‘I live alone in the country, as I did before, busy with farming,’ Konstantin replied, looking with horror at the greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying not to let it show.
‘Why don’t you get married?’
‘Haven’t had a chance,’ Konstantin replied, blushing.
‘Why not? For me - it’s all over! I’ve spoiled my life. I’ve said and still say that if I’d been given my share when I needed it, my whole life would be different.’
Konstantin Dmitrich hastened to redirect the conversation.
‘You know, your Vanyushka works in my office in Pokrovskoe?’ he said.
Nikolai twitched his neck and fell to thinking.
‘So, tell me, how are things in Pokrovskoe? Is the house still standing, and the birches, and our schoolroom? And Filipp, the gardener, is he still alive? How I remember the gazebo and the bench! Watch out you don’t change anything in the house, but get married quickly and arrange it again just as it used to be. I’ll come to visit you then, if you have a nice wife.’
‘Come to visit me now,’ said Levin. ‘We’ll settle in so nicely!’
‘I’d come if I knew I wouldn’t find Sergei Ivanych there.’
‘You won’t find him there. I live quite independently from him.’
‘Yes, but, say what you like, you’ve got to choose between me and him,’ he said, looking timidly into his brother’s eyes. This timidity touched Konstantin.
‘If you want my full confession in that regard, I’ll tell you that in your quarrel with Sergei Ivanych I don’t take either side. You’re both wrong. You are wrong more externally, and he more internally.’
‘Ah, ah! You’ve grasped that, you’ve grasped that?’ Nikolai cried joyfully.
‘But, if you wish to know, I personally value my friendship with you more, because ...’
‘Why, why?’
Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolai was unhappy and in need of friendship. But Nikolai understood that he wanted to say precisely that and, frowning, resorted to his vodka again.
‘Enough, Nikolai Dmitrich!’ said Marya Nikolaevna, reaching out with her plump, bare arm for the decanter.
‘Let go! Don’t interfere! I’ll beat you!’ he cried.
Marya Nikolaevna smiled her meek and kindly smile, which also infected Nikolai, and took away the vodka.
‘You think she doesn’t understand anything?’ Nikolai said. ‘She understands everything better than any of us. There’s something sweet and good in her, isn’t there?’
‘You’ve never been to Moscow before, miss?’ Konstantin said to her, so as to say something.
‘Don’t call her “miss”. She’s afraid of it. No one, except the justice of the peace, when she stood trial for wanting to leave the house of depravity, no one ever called her “miss”. My God, what is all this nonsense in the world!’ he suddenly cried out. ‘These new institutions, these justices of the peace, the zemstvo - what is this outrage!’
And he started telling about his encounters with the new institutions.
Konstantin Levin listened to him, and that denial of sense in all social institutions, which he shared with him and had often expressed aloud, now seemed disagreeable to him coming from his brother’s mouth.
‘We’ll understand it all in the other world,’ he said jokingly.
‘In the other world? Ah, I don’t like that other world! No, I don’t,’ he said, resting his frightened, wild eyes on his brother’s face. ‘And it might seem good to leave all this vileness and confusion, other people’s and one’s own, but I’m afraid of death, terribly afraid of death.’ He shuddered. ‘Do drink something. Want champagne? Or else let’s go somewhere. Let’s go to the gypsies! You know, I’ve come to have a great love of gypsies and Russian songs.’
His tongue began to get confused, and he jumped from one subject to another. Konstantin, with Masha’s help, persuaded him not to go anywhere and put him to bed completely drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need and to persuade Nikolai Levin to go and live with him.
XXVI
