‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said, lighting a thick cigarette after the joint. ‘I seem to have come to you as one lands from a noisy steamer on to a peaceful shore. So you maintain that the labourer should be studied as one of the factors which should decide the choice of agricultural methods? You know I am quite an outsider in these matters, but I should think this theory and its application ought to influence the labourer too.’
‘Yes, but wait a bit, I am not talking about political economy but about the science of agriculture. It should resemble the natural sciences and should examine existing phenomena, including the labourer with his economic and ethnographic …’
At that moment Agatha Mikhaylovna came in with some jam.
‘Ah, Agatha Mikhaylovna,’ said Oblonsky, kissing the tips of his plump fingers; ‘what smoked goose you have, what herb brandy! … But what d’you think, Constantine, is it not time?’ he added.
Levin glanced out of the window at the sun which was setting behind the bare trees of the forest.
‘High time, high time! Kuzma, tell them to harness the trap,’ he said, and ran downstairs.
Oblonsky went down and himself carefully took the canvas cover off the varnished case, opened it, and set to work to put together his valuable gun, which was of the newest type.
Kuzma, already scenting a substantial tip, did not leave Oblonsky for a moment. He put on his stockings and his boots for him, and Oblonsky willingly allowed him to do so.
‘Constantine, please leave word that if the dealer Ryabinin comes (I told him to come here to-day) they should ask him in and let him wait.’
‘Are you selling the forest to Ryabinin?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Of course I know him. I have had dealings with him, positively and finally.’
Oblonsky laughed. ‘Positively and finally’ were the dealer’s favourite words.
‘Yes, he does speak very funnily. She knows where the master is going,’ he added, patting Laska, who was whining and jumping round Levin, now licking his hand, now his boots and his gun.
The trap was standing at the door when they went out.
‘I told them to harness though it is not far, but if you like we can walk?’
‘No, let us drive,’ said Oblonsky, stepping up into the trap [a long vehicle something like a jaunting-car, but with four wheels]. He sat down, wrapped a rug round his legs, and lit a cigar. ‘How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is such a … not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and sign of pleasure. Ah, this is life! How delightful! This is how I should like to live.’
‘But who prevents you?’ Levin remarked, smiling.
‘No — you are a lucky fellow! You have got all you are fond of. You like horses — you have them; hounds — you have them; shooting — you get it; farming — you get it too.’
‘Perhaps it is because I am glad of what I get, and don’t grieve about what I haven’t,’ said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Oblonsky understood and looked at him but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky because, with his usual tact, noticing that Levin was afraid of talking about the Shcherbatskys, he avoided mentioning them; but now Levin wanted to find out about the matter that tormented him, and yet feared to speak of it.
‘Well, and how are your affairs?’ he asked, recollecting how wrong it was of him to be thinking only of his own concerns.
Oblonsky’s eyes began to glitter merrily.
‘But you don’t admit that one may want a roll while one gets regular rations, you consider it a crime; and I don’t believe in life without love,’ he answered, understanding Levin’s question in his own way. ‘How can I help it? I am made that way. And really so little harm is done to anyone, and one gets so much pleasure …’
‘Is there anything new then?’ inquired Levin.
‘There is! Well, you know Ossian’s type of woman — such as one sees in a dream? Well, there are such women in reality, and these women are terrible. Woman, you see, is an object of such a kind that study it as much as you will, it is always quite new.’
‘In that case, better not study them.’
‘Oh, no! Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth but in seeking it.’
Levin listened in silence, but in spite of all his efforts he could not enter into his friend’s soul and understand his feeling, nor the delight of studying women of that kind.
Chapter 15
THE place where they were going to shoot was not far away, by a stream among young aspen trees. When they had reached the wood Levin got down and led Oblonsky to the corner of a mossy and marshy glade, already free from snow. He himself went to a forked birch on the other side and, leaning his gun against the fork of the lower branch, took off his coat, tightened his girdle, and tried whether he could move his arms freely.
The old grey-haired Laska, following close on his heels, sat down warily in front of him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind the forest, and the little birches interspersed among the aspen trees stood out clearly against the evening glow with their drooping branches and their swollen buds ready to burst into leaf. From the thicket, where the snow had not all melted, the water still flowed in branching streamlets with a gentle rippling sound. Small birds chirped and now and then flew from tree to tree.
In the intervals of profound silence last year’s leaves were heard rustling, set in motion by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass.
‘Just fancy! One can hear and see the grass growing,’ thought Levin, as he noticed a wet slate-coloured aspen leaf move close to the point of a blade of grass. He stood listening, and gazing down now on the wet mossy ground, now at the attentive Laska, now at the sea of bare tree-tops stretched out before him at the foot of the hill, and now at the darkening sky streaked with fleecy clouds. A hawk flew leisurely past, high above the distant forest; another followed in the same direction and vanished. In the thicket the birds chirped louder and louder and more eagerly. A tawny owl hooted near by, and Laska started, took a few careful steps, and with her head on one side again listened intently. A cuckoo called beyond the river. It called twice in its usual note, then hoarsely and hurriedly and got out of time.
‘Fancy a cuckoo already!’ said Oblonsky, appearing from behind a bush.
‘Yes, I heard,’ answered Levin, so reluctant to disturb the silence of the wood that his own voice sounded unpleasant to him. ‘They won’t be long now.’
Oblonsky’s figure again disappeared behind the bush, and Levin saw the flare of a match, followed by the red glow of a cigarette and a spiral of blue smoke.
Click!