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Chapter 12.
The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek
horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and
with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who
were forming a ring for the haymakers’ dance. Ivan drove off to the
road and fell into line with the other loaded carts. The peasant women,
with their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chat-
tering with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild
untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a
verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a
hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in
unison.
The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt
as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of
merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock
on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads,
and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and
singing to the measures of this wild merry song with its shouts and
whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of this health and mirthful-
ness; he longed to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he
could do nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen. When the
peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a
weary feeling of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactiv-
ity, his alienation from this world, came over Levin.
Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling
with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and
who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him
goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any
feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any recollection even of hav-
ing tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry
common labor. God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day
and the strength were consecrated to labor, and that labor was its own
reward. For whom the labor? What would be its fruits? These were
idle considerations— beside the point.
Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of
the men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under
the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to
his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it
was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individual-
istic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful
life.
The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone
home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone
home, while those who came from far were gathered into a group for
supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unobserved by
the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened
and mused. The peasants who remained for the night in the meadow
scarcely slept all the short summer night. At first there was the sound
of merry talk and laughing all together over the supper, then singing
again and laughter.
All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of