Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [341]
‘Tomorrow I’ll go early in the morning and make it a point not to get excited. There’s no end of snipe. And great snipe, too. I’ll come back and there’ll be a note from Kitty. Yes, maybe Stiva’s right: I’m not manly enough with her, I’ve gone soft... But what’s to be done! Negative again!’
Through sleep he heard Veslovsky’s and Stepan Arkadyich’s laughter and merry talk. He opened his eyes for an instant: the moon had risen, and in the open doorway, in the bright light of the moon, they stood talking. Stepan Arkadyich was saying something about the girl’s freshness, comparing it to a fresh, just-shelled nut, and Veslovsky, laughing his infectious laugh, repeated something, probably what the muzhik had said to him: ‘You get yourself one of your own!’ Levin murmured drowsily:
‘Tomorrow at daybreak, gentlemen!’ and fell asleep.
XII
Waking up in the early dawn, Levin tried to rouse his comrades. Vasenka, lying on his stomach, one stockinged foot thrust out, was so fast asleep that he could get no response from him. Oblonsky refused through his sleep to go so early. Even Laska, who slept curled up at the edge of the hay, got up reluctantly, lazily straightening and stretching her hind legs, first one and then the other. Levin put on his boots, took his gun and, carefully opening the creaking barn door, went out. The coachmen were sleeping by their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, scattering them all over the trough with its muzzle. It was still grey outside.
‘What are you doing up so early, dearie?’ the muzhik’s old woman, stepping out of the cottage, addressed him amicably as a good old acquaintance.
‘Going hunting, auntie. Is this the way to the marsh?’
‘Straight through the back yards, past our threshing floor, my dear man, and then the hemp field - there’s a footpath.’
Stepping carefully with her tanned bare feet, the old woman showed him to the fence of the threshing floor and opened it for him.
‘Straight on and you’ll hit the marsh. Our boys took the horses there last night.’
Laska gaily ran ahead on the path; Levin followed her with a quick, light step, constantly glancing at the sky. He did not want the sun to come up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not tarry. The moon, which was still shining when he set out, now merely gleamed like a bit of quicksilver; the morning star, which could not be missed earlier, now had to be looked for; the spots on the distant field, indistinct before, were now clearly visible. They were shocks of rye. Still invisible without the sun’s light, the dew on the tall, fragrant hemp, from which the heads had already been plucked, wetted Levin’s legs and his blouse above the waist. In the transparent stillness of morning the slightest sounds could be heard. A bee whizzed past Levin’s ear like a bullet. He looked closer and saw another, then a third. They all flew out from behind the wattle fence of the apiary and disappeared in the direction of the marsh. The path led him straight to the marsh. It could be recognized by the steam rising from it, thicker in some places, thinner in others, so that the sedge and some small willow bushes, like islands, wavered in this steam. At the edge of the marsh and the road, the boys and muzhiks who had spent the night with the horses all lay, having fallen asleep under their caftans before dawn. Not far from them, three hobbled horses moved about. One of them clanked its chains. Laska walked beside her master, looking about and asking to run ahead. As he walked past the sleeping muzhiks and came up to the first marshy patch, Levin checked his caps and let the dog go. One of the horses,