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EIGHTEEN

Chapter 13

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LEVIN put on his high boots and, for the first time, a cloth coat instead of a fur, and went out to attend to his farm.
Stepping now on a piece of ice, now into the sticky mud, he crossed the stream of dazzling water.
Spring is the time for making plans and resolutions, and Levin, like a tree which in the spring-time does not yet know in which direction and what manner its young shoots and twigs (still imprisoned in their buds) will develop, did not quite know what work on his beloved land he was going to take in hand, but he felt that his mind was full of the finest plans and resolutions. First of all he went to the cattle-yard. The cows had been let out there, and, warmed by the sunshine, their glossy new coats glistening, they were lowing to be let out into the fields. After he had for a while admired his cows, all familiar to him to the minutest detail, Levin gave orders for them to be driven into the field and for the calves to be let out into the yard. The cowherd ran away merrily to get ready. The dairymaids, with twigs in their hands, holding their skirts up over their bare white legs, not yet sun-burnt, splashed through the puddles into the yard, driving the calves, who were mad with the joy of spring.
Having gazed with admiration at the exceptionally fine calves born that year — the older ones were as big as peasants’ cows, and Pava’s three-month-old calf was as big as a yearling — Levin gave orders to bring a trough of food for them and to put some hay into the racks outside. But it turned out that the racks, which had been put up in the yard and not used during winter, were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who was under contract to be with the threshing-machine, but it turned out that he was mending the harrows, which should have been mended the week before Lent. This was very annoying to Levin. It was vexing that the careless farm management, against which he had struggled so many years with all his might, still continued. He found out that the racks which were not wanted in winter had been taken into the farm-horses’ stable, and there had got broken, as they were lightly made, being meant only for the calves. Besides this, it proved that the harrows and all the agricultural implements which he had ordered to be examined and mended in winter, for which purpose three carpenters had been specially engaged, had not been seen to, and the harrows were now being mended when it was time to start harrowing. Levin sent for the steward, but instead of waiting went at once to look for him himself. The steward, in his astrakhan-trimmed coat, as radiant as everything else that day, was coming from the threshing-ground breaking a bit of straw in his hands.
‘Why is the carpenter not with the threshing-machine?’
‘Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday that the harrows need mending. It’s time to plough, you know.’
‘Why wasn’t it done in winter?’
‘But what do you want with the carpenter?’
‘Where are the racks from the calves’ yard?’
‘I have given orders for them to be put into their places. What is one to do with such people!’ said the steward, waving his arm.
‘It’s not a case of such people, but of such a steward!’ said Levin flaring up. ‘Tell me what I keep you for!’ he shouted; but remembering that this would not help matters, he stopped in the middle of what he was saying and only sighed. ‘Well, can we begin sowing?’ he asked after a pause.
‘It will be possible, beyond Turkino, to-morrow or the day after.’
‘And the clover?’
‘I have sent Vasily, he and Mishka are sowing. Only I don’t know if they will get through, it’s very sticky.’
‘How many acres?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Why not the lot?’ shouted Levin.
That they were only sowing sixteen instead of fifty acres with clover was still more annoying. To grow clover successfully it was necessary according to both theory and his own experience to sow it as early as possible, almost before the snow had finished melting, and Levin could never get this done.
‘There is no one to do it. What are you to do with such people? Three have not come. And now Simon . . .’
‘Well then, you should have let the straw wait.’
‘So I have.’
‘But where are the men?’
‘Five are making compote’ (he meant compost) ‘and four are turning the oats over. They might begin sprouting, Constantine Dmitrich.’
Levin understood very well that ‘might begin sprouting’ meant that the English seed-oats were already spoiling. Here again his orders had not been obeyed.
‘Oh dear, didn’t I speak about it long ago in Lent. . . .’
‘Don’t worry, it will all be done in good time.’
Levin waved his hand angrily and went to the barn to look at the oats; then he came back to the stable. The oats were not yet spoilt, but the men were turning them over with shovels whereas they should have let them run down from the loft. Levin ordered them to do this, told off two of the men to help sow the clover, and got over his vexation with the foreman. Indeed, the day was so beautiful one could not long remain angry.
‘Ignat!’ he called to the coachman, who with sleeves rolled up was washing a carriage at the pump, ‘saddle me . . .’
‘Which, sir?’
‘Oh, Kolpik.’
‘Yes, sir.’
While the horse was being saddled Levin again called the steward, who was hanging about within sight, in order to make it up with him, and began to talk about the spring work that lay before them and his plans for the estate.
‘Carting manure must be started early so that it should be over before the first hay harvest, and the far field will have to be ploughed continually so as to keep the earth clean. We must hire labour for the hay harvest and not pay in kind.’
The foreman listened attentively and evidently tried to approve of his master’s plans: but his face still wore that hopeless and despondent expression so familiar to Levin. This expression seemed to say, ‘That’s all very well, but it will be as God wills.’
Nothing grieved Levin so much as this manner, but it was a manner common to all the numerous stewards he had employed. They all took up the same attitude toward his plans, and therefore he now no longer grew angry with them, but he was grieved, feeling all the more stimulated to resist this, so to say, elemental force for which he could find no other name but ‘as God wills’, which always obstructed him.
‘We’ll see if we can manage it!’ said the steward.
‘Why should you not manage it?’
‘We must have at least fifteen more labourers; but you see they don’t come. Some came to-day, but they wanted seventy roubles each for the summer.’
Levin was silent. That force was opposing him again. He knew that try as they would they had never managed to get more than from thirty-seven to forty labourers at the proper price. Forty could be hired, but never more than forty. Yet all the same he could not but continue the struggle.
‘Send to Sury and to Chefirovka, if they don’t come. We must try and find men.’
‘I’ll send right enough,’ said Vasily Fedorich, the steward, despondently. ‘But the horses too are getting weak.’
‘We will buy some more. But don’t I know,’ he added laughing, ‘that you always want less of everything and worse? However, this year I will not let you have your way. I’ll see to everything myself.’
‘You don’t sleep much as it is, I think. It’s always pleasanter for us when the master’s eye is on us . . .’
‘Then it’s down in the Birch Valley that they are sowing the clover? I’ll ride over and see,’ said Levin, mounting the little light bay horse, Kolpik, which the coachman had brought.
‘You won’t be able to cross the brook, Constantine Dmitrich,’ the coachman called out.
‘Well then, I’ll go through the forest.’
And Levin rode across the muddy yard and out of the gate into the field at a brisk amble, his fresh little horse snorting at the puddles and pulling at the bridle.
If he had felt light-hearted in the cattle and farm yards, he felt still more so in the fields. Gently swayed by the ambling pace of his good little horse, and drinking in the warm smell with the freshness of snow and air in it, he rode through the forest over the crumbling sinking snow that melted at each footstep, and rejoiced at the sight of each one of his trees with its swelling buds and the moss reviving on its bark. When he had passed the forest, a vast expanse of velvety green unrolled before him without a single bare spot, and only sprinkled here and there in the hollows with patches of unmelted snow. He was not irritated either by the sight of a peasant’s horse and colt treading down the young growth (he told a peasant he met to drive them off), nor by the jeering and stupid answer the peasant, Ipat, whom he happened to meet, gave him in reply to his question:
‘Well, Ipat, will it soon be time to sow?’
‘We must plough first, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said Ipat.
The further he went the happier he felt, and all sorts of plans for his estate, each better than the last, presented themselves to him: to plant rows of willows with a southern aspect on all the fields, so that the snow should not remain long under them; to divide the fields, tilling six and keeping three under grass; to build a new cattle-yard at the further end of the field; to dig a pond, and to make folds for the cattle for manuring purposes. Then he would have three hundred desyatinas of wheat, one hundred of potatoes, and one hundred and fifty of clover, and not a single desyatina exhausted.
Dreaming such dreams, carefully guiding his horse so as not to trample down his young growth, he rode up to the labourers who were sowing the clover. The cart with the seed was standing not on the border but in a field of winter-wheat, which was being cut up by the wheels and trampled by the horse’s feet. Both the labourers were sitting on the narrow path between the fields, probably sharing a pipe of tobacco. The earth in the cart with which the seeds were mixed was not rubbed fine, but was pressed or frozen into lumps. On seeing the master the labourer Vasily moved toward the cart, and Mishka began to sow. This was not right, but Levin seldom got angry with the hired men. When Vasily came up Levin told him to take the cart and horse on to the border.
‘It won’t matter, sir, the wheat will recover.’
‘Please don’t argue,’ said Levin, ‘but do as you are told.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Vasily, and took hold of the horse’s head.
‘But the sowing, Constantine Dmitrich, is getting on first-rate,’ he said making up to the master. ‘Only the walking is dreadful. You drag half a hundredweight on your boots.’
‘And why has not the earth been sifted?’ said Levin.
‘Oh, but we crumble it up,’ said Vasily, taking a handful and rubbing the earth between his palms.
Vasily was not to blame that they had given him unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.
Having more than once successfully tested a patent remedy for conquering vexation and making all that seemed wrong right again, Levin employed it now. He looked at the strides Mishka took dragging the enormous lumps of earth that stuck to his feet, dismounted, took the seed-basket from Vasily, and prepared to sow.
‘Where did you stop?’
Vasily pointed to a mark with his foot and Levin began scattering the seeds and earth as best he could. It was hard walking, and having done a row Levin, wet with perspiration, stopped and gave back the basket.
‘Mind, sir, and don’t scold me for this row when summer comes,’ said Vasily.
‘Why?’ said Levin merrily, feeling that his remedy was acting well.
‘Oh, you’ll see when the summer comes. You’ll distinguish it. You just look where I sowed last spring, how regularly I scattered it over. Why, Constantine Dmitrich, I don’t think I could try harder if I was working for my own father. I don’t like to do things badly myself, and I see that others don’t. What’s good for the master is good for us too. When one looks over there it makes one’s heart rejoice,’ said Vasily, pointing to the field.
‘A fine spring, isn’t it, Vasily?’
‘It’s a spring such as the old men don’t remember. I’ve been home, and my old father also has sown three measures of wheat. They say it has caught up the rye.’
‘And have you been sowing wheat long?’
‘Why, it was you who taught us to sow it. The year before last you gave me a bushel of seed yourself. We sowed a quarter of it and sold the rest.’
‘Well, mind and rub the lumps,’ said Levin, going up to his horse, ‘and keep an eye on Mishka, and if the clover comes up well you shall have fifty kopeks for each desyatina.’
‘Thank you kindly. We are very grateful to you as it is.’
Levin mounted his horse and rode to the field where clover had been sown the year before, and to another which was deeply ploughed and ready for sowing the spring wheat.
The clover was coming on splendidly. It was already reviving and steadily growing green among last year’s wheat stubble. The horse sank into the ground up to its pasterns and drew each foot out of the half-thawed earth with a smacking noise. It was quite impossible to ride over the deeply-ploughed field; the earth bore only where there was still a little ice, in the thawed furrows the horse’s legs sank in above its pasterns. The ploughed land was in excellent condition; it would be possible to harrow and sow it in a couple of days. Everything was beautiful and gay. Levin rode back by the way that led across the brook, hoping that the water would have gone down, and he did manage to ford the stream, scaring two ducks in so doing. ‘There must be some snipe too,’ he thought, and just at the turning to his house he met the keeper, who confirmed his supposition.
Levin rode on at a trot, so as to have dinner and get his gun ready for the evening.

Chapter 14

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AS Levin, in the highest spirits, was nearing the house he heard the sound of a tinkling bell approaching the main entrance.
‘Why, that must be some one from the station,’ he thought. ‘They would just have had time to get here from the Moscow train. Who is it? Can it be brother Nicholas? He did say, “Perhaps I’ll go to a watering-place, or perhaps I’ll come to you.” ’ For a moment he felt frightened and disturbed lest his brother’s presence should destroy the happy frame of mind that the spring had aroused in him. But he was ashamed of that feeling, and immediately, as it were, opened out his spiritual arms and with tender joy expected, and now hoped with his whole soul, that it was his brother. He touched up his horse and, having passed the acacia trees, saw a hired three-horse sledge coming from the station and in it a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. ‘Oh, if only it’s some nice fellow with whom one can have a talk,’ he thought. ‘Ah,’ he cried, joyfully lifting both arms, ‘here’s a welcome guest! Well, I am glad to see you!’ he exclaimed, recognizing Oblonsky.
‘I shall know now for certain whether she is married or when she will be,’ thought Levin.
And on this lovely day he felt that the memory of her did not hurt him at all.
‘You did not expect me, eh?’ said Oblonsky, getting out of the sledge with mud on his nose, cheek, and eyebrows, but beaming with cheerfulness and health. ‘I have come to see you, that’s one thing,’ he said, embracing and kissing Levin, ‘to get some shooting, that’s two, and to sell the Ergushevo forest, that’s three.’
‘That’s grand! and what a spring we are having! How did you manage to get here in a sledge?’
‘It would have been worse still on wheels, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said the driver, whom Levin knew.
‘Well, I am very, very glad to see you,’ said Levin with a sincere smile, joyful as a child’s.
He showed his guest into the spare bedroom, where Oblonsky’s things, his bag, a gun in a case, and a satchel with cigars, were also brought, and leaving him to wash and change Levin went to the office to give orders about the ploughing and the clover. Agatha Mikhaylovna, always much concerned about the honour of the house, met him in the hall with questions about dinner.
‘Do just as you please, only be quick,’ he said and went out to see the steward.
When he returned, Oblonsky, fresh and clean, with hair brushed, and face radiant with smiles, was just coming out of his room, and they went upstairs together.
‘How glad I am to have come to you! Now I shall be able to understand what the mysteries you perpetrate here consist of. But, seriously, I envy you. What a house, and everything so splendid, so light, so gay!’ said Oblonsky, forgetting that it was not always spring and bright weather there, as on that day.
‘And your nurse! quite charming! A pretty house-maid with a little apron would be preferable; but with your severe and monastic style this one is more suitable.’
Oblonsky had much interesting news to tell, and one item of special interest to Levin was that his brother, Sergius Ivanich, intended to come and stay in the country with him that summer.
Not a word did Oblonsky say about Kitty or about any of the Shcherbatskys; he only delivered greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visit. As usual during his solitude a mass of thoughts and feelings he could not express to those around had collected in his mind, and now he poured out to Oblonsky the poetic joy of spring, his failures, his plans concerning the estate, his thoughts and remarks about the books he had read, and especially the idea of his own book, the basis of which, though he did not notice it himself, was a criticism of all previous works on agriculture. Oblonsky, always pleasant and quick at understanding everything from a hint, was specially pleasant on this visit; there was a new trait in him which Levin noticed and was flattered by — a kind of respect and a sort of tenderness toward him. The efforts of Agatha Mikhaylovna and the cook to make the dinner specially nice resulted only in both the hungry friends sitting down to a snack and having to appease their hunger with hors d’œuvres of bread and butter, smoked goose, and pickled mushrooms, and in Levin’s ordering the soup to be served without waiting for the pasties with which the cook intended to astonish the visitor. But Oblonsky, though used to very different dinners, found everything delicious; the herb beer, the bread and butter, and especially the smoked goose and pickled mushrooms, the nettle soup and the fowl with melted-butter sauce, the Crimean white wine — everything was delicious, everything was excellent.
‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said, lighting a thick cigarette after the joint. ‘I seem to have come to you as one lands from a noisy steamer on to a peaceful shore. So you maintain that the labourer should be studied as one of the factors which should decide the choice of agricultural methods? You know I am quite an outsider in these matters, but I should think this theory and its application ought to influence the labourer too.’
‘Yes, but wait a bit, I am not talking about political economy but about the science of agriculture. It should resemble the natural sciences and should examine existing phenomena, including the labourer with his economic and ethnographic . . .’
At that moment Agatha Mikhaylovna came in with some jam.
‘Ah, Agatha Mikhaylovna,’ said Oblonsky, kissing the tips of his plump fingers; ‘what smoked goose you have, what herb brandy! . . . But what d’you think, Constantine, is it not time?’ he added.
Levin glanced out of the window at the sun which was setting behind the bare trees of the forest.
‘High time, high time! Kuzma, tell them to harness the trap,’ he said, and ran downstairs.
Oblonsky went down and himself carefully took the canvas cover off the varnished case, opened it, and set to work to put together his valuable gun, which was of the newest type.
Kuzma, already scenting a substantial tip, did not leave Oblonsky for a moment. He put on his stockings and his boots for him, and Oblonsky willingly allowed him to do so.
‘Constantine, please leave word that if the dealer Ryabinin comes (I told him to come here to-day) they should ask him in and let him wait.’
‘Are you selling the forest to Ryabinin?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Of course I know him. I have had dealings with him, positively and finally.’
Oblonsky laughed. ‘Positively and finally’ were the dealer’s favourite words.
‘Yes, he does speak very funnily. She knows where the master is going,’ he added, patting Laska, who was whining and jumping round Levin, now licking his hand, now his boots and his gun.
The trap was standing at the door when they went out.
‘I told them to harness though it is not far, but if you like we can walk?’
‘No, let us drive,’ said Oblonsky, stepping up into the trap [a long vehicle something like a jaunting-car, but with four wheels]. He sat down, wrapped a rug round his legs, and lit a cigar. ‘How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is such a . . . not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and sign of pleasure. Ah, this is life! How delightful! This is how I should like to live.’
‘But who prevents you?’ Levin remarked, smiling.
‘No — you are a lucky fellow! You have got all you are fond of. You like horses — you have them; hounds — you have them; shooting — you get it; farming — you get it too.’
‘Perhaps it is because I am glad of what I get, and don’t grieve about what I haven’t,’ said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Oblonsky understood and looked at him but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky because, with his usual tact, noticing that Levin was afraid of talking about the Shcherbatskys, he avoided mentioning them; but now Levin wanted to find out about the matter that tormented him, and yet feared to speak of it.
‘Well, and how are your affairs?’ he asked, recollecting how wrong it was of him to be thinking only of his own concerns.
Oblonsky’s eyes began to glitter merrily.
‘But you don’t admit that one may want a roll while one gets regular rations, you consider it a crime; and I don’t believe in life without love,’ he answered, understanding Levin’s question in his own way. ‘How can I help it? I am made that way. And really so little harm is done to anyone, and one gets so much pleasure . . .’
‘Is there anything new then?’ inquired Levin.
‘There is! Well, you know Ossian’s type of woman — such as one sees in a dream? Well, there are such women in reality, and these women are terrible. Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.’
‘In that case, better not study them.’
‘Oh, no! Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth but in seeking it.’
Levin listened in silence, but in spite of all his efforts he could not enter into his friend’s soul and understand his feeling, nor the delight of studying women of that kind.