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‘Now you go, and I will remain with the horses,’ he said.

 

A sportsman’s jealousy¹ was beginning to torment² Levin. He handed the reins³ to Veslovsky and went into the marsh⁴.

 

Laska, who had long been whining⁵ plaintively⁶, as if complaining of the injustice⁷, rushed straight forward to a likely spot covered with hummocks⁹ and known to Levin, where Krak had not yet been.

 

‘Why don’t you stop her?’ shouted Oblonsky.

 

‘She won’t disturb them,’ answered Levin, pleased with his dog and hurrying after her.

 

Laska became more and more intent on her pursuit, the nearer she got to the hummocks. A small marsh bird only diverted her attention for an instant. She described a circle in front of the hummocks, and began another, but suddenly shuddered¹⁰ and stopped dead.

 

‘Come along, Stiva!’ Levin shouted, feeling his heart beat more rapidly, and suddenly, as if some bar had been withdrawn¹¹ from his strained sense of hearing, be lost the faculty¹² of measuring distance, and was struck by sounds which reached him clearly but without any order. He heard Oblonsky’s steps and took them for the distant tramp of horses; he heard the crumbling¹³ of a bit of hummock⁸ on which he stepped and which broke off, pulling out the grass by the roots, and he took it for the noise of a snipe on the wing; behind him he heard too a sound of splashing for which he could not account.

 

Picking his way, he approached the dog.

 

‘Seize it!’

 

It was not a great snipe but a snipe that rose before the dog. Levin raised his gun, but just as he was taking aim the splashing sounded louder and nearer, mingled¹⁴ with Veslovsky’s voice shouting strangely and loudly. Levin knew he was aiming behind the snipe, but fired, nevertheless.

 

After making sure he had missed, he turned and saw that the trap and horses were no longer on the road but in the marsh.

 

Veslovsky, wishing to watch the shooting, had driven into the marsh, where the horses had stuck fast.

 

‘What the devil brings him here?’ muttered Levin to himself, turning back to the vehicle. ‘Why did you leave the road?’ he asked drily, and calling the coachman, set to work to get the horses out.

 

Levin was vexed¹⁵ that he had been put off his shot, and that his horses had been led into the bog¹⁶, and especially that neither Oblonsky nor Veslovsky (neither of whom knew anything about harness) helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out of the bog. Without a word of reply to Vasenka, who was assuring him that it was quite dry there, Levin worked silently with the coachman to disengage the horses. But when heated with the work, and seeing Veslovsky pulling at the splashboard so strenuously¹⁷ and zealously¹⁸ that he actually wrenched¹⁹ it off, Levin reproached himself with being influenced by his sentiments of the previous day and with treating Veslovsky too coldly, and he tried to efface²⁰ his unfriendliness by particular courtesy. When everything was in order and the vehicles had been brought back to the road, Levin gave orders for lunch to be served.

 

‘Bon appétit! — bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu’au fond de mes bottes,’ [‘A good appetite means a good conscience! This chicken will go down to the bottom of my boots,’] remarked Vasenka, who had brightened up again, repeating a French saying while he finished a second chicken. ‘Now our misfortunes are ended and all will be well. But for my sin I must sit on the box. Don’t you think so, eh? No, no! I am Automedon — wait and see how I will drive you!’ he said, keeping hold of the reins, in reply to Levin who wanted him to let the coachman drive. ‘No, I must expiate²¹ my sin, and besides, it’s delightful²² on the box,’ and he was off.

 

Levin was rather afraid Veslovsky would tire out the horses, especially the roan on the left, whom he did not know how to hold in; but he could not resist Veslovsky’s high spirits, the songs he sang all the way while sitting on the box, the stories he told, and his representation of the English way of driving four-in-hand; and after lunch they were all in the best of spirits when they reached the Gvozdevo marsh.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10

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VESLOVSKY drove so fast that they arrived at the marsh too soon, while it was still hot.

 

When they got to the real marsh, the object of their journey, Levin involuntarily wished to rid himself of Vasenka and go about unhindered. Oblonsky evidently wanted the same thing, and on his face Levin noticed the preoccupation, which every true sportsman feels before the shooting begins, and also a little good-natured cunning, characteristic of him.

 

‘Well, what shall we do . . . ? It’s a splendid marsh, and I see there are hawks too,’ said Oblonsky, pointing at two large birds circling above the sedges. ‘Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game.’

 

‘Well then, gentlemen,’ said Levin with a somewhat gloomy expression, pulling up his boots and examining his percussion caps, ‘you see that sedge?’ He pointed to a dark-green little island in an enormous half-mown wet meadow stretching along the right bank of the river. ‘The marsh begins here, just in front of us: you can see, where it is greener? From there it goes to the right, where those horses are; there are hummocks, and great snipe; and it goes round that sedge to the alder grove and down to the mill. Look! Just there, by that little bay. That’s the best place. I once shot seventeen grouse there. . . . We will separate, going different ways with the two dogs, and will meet again by the mill.’

 

‘Well then, who goes to the left and who to the right?’ asked Oblonsky. ‘The space on the right is broader, so you two go there together, and I will keep to the left,’ he added with affected indifference.

 

‘Good! We’ll make the best bag,’ chimed in Vasenka.

 

Levin could not avoid agreeing, and they separated.

 

They had hardly entered the marsh when both dogs began searching together and started off toward a rusty-looking spot in the marsh. Levin knew Laska’s method of search — careful and dubious; he knew it, and expected to see a flight of snipe.

 

‘Veslovsky, walk beside me — beside me!’ he whispered with bated breath to his comrade, who was splashing in the water behind him, and the direction of whose gun, after the accidental shot by the Kolpensky marsh, involuntarily interested Levin.

 

‘No, I don’t want to hamper you. Don’t trouble about me.’

 

But Levin recollected Kitty’s parting words: ‘Mind, and don’t shoot one another!’ Nearer and nearer came the dogs, keeping out of each other’s way and each following its scent. The expectation of finding snipe was so strong that the smacking sound of his heel as he drew it out of the rusty mud sounded to Levin like the cry of a bird, and he grasped the butt end of his gun firmly.

 

‘Bang! Bang!’ he heard just above his ear. Vasenka had fired into a flight of ducks that were circling above the marsh far out of range and were at that moment flying straight toward the sportsmen. Levin had barely time to turn, before he heard the cry of a snipe, then another, and a third, and about eight more rose one after the other.

 

Oblonsky got one just as it was preparing to begin its zigzag flight, and the bird fell like a small lump into the bog. Oblonsky quietly aimed at another which was flying low towards the sedges, and at the moment of the report that one too fell, and it could be seen jumping up among the cut sedges, fluttering with one white-edged uninjured wing.

 

Levin was not so lucky: he fired at the first snipe too near, and missed; he followed it with his gun when it had already risen, but at that instant another rose just at his feet and diverted his attention, and he missed again.

 

While they were reloading another bird rose, and Veslovsky, who had finished reloading, fired two charges of small shot over the water. Oblonsky picked up his two snipe and looked with sparkling eyes at Levin.

 

‘Well, now let’s part,’ he said, and limping with his left foot, and holding his gun ready, he whistled to his dog and went off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky went in the other.

 

Levin, if his first shots were unsuccessful, always became excited and annoyed, and shot badly all the rest of the day. So it was this time. There were a great many snipe. They kept rising before the dogs and at the very feet of the sportsmen, and Levin might have recovered himself; but the oftener he fired the more he disgraced himself before Veslovsky, who was puffing away merrily, in and out of range, never killing anything, but not in the least abashed thereby. Levin hurried, grew impatient, and became more and more flurried, until at last he fired almost without hope of killing anything. Even Laska seemed to feel this. Her search became more and more indolent, and she looked round at the sportsmen as if in perplexity and with reproach. Shot followed shot. Powder smoke enveloped the sportsmen, but in the large roomy net of the game-bag were only three light little birds, and even of these one had been shot by Veslovsky, and another belonged to them both. Meanwhile from the opposite side of the marsh came not frequent but, as it seemed to Levin, significant reports from Oblonsky’s gun, followed almost every time by a cry to the dog. ‘Krak! Krak! Fetch it!’

 

That excited Levin still more. The snipe unceasingly circled above the sedges. The cry near the ground and sound in the air came incessantly from every side. The snipe that had risen previously and had been flying about descended in front of the sportsmen. Not two but dozens of hawks now soared above the marsh.

 

Having traversed more than half the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky came to a spot where the peasants’ meadow land was divided into long strips, the ends abutting on the sedge and separated by narrow lines where the grass had been trodden down or cut. Half of those strips were already mown.

 

Though there was little hope of finding as many birds in the unmown strips as on the mown part, Levin, having promised Oblonsky to meet him, went with his companion farther on over the mown and unmown strips.

 

‘Hullo, you sportsmen!’ shouted one of several peasants who were sitting beside a cart from which the horses had been taken out. ‘Come and have something with us! A drink of vodka!’

 

Levin turned round.

 

‘Come along! Never mind!’ shouted a merry, bearded, red-faced peasant, showing a row of white teeth and holding aloft a greenish vodka bottle that glittered in the sunshine.

 

‘Qu’est ce qu’ils disent? [What are they saying?]’ asked Veslovsky.

 

‘They are calling us to drink vodka. I expect they have been dividing the meadow. I should go and have a drink,’ said Levin, not quite disinterestedly, hoping that the vodka would tempt Veslovsky and lure him away.

 

‘Why are they offering it?’

 

‘Oh, they are only making merry. Really, you should go to them. It will interest you.’

 

‘Allons! C’est curieux! [Come! It’s interesting!]’

 

‘Go along! Go, you’ll find the way to the mill!’ cried Levin, and on looking round was pleased to see Veslovsky making his way out of the marsh toward the peasants, stooping and stumbling with his weary feet and holding his gun at arm’s length.

 

‘You come too!’ shouted a peasant to Levin. ‘Come! Have a bite of pie!’

 

Levin badly wanted a drink of vodka and a bit of bread. He felt faint and could hardly drag his staggering legs out of the bog, and for an instant he was in doubt. But the dog pointed. His weariness vanished, at once he went easily through the marsh toward the dog. Just at his feet rose a snipe; he fired and killed it. The dog continued pointing. ‘Fetch it!’ Another bird rose before the dog. Levin fired, but that day he had no luck: he missed, and when he went to look for the bird he had killed, he could not find it. He tramped all over the sedge, but Laska was incredulous of his having killed anything, and when he sent her to look for it, she only made a pretence and did not really search.

 

Even without Vasenka, whom he had blamed for his ill-luck, things went no better. Here, too, were plenty of birds, but Levin missed one after another.

 

The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes were wet through with perspiration and stuck to his body; his left boot, full of water, was heavy and made a smacking sound; down his face, grimy with powder, ran drops of sweat; a bitter taste was in his mouth, the smell of powder and rust was in his nose, and the perpetual cry of the snipe was in his ears; he could not touch the barrels of his gun, they were so hot; his heart thumped with short, quick beats; his hands trembled with excitement and his tired feet stumbled as he dragged them over the hummocks and through the bog; but still he went on and shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he threw his gun and hat on the ground.

 

‘No! I must pull myself together,’ he thought, picked up his gun and hat, called Laska to heel, and got out of the marsh. When he reached a dry place he sat down on a hummock, took off his boot and emptied it, then went back to the marsh, drank a little of the rusty water, wetted the heated barrels and bathed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he returned to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved not to get flurried.

 

He tried to keep calm, but the same thing happened again. His finger pulled the trigger before he had taken aim. Things went from bad to worse.

 

He had only five birds in his bag when he came out of the marsh by the alder grove where he was to meet Oblonsky.

 

Before he saw him, he saw his dog. Krak, quite black with smelly marsh slime, sprang out from beneath the upturned root of an alder with the air of a conqueror and sniffed at Laska, Behind Krak, in the shade of the alders, appeared Oblonsky’s stately figure. He came toward Levin red and perspiring, with his shirt unbuttoned, still limping as before.

 

‘Well? You have been firing a good deal!’ he said with a merry smile.

 

‘And you?’ asked Levin. But there was no need to ask, for be already saw the full bag.

 

‘Oh, not bad!’

 

He had fourteen birds.

 

‘A famous marsh! I expect Veslovsky was in your way. One dog for two people is inconvenient,’ said Oblonsky, to soften his triumph.

 

 

 

Chapter 11

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WHEN Levin and Oblonsky reached the peasant’s hut where Levin used to put up, Veslovsky was there before them. He sat in the middle of the room, holding with both hands to a bench, from which a soldier — a brother of the mistress of the house — was tugging him by his slime-covered boots, and he was laughing with his infectiously merry laugh.

 

‘I have only just got here. Ils ont été charmants! [They were charming!] Fancy! They fed me and gave me drink. What bread — wonderful! Délicieux! And the vodka . . . I never tasted better! And they positively would not take any money, and kept on saying, “No offence!” or something of that sort.’

 

‘Why should they take money? They were entertaining you, you see! Do they keep vodka for sale?’ said the soldier who had at last succeeded in dragging off one wet boot together with a blackened stocking.

 

Despite the dirtiness of the hut, soiled by the sportsmen’s boots, the dirty dogs that were licking themselves there, and despite the smell of bog and of powder and the absence of knives and forks, the sportsmen drank tea and ate supper with a relish known only when one is out shooting. Washed and clean they betook themselves to a hay-barn that had been swept out and where the coachman had made up beds for the gentlemen.

 

Though it was already dusk, none of the sportsmen wanted to sleep.

 

After fluctuating between recollections and stories of the shooting, of dogs, and of other shooting parties, the talk reached a theme that interested all three. À propos of Vasenka’s repeated expressions of delight at the charm of the arrangements for the night, of the scent of hay, and of a broken cart (which he thought was broken, because its fore wheels had been removed), of the good-nature of the peasants who had treated him to vodka, and of the dogs which lay each at its master’s feet, Oblonsky told them about the delights of a shooting party with Malthus at which he had been last summer. Malthus was a well-known railway magnate. Oblonsky spoke of the marshes which Malthus had leased in the Province of Tver, of how they were preserved, of the vehicles — dog-carts — in which the sportsmen were driven thither, and of the marquee that was set up for lunch beside the marsh.

 

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Levin, rising on his heap of hay. ‘How is it that those people don’t disgust you? I understand that lunch with good claret is very nice, but is it possible that that very luxury does not disgust you? All those people, like the holders of our drink-monopolies formerly, get their money in ways that earn contempt — they disregard that contempt — and afterwards, by means of what they have dishonestly earned, they buy off that contempt.’

 

‘Perfectly true!’ chimed in Vasenka Veslovsky. ‘Perfectly true! Of course Oblonsky does it out of bonhomie [good nature], and then others say, “Well, if Oblonsky goes there . . .” ’

 

‘Not at all!’ Levin could hear that Oblonsky said this with a smile; ‘I simply don’t consider him more dishonest than any of the rich merchants or noblemen. They have all alike made money by work and intelligence.’

 

‘Yes, but what work? Is it work to get a concession and resell it?’

 

‘Of course it is work! Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like him, there would be no railways.’

 

‘But it is not work such as that of a peasant or a savant.’

 

‘Granted! But it is work in the sense that his activity yields results: railways. But then you consider railways useless!’

 

‘That’s quite another question. I am prepared to admit that they are useful. But every acquisition out of proportion to the toil contributed is dishonourable.’

 

‘But who is to decide the proportion?’

 

‘What is dishonourable is the acquisition by wrong means, by cunning,’ said Levin, conscious that he could not clearly define the boundary between honesty and dishonesty; ‘such as the profits made by banks — the acquisition of enormous wealth without work, just as in the days of the drink-monopolists, — only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! [The king is dead, long live the king!] Hardly were the monopolies stopped before railways and banks appeared: other means of acquiring wealth without work.’

 

‘Well, all you say may be quite correct and ingenious. . . . Down, Krak!’ exclaimed Oblonsky to the dog that was scratching itself and turning round in the hay. He was obviously convinced of the truth of his own view and was therefore calm and deliberate. ‘But you have not defined the boundary between honest and dishonest work. I receive a bigger salary than my head-clerk, though he knows the work better than I do; is that dishonest?’

 

‘I don’t know !’

 

‘Well then, I’ll tell you. That you receive for your work on the estate a profit, let’s say of five thousand roubles, while our peasant host, work as he may, cannot get more than fifty, is just as dishonest as my receiving more than my head-clerk, or Malthus getting more than a railway mechanic. In fact I notice a quite unjustifiable hostility on the part of the public toward these men, and it seems to me that it is envy . . .’

 

‘Oh, no! That’s not fair,’ said Veslovsky. ‘It can’t be envy, and there is something not clean in their business.’

 

‘No, allow me!’ Levin broke in. ‘You say it is unjust for me to receive five thousand while the peasant gets only fifty roubles: that’s true. It is an injustice and I feel it, but . . .’

 

‘Yes, indeed. Why do we eat and drink, go shooting and do no work, while he is always, always working?’ said Vasenka Veslovsky, evidently for the first time in his life thinking of this, and therefore speaking quite genuinely.

 

‘Yes, you feel it, but you won’t give him your estate,’ said Oblonsky, purposely provoking Levin.

 

A covert hostility had sprung up between the two brothers-in-law of late, as if being married to two sisters had evoked a sense of rivalry as to which of them would make the best of his life, and now this hostility found expression in the personal tone the discussion was assuming.

 

‘I don’t give it away because nobody demands that of me, and if I wanted to I could not do it,’ replied Levin; ‘besides, there is no one to give it to.’

 

‘Give it to this peasant; he won’t refuse.’

 

‘Yes, but how should I set about it? Should I go with him and execute a conveyance?’

 

‘I don’t know; but if you are convinced that you have no right . . .’

 

‘I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel that I have no right to give it away, that I have duties toward the land and toward my family.’

 

‘No, allow me — if you consider such inequality unjust, why don’t you act accordingly?’

 

‘But I do act so, only in a negative sense, in the sense that I will not seek to increase the inequality that exists between my position and theirs.’

 

‘Pardon me! That is a paradox.’

 

‘Yes, that is a sophistical explanation,’ put in Veslovsky. ‘Oh, our host!’ he said, addressing a peasant who had opened the creaking barn doors and was entering. ‘So you are not asleep yet?’

 

‘No, how can I sleep? I thought you gentlemen were asleep, but then I heard you chatting. I want to get a crook here. She won’t bite?’ he asked, cautiously stepping with bare feet.

 

‘And where are you going to sleep?’

 

‘We are going to pasture the horses to-night.’

 

‘Oh, what a night!’ cried Veslovsky, gazing at the corner of the hut and the carts, visible in the faint afterglow through the now open barn-doors as in a frame. ‘Just listen! It’s women’s voices singing, and not at all badly. Who is that singing, mine host?’

 

‘Why, the maid-servants close by.’

 

‘Come, let’s go for a walk! We shan’t sleep, you know. Oblonsky, come along!’

 

‘If only one could . . . go without getting up!’ said Oblonsky, stretching himself. ‘It’s delightful to lie still.’

 

‘Well, then I’ll go alone,’ said Veslovsky, rising quickly and putting on his boots. ‘Good-bye, gentlemen! If it’s jolly I will call you. You have treated me to game, and I won’t forget you!’

 

‘Isn’t he a fine fellow?’ said Oblonsky when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had shut the doors after him.

 

‘Yes, fine,’ answered Levin, continuing to think of the question they had been discussing. It seemed to him that he had expressed his thoughts and feelings as clearly as he could, yet both the others — sincere and not stupid men — had agreed that he was comforting himself with sophistry. This perturbed him.

 

‘That’s what it is, my friend! One of two things: either you confess that the existing order of Society is just, and then uphold your rights; or else own that you are enjoying unfair privileges, as I do, and take them with pleasure.’

 

‘No! If it were unjust, you could not use such advantages with pleasure; at any rate I could not. The chief thing for me is, not to feel guilty.’

 

‘I say, hadn’t we really better go?’ put in Oblonsky, evidently weary of the mental strain. ‘We can’t go to sleep, you know. Come on, let’s go!’

 

Levin did not reply. The words he had used when he said he was acting justly in a negative sense occupied his mind. ‘Is it possible that one can act justly only in a negative sense?’ he asked himself.