920 921
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 par-
ticularly 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 appetit—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.