Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [335]
‘Why don’t you stop her?’ cried Stepan Arkadyich.
‘She won’t scare them,’ replied Levin, delighted with the dog and hurrying after her.
Laska’s search became more serious the closer she came to the familiar hummocks. A small marsh bird distracted her only for an instant. She made one circle in front of the hummocks, began another, suddenly gave a start and froze.
‘Here, here, Stiva!’ cried Levin, feeling his heart pounding faster, and it was as if some latch had suddenly opened in his strained hearing, and sounds, losing all measure of distance, began to strike him haphazardly but vividly. He heard Stepan Arkadyich’s footsteps and took them for the distant clatter of horses, heard the crunching sound made by the corner of a hummock that he tore off with its roots as he stepped on it and took the sound for the flight of a great snipe. He also heard, not far behind him, some splashing in the water which he could not account for.
Picking his way, he moved towards the dog.
‘Flush it!’
Not a great snipe but a snipe tore up from under the dog. Levin followed it with his gun, but just as he was taking aim, that same noise of splashing water increased, came nearer, and was joined by the strangely loud voice of Veslovsky shouting something. Levin saw that he was aiming his gun behind the snipe, but he fired anyway.
After making sure he had missed, Levin turned round and saw that the horses and cart were no longer on the road but in the swamp.
Veslovsky, anxious to see the shooting, had driven into the swamp and mired the horses.
‘What the devil got into him!’ Levin said to himself, going back to the mired cart. ‘Why did you drive in here?’ he said drily and, calling the coachman, started freeing the horses.
Levin was vexed because his shooting had been disturbed, and because his horses were stuck in the mud, and above all because neither Stepan Arkadyich nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, neither of them having the slightest understanding of harnessing. Saying not a word in reply to Vasenka’s assurances that it was quite dry there, Levin silently worked with the coachman to free the horses. But then, getting into the heat of the work, and seeing how diligently and zealously Veslovsky pulled the cart by the splash-board, so that he even broke it off, Levin reproached himself for being too cold towards him under the influence of yesterday’s feeling, and tried to smooth over his dryness by being especially amiable. When everything was put right and the cart was back on the road, Levin ordered lunch to be served.
‘Bon appétit- bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusquau fond de mes bottes.’ba Vasenka, merry again, joked in French as he finished a second chicken. ‘So, now our troubles are over; now everything’s going to go well. Only, for my sins I ought to sit on the box. Isn’t that right? Eh? No, no, I’m an Automedon.2 You’ll see how I get you there!’ he said, not letting go of the reins when Levin asked him to let the coachman drive. ‘No, I must redeem my sins, and I feel wonderful on the box.’ And he drove on.
Levin was a bit afraid that he would wear out the horses, especially the chestnut on the left, whom he was unable to control; but he involuntarily yielded to his merriment, listened to the romances that Veslovsky, sitting on the box, sang along the way, or to his stories and his imitation of the proper English way of driving a four-in-hand; and after lunch, in the merriest spirits, they drove on to the Gvozdevo marsh.
X
Vasenka drove the horses at such a lively pace that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.
Having arrived at the serious marsh, the main goal of the trip, Levin involuntarily thought about how to get rid of Vasenka and move about unhindered. Stepan Arkadyich obviously wished for the same thing, and Levin saw on his face the preoccupied expression that a true hunter always has before the start of a hunt and a certain good-natured