopped and handed the seed basket back.
'Well, master, mind you don't scold me for this row come summer,' said Vassily.
'What for?' Levin said gaily, already feeling the effectiveness of the remedy.
'You'll see come summer. It'll be different. You just take a look where I sowed last spring. So neat! You know, Konstantin Dmitrich, it seems I try and do it as I would for my own father. I don't like doing bad work myself and I tell others the same. If the master's pleased, so are we. Look there now,' Vassily said, pointing to the field, 'it brings joy to your heart.'
'It's a fine spring, Vassily.'
'Such a spring as the old folk don't remember. I went home, and our old man there has also sowed two acres of wheat. He says you can't tell it from rye.'
'How long have you been sowing wheat?'
'Why, it's you that taught us two years ago. And you gave me two bushels. We sold a quarter of it and sowed the rest.'
'Well, make sure you rub out these lumps,' said Levin, going towards his horse, 'and keep an eye on Mishka. If it comes up well, you'll get fifty kopecks per acre.'
'Thank you kindly. Seems we're right pleased with you anyway.'
Levin mounted his horse and rode to the field where last year's clover was and to the one that had been ploughed for the spring wheat.
The clover sprouting among the stubble was wonderful. It was all revived already and steadily greening among the broken stalks of last year's wheat. The horse sank fetlock-deep, and each of his hoofs made a sucking sound as it was pulled from the half-thawed ground. It was quite impossible to go across the ploughed field: it held only where there was ice, but in the thawed furrows the leg sank over the fetlocks. The ploughing was excellent; in two days they could harrow and begin sowing. Everything was beautiful, everything was cheerful. Levin rode back across the brook, hoping the water had subsided. And indeed he did get across and frightened two ducks. 'There must also be woodcock,' he thought, and just at the turning to his house he met a forester, who confirmed his guess about woodcock.
Levin went home at a trot, so as to arrive in time to have dinner and prepare a gun for the evening.
XIV
Approaching his house in the cheerfullest spirits, Levin heard a bell from the direction of the main entrance.
'Yes, it's from the railway station,' he thought, 'exactly the time of the Moscow train ... Who could it be? What if it's my brother Nikolai? He did say, "Maybe I'll go to a watering-place, or maybe I'll come to you."' He found it frightening and unpleasant in the first moment that the presence of his brother might spoil this happy spring mood of his. Then he became ashamed of this feeling, and at once opened, as it were, his inner embrace and with tender joy now expected and wished it to be his brother. He urged the horse on and, passing the acacia tree, saw the hired troika driving up from the railway station with a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. 'Ah, if only it's someone pleasant that I can talk with,' he thought.
'Ah!' Levin cried joyfully, raising both arms high. 'What a delightful guest! Oh, I'm so glad it's you!' he called out, recognizing Stepan Arkadyich.
'I'll find out for certain whether she's married or when she's going to be,' he thought.
And on that beautiful spring day he felt that the memory of her was not painful for him at all.
'What, you didn't expect me?' said Stepan Arkadyich, getting out of the sledge with flecks of mud on the bridge of his nose, his cheek and his eyebrow, but radiating health and good cheer. 'I've come - one - to see you,' he said, embracing and kissing him, 'and - two - to do some fowling, and - three - to sell a wood in Yergushovo.'
'Splendid! And what a spring, eh? How did you make it by sledge?'
'It's even worse by cart, Konstantin Dmitrich,' replied the coachman, whom he knew.
'Well, I'm very, very glad you've come,' Levin said with a sincere and childishly joyful smile.
Levin led his guest to the visitors' bedroom, where Stepan Arkadyich's belongings were also brought - a bag, a gun in a case, a pouch for cigars - and, leaving him to wash and change, went meanwhile to the office to give orders about the ploughing and the clover. Agafya Mikhailovna, always very concerned for the honour of the house, met him in the front hall with questions about dinner.
'Do as you like, only be quick,' he said and went to the steward.
When he returned, Stepan Arkadyich, washed, combed, with a radiant smile, was coming out of his door, and together they went upstairs.
'Well, how glad I am that I got to you! Now I'll understand what these mysteries are that you perform here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! Bright, cheerful!' Stepan Arkadyich said, forgetting that it was not always spring and a clear day like that day. 'And your nanny's such a dear! A pretty maid in a little apron would be preferable, but with your monasticism and strict style - it's quite all right.'
Stepan Arkadyich brought much interesting news, and one piece of news especially interesting for Levin - that his brother Sergei Ivanovich was going to come to him in the country for the summer.
Stepan Arkadyich did not say a single word about Kitty or generally about the Shcherbatskys, he only gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy, and was very glad of his guest. As always during his time of solitude, he had accumulated a mass of thoughts and feelings that he could not share with anyone around him, and now he poured into Stepan Arkadyich his poetic joy of spring, his failures and plans for the estate, his thoughts and observations about the books he was reading, and in particular the idea of his own book, which was based, though he did not notice it, on a critique of all the old books on farming. Stepan Arkadyich, always nice, understanding everything from a hint, was especially nice during this visit, and Levin also noticed in him a new trait of respect and a kind of tenderness towards himself, which he found flattering.
The efforts of Agafya Mikhailovna and the cook to make an especially good dinner had as their only result that the two hungry friends, sitting down to the hors d'oeuvres, ate their fill of bread and butter, polotok and pickled mushrooms, and that Levin ordered the soup served without the pirozhki with which the cook had wanted especially to surprise the guest. But Stepan Arkadyich, though accustomed to different dinners, found everything excellent: the herb liqueur, the bread and butter, and especially the polotok, the mushrooms, the nettle soup,[19] the chicken with white sauce, and the white Crimean wine - everything was excellent and wonderful.
'Splendid, splendid,' he said, lighting up a fat cigarette after the roast. 'Here it's just as if, after the noise and vibration of a steamer, I've landed on a quiet shore. So you say that the element of the worker himself must be studied and serve as a guide in the choice of farming methods. I'm not an initiate, but it seems to me that the theory and its application will influence the worker himself.'
'Yes, but wait: I'm not talking about political economy, I'm talking about scientific farming. It must be like a natural sci
ence, observing given phenomena, and the worker with his economic, ethnographic ...'
Just then Agafya Mikhailovna came in with the preserves.[20]
'Well, Agafya Mikhailovna,' Stepan Arkadyich said to her, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, 'what polotok you have, what herb liqueur! ... But say, Kostya, isn't it time?' he added.
Levin looked out of the window at the sun setting beyond the bare treetops of the forest.
'It's time, it's time,' he said. 'Kuzma, harness the trap!' And he ran downstairs.
Stepan Arkadyich, having come down, carefully removed the canvas cover from the varnished box himself and, opening it, began to assemble his expensive, new-fashioned gun. Kuzma, already scenting a big tip for vodka, would not leave Stepan Arkadyich and helped him on with his stockings and boots, which Stepan Arkadyich willingly allowed him to do.
'Kostya, tell them that if the merchant Ryabinin comes -I told him to come today - they should receive him and have him wait...'
'Are you selling the wood to Ryabinin?'
'Yes. Do you know him?'
'That I do. I've dealt with him "positively and finally".'
Stepan Arkadyich laughed. 'Positively and finally' were the merchant's favourite words.
'Yes, he has a funny way of talking. She knows where her master's going!' he added, patting Laska, who was fidgeting around Levin with little squeals, licking now his hand, now his boots and gun.
The trap was already standing by the porch when they came out.
'I told them to harness up, though it's not far - or shall we go on foot?' 'No, better to drive,' said Stepan Arkadyich, going up to the trap. He got in, wrapped his legs in a tiger rug and lit a cigar. 'How is it you don't smoke! A cigar - it's not so much a pleasure as the crown and hallmark of pleasure. This is the life! How good! This is how I'd like to live!'
'Who's stopping you?' said Levin, smiling.
'No, you're a lucky man. You have everything you love. You love horses - you have them; dogs - you have them; hunting - you have it; farming - you have it.'
'Maybe it's because I rejoice over what I have and don't grieve over what I don't have,' said Levin, remembering Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyich understood, looked at him, but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his usual tact, that he was afraid of talking about the Shcherbatskys and saying nothing about them; but now Levin wanted to find out about what tormented him so and did not dare to begin.
'Well, and how are things with you?' Levin said, thinking how wrong it was on his part to think only of himself.
Stepan Arkadyich's eyes twinkled merrily.
'You don't accept that one can like sweet rolls when one has a daily ration of bread - in your opinion, it's a crime. But I don't accept life without love,' he said, understanding Levin's question in his own way. 'No help for it, that's how I'm made. And really, it brings so little harm to anyone, and so much pleasure for oneself...'
'What, is there something new?' asked Levin.
'There is, brother! Look, you know there's this type of Ossianic[21] women ... women you see in your dreams ... But these women exist in reality .. . and these women are terrible. Woman, you see, it's such a subject that, however much you study her, there'll always be something new.'
'Better not to study then.'
'No. Some mathematician said that the pleasure lies not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it.'
Levin listened silently and, despite all his efforts, was simply unable to get inside his friend's soul and understand his feelings or the charms of studying such women.
XV
The shooting place was not far away, across a stream in a small aspen grove. Nearing the wood, Levin got out and led Oblonsky to the corner of a mossy and marshy clearing that was already free of snow. He himself went back to a double birch at the other end and, leaning his gun against the fork of a dry lower branch, took off his caftan, tightened his belt, and made sure he had freedom to move his arms.
The old, grey-haired Laska, who had followed behind him, carefully sat down facing him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind the large forest, and in its light the little birches scattered among the aspens were distinctly outlined with their hanging branches and buds swollen to bursting.
From a thicket in which there was still snow came the barely audible sound of water trickling in narrow, meandering streams. Small birds chirped and occasionally flew from tree to tree.
In intervals of complete silence one could hear the rustling of last year's leaves, stirred by the thawing ground and the growing grass.
'Imagine! You can hear and see the grass grow!' Levin said to himself, noticing the movement of a wet, slate-coloured aspen leaf beside a spear of young grass. He stood, listened, and looked down at the wet, mossy ground, at the attentive Laska, then at the sea of bare treetops of the forest spreading before him at the foot of the hill and the fading sky streaked with white clouds. A hawk, unhurriedly flapping its wings, flew high over the distant forest; another flew the same way in the same direction and disappeared. The birds chirped more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far away, and Laska gave a start, took several cautious steps and, cocking her head, began to listen. From across the stream came the call of a cuckoo. It cuckooed twice in its usual call, then wheezed, hurried and became confused.
'Imagine! a cuckoo already!' said Stepan Arkadyich, coming out from behind a bush.
'Yes, I can hear,' Levin replied, reluctantly breaking the silence of the forest with his voice, which he found disagreeable. 'It won't be long now.'
Stepan Arkadych's figure stepped back behind the bush, and Levin saw only the bright flame of a match, replaced at once by the red glow of a cigarette and blue smoke.
'Chik! chik!' clicked the hammers of Stepan Arkadyich's gun.
'And what's that cry?' asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin's attention to a drawn-out yelping, as of a frolicking colt whinnying in a high voice.
'Ah, don't you know? It's a male hare. Enough talk! Listen, they're coming!' Levin almost cried out, cocking his gun.
They heard a high, distant whistling, and two seconds later, in the usual rhythm so well known to hunters, a second, a third, and after the third whistle came a chirring.
Levin cast a glance right, left, and there before him in the dull blue sky, over the merging, tender sprouts of the aspen tops, a flying bird appeared. It flew straight towards him: the close, chirring sounds, like the measured ripping of taut fabric, were just above his ears; the bird's long beak and neck could already be seen, and just as Levin aimed, red lightning flashed from behind the bush where Oblonsky stood; the bird dropped like an arrow and again soared up. Lightning flashed again and a clap was heard; fluttering its wings as if trying to stay in the air, the bird paused, hung there for a moment, then plopped heavily to the marshy ground.
'Could we have missed?' cried Stepan Arkadyich, who was unable to see on account of the smoke.
'Here it is!' said Levin, pointing at Laska, who, with one ear raised and the tip of her fluffy tail wagging on high, stepping slowly as if she wished to prolong the pleasure, and almost smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. 'Well, I'm glad you got it,' said Levin, at the same time already feeling envious that it was not he who had succeeded in shooting this woodcock.
'A rotten miss with the right barrel,' Stepan Arkadyich replied, loading the gun. 'Shh ... here they come.'
Indeed, they heard a quick succession of piercing whistles. Two woodcock, playing and chasing each other and only whistling, not chirring, came flying right over the hunters' heads. Four shots rang out and, like swallows, the woodcock made a quick swerve and vanished from sight.
The fowling was splendid. Stepan Arkadyich shot another two birds, and Levin two, one of which could not be found. It was getting dark. Bright, silvery Venus, low in the west, was already shining with her tender gleam behind the birches, and high in the east the sombre Arcturus already played its
red fires. Overhead Levin kept finding and losing the stars of the Great Bear. The woodcock had stopped flying; but Levin decided to wait longer, until Venus, which he could see under a birch branch, rose above it and the stars of the Great Bear showed clearly. Venus had already risen above the branch, the chariot of the Great Bear with its shaft was already quite visible in the dark blue sky, but he still waited.
'Isn't it time?' said Stepan Arkadyich.
It was quiet in the forest and not a single bird moved.
'Let's stay longer.'
'As you wish.'
They were now standing about fifteen paces apart.
'Stiva!' Levin said suddenly and unexpectedly. 'Why don't you tell me whether your sister-in-law got married or when she's going to?'
Levin felt himself so firm and calm that he thought no answer could stir him. But he never expected what Stepan Arkadyich replied.
'She wasn't and isn't thinking of getting married, but she's very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They even fear for her life.'
'What's that!' cried Levin. 'Very ill? What's wrong with her? How did she ...'
