Anna Karenina
new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped
energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this
gentleman sharply turned his back.
“Yes, it’s a dirty business, there’s no denying,” a small gentleman
assented in a high voice.
Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general,
hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a
place where they could talk without being overheard.
“How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I
expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He’d better not say it, the
beast!”
“But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,” was being said in
another group; “the wife must be registered as noble.”
“Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We’re all gentlemen, aren’t
we? Above suspicion.”
“Shall we go on, your excellency, _fine champagne?_”
Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a
loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.
“I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for she can
never save a profit,” he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker was a
country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of
an old general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had met
at Sviazhsky’s. He knew him at once. The landowner too stared at Levin,
and they exchanged greetings.
“Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last year
at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch’s.”
“Well, and how is your land doing?” asked Levin.
“Oh, still just the same, always at a loss,” the landowner answered
with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and
conviction that so it must be. “And how do you come to be in our
province?” he asked. “Come to take part in our _coup d’état?_” he said,
confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent. “All
Russia’s here—gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the
ministry.” He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in
white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a general.
“I ought to own that I don’t very well understand the drift of the
provincial elections,” said Levin.
The landowner looked at him.
“Why, what is there to understand? There’s no meaning in it at all.
It’s a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of
inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it’s an assembly of
justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but
not of noblemen.”
“Then why do you come?” asked Levin.
“From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up connections.
It’s a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, there’s
one’s own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent
member; they’re not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These
gentlemen, now, what do they come for?” he said, pointing to the
malignant gentleman, who was talking at the high table.
“That’s the new generation of nobility.”
“New it may be, but nobility it isn’t. They’re proprietors of a sort,
but we’re the landowners. As noblemen, they’re cutting their own
throats.”
“But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.”
“That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more
respectfully. Snetkov, now.... We may be of use, or we may not, but
we’re the growth of a thousand years. If we’re laying out a garden,
planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s
stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be, and
yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds,
but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won’t
grow him again in a year,” he said cautiously, and he immediately
changed the conversation. “Well, and how is your land doing?”
“Oh, not very well. I make five per cent.”
“Yes, but you don’t reckon your own work. Aren’t you worth something
too? I’ll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the land,
I had a salary of three hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more
work than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent. on
the land, and thank God for that. But one’s work is thrown in for
nothing.”
“Then why do you do it, if it’s a clear loss?”
“Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It’s habit, and one knows
it’s how it should be. And what’s more,” the landowner went on, leaning
his elbows on the window and chatting on, “my son, I must tell you, has
no taste for it. There’s no doubt he’ll be a scientific man. So
there’ll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year
I’ve planted an orchard.”
“Yes, yes,” said Levin, “that’s perfectly true. I always feel there’s
no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it....
It’s a sort of duty one feels to the land.”
“But I tell you what,” the landowner pursued; “a neighbor of mine, a
merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden.
‘No,’ said he, ‘Stepan Vassilievitch, everything’s well looked after,
but your garden’s neglected.’ But, as a fact, it’s well kept up. ‘To my
thinking, I’d cut down that lime-tree. Here you’ve thousands of limes,
and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark’s
worth something. I’d cut down the lot.’”
“And with what he made he’d increase his stock, or buy some land for a
trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants,” Levin added, smiling.
He had evidently more than once come across those commercial
calculations. “And he’d make his fortune. But you and I must thank God
if we keep what we’ve got and leave it to our children.”
“You’re married, I’ve heard?” said the landowner.
“Yes,” Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. “Yes, it’s rather
strange,” he went on. “So we live without making anything, as though we
were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.”
The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
“There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or
Count Vronsky, that’s settled here lately, who try to carry on their
husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing
but making away with capital on it.”
“But why is it we don’t do like the merchants? Why don’t we cut down
our parks for timber?” said Levin, returning to a thought that had
struck him.
“Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that’s not work for a
nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn’t done here at the elections,
but yonder, each in our corner. There’s a class instinct, too, of what
one ought and oughtn’t to do. There’s the peasants, too, I wonder at
them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can.
However bad the land is, he’ll work it. Without a return too. At a
simple loss.”
“Just as we do,” said Levin. “Very, very glad to have met you,” he
added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.
“And here we’ve met for the first time since we met at your place,”
said the landowner to Sviazhsky, “and we’ve had a good talk too.”
“Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?” said Sviazhsky
with a smile.
“That we’re bound to do.”
“You’ve relieved your feelings?”
Chapter 30
Sviazhsky took Levin’s arm, and went with him to his own friends.
This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan
Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he
drew near.
“Delighted! I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you ... at
Princess Shtcherbatskaya’s,” he said, giving Levin his hand.
“Yes, I quite remember our meeting,” said Levin, and blushing crimson,
he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.
With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously
without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with
Levin. But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking
round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss
over his rudeness.
“What are we waiting for now?” asked Levin, looking at Sviazhsky and
Vronsky.
“For Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,” answered
Sviazhsky.
“Well, and what has he done, consented or not?”
“That’s the point, that he’s done neither,” said Vronsky.
“And if he refuses, who will stand then?” asked Levin, looking at
Vronsky.
“Whoever chooses to,” said Sviazhsky.
“Shall you?” asked Levin.
“Certainly not I,” said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an
alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside
Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Who then? Nevyedovsky?” said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot
into it.
But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two
candidates.
“I certainly shall not, under any circumstances,” answered the
malignant gentleman.
This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin.
“Well, you find it exciting too?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at
Vronsky. “It’s something like a race. One might bet on it.”
“Yes, it is keenly exciting,” said Vronsky. “And once taking the thing
up, one’s eager to see it through. It’s a fight!” he said, scowling and
setting his powerful jaws.
“What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.”
“Oh, yes!” Vronsky assented indifferently.
A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he had to look at
something—looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his
face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to
say something:
“How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a
justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.”
“It’s because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly
institution,” Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking
for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to
smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.
“I don’t think so, quite the contrary,” Vronsky said, with quiet
surprise.
“It’s a plaything,” Levin cut him short. “We don’t want justices of the
peace. I’ve never had a single thing to do with them during eight
years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of
the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles
I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.”
And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and
when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All
this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as
he said it.
“Oh, this is such an original fellow!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
his most soothing, almond-oil smile. “But come along; I think they’re
voting....”
And they separated.
“I can’t understand,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his
brother’s clumsiness, “I can’t understand how anyone can be so
absolutely devoid of political tact. That’s where we Russians are so
deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him
you’re _ami cochon_, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now ...
I’m not making a friend of him; he’s asked me to dinner, and I’m not
going; but he’s one of our side—why make an enemy of him? Then you ask
Nevyedovsky if he’s going to stand. That’s not a thing to do.”
“Oh, I don’t understand it at all! And it’s all such nonsense,” Levin
answered gloomily.
“You say it’s all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do
with it, you make a muddle.”
Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.
The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in the air
of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not been called
upon by all to stand, had still made up his mind to stand. All was
silence in the room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the