Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Early in June, Agafya Mikhaïlovna, the old nurse and ekonomka, or housekeeper, in going down cellar with a pot of salted mushrooms, slipped and fell, and dislocated her wrist.
The district doctor, a loquacious young medical student who had just taken his degree, came, and, after examining the arm, declared that it was not out of joint. During dinner, proud of finding himself in the society of the distinguished Sergyeï Ivanovitch Koznuishef, he began to relate all the petty gossip of the district in order to display his enlightened views of things; and he expressed his regrets at the bad condition of provincial affairs.
Sergyeï Ivanovitch listened attentively, asking various questions; and animated by the presence of a new hearer, he made keen and shrewd observations, which were received by the young doctor with respectful appreciation, and his spirits rose high, which, as his brother knew, was liable to be the case with him after a lively and brilliant conversation.
After the doctor's departure he expressed his desire to go to the river and fish. He was fond of fishing, and seemed to take pride in showing that he could amuse himself with such a stupid occupation. Konstantin had to go to certain fields and meadows, and offered to take his brother in his cabriolet as far as the river, It was the time of the year, the very top of the summer, when the prospects of harvest may be estimated, when the labors of the next year's planting begin to be thought of, and the mowing-time has come; when the rye is already eared and sea-green in color, but still not fully formed; when the ears of corn swing lightly in the breeze; when the green oats, with scattered clumps of yellow grass, peep irregularly from the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat already is up and hides the soil; when the fallow fields, beaten as hard as stone by the cattle and with paths deserted, on which the sokha, or primitive plow, has no effect, are half broken up; when the odor of the dry manure, heaped in little hillocks over the fields, mingles at twilight with the perfume of the "honey-grass," [1] and on the bottom lands, waiting for the scythe, stand the protected meadows like a boundless sea with the darkening clumps of sorrel that has done blooming.
It was the time when there is a brief breathing-spell before the harvest, that great event which the muzhik with eagerness expects each year. The crops promised to be superb; and there was a succession of bright, clear summer days, followed by short, dewy nights.
The two brothers had to go through the woodland to reach the fields. Sergyeï Ivanovitch was all the time admiring the beauty of the forest with its dense canopy of leaves, and he pointed out to his brother, as they rode along, now an old linden almost in flower, dark on its shady side and variegated with yellow stipules; now at the emerald-shining young shoots of that same year; but Konstantin did not himself like to speak or to hear about the beauties of nature. Words, he thought, spoiled the beauty of the thing that he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but allowed his mind to concern itself with other things. After they left the wood, his whole attention was absorbed by a fallow field on a hillock, where in some places the grass was growing yellow, where in others whole squares of it had been cut, and in others raked up into haycocks, and where in still other places the men were plowing. The carts were thronging up toward the field. Levin counted them, and was satisfied with the work which was going on.
His thoughts were diverted, by the sight of the meadows, to the question of haymaking. He always experienced something which went to his very heart at the hay-harvesting. When they reached the meadow Levin stopped his horse. The morning dew was still damp on the thick grass, and Sergyeï Ivanovitch begged his brother, in order that he might not wet his feet, to drive him in his cabriolet as far as a clump of laburnums near which perch were to be caught. Though Levin disliked to trample down his grass, he drove over through the field. The tall grass clung round the wheels and the horse's legs, and scattered its seed on the damp spokes and naves.
Sergyei sat down under the laburnums, and cast his line, but Levin drove the horse aside, fastened him, and then went off through the vast green sea of the meadow unstirred by a breath of wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds was almost waist-high in the places that had been overflowed.
As Konstantin Levin crossed the meadow diagonally, he met on the road an old man with one of his eyes swollen, and carrying a swarming-basket full of bees.
"Well? Have you caught them, Fomitch?" he asked.
"Caught them indeed, Konstantin Mitritch! If only I could keep my own! This is the second time this swarm has gone off, .... but, thanks to the boys! they galloped after 'em! .... They're plowing your fields. They unhitched the horse and dashed off after 'em!" ....
"Well, what do you say, Fomitch, should we begin mowing or wait?"
"Just as you say! According to our notions we should wait till St. Peter's Day.[2] But you always mow earlier. Well, just as God will have it—the grass is in fine codition. There'll be plenty of room for the cattle."
"And what do you think of the weather?"
"Well, all is in the hand of God. Maybe the weather will hold."
Levin returned to his brother.
Though he had caught nothing, Sergyeï Ivanovitch was undisturbed, and seemed in the best of spirits. Levin saw that he was stimulated by his talk with the doctor, and that he was eager to go on talking. Levin, on the contrary, was anxious to get back to the house as soon as possible to give some orders about hiring mowers for the next day, and to decide the question about the haymaking which occupied all his thoughts. "Well," said he, "shall we go?"
"What is your hurry? Do let us sit down. But how drenched you are! .... No, I have had no luck, but I have enjoyed it all the same. All outdoor sports are beautiful because you have to do with nature. Now just notice how charming that steely water is!" he exclaimed.
"These meadow banks," he went on to say, "always remind me of an enigma, do you know?—'The grass says to the river, "We have strayed far enough, we have strayed far enough,"'"
"I don't know that riddle," interrupted Konstantin, in a melancholy tone.