‘I had expected it.’ Under the influence of anger he had evidently regained perfect self-possession. ‘But I repeat again what I then told you and subsequently wrote,’ he went on in a shrill thin voice, ‘I again repeat that I will not know it; I ignore it as long as it is not known to the rest of the world, as long as my name is not dishonoured. Therefore I warn you that our relations must remain what they have been, and that if you let yourself be compromised I shall be obliged to take measures to safeguard my honour.’
‘But our relations cannot be what they were before,’ Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with frightened eyes.
When she saw his quiet gestures, heard his shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her repulsion toward him destroyed the pity she had felt for him, and she now experienced nothing but fear and anxiety to clear up the situation at any cost.
‘I cannot be your wife, since I …’ she began.
He laughed in a cruel, cold manner. ‘I suppose the kind of life you have chosen has affected your principles. I respect or despise both so much — I respect your past and despise your present — that the interpretation you give to my words was far from my thoughts!’
Anna sighed and hung her head.
‘I cannot understand, however, that with your independent mind,’ he went on, getting heated, ‘informing your husband of your infidelity and appearing to see nothing unseemly in it, you should consider it unseemly to continue to fulfil a wife’s duties to your husband!’
‘Alexis Alexandrovich, what do you want of me?’
‘What I want, is not to meet that person here, and for you to behave in such a way that neither Society nor the servants shall be able to accuse you, — for you not to see that man. I think that is not much to ask! And in return you will enjoy all the advantages of a wife without fulfilling her duties. That is all I have to say! Now I must be going… . And I shan’t be back to dinner.’ He rose and went toward the door. Anna too rose. He stopped and let her pass first.
Chapter 24
THE night Levin had spent on the haycock had not passed without leaving its mark: he became disgusted with the agricultural pursuits on which he was engaged and lost all interest in them. In spite of the splendid harvest he had never, or thought he had never, encountered so many failures, or so much hostility from the peasants, as that year; and the cause of those failures and that hostility was now quite plain to him. The delight he had felt in the labour itself, occasioned by his having drawn nearer to the peasants, his jealousy of them, his envy of their life, his desire to adopt that kind of life (which had not been a mere desire that night but a real intention, the details of which he had considered), all these things together had so changed his outlook on the working of his estate that he could no longer feel his former interest in the work, or help noticing the unpleasant relation to the labourer on which it was all based. Herds of cattle of an improved breed like Pava, the tilled land ploughed with good ploughs, the nine fields surrounded with willows, the hundreds of acres of deeply manured land, the seed drills and all such things, were splendid if they could be worked by himself alone or with the help of friends and people in sympathy with him. But now he clearly saw (the book on agriculture which he was writing, in which the labourer was the chief factor in farming, helped much in this direction) that the agricultural work he was carrying on was founded on a bitter and obstinate struggle between himself and his labourers, in which on the one side — his — there was a continual and strenuous attempt to bring everything into accord with what were considered the best models, while on the other side there was the natural order of things. And he saw that in his struggle, in spite of extreme efforts on his part, and without any effort or even intention on the part of others, the only results achieved were that neither side was the winner, and that fine tools and splendid cattle and soil were quite uselessly damaged. But the chief point was that not only was the energy expended on the work wasted, but he could not help feeling now, when he saw the meaning of his pursuit laid bare before him, that the aim of his efforts was a most unworthy one. What was the essential cause of that hostility? He struggled to get every penny he could, and had to do so or he would not have been able to pay his labourers their wages, and they struggled to be allowed to work quietly, pleasantly, and just as they were used to work. It was to his interest that every labourer should get through as much work as possible and at the same time give his mind to it, not injuring the winnowing machine, the horse-rake, or the threshing machine, but working intelligently. The labourer wished to work in the pleasantest way possible, with intervals of rest, and especially to think unconcernedly about other things without having to reason. During that summer Levin noticed this continually.
He gave orders to mow the clover for hay, choosing the inferior fields overgrown with grass and hemlock and not fit for seed; and they cut down all the best seed clover, defended themselves by saying that the foreman ordered them to do it, and comforted him with the assurance that he would get splendid hay; while he knew that they had done it simply because that clover was easiest to mow. He sent out the horse-rake to turn the hay and it got broken while tossing the first few rows, because the peasant found it dull to sit in the seat under the rotating wings; and Levin was told: ‘Don’t worry, sir! The women will toss it all in no time!’
The English ploughs turned out useless, because it never entered the peasant’s head to lower the upturned ploughshare, and as he forced it through at the turning he spoiled the ground and strained the horses; and Levin was told not to worry! The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat-field because not one of the peasants wanted to be watchman, and in spite of its having been forbidden the labourers took turns to watch the horses at night; so Vanka, who had been at work all day, fell asleep, and confessed his guilt, saying, ‘I am in your hands, sir!’
Three of the best calves had been overfed by being turned into the meadow where the clover had been cut, without any water to drink, and the peasants would on no account admit that the clover had injured them. To comfort Levin he was told that his neighbour had lost a hundred head of cattle in three days. All this happened not because anyone wished to harm Levin or his farming; on the contrary he well knew that they liked him and considered him a homely gentleman — high praise from a peasant. It was done simply because the labourers wished to work merrily and without care, while his interests were not only foreign and incomprehensible to them but flatly opposed to their own just interests. Levin had long felt dissatisfied with his relation to the work on his estate. He had seen that the boat was leaking but had not found or looked for the leak, and perhaps had purposely deceived himself, for had he been disillusioned in that work, he would have had nothing left. But now he could deceive himself no longer.
His agricultural pursuits had not only ceased to interest him but had become repulsive, and he could no longer give his mind to them.
Added to this there was Kitty Shcherbatskaya not more than twenty miles away, and he wanted to meet her, yet could not. When he called on Dolly, she had asked him to come again and come with the object of once more proposing to her sister, letting him feel that her sister would now accept him. Levin himself having seen Kitty Shcherbatskaya knew that he had not ceased to love her, yet he could not go to the Oblonskys’ house while she was there. That he had proposed and she had refused him had put an impossible barrier between them.
‘I cannot ask her to be my wife just because she cannot be the wife of the man she wanted,’ he said to himself, and this thought rendered him cold and hostile toward her.
‘I shall not have the strength to speak to her without reproach or to look at her without ill-will, and she will only hate me all the more — as it is only right she should! Besides, how can I go there now after what Darya Alexandrovna told me? Can I help betraying what she told me? And I should
