The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with him.
`Well, I have had some today already,' said the old man, obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure. `Well, be it so, for company.'
Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten years before the old man had rented a hundred and twenty dessiatinas from the lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land -the worst part - he let out for rent, while some forty dessiatinas of arable land he cultivated himself, with his family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that things were going badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have bought land at a hundred and five roubles the dessiatina, he would not have married off his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man's complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons' wives, his horses, and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this farming going.
From his conversation with the old man, Levin realized he was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were already past flowering and beginning to ripen, whereas Levin's were only just coming into flower. He plowed the ground for his potatoes with a modern plow borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses, struck Levin especially.
How many times had Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it had turned out to be impossible. This peasant had done so, and he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.
`What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the roadside, and the cart brings it away.'
`Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers,' said Levin, handing him a glass of tea.
`Thanks,' said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused sugar, pointing to a bit he had left. `There's no getting along with them,'
said he. `They're simple waste. Look at Sviiazhsky, for instance. We know what the land's like - first-rate; yet there's not much of a crop to boast of. It's not looked after enough - that's all it is!'
`But you work your land with hired laborers?'
`We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves.
If a man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves.'
`Father Finogen wants some tar,' said the young woman in the clogs, coming in.
`Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!' said the old man, getting up, and, crossing himself lingeringly, he thanked Levin and went out.
When Levin went in the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole family of men at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them.
The young, robust son was telling something funny, with his mouth full of buckwheat porridge, and they were all laughing - the woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.
Very probably the comely face of the young woman in the clogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant's to Sviiazhsky's he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were something in this impression demanding his special attention.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 3, Chapter 26[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 26 Sviiazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew that Sviiazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it, though he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone; and he also knew that, although he wanted to get married, and although by every token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatskaia, than he could have flown up to the sky. And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to Sviiazhsky.
On getting Sviiazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting, Levin had immediately thought of this; but, in spite of it, he had made up his mind that Sviiazhsky's having such views for him was simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go, notwithstanding. Besides, at the bottom of his heart, he had a desire to try himself, to put himself to the test in regard to this girl. The Sviiazhskys' home life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviiazhsky himself, the best type of Zemstvo man that Levin knew, was very interesting to him.
