Anna Karenina

hey had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He was
sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She, wearing the
dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married
life, and put on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved
by him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa
which had always stood in the study in Levin’s father’s and
grandfather’s days. She was sewing at broderie anglaise. He thought
and wrote, never losing the happy consciousness of her presence. His
work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the
new land system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just
as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and
trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now
they seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the life that
lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went
on with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his
attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked
at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had
been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without
this work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were
necessary for him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking
up his manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with
pleasure that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas
seemed to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct
to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing
now a new chapter on the causes of the present disastrous condition of
agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises
not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and
misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to
this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon
Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to
centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent
development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of
speculation—all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that
in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would
arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into
agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite,
conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase
proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of
wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain
stage of agriculture there should be means of communication
corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land,
railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs,
were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected
of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the
development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress;
and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ
in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general
development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication,
manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had
arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing
into the background the chief question calling for settlement—the
question of the organization of agriculture.

While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial
her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want
of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s
jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s
jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr
the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling
of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from
his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he
feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round ... I’ll will him
to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence
of her gaze.

“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was
looking at him and smiling, he looked round.

“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.

“He looked round,” she thought.

“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and
trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.

“How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going up to
her with a radiant smile of happiness.

“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.”

“And what were you thinking about?”

“I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break
off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little
holes now, do you see?”

She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.

“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and
watching the tiny scissors moving round.

“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the
back of your head.”

“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too
good,” he said, kissing her hand.

“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it
seems to me.”

“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her
head round.

“A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!”

Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another
like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.

“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.

“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”

“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else
I shall read your letters without you.”

Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio
bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the
elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin
smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those
thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something
shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his
present mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought.
“It’ll soon be three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today,
almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened?
I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I
have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all
to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she’s
dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing
much, somehow didn’t count, but that after marriage, life began in
earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my
time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won’t do; I must begin. Of
course, it’s not her fault. She’s not to blame in any way. I ought
myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action;
or else I shall get into such ways, and she’ll get used to them too....
Of course she’s not to blame,” he told himself.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone
else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground
of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin’s mind that she
herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but
what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous.
(“That fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn’t know
how to.”) “Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has),
apart from dress and broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests.
No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music,
though she’s rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and
is perfectly satisfied.” Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did
not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of
activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife
of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse,
and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of
this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not
reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her
love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future.