Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
The next forenoon Levin left Moscow, and toward evening was at home. On the journey he talked with those near him in the train about politics, about the new railroads; and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by the chaos of conflicting opinions, self-dissatisfaction, and a sense of shame. But when he got out at his station, and perceived his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with his kaftan collar turned up; when he saw, in the dim light that fell through the station windows, his covered sledge and his horses with their tied-up tails, and their harness with its rings and fringes; when Ignat, as he was tucking in the robes, told him all the news of the village, about the coming of the contractor, and how Pava the cow had calved,—then it seemed to him that the chaos resolved itself a little, and his shame and dissatisfaction passed away. This he felt at the very sight of Ignat and his horses; but, as soon as he had put on his sheepskin tulup, which he found in the sleigh, and took his seat in the sleigh comfortably wrapped up, and drove off thinking what arrangement he should have to make in the village, and at the same time examining the off-horse, Donskaya, which used to be his saddle-horse, a jaded but mettlesome steed, he began to view his experiences in an absolutely different light.
He felt himself again, and no longer wished to be a different person. He only wished to be better than he had ever been before. In the first lace, he resolved from that day forth that he would never expect extraordinary joys, such as marriage had promised to bring to him, and therefore he would never again despise the present; and, in the second place, he would never allow himself to be led away by low passion, the remembrances of which so tortured him while he was deciding to make his proposal. And lastly, as he thought of his brother Nikolaï, he resolved that he would never again forget him, but that he would keep track of him and not let him out of sight, so that he might be in readiness to aid him whenever the evil moment arrived, and that seemed likely to be very soon.
Then the conversation about communism, which he had so lightly treated with his brother, came back to him, and made him reflect. A reform of economic conditions seemed to him nonsense, but he always felt the unfair difference between his own superfluity and the poverty of the people, and in order that he might feel perfectly right, he now vowed that though hitherto he had worked hard, and lived economically, he would in the future work still harder, and permit himself even less luxury than ever. And all this seemed to him so easy to accomplish that, throughout the drive from the station, he was the subject of the pleasantest illusions. With a hearty feeling of hope for a new and better life, he reached home just as the clock was striking ten.
From the windows of the room occupied by his old nurse, Agafya Mikhaïlovna, who fulfilled the functions of housekeeper, the light fell on the snow-covered walk before his house. She was not yet asleep. Kuzma, wakened by her, hurried down, barefooted and sleepy, to open the door. Laska, the setter, almost knocking Kuzma down in her desire to get ahead of him, ran to meet her master, and jumped upon him, trying to place her fore paws on his breast.
"You are back very soon, batyushka," said Agafya Mikhaïlovna.
"I was bored, Agafya Mikharlovna; 't is good to go visiting, but it's better at home," said he. And he went into his library.
The library slowly grew light as the candle that was brought burnt up. The familiar details little by little came into sight—the great antlers, the shelves lined with books, the mirror, the stove with a hole which ought long ago to have been repaired, the ancestral divan, the great table, and on the table an open book, a broken ash-tray, a note-book filled with his writing.
As he saw all these things, for a moment the doubt arose in his mind if it would be possible to bring about this new life which he had dreamed of during his journey. All these signs of his past seemed to say to him, 'No, thou shalt not leave us! thou shalt not become another; but thou shalt still be as thou hast always been,—with thy doubts, thy everlasting self-dissatisfaction, thy idle efforts at reform, thy failures, and thy perpetual striving for a happiness which will never be thine.'
But while these external objects spoke to him thus, a different voice whispered to his soul, bidding him cease to be a slave to his past, and declaring that a man has every possibility within him. And, listening to this voice, he went to one side of the room, where he found two forty-pound dumb-bells. And he began to practise his gymnastic exercises with them, endeavoring to bring himself into a condition of vigor. At the door there was a noise of steps. He hastily put down the dumb-bells.
The intendant[1] came in and said that, thanks to God, everything was all right, but he confessed that the buckwheat in the new drying-room had got burnt. This provoked Levin. This new drying-room he had himself built, and partially invented. But the intendant had been entirely opposed to it, and now he announced with ill-concealed triumph that the buckwheat was burnt. Levin was sure that it was because he had neglected the precautions a hundred times suggested. He grew angry, and reprimanded the intendant.
But there was one fortunate and important event: Pava, his best, his most beautiful cow, which he had bought at the cattle-show, had calved.
"Kuzma, give me my tulup. And you," said he to the intendant, "get a lantern. I will go and see her."
The stable for the cattle was immediately behind the house. Crossing the courtyard, where the snow was heaped under the lilac bushes, he stepped up to the stable. As he opened the frosty door, he was met by the warm fumes of manure, and the cows, astonished at the unwonted light of the lantern, stirred on their fresh straw. The light fell on the broad black back of his piebald Holland cow. Berkut, the bull, with a ring in his nose, tried to get to his feet, but changed his mind, and only snorted as they passed by.
The beautiful Pava, huge as a hippopotamus, was lying near her calf, snuffing at it, and protecting it against those who would come too close.
Levin entered the stall, examined Pava, and lifted the calf, spotted with red and white, on its long, awkward legs. Pava began to low with anxiety, but was reassured when the calf was restored to her, and began to lick it with her rough tongue. The calf hid its nose under its mother's side, and frisked its tail.
"Bring the light this way, Feodor, this way," said Levin, examining the calf. "Like its mother, but its color is like the sire's, very pretty! long hair and prettily spotted. Vasili Feodorovitch, is n't it a beauty?" he said, turning to his intendant, forgetting, in his joy over the new-born calf, the grief caused by the burning of his wheat.
"Why should it be homely? But Semyon the contractor was here the day after you left. It will be necessary to come to terms with him, Konstantin Dmitritch," replied the intendant. "I have already spoken to you about the machine."
This single phrase brought Levin back to all the details of his enterprise, which was great and complicated; and from the stable he went directly to the office, and after a long conversation with the intendant and Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house, and marched straight up into the drawing-room.
- ↑ Prikaschik.