Anna Karenina

he night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for
him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and
had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest,
never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there
been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the
peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this
hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had
experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy
with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire
to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an
intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail—all this
had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had
managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could
not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople
which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as
Pava, the whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields
surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily
manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it—it was all
splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or for
themselves and comrades—people in sympathy with them. But he saw
clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief
element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him
in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a
cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which
there was on one side—his side—a continual intense effort to change
everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the
natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with immense
expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention
on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go
to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle
and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy
expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling
now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the
aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the
struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share (and
he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he
would not have had the money to pay his laborers’ wages), while they
were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably,
that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests
that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while
doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break
the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that
he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to
work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly
and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at every
step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out the worst
patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no
use for seed; again and again they mowed the best acres of clover,
justifying themselves by the pretense that the bailiff had told them
to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance that it would be
splendid hay; but he knew that it was owing to those acres being so
much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay—it
was broken at the first row because it was dull work for a peasant to
sit on the seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he
was told, “Don’t trouble, your honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch
it quick enough.” The ploughs were practically useless, because it
never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned the
plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses and tore up the
ground, and Levin was begged not to mind about it. The horses were
allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer would
consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the contrary,
the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and Ivan, after
working all day long, fell asleep, and was very penitent for his fault,
saying, “Do what you will to me, your honor.”

They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the clover
aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing would make the
men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told
him, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a
hundred and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not
because anyone felt ill-will to Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he
knew that they liked him, thought him a simple gentleman (their highest
praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work
merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just
claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own
position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked, but he
did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself.
(Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But now he could
deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing
it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him, and he
could take no further interest in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off, of
Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not see. Darya
Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was over there, to
come; to come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister, who
would, so she gave him to understand, accept him now. Levin himself had
felt on seeing Kitty Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love
her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys’, knowing she was there.
The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him, had
placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. “I can’t ask her to
be my wife merely because she can’t be the wife of the man she wanted
to marry,” he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and
hostile to her. “I should not be able to speak to her without a feeling
of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will
only hate me all the more, as she’s bound to. And besides, how can I
now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help
showing that I know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to
forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before
her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What
induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might have seen
her, then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it’s
out of the question, out of the question!”

Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a side-saddle for
Kitty’s use. “I’m told you have a side-saddle,” she wrote to him; “I
hope you will bring it over yourself.”

This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any
intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating
position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and sent the saddle
without any reply. To write that he would go was impossible, because he
could not go; to write that he could not come because something
prevented him, or that he would be away, that was still worse. He sent
the saddle without an answer, and with a sense of having done something
shameful; he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate
to the bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his
friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his
neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a long-standing
promise to stay with him. The grouse-marsh, in the Surovsky district,
had long tempted Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on
account of his work on the estate. Now he was glad to get away from the
neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys, and still more from his farm work,
especially on a shooting expedition, which always in trouble served as
the best consolation.