546 547
give some final directions on the estate before setting off.
Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams
of water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his
gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin returned
homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever
towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she
went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all
right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy
streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare
twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the
planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay
heaped up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of
nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been
having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they
were beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to
whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin’s plan,
and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the pur-
chase of cattle.
“I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain
my end,” thought Levin; “and it’s something to work and take trouble
for. This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the
public welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief
element in the condition of the people, must be completely trans-
formed. Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of
hostility, harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolu-
tion, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little
circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world.
Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it’s an aim worth
working for. And it’s being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a
black tie, and was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was
intrinsically such a pitiful, worthless creature—that proves nothing; I
feel sure Franklin felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in
himself, thinking of himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he
too, most likely, had an Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his
secrets.”
Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.
The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and
brought part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been
made with the old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that
everywhere the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one
hundred and sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in
comparison with the losses of others.
After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair
with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before
him in connection with his book. Today all the significance of his book
rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged
themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. “I must write that
down,” he thought. “That ought to form a brief introduction, which I
thought unnecessary before.” He got up to go to his writing table, and
Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him as
though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down, for
the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall to
them.
After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of
the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him,
Levin went back to his study and sat down to work.
Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her
place with her stocking.