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Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let’s
go to the Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and
Russian songs.”
His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one
subject to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him
not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to
persuade Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.
Chapter 26.
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening
he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neigh-
bors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he
was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with
himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own
station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of
his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires,
he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their
harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as
he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had
arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little by little the
confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were
passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses;
but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down
wrapped in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that
lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had
been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from
the Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a differ-
ent light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he
wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved
that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary