ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ it’s not quite like that.’

      ‘Never mind! You propose when your love is ripe, or when the balance falls in favour of one of those between whom your choice lies. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to choose for herself yet she has no choice; she can only say “Yes” or “No”.’

      ‘Yes, a choice between me and Vronsky,’ thought Levin, and the dead hope that had begun to revive in his soul died again and only weighed painfully on his heart.

      ‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, ‘in that way one may choose a dress, or … purchases … anything … but not love. The choice is made, and so much the better … a repetition is impossible.’

      ‘Oh, that pride, that pride!’ said Dolly, speaking as if she despised him for the meanness of his feelings compared to those which only women know. ‘When you proposed to Kitty she was just in that state when it was impossible for her to give an answer: she was undecided — undecided between you and Vronsky; she saw him every day, you she had not seen for a long time. I admit that had she been older … I, for instance, could not have been undecided in her place. To me he was always repulsive, and so he has proved in the end.’

      Levin recalled Kitty’s answer. She had said, ‘No, it cannot be.’

      ‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he replied drily, ‘I value your confidence in me, but think you are mistaken. Whether I am right or wrong, that pride which you so despise makes any thought of your sister impossible for me — do you understand me? — perfectly impossible.’

      ‘I will only add just this: you understand that I am speaking about my sister, whom I love as much as my own children. I do not say she loves you; I only wished to tell you that her refusal proves nothing.’

      ‘I don’t know!’ said Levin, jumping up. ‘If you know how you hurt me! It is just as if you had lost a child, and they kept on telling you: “Now he would have been so and so, and might be living and you rejoicing in him, but he is dead, dead, dead… !” ’

      ‘How funny you are!’ said Dolly, regarding Levin’s agitation with a sad yet mocking smile. ‘Yes, I understand it more and more,’ she added meditatively. ‘Then you won’t come to see us while Kitty is here?’

      ‘No, I won’t. Of course I will not avoid her, but whenever I can I will try to save her the unpleasantness of meeting me.’

      ‘You are very, very funny!’ Dolly repeated, looking tenderly into his face. ‘All right then! Let it be as if nothing had been said about it.’

      ‘What have you come for, Tanya?’ said Dolly in French to her little girl, who had just come in.

      ‘Where is my spade, Mama?’

      ‘I am speaking French, and you must answer in French.’

      The little girl had forgotten the French for spade, so her mother told her and went on to say, still in French, where she would find the spade. All this was disagreeable to Levin. Nothing in Dolly’s house, or about her children seemed half as charming as before.

      ‘Why does she talk French with the children?’ he thought. ‘How unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it. Teach them French and deprive them of sincerity,’ thought he, not knowing that Dolly had considered the point over and over again and had decided that even to the detriment of their sincerity the children had to be taught French.

      ‘Where are you hurrying to? Stay a little longer.’

      So Levin stayed to tea, though his bright spirits had quite vanished and he felt ill at ease.

      After tea he went out to tell his coachman to harness, and when he returned he found Dolly excited, a worried look on her face and tears in her eyes.

      In Levin’s absence an event took place which suddenly put an end to the joy and pride that Dolly had been feeling all day. Grisha and Tanya had a fight about a ball. Dolly, hearing their screams, ran up to the nursery, and found them in a dreadful state. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, and he, his face distorted with anger, was hitting her at random with his fists. Dolly’s heart sank when she saw this. A shadow seemed to have fallen on her life; she recognized that these children, of whom she had been so proud, were not only quite ordinary but even bad and ill-bred children, with coarse animal inclinations — in fact, vicious children. She could think and speak of nothing else, and yet could not tell Levin her trouble.

      Levin saw that she was unhappy, and tried to comfort her by saying that it did not prove that anything was wrong with them, that all children fought; but as he spoke he thought to himself: ‘No, I’ll not humbug my children and won’t speak French with them. But I shan’t have children like these. All that is needed is not to spoil or pervert children, and then they will be splendid. No, my children will not be like these!’

      He said goodbye and left, and she did not try to detain him any longer.

      Chapter 11

      IN the middle of July the Elder from the village belonging to Levin’s sister (which lay fifteen miles from Pokrovsk) came to see Levin and report on business matters and on the hay-harvest. The chief income from his sister’s estate was derived from the meadows, which were flooded every spring. In former years the peasants used to buy the grass, paying seven roubles per acre for it. When Levin took over the management of the estate he looked into the matter, and, concluding that the grass was worth more, fixed the price at eight roubles. The peasants would not pay so much, and Levin suspected them of keeping other buyers off. Then he went there himself and arranged to have the harvest gathered in partly by hired labourers and partly by peasants paid in kind. The local men opposed this innovation by all the means in their power, but the plan succeeded, and in the first year the meadows brought in almost double. The next and third years the peasants still held out and the harvest was got in by the same means. But this year the peasants had agreed to get the harvest in and take one-third of all the hay in payment. Now the Elder had come to inform Levin that the hay was all made, and that for fear of rain he had asked the steward to come, and in his presence had apportioned the hay and had already stacked eleven stacks of the landlord’s share.

      From the Elder’s vague replies to Levin’s questions as to how much hay the largest meadow had yielded, from his haste to apportion the hay without waiting for permission, and from the general tone of the peasant, Levin knew that there was something not quite square about the apportionment, and decided to go and investigate the matter himself.

      Levin arrived at his sister’s village at noon and left his horse with a friendly old peasant, the husband of his brother’s nurse. Wishing to hear particulars of the hay-harvest from this old man, Levin went to speak to him in his apiary. Parmenich, a loquacious, handsome old man, welcomed Levin joyfully, showed him over his homestead, and told him all about the swarming of his bees that year; but to Levin’s questions about the hay-harvest he gave vague and reluctant answers. This still further confirmed Levin’s suspicions. He went to inspect the hay, examined the stacks, and saw that there could not be fifty cartloads in each. To put the peasant to the proof Levin ordered the carts on which the hay was being moved to be fetched, and one of the stacks to be carried to the barn. There were only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the Elder’s explanations that the hay had been loose, but had settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that all had been done in a ‘godly way’, Levin insisted СКАЧАТЬ