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Chapter 14
As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the
bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.
"Yes, that's someone from the railway station," he thought, "just the time to
be here from the Moscow train...Who could it be? What if it's brother
Nikolay? He did say: 'Maybe I'll go to the waters, or maybe I'll come down
to you.'" He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother
Nikolay's presence should come to disturb his happy mood of spring. But
he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms
of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he
hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and
riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from
the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother.
"Oh, if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little!" he thought.
"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's a delightful
visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted, recognizing Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"In shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when she's going to
be married," he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt that the
thought of her did not hurt him at all.
"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of
the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and
on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. "I've come to see
you in the first place," he said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some
stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third."
"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get along in a
sledge?"
"In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,"
answered the driver, who knew him.
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226
"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a genuine smile of
childlike delight.
Levin let his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan
Arkadyevitch's things were carried also--a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for
cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to
the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea
Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the
hall with inquiries about dinner.
"Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he said, and went to
the bailiff.
When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out
of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.
"Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand
what the mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here. No,
really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always spring and fine
weather like that day. "And your nurse is simply charming! A pretty maid
in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe
monastic style it does very well."
Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news; especially
interesting to Levin was the news that his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, was
intending to pay him a visit in the summer.
Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty and the
Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was
grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As always
happened with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had
been accumulating within him, which he could not communicate to those
about him. And now he poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic
joy in the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his thoughts
and criticisms on the books he had been reading, and the idea of his own
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227
book, the basis of which really was, though he was unaware of it himself, a
criticism of all the old books on agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always
charming, understanding everything at the slightest reference, was
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