第280章

`Then why do you do it, if it's a clear loss?'

`Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It's habit, and one knows it's as it should be. And what's more,' the landowner went on, leaning on the window and chatting on, `my son, I must tell you, has no taste for it. There's no doubt he'll be a savant. So there'll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year I've planted an orchard.'

`Yes, yes,' said Levin, `that's perfectly true. I always feel there's no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it.... It's a sort of duty one feels to the land.'

`But I tell you what,' the landowner pursued; `a neighbor of mine, a merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the park. ``No,'

said he, ``Stepan Vassilyevich - everything's well looked after but your garden's neglected.' But, as a fact, it's well kept up. ``To my thinking, I'd cut down the linden trees. Only do it when they're running sap. Here's a thousand lindens, and each would make two good bundles of bast. And nowadays that bast's worth something. And you'd cut down the lot of the linden shells.''

`And with what he made he'd buy up livestock, or buy some land for a trifle, and let it out to the peasants,' Levin added, smiling. He had evidently more than once come across those commercial calculations.

`And he'd make his fortune. But you and I must thank God if we keep what we've got and leave it to our children.'

`You're married, I've heard?' said the landowner.

`Yes,' Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. `Yes, all this is rather strange,' he went on. `So we live on without any reckoning, as though we were the vestals of antiquity, set to guard a sacred fire or something.'

The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.

`There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolai Ivanovich, or Count Vronsky, who's settled here lately - they try to set up an agronomic industry; but so far it leads to nothing but making away with capital.'

`But why is it we don't do like the merchants? Why don't we cut down our parks for bast?' said Levin, returning to a thought that had struck him.

`Why, as you said, to guard the fire. Besides, that's not work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn't done here at the elections, but yonder, each in his own nook. There's a class instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtn't to do. There are the peasants, too - I wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can. However bad the land is, he'll work it. Without a reckoning too. At a simple loss.'

`Just as we do,' said Levin. `Very, very glad to have met you,'

he added, seeing Sviiazhsky approaching him.

`And here we've met for the first time since we met at your place,'

said the landowner to Sviiazhsky, `and we've had a good talk, too.'

`Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?' said Sviiazhsky with a smile.

`That we're bound to do.'

`You've been relieving your feelings.'

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]

TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 30[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 30 Sviiazhsky took Levin's arm, and went with him to his own friends. This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan Arkadyevich and Sergei Ivanovich, and looking straight at Levin as he drew near.

`Delighted! I believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you...

at Princess Shcherbatskaia's,' he said, giving Levin his hand.

`Yes, I quite remember our meeting,' said Levin, and, blushing crimson, he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.

With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviiazhsky, obviously without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with Levin.

But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to smooth over his rudeness.

`What are we waiting for now?' asked Levin, looking at Sviiazhsky and Vronsky.

`For Snetkov. He has to refuse or accept the candidacy,' answered Sviiazhsky.

`Well, and what has he done - consented or not?'

`That's the point: he's done neither,' said Vronsky.

`And if he refuses, who will run then?' asked Levin, looking at Vronsky.

`Whoever chooses to,' said Sviiazhsky.

`Shall you?' asked Levin.

`Certainly not I,' said Sviiazhsky, looking confused, and turning an alarmed glance at the venomous gentleman, who was standing beside Sergei Ivanovich.

`Who then? Neviedovsky?' said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot into it.

But this was worse still. Neviedovsky and Sviiazhsky were the two candidates.

`I certainly shall not, under any circumstances,' answered the venomous gentleman.

This was Neviedovsky himself. Sviiazhsky introduced him to Levin.

`Well, do you find it exciting too?' said Stepan Arkadyevich, winking at Vronsky. `It's something like a race. One might bet on it.'

`Yes, it is keenly exciting,' said Vronsky. `And once taking the thing up, one's eager to see it through. It's a fight!' he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws.

`What a businessman Sviiazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.'

`Oh, yes!' Vronsky assented indifferently.

A silence followed, during which Vronsky - since he had to look at something - looked at Levin, at his feet, at his frock coat, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something:

`How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.'

`It's because I consider the justice of the peace a silly institution,'

morosely answered Levin, who had been all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.

`I don't think so - quite the contrary,' Vronsky said, with calm surprise.