Anna Karenina

the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he
reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors
about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was
overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with
himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own
station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of
his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station
fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up,
in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman
Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the
contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little
by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and
self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight
of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought
for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off
pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring
at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now,
but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to
him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be
anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the
first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for
any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and
consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he
would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of
which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make
an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself
that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow
him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when
things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then,
too, his brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly
at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic
conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own
abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he
determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked
hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still
harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed
to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in
the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,
better life, he reached home before nine o’clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a
light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who
performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet
asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the
steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and
whining, turned round about Levin’s knees, jumping up and longing, but
not daring, to put her forepaws on his chest.

“You’re soon back again, sir,” said Agafea Mihalovna.

“I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at
home, one is better,” he answered, and went into his study.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar
details came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass,
the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his
father’s sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken
ashtray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this,
there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of
arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All
these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: “No,
you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be
different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with
doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to
amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you
won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling
him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can
do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the
corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them
like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a
creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well;
but informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been
a little scorched. This piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying
machine had been constructed and partly invented by Levin. The bailiff
had always been against the drying machine, and now it was with
suppressed triumph that he announced that the buckwheat had been
scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the buckwheat had been
scorched, it was only because the precautions had not been taken, for
which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and
reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful
event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had
calved.

“Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern.
I’ll come and look at her,” he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house.
Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went
into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the
frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar
light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse
of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the
bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get
up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed
by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back
turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all
over.

Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and
spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing,
but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing
heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling,
poked her nose under her mother’s udder, and stiffened her tail out
straight.

“Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,” said Levin, examining the
calf. “Like the mother! though the color takes after the father; but
that’s nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily
Fedorovitch, isn’t she splendid?” he said to the bailiff, quite
forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in
the calf.

“How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after
you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said the
bailiff. “I did inform you about the machine.”

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his
work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He
went straight from the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a
little conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went
back to the house and straight upstairs to the drawing-room.