With such thoughts Levin reached home when it was already dark.
The steward, having been to the merchant, had returned bringing an instalment of the money for the wheat. An arrangement had been made with the innkeeper, and the steward, while away, had learnt that the corn had nowhere been got in, so that Levin’s hundred and sixty stacks still in the fields were a trifle compared to what others were losing.
Having dined, Levin as usual sat down in his easy-chair with a book, and while reading continued to think about his impending journey in connection with the book he was writing. To-day the importance of his work presented itself to him with especial clearness, and whole paragraphs of their own accord shaped themselves in his mind, expressing the gist of his thoughts. ‘I must write that down,’ thought he. ‘That must form a short preface, such as I formerly considered unnecessary.’ He rose to go to his writing-table, and Laska, who was lying at his feet, stretched herself, also got up, and looked round at him as if asking where she was to go to. But he had no time to write his thoughts down, for the labourers’ foremen had come, and Levin went into the hall to speak to them.
After arranging about the next day’s work by seeing the peasants who had come on business, Levin went to his study and sat down to his work. Laska lay down under the table, and Agatha Mikhaylovna with her knitting sat down in her usual place.
Having written for some time, Levin suddenly with particular vividness remembered Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting. He rose and began to pace up and down the room.
‘What is the use of fretting?’ said Agatha Mikhaylovna. ‘Why do you always sit at home? You should go to a watering-place now that you have got ready.’
‘So I shall: I am going the day after to-morrow, Agatha Mikhaylovna, only I must finish my business.’
‘Eh, what is your business? Have you not done enough for the peasants as it is! Why, they are saying, “Your master will get a reward from the Tsar for it!” And it is strange: why should you bother about the peasants?’
‘I am not bothering about them: I am doing it for myself.’
Agatha Mikhaylovna knew all the details of Levin’s farming plans. He often laid bare his thoughts before her in all their details, and frequently argued with her and disagreed with her explanations. But this time she quite misunderstood what he said.
‘Of course one must think of one’s soul before everything else,’ she remarked with a sigh. ‘There was Parfen Denisich, who was no scholar at all, but may God grant every one to die as he did!’ she said, referring to a servant who had died recently: ‘he received Holy Communion and Extreme Unction.’
‘I am not speaking about that,’ he said. ‘I mean that I am doing it for my own profit. My gains are bigger when the peasants work better.’
‘But, whatever you do, an idler will always bungle. If he has a conscience he will work, if not, you can do nothing with him.’
‘But you yourself say that Ivan looks after the cattle better now.’
‘I only say,’ answered Agatha Mikhaylovna, evidently not speaking at random but with strict sequence of thought, ‘you must marry, that is all!’
Her mention of the very thing he was just thinking about grieved and hurt him. He frowned, and without replying again sat down to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking about its importance. Only occasionally, in the stillness, he listened to the clicking of her needles and, remembering what he did not wish to remember, made a wry face.
At nine o’clock he heard the sound of a bell and the heavy lurching of a carriage through the mud.
‘There now! Visitors have come to you,’ said Agatha Mikhaylovna, rising and going toward the door. ‘Now you won’t feel dull.’
But Levin overtook her. His work was not getting on now and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it might be.
Chapter 31
HALFWAY to the front door Levin heard a familiar sound of coughing in the hall, but the noise of his own footsteps prevented his hearing it clearly and he hoped he was mistaken. Then he saw the whole of his brother’s long, bony, familiar figure, and it seemed that there could be no mistake, but he still hoped he was mistaken and that this tall man, who was taking off his overcoat and coughing, was not his brother Nicholas.
Levin was fond of his brother, but to be with him was always a torment. Under the sway of the thoughts that had come to him and of Agatha Mikhaylovna’s reminders, he was in an unsettled and confused state of mind and the forthcoming meeting with his brother seemed particularly distressing. Instead of a cheerful, healthy stranger who, he hoped, would have diverted him from his mental perplexity, he had to meet his brother, who knew him through and through and would disturb his innermost thoughts and force him to make a clean breast of everything. And that was what he did not desire.
Angry with himself for this bad feeling Levin ran into the hall; and as soon as he had a near view of his brother this feeling of disappointment vanished and was replaced by pity. Dreadful as his emaciation and illness had previously made Nicholas, he was now still thinner and weaker. He was a mere skeleton covered with skin.
He stood in the hall jerking his long, thin neck, drawing a scarf from it, and smiling in a strangely piteous manner. When he saw this meek, submissive smile, Levin felt his throat contract convulsively.
‘There! I have come to see you,’ said Nicholas in a hollow voice, without taking his eyes for an instant from his brother’s face. ‘I have long wanted to, but did not feel well. Now I am much better,’ and he wiped his beard with the thin palms of his hands.
‘Yes, yes!’ answered Levin. He was still more terrified when, kissing his brother’s face, his lips felt the dryness of the skin and he saw his large strangely brilliant eyes close at hand.
Some weeks before this Constantine Levin had written to tell his brother that, after the sale of a few things which till then had remained undivided, Nicholas was entitled to his share, which came to about 2000 roubles.
Nicholas said that he had now come to fetch that money, but chiefly to visit his own nest and touch his native soil, in order like the heroes of old to gather strength from it for the work that lay before him. In spite of the fact that he was more round-shouldered than ever and that, being so tall, his leanness was startling, his movements were quick and sudden as formerly. Levin took him to his room.
Nicholas dressed carefully, a thing he never used to do, brushed his thin, straight hair and went smiling upstairs.
He was in a most affectionate and cheerful mood, such as Levin remembered his often being in as a child: and he even mentioned Sergius Ivanich without irritation. When he met Agatha Mikhaylovna he joked with her and questioned her about the other old servants. The news of Parfen Denisich’s death affected him strangely. A look of fear appeared on his face but he immediately recovered himself
‘After all, he was old,’ he remarked and changed the subject. ‘Well, I will spend a month or two with you and then I will go to Moscow. D’you know, Myagkov has promised me a post and I am entering the Civil Service. I will now arrange my life quite differently,’ he continued. ‘You know, I have got rid of that woman?’
‘Mary Nikolavna? Why, what for?’
‘Oh, she was a horrid woman! She has caused me a lot of unpleasantness,’ but he did not say in what the unpleasantness consisted. He could not explain that he had turned Mary Nikolavna away because she made his tea too weak, and chiefly because she waited on him as on an invalid.
‘Besides, I want to alter my life completely. Of course, like everybody else, I have done stupid things, but property is the least consideration and I don’t regret mine. Health is the great thing, and my health, thank God, has improved.’