It was that time when a short break comes in the farm work, before the beginning of the harvest, annually repeated and annually calling on all the strength of the peasantry. The crops were excellent, and clear, hot summer days set in, with short, dewy nights.
The brothers had to pass through a wood in order to reach the meadows. Sergei Ivanovich kept admiring the beauty of the wood overgrown with leaves, pointing out to his brother now an old linden, dark on its shady side, rippling with yellow stipules and ready to flower, now the brilliant emerald of that year’s young shoots on the trees. Konstantin Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. For him words took away the beauty of what he saw. He agreed with his brother, but involuntarily began thinking of other things. When they reached the other side of the wood, all his attention was absorbed by the sight of a fallow field on a hillock, in some places yellow with grass, in others trodden down and cut criss-cross or dotted with heaps, or even ploughed under. A file of carts moved across the field. Levin counted the carts and was pleased that they were bringing out all that was necessary, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts turned to the mowing. He always experienced something that especially touched him to the quick during the haymaking. Driving up to the meadow, Levin stopped the horse.
The morning dew lingered below in the thick undergrowth of the grass, and Sergei Ivanovich, to avoid getting his feet wet, asked to be taken across the meadow in the cabriolet, to that willow bush where the perch took the bait so well. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to crush his grass, he drove into the meadow. The tall grass softly twined around the wheels and the horse’s legs, leaving its seeds on the wet spokes and hubs.
His brother sat down under the bush, sorting his fishing rods, while Levin led the horse away, tied it up, and went into the enormous grey-green sea of the meadow, unstirred by the wind. The silky grass with its ripening seeds reached his waist in the places flooded in spring.
Cutting across the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out on the road and met an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a hive of bees.
‘Did you catch it, Fomich?’ he asked.
‘Catch it, Konstantin Dmitrich! I’ll be happy to keep the one I have. It’s the second time a swarm got away ... Thanks be, the boys rode after it. Yours are ploughing. They unhitched a horse and rode after it ...’
‘Well, what do you say, Fomich - shall we mow or wait?’
‘There, now! We’d say wait till St Peter’s.1 But you always mow earlier. Why not? The grass is fine, thank God. The cattle will have plenty.’
‘And the weather, what do you think?’
‘That’s God’s doing. Maybe the weather’ll hold.’
Levin went back to his brother. He had caught nothing, but Sergei Ivanovich was not bored and seemed in the most cheerful spirits. Levin saw that he had been stirred by the conversation with the doctor and wanted to talk. Levin, on the contrary, wanted to get home quickly, to arrange for mowers to be called in by tomorrow and resolve the doubt concerning the mowing, which greatly preoccupied him.
‘Let’s go then,’ he said.
‘What’s the hurry? Let’s sit here. How soaked you are, though! I’m not catching anything, but it’s nice here. Any hunting is good in that you have to do with nature. This steely water is so lovely!’ he said. ‘Those meadows along the bank,’ he went on, ‘always remind me of a riddle - do you know it? The grass says to the water: we’ll sway and sway.’
‘I don’t know that riddle,’ Levin replied glumly.
III
‘You know, I’ve been thinking about you,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘What’s happening in your district is unheard-of, from what this doctor tells me - he’s quite an intelligent fellow. I’ve said to you before and I’ll say it again: it’s not good that you don’t go to the meetings and have generally withdrawn from zemstvo affairs. Of course, if decent people start withdrawing, God knows how things will go. We pay money, it goes to pay salaries, and there are no schools, no medical aid, no midwives, no dispensaries, nothing.’
‘But I tried,’ Levin answered softly and reluctantly, ‘I just can’t! There’s no help for it!’
‘Why can’t you? I confess, I don’t understand. Indifference, inability, I don’t accept; can it be simple laziness?’
‘Neither the one, nor the other, nor the third. I tried and I see that I can’t do anything,’ said Levin.
He hardly entered into what his brother was saying. Peering across the river at the ploughed field, he made out something black, but could not tell whether it was a horse or the mounted steward.
‘Why can’t you do anything? You made an attempt, it didn’t succeed as you wanted, and you gave up. Where’s your self-esteem?’
