Anna Karenina
We’ll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then
meet over there at the mill.”
“Well, which shall go to left and which to right?” asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch. “It’s wider to the right; you two go that way and I’ll
take the left,” he said with apparent carelessness.
“Capital! we’ll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!”
Vassenka exclaimed.
Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.
As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about
together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Levin knew
Laska’s method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected
a whole covey of snipe.
“Veslovsky, beside me, walk beside me!” he said in a faint voice to his
companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not help
feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that
casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.
“Oh, I won’t get in your way, don’t trouble about me.”
But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kitty’s words at
parting: “Mind you don’t shoot one another.” The dogs came nearer and
nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation
of snipe was so intense that to Levin the squelching sound of his own
heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a
snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun.
“Bang! bang!” sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock
of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment
towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to look
round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some
eight more rose one after another.
Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning
its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud.
Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds,
and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it
could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt
wing showing white beneath.
Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed;
he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant
another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he
missed again.
While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky,
who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the
water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes
looked at Levin.
“Well, now let us separate,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on
his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog,
he walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the
other.
It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure
he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was
that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up
from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen’s legs, and Levin
might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he
felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily
and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed
by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain
himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost
without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this.
She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as
it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots
in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen,
while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three
light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky
alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side
of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shots, not
frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each
they heard “Krak, Krak, _apporte_!”
This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in
the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and
their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the
snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again
before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of
them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.
After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky
reached the place where the peasants’ mowing-grass was divided into
long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the
trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these
strips had already been mown.
Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as
the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and
so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.
“Hi, sportsmen!” shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an
unharnessed cart; “come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of
wine!”
Levin looked round.
“Come along, it’s all right!” shouted a good-humored-looking bearded
peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding
up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.
“_Qu’est-ce qu’ils disent_?” asked Veslovsky.
“They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they’ve been dividing
the meadow into lots. I should have some,” said Levin, not without some
guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go
away to them.
“Why do they offer it?”
“Oh, they’re merry-making. Really, you should join them. You would be
interested.”
“_Allons, c’est curieux_.”
“You go, you go, you’ll find the way to the mill!” cried Levin, and
looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Veslovsky, bent and
stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at arm’s length, was
making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
“You come too!” the peasants shouted to Levin. “Never fear! You taste
our cake!”
Levin felt a strong inclination to drink a little vodka and to eat some
bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his
staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But
Laska was setting. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he
walked lightly through the swamp towards the dog. A snipe flew up at
his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.—“Fetch it!”
Another bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an
unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one
he had shot, he could not find that either. He wandered all about the
reeds, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her
to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really. And in
the absence of Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his failure,
things went no better. There were plenty of snipe still, but Levin made
one miss after another.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked
through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of
water weighed heavily on his leg and squeaked at every step; the sweat
ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of the
bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his
ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not
touch the stock of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short,
rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs
stumbled and staggered over the hillocks and in the swamp, but still he
walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he
flung his gun and his hat on the ground.
“No, I must control myself,” he said to himself. Picking up his gun and
his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got on to
dry ground he sat down, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked
to the marsh, drank some stagnant-tasting water, moistened his burning
hot gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back
to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.
He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the
cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and
worse.
He had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh
towards the alders where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak
darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over
with the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror
sniffed at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the
alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He came to meet
him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the
same way.
“Well? You have been popping away!” he said, smiling good-humoredly.
“How have you got on?” queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for
he had already seen the full game bag.
“Oh, pretty fair.”
He had fourteen birds.
“A splendid marsh! I’ve no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It’s
awkward too, shooting with one dog,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to
soften his triumph.
Chapter 11
When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasant’s hut where
Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting
in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from
which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant’s
wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was
laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.
“I’ve only just come. _Ils ont été charmants_. Just fancy, they gave me
drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! _Délicieux!_ And the
vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for
anything. And they kept saying: ‘Excuse our homely ways.’”
“What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be
sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?” said the soldier,
succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened
stocking.
In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their
boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of
marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives
and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish
only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn
swept ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for
the gentlemen.
Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.
After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and
of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that
interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed
his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant
hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because
the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that
had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their
respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful
shooting party at Malthus’s, where he had stayed the previous summer.
Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by
speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevitch described what
grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they
were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting
party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged
up at the marsh.
“I don’t understand you,” said Levin, sitting up in the hay; “how is it
such people don’t disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is