Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
The night spent by Levin on the hayrick was not without its lesson. His way of farming became repugnant to him, and entirely lost its interest. Notwithstanding the excellent crops, never, or at least it seemed to him that never, had there been such failure, and such unfriendly relations between him and the muzhiks, as this year; and now the reasons for this failure, and this animosity, were perfectly clear to him. The pleasure which he found in work itself, the resulting acquaintance with the muzhiks, the envy which seized him when he saw them and their lives, the desire to lead such a life himself, which on that night had been not visionary but real, now that he had thought over all the details necessary to carry out his desire,—all this taken together had so changed his views in regard to the management of his estate, that he could not take the same interest in it as before, and he could not help seeing how these unpleasant relations with the laborers met him at every new undertaking.
The herd of improved cows, like Pava; all the fertilized lands plowed with European plows; nine equal fields set round with young trees; the ninety desyatins, covered with dressing well plowed in; the deep drills and other improvements,—all was excellent as far as it concerned only himself or himself and the people who were in sympathy with him.
But now he clearly saw—and his work, his treatise on rural economy, in which the principal element was found to be the laborer, helped him to this conclusion—that his present way of carrying on his estate was only a cruel and wicked struggle between him and the laborers, in which on one side, on his side, was a constant effort to change everything to what he thought a better model, while on the other side was the natural order of things.
In this struggle, he saw that on his side there were effort and lofty purpose, and on the other no effort or purpose, and that the result was that the estate went from bad to worse; beautiful tools were destroyed, beautiful cattle and lands ruined. The principal objection was the energy absolutely wasted in this matter; but he could not help thinking now, when his thought was laid bare, that the aim of his energies was itself unworthy. In reality, where lay this quarrel? He insisted on having every penny of his own,—and he could not help insisting on it, because he was obliged to use his energies to the utmost, otherwise he would not have wherewithal to pay his laborers,—and they insisted on working lazily and comfortably, in other words, as they had always done.
It was for his interests that every laborer should do his very best; above all, should strive not to break the winnowing-machines, the horse-rakes, the threshing-machines, so that he might accomplish what he was doing.
But the laborer wanted to do his work as easily as possible, with long breathing-spaces, with plenty of time for resting, and—what was more—without being bothered to think.
This year Levin had this experience at every step. He sent men to mow the clover-fields, selecting the poorer portions to be done first, where the intermixture of grass and wormwood made the crop unfit for seed; and they mowed his best fields,—those reserved for seed,—justifying themselves by saying that they had done what the overseer ordered, and trying to console him with the assurance that it would make splen- did fodder. But he knew that they did this because these fields were the easiest ones to mow.
He sent out the hay-making machine, but the muzhiks broke it on the first few rows because the driver, sitting on the box-seat, disliked having the arms of the machine waving over his head; and they tried to console him by saying:—
"Oh, it's all right; the women will do the work easy enough."
The new plows were condemned as good for nothing, because the muzhik did not think to raise the blade on turning a corner, but wrenched it round through the soil, thus tearing up the land and straining the horses. And here again they urged Levin to have patience with them.
The horses strayed into the wheat, for the reason that no one would act regularly as night watchman, the muzhiks, in spite of strict orders to the contrary, insisting on taking the duty in turns; and Vanka, who had been at work all day, fell asleep during his watch. When accused, he acknowledged his fault and only said: "Do what you please with me."
Three of the best calves were poisoned. They were allowed to get into the clover aftermath without giving them water; the result was that they were blown out and died. But the muzhiks would not believe that it was the clover that did the harm; and they tried to console Levin by informing him that one of his neighbors had lost one hundred and twelve head within three days in the same way.
All these mishaps took place, not because any one wished ill either to Levin or to his estate; on the contrary, he knew that the muzhiks loved him, and called him "a simple-minded gentleman,"—prostoï barin,—which was the highest praise. But these mishaps happened simply because the muzhiks liked to work merrily and carelessly; and his interests were not only strange and incomprehensible to them, but even fatally clashed with what they thought their own true interests.
For a long time Levin had felt that there was something unsatisfactory in his methods. He saw that his canoe was leaking, but he could not find the leaks; and he did not search for them, perhaps on purpose to deceive himself. Nothing would be left him if he should allow his illusions to perish. But now he could no longer deceive himself. Not only had his system of management become uninteresting, but had begun actually to disgust him, and he felt he could no longer continue it.
Besides all this, Kitty Shcherbatsky was within thirty versts of him, and he wanted to see her, and could not.
Darya Aleksandrovna Oblonskaya, when he called on her, invited him to come:—to come with the express purpose of renewing his offer to her sister, who, as she pretended to think, now cared for him. Levin himself, after he caught the ghmpse of Kitty Shcherbatsky, felt that he had not ceased to love her; but he could not go to the Oblonskys', because he knew that she was there. The fact that he had offered himself, and she had refused him, put an unsurmountable barrier between them.
"I cannot ask her to be my wife simply because she cannot be the wife of the man she wanted," he said to himself.
The thought of this made him cold and hostile toward her.
"I have not the strength to go and talk with her without a sense of reproach, to look at her without angry feelings; and she would feel even more incensed against me, and justly so. And besides, how can I go there now, after what Darya Aleksandrovna told me? How can I help showing that I know what she told me? That I go with magnanimity,—to pardon her, to be reconciled to her! I, in her presence, play the rôle of a pardoning and honor-conferring lover to her!—Why did Darya Aleksandrovna tell me that? If I had met her accidentally, then perhaps everything might have been arranged of itself; but now it is impossible, impossible!"
Darya Aleksandrovna sent him a note, asking the loan of a side-saddle for Kitty. "They tell me you have a saddle," she wrote: "I hope that you will bring it yourself."
This was too much for him. How could a sensible woman of any delicacy so lower her sister? He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and then sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would come was impossible, because he could not come: to write that he could not come because he was busy, or was going away somewhere, was still worse. So he sent the saddle without any reply; and, with the consciousness that he was doing something disgraceful, on the next day, leaving the now disagreeable charge of the estate to the overseer, he set off to a distant district where there were magnificent snipe-marshes to see his friend Sviazhsky, who had lately invited him to fulfil an old project of making him a visit. The snipe-marshes in the district of Surof had long been an attraction to Levin, but on account of his farm-work he had kept postponing his visit there. Now he was glad to escape from the neighborhood of the Shcherbatskys, and especially from his estate, and to go on a hunting-expedition, which for all his tribulations was a sovereign remedy.