IX
Surrounded by all her bathed, wet-headed children, Darya Alexandrovna, a kerchief on her head, was driving up to her house when the coachman said:
'Some gentleman's coming, looks like the one from Pokrovskoe.'
Darya Alexandrovna peered ahead and rejoiced, seeing the familiar figure of Levin in a grey hat and grey coat coming to meet them. She was always glad to see him, but she was especially glad now that he would see her in all her glory. No one could understand her grandeur better than Levin.
Seeing her, he found himself before one of the pictures of his imaginary future family life.
'You're just like a mother hen, Darya Alexandrovna.'
'Ah, I'm so glad!' she said, giving him her hand.
'Glad, but you didn't even let me know. My brother's staying with me. I got a note from Stiva saying that you were here.'
'From Stiva?' Darya Alexandrovna asked in surprise.
'Yes. He wrote that you'd moved, and he thought you might allow me to help you in some way,' Levin said and, having said it, suddenly became embarrassed, fell silent and went on walking beside the break, plucking linden shoots and biting them in two. He was embarrassed by the realization that it might be unpleasant for Darya Alexandrovna to be helped by an outsider in something that should have been done by her husband. Darya Alexandrovna indeed disliked this way Stepan Arkadyich had of foisting his family affairs on others. And she knew at once that Levin understood it. It was for this subtle understanding, for this delicacy, that Darya Alexandrovna loved him.
'I understood, of course,' said Levin, 'that it only meant you wanted to see me, and I'm very glad of it. Of course, I can imagine that you, the mistress of a town house, may find it wild here, and if there's any need, I'm entirely at your service.'
'Oh, no!' said Dolly. 'At first it was uncomfortable, but now everything's settled beautifully, thanks to my old nanny,' she said, pointing to Matryona Filimonovna, who, realizing that they were talking about her, smiled gaily and amiably to Levin. She knew him, knew that he was a good match for the young lady, and wished things would work out.
'Get in, please, we'll squeeze over,' she said to him.
'No, I'll walk. Children, who wants to race the horses with me?'
The children scarcely knew Levin, did not remember when they had last seen him, but did not show that strange feeling of shyness and aversion towards him that children so often feel for shamming adults, for which they are so often painfully punished. Shamming in anything at all can deceive the most intelligent, perceptive person; but the most limited child will recognize it and feel aversion, no matter how artfully it is concealed. Whatever Levin's shortcomings were, there was no hint of sham in him, and therefore the children showed him the same friendliness they found in their mother's face. At his invitation the two older ones at once jumped down and ran with him as simply as they would have run with the nanny, with Miss Hull, or with their mother. Lily also started asking to go with him, and her mother handed her down to him; he put her on his shoulders and ran with her.
'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!' he said, smiling gaily to the mother. 'There's no chance I'll hurt her or drop her.'
And seeing his deft, strong, cautiously mindful and all-too-tense movements, the mother calmed down and smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him.
Here, in the country, with the children and Darya Alexandrovna, who was so sympathetic to him, Levin got into that childishly merry state of mind that often came over him, and which Darya Alexandrovna especially loved in him. He ran with the children, taught them gymnastics, made Miss Hull laugh with his bad English, and told Darya Alexandrovna about his occupations in the country.
After dinner, sitting alone with him on the balcony, Darya Alexandrovna began talking about Kitty.
'Do you know, Kitty's coming here and will spend the summer with me.'
'Really?' he said, flushing; and to change the subject, said at once: 'Shall I send you two cows then? If you want to keep accounts, then you can pay me five roubles a month, if you're not ashamed.'
'No, thank you. We're all settled.'
'Well, then I'll have a look at your cows and, with your permission, give orders on how to feed them. The whole thing is in the feeding.'
And Levin, only to divert the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the theory of dairy farming, the essence of which was that a cow is merely a machine for processing feed into milk, and so on.
He was saying that while passionately wishing to hear the details about Kitty and at the same time fearing it. He was afraid that the peace he had attained with such difficulty might be disturbed.
'Yes, but anyhow all that has to be looked after, and who will do it?' Darya Alexandrovna replied reluctantly.
She had now set up her housekeeping so well through Matryona Filimonovna that she did not want to change anything in it; nor did she trust Levin's knowledge of agriculture. The argument that a cow is a machine for producing milk was suspect to her. It seemed to her that such arguments could only hinder things. To her it all seemed much simpler: as Matryona Filimonovna explained, they had only to give Spotty and Whiterump more to eat and drink, and keep the cook from taking the kitchen scraps to the washerwoman's cow. That was clear. And all this talk about starchy and grassy feeds was dubious and vague. Above all she wanted to talk about Kitty.
X
'Kitty writes to me that she wishes for nothing so much as solitude and quiet,' Dolly said after the ensuing pause.
'And has her health improved?' Levin asked anxiously.
'Thank God, she's quite recovered. I never believed she had anything wrong with her lungs.'
'Ah, I'm very glad!' said Levin, and it seemed to Dolly that there was something touching and helpless in his face as he said it and silently looked at her.
'Listen, Konstantin Dmitrich,' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her kind and slightly mocking smile, 'why are you angry with Kitty?'
'I? I'm not angry,' said Levin.
'No, you are angry. Why didn't you come either to see us or to see them when you were in Moscow?'
'Darya Alexandrovna,' he said, blushing to the roots of his hair, 'I'm even astonished that you, with all your kindness, don't feel it. Aren't you simply sorry for me, since you know ...'
'What do I know?'
'You know that I proposed and was refused,' said Levin, and all the tenderness he had felt for Kitty a moment before was replaced in his soul by a feeling of anger at the insult.
'Why do you think I know?'
'Because everybody knows.'
'There you're mistaken; I didn't know, though I guessed.'
'Ah! Well, now you know.'
'I knew only that there was something, but Kitty never told me what it was. I could see that there was something that tormented her terribly, and she asked me never to speak of it. And if she didn't tell me, she didn't tell anybody. But what happened between you? Tell me.'
'I've told you what happened.'
'When was it?'
'When I last visited you.'
'And, you know, I shall tell you,' said Darya Alexandrovna, 'that I'm terribly, terribly sorry for her. You only suffer from pride ...'
'Maybe,' said Levin, 'but...'
She interrupted him:
'But for her, poor thing, I'm terribly, terribly sorry. Now I understand everything.'
'Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you will excuse me,' he said, getting up. 'Goodbye! Goodbye, Darya Alexandrovna.'
'No, wait,' she said, holding him by the sleeve. 'Wait, sit down.'
'Please, please, let's not talk about it,' he said, sitting down and at the same time feeling a hope he had thought buried rising and stirring in his heart.
'If I didn't love you,' said Darya Alexandrovna, and tears welled up in her eyes, 'if I didn't know you as I do ...' The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rising and taking possession of Levin's heart.
'Yes, I understand everything now,' Dary
a Alexandrovna went on. 'You can't understand it. For you men, who are free and can choose, it's always clear whom you love. But a young girl in a state of expectation, with that feminine, maidenly modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust - a girl may and does sometimes feel that she doesn't know who she loves or what to say.'
'Yes, if her heart doesn't speak ...'
'No, her heart speaks, but consider: you men have your eye on a girl, you visit the house, you make friends, you watch, you wait to see if you're going to find what you love, and then, once you're convinced of your love, you propose ...'
'Well, it's not quite like that.'
'Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn't asked. She's expected to choose for herself, but she can't choose and only answers yes or no.'
'Yes,' thought Levin, 'a choice between me and Vronsky,' and the dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully.
'Darya Alexandrovna,' he said, 'one chooses a dress that way, or I don't know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made and so much the better ... And there can be no repetition.'
'Ah, pride, pride!' said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the meanness of this feeling compared with that other feeling which only women know. 'At the time you proposed to Kitty, she was precisely in a position where she could not give an answer. She hesitated. Hesitated between you and Vronsky. Him she saw every day, you she had not seen for a long time. Suppose she had been older - for me, for example, there could have been no hesitation in her place. I always found him disgusting, and so he was in the end.'
Levin remembered Kitty's answer. She had said: 'No, it cannot be .. .'
'Darya Alexandrovna,' he said drily, 'I appreciate your confidence in me, but I think you're mistaken. I may be right or wrong, but this pride that you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna impossible for me - you understand, completely impossible.'
'I'll say only one more thing. You understand that I'm speaking of a sister whom I love like my own children. I'm not saying that she loves you, but I only want to say that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.'
'I don't know!' said Levin, jumping up. 'If you realized what pain you're causing me! It's the same as if your child were dead, and you were told he would have been like this and that, and he might have lived, and you would have rejoiced over him. And he's dead, dead, dead ...'
'How funny you are,' Darya Alexandrovna said with a sad smile, despite Levin's agitation. 'Yes, I understand it all now,' she went on pensively. 'So, you won't come to see us when Kitty's here?'
'No, I won't. Naturally, I'm not going to avoid Katerina Alexandrovna but, wherever possible, I'll try to spare her the unpleasantness of my presence.'
'You're very, very funny,' Darya Alexandrovna repeated, studying his face tenderly. 'Well, all right, it will be as if we never spoke of it. What is it, Tanya?' she said in French to the girl who had just come in.
'Where's my shovel, mama?'
'I am speaking French, and you should do the same.'
The girl wanted to do the same, but forgot what a shovel is called in French; her mother told her and then proceeded to tell her in French where to find the shovel. And Levin found this disagreeable.
Now everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and in her children seemed less nice to him than before.
'And why does she speak French with the children?' he thought. 'How unnatural and false it is! And the children can feel it. Teaching French and unteaching sincerity,' he thought to himself, not knowing that Darya Alexandrovna had already thought it all over twenty times and, to the detriment of sincerity, had found it necessary to teach her children in this way.
'But where are you going? Stay a little.'
Levin stayed till tea, but all his merriment had vanished and he felt awkward.
After tea he went to the front hall to order the horses to be readied and, on returning, found Darya Alexandrovna looking agitated and upset, with tears in her eyes. While Levin was out of the room, an event had occurred which had suddenly destroyed for Darya Alexandrovna all that day's happiness and pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had fought over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing shouts in the nursery, had run there and found a terrible sight. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, while he, his face disfigured by anger, was hitting her with his fists wherever he could reach. Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna's heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness came over her life: she understood that her children, of whom she was so proud, were not only most ordinary, but even bad, poorly brought up children, wicked children, with coarse, beastly inclinations.
She could neither speak nor think of anything else and could not help telling Levin of her unhappiness.
Levin saw that she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that this did not prove anything bad, that all children fought; but, as he said it, Levin thought in his heart: 'No, I will not be affected and speak French with my children, but my children will not be like that: one need only not harm, not disfigure children, and they will be lovely. Yes, my children will not be like that.'
He said goodbye and left, and she did not try to keep him.
XI
In the middle of July the headman of his sister's village, fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin with a report on the course of affairs and the mowing. The main income from his sister's estate came from the water meadows. In former years the hay had been taken by the muzhiks at eight roubles per acre. When Levin took over the management, he examined the meadows, discovered that they were worth more, and set a price of ten roubles per acre. The muzhiks would not pay that price and, as Levin suspected, drove away other buyers. Then Levin went there in person and arranged for the meadows to be reaped partly by hired help, partly on shares. His muzhiks resisted this innovation in every possible way, but the thing went ahead, and in the first year the income from the meadows nearly doubled. Two years ago and last year the muzhiks had kept up the same resistance, and the reaping had been done in the same way. This year the muzhiks had cut all the hay for a share of one-third, and now the headman had come to announce that the mowing was done and that, fearing rain, he had sent for the clerk and in his presence had already divided the hay, piling up eleven stacks as the master's share. From his vague answers to the question of how much hay there had been in the main meadow, from the headman's haste in dividing the hay without asking permission, from the muzhik's whole tone, Levin realized that there was something shady in this distribution of the hay and decided to go himself to verify the matter.
Arriving at the village at dinner-time and leaving his horse with an old friend, the husband of his brother's wet nurse, Levin went to see the old man in the apiary, wishing to learn the details of the hay harvest. A garrulous, fine-looking old man, Parmenych received Levin joyfully, showed him what he was doing, told him all the details about his bees and about that year's hiving; but to Levin's questions about the mowing he spoke uncertainly and unwillingly. That further confirmed Levin in his surmises. He went to the field and examined the stacks. The stacks could not have contained fifty cartloads each, and, to catch the muzhiks, Levin at once gave orders to send for the carts used in transporting hay, to load one stack and transport it to the barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two cartloads in the stack. Despite the headman's assurances about the fluffiness of the hay and its settling in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in an honest-to-God way, Levin insisted on his point that the hay had been divided without his order, and that he therefore did not accept this hay as fifty cartloads to a stack. After lengthy arguments, the decision was that the muzhiks would take those eleven stacks, counting them as fifty cartloads each, towards their share, and apportion the master's share again. These negotiations and the distribution of the stacks went on till the afternoon break. When the last of the hay had been distributed, Levi
n, entrusting the clerk with supervising the rest, seated himself on a haystack marked with a willow branch and admired the meadow teeming with peasants.
In front of him, where the river bent around a little bog, a motley line of women moved with a merry chatter of ringing voices, and the scattered hay quickly stretched out in grey, meandering ridges over the pale green new growth. Behind the women came muzhiks with forks, and the ridges grew into broad, tall, fluffy haystacks. To the left, carts rattled over the already reaped meadow, and the haystacks, lifted in huge forkfuls, vanished one after another, replaced by heavy cartloads of fragrant hay overhanging the horses' croups.
'Fine weather for it! What hay we'll have!' said the old man, sitting down beside Levin. 'It's tea, not hay! They pick it up like ducklings after grain!' he added, pointing to the stacks being forked. 'A good half's been carted off since dinner.' 'The last one, is it?' he shouted to a young fellow who was driving by, standing in front of the cart-box and waving the ends of the hempen reins.
'The last one, pa!' the young fellow shouted, holding the horse back, and, smiling, he turned round to the gay, red-cheeked woman, also smiling, who was sitting in the cart-box, and drove on.