‘Say, father, what about those ploughshares I asked you to get, have you brought them?’ asked a tall, strapping fellow, apparently the old man’s son.
‘There ... in the sledge,’ replied the old man, coiling the unhitched reins and throwing them on the ground. ‘Set them up while we’re having dinner.’
The comely young woman, with full buckets weighing down her shoulders, went into the front hall. Other women appeared from somewhere - young, beautiful, middle-aged, and old ugly ones, with and without children.
The samovar chimney hummed; the workers and family members, finished with the horses, went to have dinner. Levin got his own provisions from the carriage and invited the old man to have tea with him.
‘Why, we’ve already had tea today,’ said the old man, accepting the invitation with obvious pleasure. ‘Or just for company.’
Over tea Levin learned the whole story of the old man’s farming. Ten years ago the old man had rented three hundred and twenty acres from a lady landowner, and last year he had bought them and rented eight hundred more from a local landowner. A small portion of the land, the worst, he rented out, and he himself ploughed some hundred acres with his family and two hired men. The old man complained that things were going poorly. But Levin understood that he was complaining only for propriety’s sake, and that his farm was flourishing. If it had been going poorly, he would not have bought land at forty roubles an acre, would not have got three sons and a nephew married, would not have rebuilt twice after fires, each time better than before. Despite the old man’s complaints, it was clear that he was justifiably proud of his prosperity, proud of his sons, nephew, daughters-in-law, horses, cows, and especially that the whole farm held together. From talking with the old man, Levin learned that he was also not against innovations. He had planted a lot of potatoes, and his potatoes, which Levin had noticed driving up, had already flowered and were beginning to set, while Levin’s were just beginning to flower. He had ploughed for the potatoes with an iron plough, which he called a ‘plougher’, borrowed from the landowner. He sowed wheat. A small detail especially struck Levin, that as he thinned his rye he gave the thinned stalks to the horses. So many times, seeing this excellent feed go to waste, Levin had wanted to gather it; but it had always proved impossible. Yet with the muzhik it got done, and he could not praise this feed enough.
‘Don’t the womenfolk need work? They carry the piles to the road, and the cart drives up.’
‘And for us landowners things go badly with our hired men,’ said Levin, handing him a glass of tea.
‘Thank you,’ the old man replied, took the glass, but refused sugar, pointing to the nibbled lump he had left. ‘Where are you going to get with hired men?’ he said. ‘It’s sheer ruin. Take the Sviyazhskys even. We know their land - black as poppyseed, but they can’t boast of their crops either. There’s always some oversight!’
‘But you do your farming with hired men?’
‘That’s between muzhiks. We can make do on our own. Bad work - out you go! We’ll manage.’
‘Father, Finogen says to fetch some tar,’ the woman in galoshes said, coming in.
‘So there, sir!’ said the old man, getting up, and, crossing himself lengthily, he thanked Levin and left.
When Levin went into the kitchen side of the cottage to call his coachman, he saw all the men of the family at the table. The women served standing. The strapping young son, with his mouth full of kasha, was telling some funny story, and they were all laughing, and the woman in galoshes laughed especially gaily as she added more shchi to the bowl.
It might very well be that the comely face of the woman in galoshes contributed greatly to the impression of well-being that this peasant home made on Levin, but the impression was so strong that he could not get rid of it. And all the way from the old man to Sviyazhsky, he kept recalling this household, as if something in this impression called for his special attention.
XXVI
Sviyazhsky was the marshal of nobility in his district. He was five years older than Levin and long married. His young sister-in-law, a girl Levin found very sympathetic, lived in his house. And Levin knew that Sviyazhsky and his wife wished very much to marry this girl to him. He knew it indubitably, as these things are always known to young men, so-called suitors, though he would never have dared say it to anyone, and he also knew that even though he wanted to get married, even though by all tokens this quite attractive girl would make a wonderful wife, he was as little capable of marrying her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatsky, as of flying into the sky. And this knowledge poisoned for him the pleasure he hoped to have in visiting Sviyazhsky.
