Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 96/119

In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening

he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his

neighbors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in

Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas,

dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But

when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed

coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in

the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own

sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness

trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he

put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the

contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,--he felt that

little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and

self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere

sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the

sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge,

and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in

the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had been his

saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the

Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a

different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one

else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the

first place he resolved that from that day he would give up

hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must

have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he

really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way

to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he

had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering

his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never

allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not

lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should

go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too,

his brother's talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly

at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in

economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice

of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the

peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the

right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means

luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would

allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so

easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the

pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,

better life, he reached home before nine o'clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by

a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea

Mihalovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house.

She was not yet asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling

sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too,

almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round about Levin's

knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to put her

forepaws on his chest.

"You're soon back again, sir," said Agafea Mihalovna.

"I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well;

but at home, one is better," he answered, and went into his

study.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The

familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves,

the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long

wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an

open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his

handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an

instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of

which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his

life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not

going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different,

but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with

doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts

to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness

which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you."

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was

telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and

that one can do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice,

he went into the corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and

began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to restore his

confident temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He

hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing

well; but informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying

machine had been a little scorched. This piece of news irritated

Levin. The new drying machine had been constructed and partly

invented by Levin. The bailiff had always been against the

drying machine, and now it was with suppressed triumph that he

announced that the buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly

convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched, it was only

because the precautions had not been taken, for which he had

hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and reprimanded

the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful event:

Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had

calved.

"Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a

lantern. I'll come and look at her," he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the

house. Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac

tree, he went into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy

smell of dung when the frozen door was opened, and the cows,

astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the

fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and

piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying down

with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought

better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him.

Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back

turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed

her all over.

Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and

spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began

lowing, but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed,

and, sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue.

The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her mother's udder, and

stiffened her tail out straight.

"Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way," said Levin, examining

the calf. "Like the mother! though the color takes after the

father; but that's nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the

haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn't she splendid?" he said to the

bailiff, quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the

influence of his delight in the calf.

"How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the

day after you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin

Dmitrievitch," said the bailiff. "I did inform you about the

machine."

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of

his work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and

complicated. He went straight from the cowhouse to the counting

house, and after a little conversation with the bailiff and

Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight

upstairs to the drawing room.