‘Do as you like, only be quick,’ he said and went to the steward.
When he returned, Stepan Arkadyich, washed, combed, with a radiant smile, was coming out of his door, and together they went upstairs.
‘Well, how glad I am that I got to you! Now I’ll understand what these mysteries are that you perform here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! Bright, cheerful!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, forgetting that it was not always spring and a clear day like that day. ‘And your nanny’s such a dear! A pretty maid in a little apron would be preferable, but with your monasticism and strict style - it’s quite all right.’
Stepan Arkadyich brought much interesting news, and one piece of news especially interesting for Levin - that his brother Sergei Ivanovich was going to come to him in the country for the summer.
Stepan Arkadyich did not say a single word about Kitty or generally about the Shcherbatskys, he only gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy, and was very glad of his guest. As always during his time of solitude, he had accumulated a mass of thoughts and feelings that he could not share with anyone around him, and now he poured into Stepan Arkadyich his poetic joy of spring, his failures and plans for the estate, his thoughts and observations about the books he was reading, and in particular the idea of his own book, which was based, though he did not notice it, on a critique of all the old books on farming. Stepan Arkadyich, always nice, understanding everything from a hint, was especially nice during this visit, and Levin also noticed in him a new trait of respect and a kind of tenderness towards himself, which he found flattering.
The efforts of Agafya Mikhailovna and the cook to make an especially good dinner had as their only result that the two hungry friends, sitting down to the hors d‘oeuvres, ate their fill of bread and butter, polotok and pickled mushrooms, and that Levin ordered the soup served without the pirozhki with which the cook had wanted especially to surprise the guest. But Stepan Arkadyich, though accustomed to different dinners, found everything excellent: the herb liqueur, the bread and butter, and especially the polotok, the mushrooms, the nettle soup,19 the chicken with white sauce, and the white Crimean wine - everything was excellent and wonderful.
‘Splendid, splendid,’ he said, lighting up a fat cigarette after the roast. ‘Here it’s just as if, after the noise and vibration of a steamer, I’ve landed on a quiet shore. So you say that the element of the worker himself must be studied and serve as a guide in the choice of farming methods. I’m not an initiate, but it seems to me that the theory and its application will influence the worker himself.’
‘Yes, but wait: I’m not talking about political economy, I’m talking about scientific farming. It must be like a natural science, observing given phenomena, and the worker with his economic, ethnographic ...’
Just then Agafya Mikhailovna came in with the preserves.20
‘Well, Agafya Mikhailovna,’ Stepan Arkadyich said to her, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, ‘what polotok you have, what herb liqueur! ... But say, Kostya, isn’t it time?’ he added.
Levin looked out of the window at the sun setting beyond the bare treetops of the forest.
‘It’s time, it’s time,’ he said. ‘Kuzma, harness the trap!’ And he ran downstairs.
Stepan Arkadyich, having come down, carefully removed the canvas cover from the varnished box himself and, opening it, began to assemble his expensive, new-fashioned gun. Kuzma, already scenting a big tip for vodka, would not leave Stepan Arkadyich and helped him on with his stockings and boots, which Stepan Arkadyich willingly allowed him to do.
‘Kostya, tell them that if the merchant Ryabinin comes — I told him to come today - they should receive him and have him wait ...’
‘Are you selling the wood to Ryabinin?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘That I do. I’ve dealt with him “positively and finally”.’
Stepan Arkadyich laughed. ‘Positively and finally’ were the merchant’s favourite words.
‘Yes, he has a funny way of talking. She knows where her master’s going!’ he added, patting Laska, who was fidgeting around Levin with little squeals, licking now his hand, now his boots and gun.
The trap was already standing by the porch when they came out.
‘I told them to harness up, though it’s not far - or shall we go on foot?’
‘No, better to drive,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, going up to the trap. He got in, wrapped his legs in a tiger rug and lit a cigar. ‘How is it you don’t smoke! A cigar - it’s not so much a pleasure as the crown and hallmark of pleasure. This is the life! How good! This is how I’d like to live!’
‘Who’s stopping you?’ said Levin, smiling.
‘No, you’re a lucky man. You have everything you love. You love horses - you have them; dogs - you have them; hunting - you have it; farming - you have it.’
