by Leo Tolstoy
'That'll do nicely!' thought Levin, putting the two plump, warm birds into his game bag. 'Eh, Lasochka, won't it do nicely?'
By the time Levin reloaded his gun and started off again, the sun, though still invisible behind the clouds, was already up. The crescent moon, having lost all its brilliance, showed white like a cloud in the sky; there was no longer a single star to be seen. The marshy patches, silvery with dew earlier, now became golden. The rustiness turned to amber. The blue of the grass changed to yellowish green. Little marsh birds pottered by the brook, in bushes glistening with dew and casting long shadows. A hawk woke up and sat on a haystack, turning its head from side to side, looking with displeasure at the marsh. Jackdaws flew into the fields, and a barefoot boy was already driving the horses towards an old man, who had got up from under his caftan and was scratching himself. Smoke from the shooting, like milk, spread white over the green grass.
One of the boys came running to Levin.
'Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!' he cried to him and followed him at a distance.
And in the sight of this boy, who expressed his approval, Levin took a double pleasure in straight away killing three more snipe, one after the other.
XIII
The hunters' omen proved true, that if the first beast or bird was taken the field would be lucky.
Tired, hungry, happy, Levin returned towards ten o'clock, having walked some twenty miles on foot, with nineteen pieces of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt because there was no room for it in his game bag. His comrades had long been awake and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast.
'Wait, wait, I know it's nineteen,' said Levin, counting for a second time the snipe and great snipe, doubled up and dry, caked with blood, their heads twisted to the side, no longer looking as impressive as when they flew.
The count was correct, and Levin was pleased at Stepan Arkadyich's envy. He was also pleased to find on his return that the messenger had already arrived with a note from Kitty.
'I am quite well and cheerful. If you are afraid for me, you may be more at ease than ever. I have a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna' (this was the midwife, a new, important person in Levin's family life). 'She came to see how I am. She found me perfectly well, and we are having her stay until you come. Everyone is cheerful and well, so please don't you be in a hurry, and if the hunting is good, stay another day.'
These two joys, the lucky hunting and the note from his wife, were so great that the two minor unpleasantnesses that occurred afterwards passed easily for him. One was that the chestnut outrunner, evidently overworked the day before, was off her feed and looked dull. The coachman said she had been strained.
'She was overdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitrich,' he said. 'Of course, she was pushed hard those seven miles!'
The other unpleasantness that upset his good mood at first, but at which he later laughed a great deal, was that of all the provisions, which Kitty had sent with them in such abundance that it seemed they could not have been eaten in a week, nothing remained. Coming back from the hunt tired and hungry, Levin had been dreaming so specifically of pirozhki that, as he approached their quarters, he could already feel their smell and taste in his mouth, the way Laska could sense game, and he at once ordered Filipp to serve them. It turned out that there were not only no pirozhki but no chicken either.
'Quite an appetite!' said Stepan Arkadyich, laughing and pointing at Vasenka Veslovsky. 'I don't suffer from lack of appetite myself, but this is astonishing ...'
'Mais c'etait delicieux.'* Veslovsky praised the beef he had just eaten.
'Well, nothing to be done!' said Levin, giving Veslovsky a dark look. 'Serve some beef, then, Filipp.'
'The beef got eaten. I gave the bone to the dogs,' Filipp replied.
Levin was so upset that he said vexedly:
'You might have left me at least something!' and nearly wept.
'Clean the game,' he said to Filipp in a trembling voice, trying not to look at Vasenka, 'and layer it with nettles. And fetch me some milk at least.'
Later on, when he had drunk his fill of milk, he felt ashamed at having shown vexation to a stranger, and he started laughing at his hungry anger.
That evening they hunted in yet another field, where Veslovsky also shot several birds, and at night they returned home.
The way back was as merry as the way there. Veslovsky sang, then recalled with pleasure his exploits with the muzhiks who had treated him to vodka and said 'No offence', then his night's exploits with the nuts and the farm girl, and the muzhik who had asked him whether he was married or not and, on learning that he was not, had told him: 'Don't you go looking at other men's wives; you'd best get one of your own.' These words especially made Veslovsky laugh.
'All in all I'm terribly pleased with our trip. And you, Levin?'
'I'm very pleased,' Levin said sincerely, especially glad not only that
* But it was delicious.
he did not feel the hostility he had felt towards Vasenka Veslovsky at home, but that, on the contrary, he felt the most friendly disposition towards him.
XIV
The next day at ten o'clock, having already made the round of the farm, Levin knocked at the door of Vasenka's bedroom.
'Entrez,' Veslovsky called to him. 'Excuse me, I've just finished my ablutions,' he said, smiling, standing before him in nothing but his underwear.
'Please don't be embarrassed.' Levin sat down by the window. 'Did you sleep well?'
'Like a log. What a good day for hunting!'
'Yes. Will you take tea or coffee?'
'Neither one. I'll wait for lunch. I'm ashamed, really. The ladies must be up already? It would be splendid to take a stroll around. You can show me your horses.'
After strolling in the garden, visiting the stables, and even doing some exercises together on the bars, Levin and his guest returned to the house and went into the drawing room.
'We had excellent hunting and so many impressions!' Veslovsky said, going up to Kitty, who was sitting by the samovar. 'It's a pity ladies are deprived of such pleasures!'
'Well, so what? He has to find something to talk about with his hostess,' Levin said to himself. Again it seemed to him there was something in the smile and the victorious expression with which his guest had addressed Kitty . ..
The princess, who was sitting at the other end of the table with Marya Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyich, called Levin over and started a conversation with him about moving to Moscow for Kitty's confinement and getting an apartment ready. As Levin had found all the preparations for the wedding unpleasant, insulting in their insignificance to the grandeur of what was taking place, so he found still more insulting the preparations for the future confinement, the date of which was somehow being counted out on their fingers. He tried all the time not to hear those conversations about the ways of swaddling the future baby, tried to turn away and not see some sort of mysterious, endless knitted strips, some sort of linen triangles, to which Dolly attached some special significance, and so on. The event of his son's birth (he was sure it would be a son), which he had been promised but in which he still could not believe - so extraordinary did it seem to him - appeared on the one hand as such an enormous and therefore impossible happiness, and on the other as such a mysterious event, that this imaginary knowledge of what was going to be and, consequently, the preparation for it as for something ordinary, done by these same people, seemed to him outrageous and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings and explained his unwillingness to think and talk about it as light-mindedness and indifference, and therefore would not leave him in peace. She had charged Stepan Arkadyich with seeing about the apartment, and now she called Levin over.
'I don't know a thing, Princess. Do as you like,' he said.
'You must decide when you'll move.'
'I really don't know. I know there are millions of children born without Moscow and doctors . .. why then ...'
'But no, it's as Kitty wants.'
'It's impossible to discuss it with Kitty! Do you want me to frighten her? This spring Natalie Golitsyn died because of a bad doctor.'
'I will do whatever you say,' he said sullenly.
The princess began telling him, but he was not listening to her. Though the conversation with the princess upset him, he became gloomy not because of that conversation, but because of what he saw by the samovar.
'No, this is not possible,' he thought, glancing again and again at Vasenka, who was leaning towards Kitty, talking to her with his handsome smile, and then at her, blushing and excited.
There was something impure in Vasenka's pose, in his glance, in his smile. Levin even saw something impure in Kitty's pose and glance. And again everything went dark in his eyes. Again, as yesterday, suddenly, without the least transition, he felt himself thrown down from the height of happiness, peace, dignity, into an abyss of despair, anger and humiliation. Again everyone and everything became repulsive to him.
'Do as you like, then, Princess,' he said, turning round again.
'Heavy is the hat of Monomakh!'[5] Stepan Arkadyich joked, obviously alluding not only to the conversation with the princess but to the cause of Levin's agitation, which he had noticed. 'How late you are today, Dolly!'
Everyone rose to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vasenka rose for a moment and, with that lack of courtesy peculiar to the new young men, bowed slightly and went on with his conversation, laughing at something.
'Masha has worn me out. She slept poorly and has been very capricious all day,' said Dolly.
The conversation Vasenka had begun with Kitty was again on yesterday's subject, on Anna and whether love can be above social conventions. Kitty found this conversation unpleasant. It upset her by its content and by the tone in which it was carried on, and especially by the effect she now knew it would have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to be able to stop the conversation or even to hide the external pleasure the young man's obvious attention gave her. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know how. She knew that whatever she did would be noticed by her husband and interpreted in a bad sense. And indeed, when she asked Dolly what was the matter with Masha, and Vasenka, waiting for that discussion, which he found dull, to be over, began gazing indifferently at Dolly, the question seemed to Levin an unnatural, disgusting ruse.
'What do you say, shall we go mushrooming today?' asked Dolly.
'Let's go, please, and I'll go, too,' said Kitty, and blushed. She wanted, out of politeness, to ask Vasenka if he would go, but did not. 'Where are you going, Kostya?' she asked her husband, with a guilty look, as he walked past her with resolute strides. That guilty expression confirmed all his suspicions.
'The mechanic came in my absence. I haven't seen him yet,' he said without looking at her.
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study, he heard the familiar steps of his wife, who was coming to him with incautious haste.
'What is it?' he said drily. 'We're busy.'
'Excuse me,' she turned to the German mechanic, T must say a few words to my husband.'
The German was going to leave, but Levin said:
'Don't bother.'
'The train's at three?' asked the German. T don't want to be late.'
Levin did not reply and stepped out of the room with his wife.
'Well, what do you have to say to me?' he said in French.
He was not looking in her face and did not want to see that she, in her condition, stood with her face all trembling and looked pitiful and crushed.
'I... I want to say that it's impossible to live this way, that it's torture ...' she said.
'There are people in the pantry here,' he said angrily, 'kindly do not make a scene.'
'Let's go in here then!'
They were standing in a passage. Kitty wanted to go into the next room, but the governess was giving Tanya a lesson there.
'Then let's go to the garden!'
In the garden they came upon a muzhik who was weeding the path. And no longer considering that the muzhik might see her tear-stained and his troubled face, not considering that they had the look of people fleeing some disaster, they went on with quick steps, feeling that they had to say everything and reassure each other, to be alone together and rid themselves of the suffering they were both experiencing.
'It's impossible to live this way! It's torture! I'm suffering, you're suffering. Why?' she said, when they finally reached a solitary bench at the corner of a linden alley.
'But tell me yourself: was there something indecent, impure, humiliatingly terrible in his tone?' he said, standing before her again, fists on his chest, in the same pose as the other night.
'There was,' she said in a trembling voice. 'But don't you see, Kostya, that it's not my fault? All morning I wanted to set a certain tone, but these people... Why did he come? We were so happy!' she said, choking with sobs that shook her whole filled-out body.
The gardener saw with surprise that, though no one had chased them and there had been nothing to flee from, and though they could not have found anything especially joyful on that bench - they returned home past him with calmed, radiant faces.
XV
After taking his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly's side of the house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was very upset that day. She was pacing the room and saying angrily to the girl who stood in the corner howling:
'And you'll stand in the corner all day, and have dinner alone, and won't see a single doll, and I won't make you a new dress,' she said, not knowing how else to punish her.
'No, she's a nasty little girl!' She turned to Levin. 'Where did she get these vile inclinations?'
'But what did she do?' Levin said rather indifferently. He had wanted to consult her about his own affairs and was therefore vexed that he had come at the wrong moment.
'She and Grisha went into the raspberry bushes, and there ... I can't even tell you what she did there. Such nasty things. I'm a thousand times sorry Miss Elliot's not here. This woman doesn't look after anything, she's a machine ... Figurez-vous, que la petite . . .'*
And Darya Alexandrovna related Masha's crime.
'That doesn't prove anything. It's not vile inclinations, it's simply a prank,' Levin comforted her.
'But you're upset about something? Why did you come?' asked Dolly. 'What's going on there?'
And in the tone of this question Levin heard that it would be easy for him to say what he meant to say.
'I wasn't there, I was alone in the garden with Kitty. It's the second time we've quarrelled since ... Stiva arrived.'
Dolly looked at him with intelligent, understanding eyes.
'Well, tell me, hand on heart, wasn't there ... not in Kitty, but in that gentleman, a tone that could be unpleasant - not unpleasant but terrible, insulting for a husband?'
'That is, how shall I put it to you ... Stay, stay in the corner,' she said to Masha, who, seeing a barely noticeable smile on her mother's lips, had begun to stir. 'Society's view would be that he's behaving as all young men behave. Il fait la cour a une jeune et jolie femme,* and a worldly husband should be flattered by it.'
* Imagine, the little girl . . .
* He's courting a young and pretty woman.
'Yes, yes,' Levin said gloomily, 'but you did notice?'
'Not only I, but Stiva noticed. He told me just after tea: "Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour a Kitty." '*
'Well, splendid, now I'm at peace. I shall throw him out,' said Levin.
'What, have you lost your mind?' Dolly cried in horror. 'No, Kostya, come to your senses!' she said, laughing. 'Well, you can go to Fanny now,' she said to Masha. 'No, if you want, I'll tell Stiva. He'll take him away. He can say you're expecting guests. Generally, he doesn't fit in with us.'
'No, no, I'll do it myself.'
'But you're going to quarrel?...'
'Not at all.
It will be great fun for me,' said Levin, his eyes indeed sparkling merrily. 'Well, forgive her, Dolly! She won't do it again,' he said, referring to the little criminal, who would not go to Fanny and stood hesitantly before her mother, looking expectantly from under her brows and seeking her eyes.
The mother looked at her. The girl burst into sobs, buried her face in her mother's lap, and Dolly placed her thin hand tenderly on her head.
'And what do we and he have in common?' thought Levin, and he went to look for Veslovsky.
Passing through the front hall, he ordered the carriage harnessed to go to the station.
'A spring broke yesterday,' the footman replied.
'The tarantass, then, but quickly. Where's the guest?'
'The gentleman has gone to his room.'
Levin found Vasenka at a moment when, having taken his things from the suitcase and laid out the new song music, he was trying on his leggings for horseback riding.
Either there was something special in Levin's face, or Vasenka himself sensed that the petit brin de cour he had started was out of place in this family, but he was somewhat embarrassed (as much as a worldly man could be) by Levin's entrance.
