‘If you don’t want to say, then don’t. Only there’s no need for you to talk with her. She’s a slut and you’re a gentleman,’ he said, his neck twitching. ‘I see you’ve understood and appraised everything, and look upon my errors with regret,’ he began again, raising his voice.
‘Nikolai Dmitrich, Nikolai Dmitrich,’ Marya Nikolaevna whispered, going up to him.
‘Well, all right, all right! ... And what about supper? Ah, here it is,’ he said, seeing a lackey with a tray. ‘Here, put it here,’ he said angrily, and at once took the vodka, poured a glass and drank it greedily. ‘Want a drink?’ he asked his brother, cheering up at once. ‘Well, enough about Sergei Ivanych. Anyhow, I’m glad to see you. Say what you like, we’re not strangers. Well, have a drink. Tell me, what are you up to?’ he went on, greedily chewing a piece of bread and pouring another glass. ‘How’s your life going?’
‘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
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow and towards evening he arrived at home. On the way in the train he talked with his neighbours about politics, about the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by the confusion of his notions, by dissatisfaction with himself and shame at something; but when he got off at his station, recognized the one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with his caftan collar turned up, when he saw his rug sleigh38 in the dim light coming from the station windows, his horses with their bound tails, their harness with its rings and tassels, when the coachman Ignat, while they were still getting in, told him the village news, about the contractor’s visit, and about Pava having calved - he felt the confusion gradually clearing up and the shame and dissatisfaction with himself going away. He felt it just at the sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he put on the sheepskin coat brought for him, got into the sleigh, wrapped himself up and drove off, thinking over the orders he had to give about the estate and glancing at the outrunner, a former Don saddle horse, over-ridden but a spirited animal, he began to understand what had happened to him quite differently. He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before. First, he decided from that day on not to hope any more for the extraordinary happiness that marriage was to have given him, and as a consequence not to neglect the present so much. Second, he would never again allow himself to be carried away by a vile passion, the memory of which had so tormented him as he was about to propose. Then, remembering his brother Nikolai, he decided that he would never again allow himself to forget him, would watch over him and never let him out of his sight, so as to be ready to help when things went badly for him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his brother’s talk about communism, which he had taken so lightly at the time, now made him ponder. He regarded the reforming of economic conditions as nonsense, but he had always felt the injustice of his abundance as compared with the poverty of the people, and he now decided that, in order to feel himself fully in the right, though he had worked hard before and lived without luxury, he would now work still harder and allow himself still less luxury. And all this seemed so easy to do that he spent the whole way in the most pleasant dreams. With a cheerful feeling of hope for a new, better life, he drove up to his house between eight and nine in the evening.
Light fell on to the snow-covered yard in front of the house from the windows of the room of Agafya Mikhailovna, his old nurse, who filled the role of housekeeper for him. She was not yet asleep. Kuzma, whom she woke up, ran out sleepy and barefoot on to the porch. The pointer bitch Laska also ran out, almost knocking Kuzma off his feet, and rubbed herself against Levin’s knees, stood on her hind legs and wanted but did not dare to put her front paws on his chest.