LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 14

      AS Levin, in the highest spirits, was nearing the house he heard the sound of a tinkling bell approaching the main entrance.

      ‘Why, that must be some one from the station,’ he thought. ‘They would just have had time to get here from the Moscow train. Who is it? Can it be brother Nicholas? He did say, “Perhaps I’ll go to a watering-place, or perhaps I’ll come to you.” ’ For a moment he felt frightened and disturbed lest his brother’s presence should destroy the happy frame of mind that the spring had aroused in him. But he was ashamed of that feeling, and immediately, as it were, opened out his spiritual arms and with tender joy expected, and now hoped with his whole soul, that it was his brother. He touched up his horse and, having passed the acacia trees, saw a hired three-horse sledge coming from the station and in it a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. ‘Oh, if only it’s some nice fellow with whom one can have a talk,’ he thought. ‘Ah,’ he cried, joyfully lifting both arms, ‘here’s a welcome guest! Well, I am glad to see you!’ he exclaimed, recognizing Oblonsky.

      ‘I shall know now for certain whether she is married or when she will be,’ thought Levin.

      And on this lovely day he felt that the memory of her did not hurt him at all.

      ‘You did not expect me, eh?’ said Oblonsky, getting out of the sledge with mud on his nose, cheek, and eyebrows, but beaming with cheerfulness and health. ‘I have come to see you, that’s one thing,’ he said, embracing and kissing Levin, ‘to get some shooting, that’s two, and to sell the Ergushevo forest, that’s three.’

      ‘That’s grand! and what a spring we are having! How did you manage to get here in a sledge?’

      ‘It would have been worse still on wheels, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said the driver, whom Levin knew.

      ‘Well, I am very, very glad to see you,’ said Levin with a sincere smile, joyful as a child’s.

      He showed his guest into the spare bedroom, where Oblonsky’s things, his bag, a gun in a case, and a satchel with cigars, were also brought, and leaving him to wash and change Levin went to the office to give orders about the ploughing and the clover. Agatha Mikhaylovna, always much concerned about the honour of the house, met him in the hall with questions about dinner.

      ‘Do just as you please, only be quick,’ he said and went out to see the steward.

      When he returned, Oblonsky, fresh and clean, with hair brushed, and face radiant with smiles, was just coming out of his room, and they went upstairs together.

      ‘How glad I am to have come to you! Now I shall be able to understand what the mysteries you perpetrate here consist of. But, seriously, I envy you. What a house, and everything so splendid, so light, so gay!’ said Oblonsky, forgetting that it was not always spring and bright weather there, as on that day.

      ‘And your nurse! quite charming! A pretty housemaid with a little apron would be preferable; but with your severe and monastic style this one is more suitable.’

      Oblonsky had much interesting news to tell, and one item of special interest to Levin was that his brother, Sergius Ivanich, intended to come and stay in the country with him that summer.

      Not a word did Oblonsky say about Kitty or about any of the Shcherbatskys; he only delivered greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visit. As usual during his solitude a mass of thoughts and feelings he could not express to those around had collected in his mind, and now he poured out to Oblonsky the poetic joy of spring, his failures, his plans concerning the estate, his thoughts and remarks about the books he had read, and especially the idea of his own book, the basis of which, though he did not notice it himself, was a criticism of all previous works on agriculture. Oblonsky, always pleasant and quick at understanding everything from a hint, was specially pleasant on this visit; there was a new trait in him which Levin noticed and was flattered by — a kind of respect and a sort of tenderness toward him. The efforts of Agatha Mikhaylovna and the cook to make the dinner specially nice resulted only in both the hungry friends sitting down to a snack and having to appease their hunger with hors d’œuvres of bread and butter, smoked goose, and pickled mushrooms, and in Levin’s ordering the soup to be served without waiting for the pasties with which the cook intended to astonish the visitor. But Oblonsky, though used to very different dinners, found everything delicious; the herb beer, the bread and butter, and especially the smoked goose and pickled mushrooms, the nettle soup and the fowl with melted-butter sauce, the Crimean white wine — everything was delicious, everything was excellent.

      ‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said, lighting a thick cigarette after the joint. ‘I seem to have come to you as one lands from a noisy steamer on to a peaceful shore. So you maintain that the labourer should be studied as one of the factors which should decide the choice of agricultural methods? You know I am quite an outsider in these matters, but I should think this theory and its application ought to influence the labourer too.’

      ‘Yes, but wait a bit, I am not talking about political economy but about the science of agriculture. It should resemble the natural sciences and should examine existing phenomena, including the labourer with his economic and ethnographic …’

      At that moment Agatha Mikhaylovna came in with some jam.

      ‘Ah, Agatha Mikhaylovna,’ said Oblonsky, kissing the tips of his plump fingers; ‘what smoked goose you have, what herb brandy! … But what d’you think, Constantine, is it not time?’ he added.

      Levin glanced out of the window at the sun which was setting behind the bare trees of the forest.

      ‘High time, high time! Kuzma, tell them to harness the trap,’ he said, and ran downstairs.

      Oblonsky went down and himself carefully took the canvas cover off the varnished case, opened it, and set to work to put together his valuable gun, which was of the newest type.

      Kuzma, already scenting a substantial tip, did not leave Oblonsky for a moment. He put on his stockings and his boots for him, and Oblonsky willingly allowed him to do so.

      ‘Constantine, please leave word that if the dealer Ryabinin comes (I told him to come here to-day) they should ask him in and let him wait.’

      ‘Are you selling the forest to Ryabinin?’

      ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

      ‘Of course I know him. I have had dealings with him, positively and finally.’

      Oblonsky laughed. ‘Positively and finally’ were the dealer’s favourite words.

      ‘Yes, he does speak very funnily. She knows where the master is going,’ he added, patting Laska, who was whining and jumping round Levin, now licking his hand, now his boots and his gun.

      The trap was standing at the door when they went out.

      ‘I told them to harness though it is not far, but if you like we can walk?’

      ‘No, let us drive,’ said Oblonsky, stepping up into the trap [a long vehicle something like a jaunting-car, but with four wheels]. He sat down, wrapped a rug round his legs, and lit a cigar. ‘How

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