Anna Karenina
whether Laska would show to advantage in comparison with Krak, and
whether he would shoot well that day himself. Not to disgrace himself
before a new spectator—not to be outdone by Oblonsky—that too was a
thought that crossed his brain.
Oblonsky was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative. Vassenka
Veslovsky kept up alone a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter. As he
listened to him now, Levin felt ashamed to think how unfair he had been
to him the day before. Vassenka was really a nice fellow, simple,
good-hearted, and very good-humored. If Levin had met him before he was
married, he would have made friends with him. Levin rather disliked his
holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and easy assumption of
elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree of importance in
himself that could not be disputed, because he had long nails and a
stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but this could be
forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good breeding. Levin liked
him for his good education, for speaking French and English with such
an excellent accent, and for being a man of his world.
Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the
Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. “How fine it must
be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn’t it?” he
said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and
romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity,
particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and
the grace of his movements, was very attractive. Either because his
nature was sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone
for his sins of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was
good in him, anyway he liked his society.
After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at once
felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had
lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were
thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in
uncertainty.
“Do you know what, Levin, I’ll gallop home on that left trace-horse.
That will be splendid. Eh?” he said, preparing to get out.
“No, why should you?” answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could
hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. “I’ll send the coachman.”
The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the
remaining pair.
Chapter 9
“Well, now what’s our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it,” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Our plan is this. Now we’re driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov there’s a
grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent
snipe marshes where there are grouse too. It’s hot now, and we’ll get
there—it’s fifteen miles or so—towards evening and have some evening
shooting; we’ll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger
moors.”
“And is there nothing on the way?”
“Yes; but we’ll reserve ourselves; besides it’s hot. There are two nice
little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.”
Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they
were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only
little places—there would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so,
with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to
shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once
detected reeds visible from the road.
“Shan’t we try that?” he said, pointing to the little marsh.
“Levin, do, please! how delightful!” Vassenka Veslovsky began begging,
and Levin could but consent.
Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other
into the marsh.
“Krak! Laska!...”
The dogs came back.
“There won’t be room for three. I’ll stay here,” said Levin, hoping
they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs,
and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the
marsh.
“No! Come along, Levin, let’s go together!” Veslovsky called.
“Really, there’s not room. Laska, back, Laska! You won’t want another
dog, will you?”
Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the
sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little birds and
peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.
“Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,” said
Levin, “only it’s wasting time.”
“Oh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?” said Vassenka
Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his
peewit in his hands. “How splendidly I shot this bird! Didn’t I? Well,
shall we soon be getting to the real place?”
The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against the
stock of someone’s gun, and there was the report of a shot. The gun did
actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Levin. It appeared
that Vassenka Veslovsky had pulled only one trigger, and had left the
other hammer still cocked. The charge flew into the ground without
doing harm to anyone. Stepan Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed
reprovingly at Veslovsky. But Levin had not the heart to reprove him.
In the first place, any reproach would have seemed to be called forth
by the danger he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Levin’s
forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so naïvely distressed,
and then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously at their general
dismay, that one could not but laugh with him.
When they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and would
inevitably take some time to shoot over, Levin tried to persuade them
to pass it by. But Veslovsky again overpersuaded him. Again, as the
marsh was narrow, Levin, like a good host, remained with the carriage.
Krak made straight for some clumps of sedge. Vassenka Veslovsky was the
first to run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come
up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown
meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow up. Krak found it
again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriage.
“Now you go and I’ll stay with the horses,” he said.
Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman’s envy. He handed the
reins to Veslovsky and walked into the marsh.
Laska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the
injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to a hopeful place that
Levin knew well, and that Krak had not yet come upon.
“Why don’t you stop her?” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“She won’t scare them,” answered Levin, sympathizing with his bitch’s
pleasure and hurrying after her.
As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was
more and more earnestness in Laska’s exploration. A little marsh bird
did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one
circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly
quivered with excitement and became motionless.
“Come, come, Stiva!” shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to beat
more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had
been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud,
began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard
the steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the
horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on
which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He
heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could
not explain to himself.
Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.
“Fetch it!”
Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted
his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of
splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of
Veslovsky’s voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw
he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.
When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the
horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.
Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and
got the horses stuck in the mud.
“Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the
carriage that had sunk in the mire. “What did you drive in for?” he
said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the
horses out.
Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses
getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither
Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to
unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the
slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply
to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin
worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But
then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was
tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it
indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of
yesterday’s feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be
particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When
everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back
to the road, Levin had the lunch served.
“_Bon appétit—bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu’au fond de
mes bottes_,” Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the
French saying as he finished his second chicken. “Well, now our
troubles are over, now everything’s going to go well. Only, to atone
for my sins, I’m bound to sit on the box. That’s so? eh? No, no! I’ll
be your Automedon. You shall see how I’ll get you along,” he answered,
not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman
drive. “No, I must atone for my sins, and I’m very comfortable on the
box.” And he drove.
Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the
chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he
fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he
sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he
gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the
very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.
Chapter 10
Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too
early, while it was still hot.
As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their
expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of
Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently
had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety
always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together
with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.
“How shall we go? It’s a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the
reeds. “Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game.”
“Now, gentlemen,” said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the
lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, “do you see those
reeds?” He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown
wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. “The marsh
begins here, straight in front of us, do you see—where it is greener?
From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding
places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that
alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the
pools are? That’s the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe.