'So you see, it wasn't that I grudged you this marsh,' said Levin, 'it was just a loss of time.'
'No, it was fun all the same. Did you see?' said Vasenka Veslovsky, awkwardly getting up on the cart with his gun and the lapwing in his hands. T bagged this one nicely! Isn't it true? Well, how soon will we get to the real place?'
Suddenly the horses gave a start. Levin hit his head against the barrel of somebody's gun and a shot rang out. So it seemed to Levin, but in fact the shot came first. The thing was that Vasenka Veslovsky, while uncocking the hammers, had his finger on one trigger as he eased off the other. The shot struck the ground, doing no one any harm. Stepan Arkadyich shook his head and laughed reproachfully at Veslovsky. But Levin did not have the heart to reprimand him. First, any reproach would seem to be caused by the danger he had escaped and the bump swelling on his forehead; and second, Veslovsky began by being so naively upset and then laughed so good-naturedly and enthusiastically at the general commotion that it was impossible not to laugh with him.
When they drove up to the second marsh, which was quite big and was bound to take a long time, Levin tried to persuade them not to go in, but Veslovsky again insisted. Again, since the marsh was narrow, Levin, as a hospitable host, stayed by the carriages.
Krak made straight for the hummocks. Vasenka Veslovsky was the first to run after the dog. And before Stepan Arkadyich had time to get close, a great snipe had already flown up. Veslovsky missed and the snipe landed in an unmowed meadow. This snipe was left to Veslovsky. Krak found it again, pointed, Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriages.
'Now you go and I'll stay with the horses,' he said.
Hunter's envy was beginning to take hold of Levin. He handed the reins to Veslovsky and went into the marsh.
Laska, who had long been squealing pitifully and complaining at the injustice, rushed ahead, straight to some trusty hummocks, familiar to Levin, where Krak had not yet gone.
'Why don't you stop her?' cried Stepan Arkadyich.
'She won't scare them,' replied Levin, delighted with the dog and hurrying after her.
Laska's search became more serious the closer she came to the familiar hummocks. A small marsh bird distracted her only for an instant. She made one circle in front of the hummocks, began another, suddenly gave a start and froze.
'Here, here, Stiva!' cried Levin, feeling his heart pounding faster, and it was as if some latch had suddenly opened in his strained hearing, and sounds, losing all measure of distance, began to strike him haphazardly but vividly. He heard Stepan Arkadyich's footsteps and took them for the distant clatter of horses, heard the crunching sound made by the corner of a hummock that he tore off with its roots as he stepped on it and took the sound for the flight of a great snipe. He also heard, not far behind him, some splashing in the water which he could not account for.
Picking his way, he moved towards the dog.
'Flush it!'
Not a great snipe but a snipe tore up from under the dog. Levin followed it with his gun, but just as he was taking aim, that same noise of splashing water increased, came nearer, and was joined by the strangely loud voice of Veslovsky shouting something. Levin saw that he was aiming his gun behind the snipe, but he fired anyway.
After making sure he had missed, Levin turned round and saw that the horses and cart were no longer on the road but in the swamp.
Veslovsky, anxious to see the shooting, had driven into the swamp and mired the horses.
'What the devil got into him!' Levin said to himself, going back to the mired cart. 'Why did you drive in here?' he said drily and, calling the coachman, started freeing the horses.
Levin was vexed because his shooting had been disturbed, and because his horses were stuck in the mud, and above all because neither Stepan Arkadyich nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, neither of them having the slightest understanding of harnessing. Saying not a word in reply to Vasenka's assurances that it was quite dry there, Levin silently worked with the coachman to free the horses. But then, getting into the heat of the work, and seeing how diligently and zealously Veslovsky pulled the cart by the splash-board, so that he even broke it off, Levin reproached himself for being too cold towards him under the influence of yesterday's feeling, and tried to smooth over his dryness by being especially amiable. When everything was put right and the cart was back on the road, Levin ordered lunch to be served.
'Bon appetit - bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu'au fond de mes bottes.'* Vasenka, merry again, joked in French as he finished a second chicken. 'So, now our troubles are over; now everything's going to go well. Only, for my sins I ought to sit on the box. Isn't that right? Eh? No, no, I'm an Automedon.[2] You'll see how I get you there!' he said, not letting go of the reins when Levin asked him to let the coachman drive. 'No, I must redeem my sins, and I feel wonderful on the box.' And he drove on.
Levin was a bit afraid that he would wear out the horses, especially the chestnut on the left, whom he was unable to control; but he involuntarily yielded to his merriment, listened to the romances that Veslovsky, sitting on the box, sang along the way, or to his stories and his imitation of the proper English way of driving a four-in-hand; and after lunch, in the merriest spirits, they drove on to the Gvozdevo marsh.
X
Vasenka drove the horses at such a lively pace that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.
Having arrived at the serious marsh, the main goal of the trip, Levin involuntarily thought about how to get rid of Vasenka and move about unhindered. Stepan Arkadyich obviously wished for the same thing, and Levin saw on his face the preoccupied expression that a true hunter always has before the start of a hunt and a certain good-natured slyness all his own.
'How shall we proceed? I see it's an excellent marsh, and there are hawks,' said Stepan Arkadyich, pointing at two big birds circling over the sedge. 'Where there are hawks, there must be game as well.'
* A good appetite means a good conscience! This chicken is going to drop right to the bottom of my boots [that is, go down very well].
'So you see, gentlemen,' said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the percussion caps on his gun with a slightly glum expression. 'You see that sedge?' He pointed to a little black-green island showing dark against the huge, half-mowed wet meadow that stretched to the right side of the river. 'The swamp begins there, right in front of us, where it's greener. From there it goes to the right, where those horses are; it's hummocky and there are great snipe; and then around the sedge to that alder grove over there and right up to the mill. See, where that creek is. That's the best spot. I once shot seventeen snipe there. We'll split up in two directions with the two dogs and meet there at the mill.'
'Well, who goes right and who left?' asked Stepan Arkadyich. 'It's wider to the right, the two of you go that way, and I'll go left,' he said as if casually.
'Excellent! We'll outshoot him. Well, let's go, let's go!' Vasenka picked up.
Levin could not but consent, and they went their separate ways.
As soon as they entered the marsh, both dogs began searching together and drew towards a rusty spot. Levin knew this searching of Laska's, cautious and vague; he also knew the spot and was expecting a wisp of snipe.
'Walk beside me, Veslovsky, beside me!' he said in a muted voice to his comrade, who was splashing behind him through the water, and the direction of whose gun, after the accidental shot by the Kolpeno marsh, involuntarily interested him.
'No, I don't want to hamper you, don't think about me.'
But Levin could not help remembering Kitty's words as he parted from her: 'See that you don't shoot each other.' The dogs came closer and closer, passing by each other, each following its own thread; the expectation was so intense that the sucking of his own boot as he pulled it out of the rusty water sounded to Levin like the call of a snipe, and he tightened his grip on the stock of his gun.
'Bang! bang!' rang out by his ear. It
was Vasenka shooting at a flock of ducks that was circling above the swamp, far out of range, and just then came flying over the hunters. Levin had barely turned to look when a snipe screeched, then another, a third, and some eight more rose one after the other.
Stepan Arkadyich brought one down just as it was about to start zigzagging and the snipe fell like a lump into the mire. Oblonsky unhurriedly aimed at another that was still flying low towards the sedge, and that snipe dropped; it could be seen thrashing about in the mowed sedge, beating its unhurt wing, white underneath.
Levin was not so lucky: his first snipe was too close when he fired, and he missed; he aimed at it again as it flew up, but just then another flew out from under his feet and distracted him, and he missed a second time.
While they were reloading their guns another snipe rose, and Vesiovsky, who had had time to reload, sent another two charges of small shot over the water. Stepan Arkadyich picked up his snipe and glanced at Levin with shining eyes.
'Well, let's split up now,' said Stepan Arkadyich, and, limping slightly on his left leg and holding his gun ready, he whistled to his dog and went off in one direction. Levin and Vesiovsky went in the other.
It always happened with Levin that when the first shots were unsuccessful, he would become angry, vexed, and shoot badly all day. That was happening now. There were a great many snipe. Snipe kept flying up from under the dog, from under the hunters' feet, and Levin might have recovered; but the more shots he fired, the more he disgraced himself in front of Vesiovsky, who merrily banged away, in and out of range, hit nothing and was not the least embarrassed by it. Levin rushed, could not control himself, became more and more feverish and finally reached the point of shooting almost without hope of hitting anything. Even Laska seemed to understand it. She began searching more lazily and glanced back at the hunters as if in perplexity or reproach. Shots came one after another. Powder smoke hung about the hunters, yet in the big, roomy net of the hunting bag there were only three small, light snipe. And of those one had been shot by Vesiovsky and another by them both. Meanwhile, along the other side of the swamp, the infrequent but, as it seemed to Levin, significant shots of Stepan Arkadyich rang out, followed almost each time by: 'Fetch, Krak, fetch!'
This upset Levin still more. Snipe kept circling in the air over the sedge. Screeching close to the ground and croaking higher up came ceaselessly from all sides; snipe flushed out earlier raced through the air and alighted just in front of the hunters. Not two but dozens of hawks, whimpering, circled over the marsh.
Having gone through the greater part of the marsh, Levin and Vesiovsky reached a place where the muzhiks' meadow was divided into long strips running down to the sedge, marked out here by trampled strips, there by thin rows of cut grass. Half of these strips had already been mowed.
Though there was little hope of finding as many in the unmowed grass as in the mowed, Levin had promised to meet Stepan Arkadyich and went further on down the mowed and unmowed strips with his companion.
'Hey, hunters!' one of the muzhiks, sitting by an unhitched cart, shouted to them. 'Come and have a bite with us! Drink a glass!'
Levin turned.
'Come on, it's all right!' a merry, bearded muzhik with a red face shouted, baring his white teeth and raising a glittering green bottle in the sun.
'Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent?'* asked Veslovsky.
'They're inviting us to drink vodka. They've probably been dividing up the meadows. I'd go and have a drink,' said Levin, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka and go to them.
'Why do they want to treat us?'
'Just for fun. You really ought to join them. You'd be interested.'
'Allons, c'est curieux.'*
'Go on, go on, you'll find the way to the mill!' Levin shouted and, looking back, was pleased to see Veslovsky, hunched over, his weary legs stumbling, his gun in his outstretched hand, making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
'You come, too!' the muzhik cried to Levin. 'Why not? Have a bit of pie! Eh!'
Levin badly wanted a drink of vodka and a piece of bread. He felt weak, so that it was hard for him to pull his faltering legs from the mire, and for a moment he hesitated. But the dog pointed. And at once all fatigue vanished, and he stepped lightly over the mire towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he shot and hit it - the dog went on pointing. 'Fetch!' Another rose just in front of the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day; he missed, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find it either. He searched everywhere in the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to search, she did not really search but only pretended.
Even without Vasenka, whom Levin blamed for his failure, things did not improve. There were many snipe here, too, but Levin missed time after time.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes were soaked
* What are they saying?
* Let's go, it's curious.
through with sweat and clung to his body; his left boot, filled with water, was heavy and sloshy; drops of sweat rolled down his face, grimy with the soot of gunpowder; there was a bitter taste in his mouth, the smell of powder and rust in his nose, and in his ears the ceaseless screeching of the snipe; the gun barrels were too hot to touch; his heart pounded in short, quick beats; his hands shook from agitation, and his weary legs stumbled and tripped over the hummocks and bog; but he went on and kept shooting. Finally, after a shameful miss, he threw down his gun and hat.
'No, I must come to my senses!' he said to himself. He picked up the gun and hat, called Laska to heel and left the marsh. Coming to a dry spot, he sat down on a hummock, took off his boot, poured the water out of it, then went back to the marsh, drank some rusty-tasting water, wetted the burning gun barrels and rinsed his face and hands. Having refreshed himself, he moved back to the spot where the snipe had landed, with the firm intention of not getting agitated.
He wanted to keep calm, but it was the same thing all over again. His finger pulled the trigger before the bird was in his sights. It all went worse and worse.
There were only five birds in his game bag when he came out of the marsh to the alder grove where he was to meet Stepan Arkadyich.
Before he saw Stepan Arkadyich, he saw his dog. Krak leaped from behind the upturned roots of an alder, all black with the stinking slime of the marsh, and with a victorious look began sniffing Laska. Behind Krak the stately figure of Stepan Arkadyich appeared in the shade of the alders. He came towards Levin, red, sweaty, his collar open, still limping in the same way.
'Well, so? You did a lot of shooting!' he said, smiling gaily.
'And you?' asked Levin. But there was no need to ask, because he already saw the full game bag.
'Not too bad.'
He had fourteen birds.
'A fine marsh! Veslovsky must have hampered you. It's inconvenient for two with one dog,' said Stepan Arkadyich, softening his triumph.
XI
When Levin and Stepan Arkadyich came to the cottage of the muzhik with whom Levin always stayed, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the cottage, holding on with both hands to a bench from which a soldier, the brother of the mistress of the house, was pulling him by the slime-covered boots, and laughing his infectiously gay laugh.
'I've just come. Ils ont ete charmants.* Imagine, they wined me and dined me. Such bread, a wonder! Delicieux! And the vodka - I never drank anything tastier! And they absolutely refused to take money. And they kept saying "No offence", or something.'
'Why take money? They were treating you. As if they'd sell their vodka!' said the soldier, finally pulling off the wet boot and the blackened stocking along with it.
Despite the filth in the cottage, muddied by the hunters' boots and the dirty dogs licking themselves, the smell of marsh and powder that filled it, and the absence of knives and forks, the hunters drank their tea and ate dinner with a relish that only comes from hunting. Washed and clean, they went
to the swept-out hay barn where the coachmen had prepared beds for the masters.
Though it was already dark, none of the hunters wanted to sleep.
After wavering between reminiscences and stories about shooting, about dogs, about previous hunts, the conversation hit upon a subject that interested them all. Prompted by Vasenka's repeated expressions of delight at the charm of the night and the smell of the hay, at the charm of the broken cart (it seemed broken to him because its front end had been detached), the affability of the muzhiks who had given him vodka, the dogs who lay each at its master's feet, Oblonsky told about the charm of the hunting at Malthus's place, which he had taken part in during the past summer. Malthus was a well-known railway magnate. Stepan Arkadyich told about the marshlands this Malthus had bought up in Tver province, and how he kept them as a reserve, and what carriages - dog-carts - the hunters drove in, and the tent they set up for lunch by the marsh.
'I don't understand you,' said Levin, sitting up on his hay. 'How is it
* They were charming.
you're not disgusted by those people? I understand that Lafite with lunch is very agreeable, but aren't you disgusted precisely by that luxury? All those people make their money, as our old tax farmers[3] used to, in a way that earns them people's contempt. They ignore it and then use their dishonestly earned money to buy off the former contempt.'