Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [203]
Having done everything, wet from the streams that poured from his leather jacket either down his neck or into his boots, but in a most cheerful and excited mood, Levin returned home towards evening. The weather grew still worse towards evening, hail beat so painfully on his drenched horse that he walked sideways, twitching his ears and head; but Levin felt fine under his hood, and he glanced cheerfully around him, now at the turbid streams running down the ruts, now at the drops hanging on every bare twig, now at the white spots of unmelted hail on the planks of the bridge, now at the succulent, still-fleshy elm leaves that lay in a thick layer around the naked tree. Despite the gloom of the surrounding nature, he felt himself especially excited. Talks with the peasants in the distant village had shown that they were beginning to get used to their relations. The old innkeeper at whose place he stopped in order to dry off apparently approved of Levin’s plan and himself offered to join the partnership to buy cattle.
‘I need only persist in going towards my goal and I’ll achieve what I want,’ thought Levin, ‘and so work and effort have their wherefore. This is not my personal affair, it is a question here of the common good. Agriculture as a whole, above all the position of the entire peasantry, must change completely. Instead of poverty - universal wealth, prosperity ; instead of hostility - concord and the joining of interests. In short, a revolution, a bloodless but great revolution, first in the small circle of our own region, then the province, Russia, the whole world. Because a correct thought cannot fail to bear fruit. Yes, that is a goal worth working for. And the fact that it is I, Kostya Levin, the same one who came to the ball in a black tie and was rejected by Miss Shcherbatsky and is so pathetic and worthless in his own eyes - proves nothing. I’m sure that Franklin32 felt as worthless and distrusted himself in the same way, looking back at his whole self. That means nothing. And he, too, surely had his Agafya Mikhailovna to whom he confided his projects.’
In such thoughts Levin rode up to the house when it was already dark.
The steward, who had gone to the merchant, came and brought part of the money for the wheat. The arrangement with the innkeeper was made, and the steward had found out on the way that wheat had been left standing in the fields everywhere, so that his own hundred and sixty stacks were nothing in comparison with what others had lost.
After dinner Levin sat down in his easy-chair with a book, as usual, and while reading continued to think about his forthcoming trip in connection with his book. Today the significance of what he was doing presented itself to him with particular clarity, and whole paragraphs took shape of themselves in his mind, expressing the essence of his thinking. ‘This must be written down,’ he thought. ‘This should constitute the brief introduction that I considered unnecessary before.’ He got up to go to his desk, and Laska, who lay at his feet, also got up, stretching herself, and looked back at him as if asking where to go. But there was no time to write it down, because the foremen of the work details came, and Levin went out to them in the front hall.
Having done the detailing - that is, given orders for the next day’s work - and received all the muzhiks who had business with him, Levin went to his study and sat down to work. Laska lay under the desk; Agafya Mikhailovna settled in her place with a stocking.
Levin had been writing for some time when suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, he remembered Kitty, her refusal and their last encounter. He got up and began to pace the room.
‘No point being bored,’ Agafya Mikhailovna said to him. ‘Well, why do you sit at home? Go to the hot springs, since you’re all ready.’
‘I’ll go the day after tomorrow, Agafya Mikhailovna. I have business to finish.’
‘Well, what’s this business of yours? As if you haven’t given