Anna Karenina 27

ANNA KARENINA

 

PART 27

Chapter 10

 

“Kitty writes to me that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,” Dolly said after the silence that had followed.

“And how is she—better?” Levin asked in agitation.

“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.”

“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.

“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry with Kitty?”

“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.

“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them when you were in Moscow?”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know....”

“What do I know?”

“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

“What makes you suppose I know?”

“Because everybody knows it....”

“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had guessed it was so.”

“Well, now you know it.”

“All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.”

“I have told you.”

“When was it?”

“When I was at their house the last time.”

“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but....”

She interrupted him.

“But she, poor girl ... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.”

“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up. “Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again.”

“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve. “Wait a minute, sit down.”

“Please, please, don’t let us talk of this,” he said, sitting down, and at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had believed to be buried.

“If I did not like you,” she said, and tears came into her eyes; “if I did not know you, as I do know you....”

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Levin’s heart.

“Yes, I understand it all now,” said Darya Alexandrovna. “You can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense, with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,—a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”

“Yes, if the heart does not speak....”

“No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer....”

“Well, that’s not quite it.”

“Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on his heart and set it aching.

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that’s how one chooses a new dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much the better.... And there can be no repeating it.”

“Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which only women know. “At the time when you made Kitty an offer she was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt. Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older ... I, for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it has turned out.”

Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said: “No, that cannot be....”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,—you understand, utterly out of the question.”

“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”

“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are hurting me. It’s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he’s dead, dead, dead!...”

“How absurd you are!” said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with mournful tenderness at Levin’s excitement. “Yes, I see it all more and more clearly,” she went on musingly. “So you won’t come to see us, then, when Kitty’s here?”

“No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting Katerina Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance of my presence.”

“You are very, very absurd,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with tenderness into his face. “Very well then, let it be as though we had not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?” she said in French to the little girl who had come in.

“Where’s my spade, mamma?”

“I speak French, and you must too.”

The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on Levin.

Everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and children struck him now as by no means so charming as a little while before. “And what does she talk French with the children for?” he thought; “how unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and unlearning sincerity,” he thought to himself, unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in that way.

“But why are you going? Do stay a little.”

Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humour had vanished, and he felt ill at ease.

After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in, and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly disturbed, with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Levin had been outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling Grisha’s hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal propensities—wicked children.

She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak to Levin of her misery.

Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it, he was thinking in his heart: “No, I won’t be artificial and talk French with my children; but my children won’t be like that. All one has to do is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and they’ll be delightful. No, my children won’t be like that.”

He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.

Chapter 11

 

In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin’s sister’s estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income on his sister’s estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When Levin took over the management of the estate, he thought on examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers. Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass cut, partly by hired labour, partly at a payment of a certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first year the meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year—which was the third year—the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the village elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked together eleven stacks as the owner’s share. From the vague answers to his question how much hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village elder who had made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself to look into the matter.

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother’s wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house, wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him everything about his bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and unwilling answers to Levin’s inquiries about the mowing. This confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Levin ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village elder’s assertions about the compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in the fear of God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon. When the last of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the superintendence of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked off by a stake of willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved a bright-collared line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green stubble. After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from the gray rows there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks. To the left, carts were rumbling over the meadow that had been already cleared, and one after another the haycocks vanished, flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place there were rising heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the horses’ hind-quarters.

“What weather for haying! What hay it’ll be!” said an old man, squatting down beside Levin. “It’s tea, not hay! It’s like scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!” he added, pointing to the growing haycocks. “Since dinner time they’ve carried a good half of it.”

“The last load, eh?” he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by, standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.

“The last, dad!” the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and, smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-checked peasant girl who sat in the cart smiling too, and drove on.

“Who’s that? Your son?” asked Levin.

“My baby,” said the old man with a tender smile.

“What a fine fellow!”

“The lad’s all right.”

“Married already?”

“Yes, it’s two years last St. Philip’s day.”

“Any children?”

“Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe himself, and bashful too,” answered the old man. “Well, the hay! It’s as fragrant as tea!” he repeated, wishing to change the subject.

Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then on the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to save her every minute of unnecessary labour, made haste, opening his arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together what was left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay that had fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had dropped forward over her white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to fasten the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he laughed aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen vigorous, young, freshly awakened love.

Chapter 12

 

The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers’ dance. Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the other loaded carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world, came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him good-humouredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancour against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labour. God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labour, and that labour was its own reward. For whom the labour? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations—beside the point.

Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of the men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life.

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone home, while those who came from far were gathered into a group for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was over.

“Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?” he said to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content, the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the question how to effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. “Have a wife? Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land? Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set about it?” he asked himself again, and could not find an answer. “I haven’t slept all night, though, and I can’t think it out clearly,” he said to himself. “I’ll work it out later. One thing’s certain, this night has decided my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the real thing,” he told himself. “It’s all ever so much simpler and better....”

“How beautiful!” he thought, looking at the strange, as it were, mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right over his head in the middle of the sky. “How exquisite it all is in this exquisite night! And when was there time for that cloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it—only two white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!”

He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the dawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the ground. “What’s that? Someone coming,” he thought, catching the tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts, so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that was remote from Levin, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the sunrise.

At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face lighted up with wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was the empty fields all round, the village in front, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely along the deserted highroad.

He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

“No,” he said to himself, “however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her.”

To be continued

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