The hunting turned out worse than Levin had expected. The marsh had dried up and there were no snipe. He walked all day and brought back only three, but to make up for it he brought back, as always with hunting, an excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that aroused state of mind which with him always accompanied strong physical movement. And while it would seem that he was not thinking of anything as he hunted, he again kept recalling the old man and his family, and it was as if this impression called not only for attention to itself, but for the resolution of something connected with it.
That evening over tea, in the company of two landowners who had come on some matter of custody, the interesting conversation that Levin had been hoping for sprang up.
Levin was sitting beside the hostess at the tea table and had to carry on a conversation with her and the sister-in-law, who sat facing him. The hostess was a short, round-faced, fair-haired woman, all beaming with smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to probe for the answer to that important riddle which her husband represented for him; but he did not have full freedom of thought, because he felt painfully awkward. He felt painfully awkward because the sister-in-law sat facing him in a special dress, put on for his sake, as it seemed to him, cut in a special trapezoidal shape on her white bosom. This rectangular neckline, despite the fact that her bosom was very white, or precisely because of it, deprived Levin of his freedom of thought. He fancied, probably mistakenly, that this neckline had been made on his account, and considered that he had no right to look at it and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the neckline having been made at all. It seemed to Levin that he was deceiving someone, that he had to explain something, but that it was quite impossible to explain it, and therefore he blushed constantly, felt restless and awkward. His awkwardness also communicated itself to the pretty sister-in-law. But the hostess seemed not to notice it and purposely tried to draw her into the conversation.
‘You say,’ the hostess continued the conversation they had begun, ‘that my husband cannot interest himself in things Russian. On the contrary, he may be cheerful abroad, but never so much as here. Here he feels in his element. There’s so much to be done, and he has the gift of being interested in everything. Ah, you haven’t been to our school?’
‘I’ve seen it ... That little vine-covered house?’
‘Yes, it’s Nastya’s doing,’ she said, pointing to her sister.
‘Do you teach in it yourself?’ asked Levin, trying to look past the neckline, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction, he would see nothing else.
‘Yes, I have taught and still do, but we have a wonderful young woman for a teacher. And we’ve introduced gymnastics.’
‘No, thank you, I won’t have more tea,’ said Levin, and, feeling that he was being discourteous, but unable to continue the conversation any longer, he stood up, blushing. ‘I hear a very interesting conversation,’ he added and went to the other end of the table, where the host sat with the two landowners. Sviyazhsky was sitting sideways to the table, leaning his elbow on it and twirling a cup with one hand, while with the other he gathered his beard in his fist, put it to his nose as if sniffing it, and let it go again. His shining dark eyes looked straight at the excited landowner with the grey moustache, and he was obviously finding what he said amusing. The landowner was complaining about the peasantry. It was clear to Levin that Sviyazhsky had an answer to the landowner’s complaints that would immediately destroy the whole meaning of what he said, but that from his position he was unable to give this answer, and therefore listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner’s comic speech.
The landowner with the grey moustache was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom, an old countryman and passionate farmer. Levin saw tokens of it in his clothes - the old-fashioned, shabby frock coat, to which the landowner was obviously unaccustomed - and in his intelligent, scowling eyes, his well-turned Russian speech, his peremptory tone, obviously acquired through long experience, and the resolute movements of his big, handsome, sunburnt hands with a single old engagement ring on the ring-finger.
XXVII
‘If only I wasn’t sorry to drop what’s been started ... so much work has gone into it ... I’d wave my hand at it all, sell it and go like Nikolai Ivanych ... to hear
‘Yes, but you don’t drop it,’ said Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky, ‘which means it adds up to something.’
