THREE

‘We have long been expecting you,’ said Oblonsky entering his private room and releasing Levin’s arm, as if to show that here all danger was past. ‘I’m very, very glad to see you!’ continued he. ‘Well, how are you, eh? When did you arrive?’
Levin looked silently at the faces of the two strangers, Oblonsky’s colleagues, and especially at the hands of the elegant Grinevich, who had such long white fingers and such long yellowish nails curving at the points, and such large glittering sleeve-links, that evidently his hands occupied his whole attention and deprived him of freedom of thought. Oblonsky at once noticed Levin’s look and smiled.
‘Oh, of course! Let me introduce you,’ he said. ‘My colleagues: Philip Ivanich Nikitin; Michael Stanislavich Grinevich,’ then turning to Levin, ‘Constantine Dmitrich Levin, an active member of the Zemstvo, one of the new sort — a gymnast who lifts a hundredweight and a half with one hand, a cattle-breeder, a sportsman, — my friend and a brother of Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev.’
‘Very pleased . . .’ said the old official.
‘I have the honour of knowing your brother, Sergius Ivanich,’ said Grinevich, holding out his narrow hand with the long fingernails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and immediately turned to Oblonsky. Though Levin had great respect for his step-brother, an author known throughout Russia, he hated to be regarded not as Constantine Levin but as a brother of the famous Koznyshev.
‘No, I am no longer on the Zemstvo — I have quarrelled with the lot of them, and don’t attend their meetings any more,’ said he, addressing his friend.
‘Quick work!’ said Oblonsky, with a smile. ‘What was it all about?’
‘It’s a long story — I’ll tell you some other time,’ said Levin, but at once began telling it. ‘To put it in a nutshell, I have come to the conclusion that there is and can be no such thing as Zemstvo work,’ he said, speaking as if some one had just offended him. ‘On the one hand it’s simply playing! They play at being a parliament, and I am neither young enough nor old enough to amuse myself with toys. On the other hand . . .’ he hesitated, ‘it is a means of getting pelf2 for the provincial3 coterie4! We used to have guardianships and judgeships as soft jobs, and now we’ve Zemstvos — not bribes5, but unearned salaries!’ he went on as warmly as if he had just been contradicted.
‘Aha! I see you’ve reached another new phase — a Conservative one this time!’ said Oblonsky. ‘However, we’ll talk about that later.’
‘Yes, later! . . . But I want to see you,’ said Levin, gazing with aversion at Grinevich’s hand.
Oblonsky’s smile was hardly perceptible.
‘Didn’t you tell me you would never again put on Western European clothes?’ he asked, surveying Levin’s new suit, evidently made by a French tailor. ‘That’s it! You’re in a new phase.’
Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown-up people blush who hardly notice it themselves, but as boys blush who are aware that their shyness is ridiculous and therefore feel ashamed of it and blush still more, almost to tears. It was so strange to see that intelligent manly6 face in such a childish condition that Oblonsky left off looking at him.
‘Where shall we see one another? You know it is very, very important for me to have a talk with you,’ said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to consider: ‘Well — suppose we go to lunch at Gurin’s and have a talk there? I am free till three.’
‘No,’ said Levin, after a moment’s consideration; ‘I have to go somewhere else.’
‘Well then, let’s dine together.’
‘Dine? But I’ve nothing particular to say — only a word or two . . . to ask you something! We can have a talk some other time.’
‘Well, tell me the word or two now, and we’ll talk at dinner.’
‘The two words are . . . however, it’s nothing particular,’ said Levin, and his face became almost vicious in his efforts to overcome his shyness.
‘What are the Shcherbatskys doing? All going on as usual?’
Oblonsky, who had long known that Levin was in love with his, Oblonsky’s, sister-in-law Kitty, smiled very slightly and his eyes sparkled merrily.
‘You spoke7 of two words, but I can’t answer in two because. . . . Excuse me a moment. . . .’
The Secretary came in, familiarly respectful, though with a certain modest consciousness (common to all secretaries) of his superiority to his chief in knowledge of business affairs, approached Oblonsky with some papers, and on the plea of asking a question began to explain some difficulty. Oblonsky, without hearing him to the end, put his hand in a kindly8 way on the Secretary’s sleeve and, softening9 his remark with a smile, said:
‘No; please do it as I said,’ and, having in a few words explained his view of the matter, he pushed the paper away and said finally: ‘Yes, please do it that way, Zachary Nikitich!’
The Secretary went out, abashed10. Levin, who during Oblonsky’s talk with the Secretary had quite overcome his shyness, stood leaning both arms on the back of a chair and listening with ironical11 attention.
‘I don’t understand it at all!’ he remarked.
‘What don’t you understand?’ asked Oblonsky with his usual merry smile, as he took out a cigarette. He expected Levin to say something eccentric.
‘I don’t understand what you’re doing,’ said Levin, shrugging his shoulders. ‘How can you do it seriously?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there’s nothing to do!’
‘That’s how it seems to you, but really we’re overwhelmed with work.’
‘ — On paper! Ah well! you’ve a gift for that sort of thing,’ added Levin.
‘You mean I’m deficient12 in something?’
‘Perhaps!’ said Levin. ‘But all the same I admire your dignity and am proud that my friend is such a great man! But all the same you’ve not answered my question,’ he added, making a desperate effort to look Oblonsky straight in the face.
‘All right! All right! Wait a bit, and you’ll be in the same position yourself. It’s all very well for you, who have three thousand desyatins [about eight thousand acres] in the Karazin District, and such muscles, and are as fresh as a twelve-year-old girl! But still, you’ll be joining us yourself some day! . . . Now, about what you were asking: nothing has changed, but it’s a pity you’ve stopped away so long.’
‘Why?’ asked Levin in alarm.
‘Oh, nothing — ’ answered Oblonsky. ‘We’ll talk it over later on. But what has brought you here specially1?’
‘We’ll talk about that too later on,’ said Levin and again blushed to his very ears.
‘All right, that’s natural enough!’ said Oblonsky. ‘Well, you know, I’d ask you to come to us, but my wife is not very well. Let’s see, — if you want to meet them, you’ll be sure to find them in the Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates there. Go there, and I’ll call for you and we’ll dine somewhere together.’
‘Splendid! Well then, au revoir!’
‘Mind you don’t forget! I know you — you may rush off back to the country!’ shouted Oblonsky after him.
‘That’ll be all right!’ said Levin and left the room, only recollecting13 when already at the door that he had not taken leave of Oblonsky’s colleagues.
‘He seems a very energetic man,’ said Grinevich when Levin was gone.
‘Yes, my dear fellow,’ said Oblonsky, shaking his head, ‘and he’s a lucky man! Three thousand desyatins in the Karazin District, his life before him, and such freshness! Not like some of us!’
‘What have you to complain of, Stephen Arkadyevich?’
‘Oh, things are wretched, miserable14!’ said Oblonsky, and sighed heavily.

Chapter 6

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WHEN Oblonsky asked Levin his reason for coming to town, Levin had blushed and been angry with himself for blushing, because he could not answer: ‘I have come to propose to your sister-in-law,’ although he really had come solely for that purpose.
The Levins and the Shcherbatskys were two old aristocratic Moscow families that had always been on intimate and friendly terms. Their ties were drawn still closer during Levin’s University days. He had prepared for and entered the University together with young Prince Shcherbatsky, Dolly’s and Kitty’s brother. At that time Levin often visited the Shcherbatskys, and fell in love with the family. Strange as it may seem, it was the whole Shcherbatsky family — especially the feminine half of it — that Levin was in love with. He could not remember his mother, and his sister was much his senior, so that in the Shcherbatskys’ house he saw for the first time the family life of a well-educated and honourable family of the old aristocracy — a life such as he had been deprived of by the death of his own father and mother. All the members of that family, especially the women, appeared to him as though wrapped in some mystic poetic veil, and he not only saw no defects in them, but imagined behind that poetic veil the loftiest feelings and every possible perfection. Why these three young ladies had to speak French and English on alternate days; why at a given time they played, each in her turn, on the piano (the sound of which reached their brother’s room where the students were at work); why those masters of French literature, music, drawing, and dancing came to the house; why at certain hours the three young ladies accompanied by Mademoiselle Linon were driven in a calèche [a light carriage with a folding top] to the Tverskoy Boulevard, wearing satin cloaks (Dolly a long one; Nataly a somewhat shorter one; and Kitty so short a cloak that her shapely little legs in their tight red stockings were quite exposed); why they had to walk up and down the Tverskoy Boulevard accompanied by a footman with a gilt cockade in his hat, — all this and much more that happened in this mystic world he did not understand; but he knew that everything done there was beautiful and he was in love with the very mystery of it all.
In his student days he very nearly fell in love with the eldest daughter, Dolly; but a marriage was soon after arranged between her and Oblonsky. Then he began falling in love with the second daughter. He seemed to feel that he must fall in love with one of the sisters, but he was not sure with which. But Nataly too, as soon as she came out, married the diplomat, Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin finished at the University. Young Shcherbatsky who entered the navy was drowned in the Baltic; and after that, in spite of his friendship with Oblonsky, Levin’s intercourse with the Shcherbatskys became less frequent. But when he had come to Moscow early in the winter of this year and met them, he knew at last which of the three sisters he was really fated to love.
It would seem that nothing could be simpler than for him, a man of good family, rich rather than poor, and thirty-two years of age, to propose to the Princess Shcherbatskaya. In all likelihood he would have been considered quite a suitable match. But Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him so perfect in every respect, so transcending everything earthly, and he seemed to himself so very earthly and insignificant a creature, that the possibility of his being considered worthy of her by others or by herself was to him unimaginable.
Having spent two months in Moscow, living as in a fog, meeting Kitty almost every day in Society which he began to frequent in order to meet her, he suddenly made up his mind that it was impossible, and returned to the country.
Levin’s conviction that it was impossible rested on the idea that from her relatives’ point of view he was not a good or suitable match for the delightful Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. From her parents’ standpoint (it seemed to him) he had no settled occupation or position in the world. He was thirty-two, and while his former comrades were already colonels, aides-de-camp, Bank and Railway Directors, or Heads of Government Boards like Oblonsky, he (he knew very well what others must think of him) was merely a country squire, spending his time breeding cows, shooting snipe, and erecting buildings — that is to say, a fellow without talent, who had come to no good and was only doing what in the opinion of Society good-for-nothing people always do. Of course the mysterious, enchanting Kitty could not love a plain fellow, such as he considered himself to be, a man so ordinary and undistinguished. Moreover, his former relation to Kitty had been that of a grown-up man toward a child whose brother’s friend he was, and this seemed an additional obstacle in love’s path. He thought a plain kindly fellow like himself might be loved as a friend, but to be loved with the kind of love he felt for Kitty, a man must be handsome, and above all remarkable.
He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.
But after spending two months alone in the country, he became convinced that this time he was not in love as he had been when quite young — for his present feelings gave him not a moment’s rest — and that he could not live unless the question whether she was to be his wife or not were decided; also that his despair had been the outcome of his own fancy, and that he had no proof that he would be rejected. So he had now come to Moscow determined to propose to her, and to marry her if he was accepted. Or . . . but he dared not think what would happen if she refused him.

Chapter 7

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HAVING reached Moscow by a morning train, Levin went to stay at the house of his half-brother Koznyshev, who was older than he, and after changing his clothes entered his brother’s study, intending to tell him why he had come and to ask his advice. But his brother was not alone. A well-known professor of philosophy was with him, who had come specially from Kharkov to settle a dispute that had arisen between them on an important philosophical question. The professor was engaged in a fierce polemic against the materialists, and Sergius Koznyshev, who followed this polemic with interest, on reading the professor’s last article had written to him reproaching him with having conceded too much to the materialists; and the professor had come at once to talk the matter over. The question was the fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies?
When Levin entered, Sergius Ivanich greeted him with the coldly affable smile he bestowed on everybody and, having introduced him to the professor, went on with the discussion.
The small spectacled man with the narrow forehead interrupted the conversation a moment to say, ‘how do you do’ to Levin and, paying no further attention to him, went on talking. Levin sat down to wait till the professor should go, but soon became interested in the subject of their conversation.
He had seen in the papers the articles they were discussing, and had read them because they interested him as a development of the bases of natural science — familiar to him as he had studied in that faculty at the University; but he had never connected these scientific deductions as to man’s animal origin, reflex actions, biology and sociology, with those questions concerning the meaning to himself of life and death, which had of late more and more frequently occurred to him.
Listening to his brother’s conversation with the professor, he noticed that they connected the scientific question with the spiritual and several times almost reached the latter, but every time they approached this, which seemed to him the most important question, they at once hurriedly retreated and again plunged into the domain of fine sub-divisions, reservations, quotations, hints and references to authorities; and he found it difficult to understand what they were talking about.
‘I cannot admit,’ said Koznyshev with his usual clear and precise expression and polished style, ‘I cannot on any account agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world is the outcome of impressions. The most fundamental perception — that of existence — is not received through the senses, for there is no special organ to convey that perception.’
‘Yes, but they (Wurst and Knaust and Pripasov) will tell you that your conception of existence results from the collective effect of all your sensations and is therefore a result of sensations. Wurst actually says that without the senses there can be no perception of existence.’
‘I would maintain the opposite . . .’ began Koznyshev.
But here again it seemed to Levin that having reached the most important matter they avoided it; and he made up his mind to ask the professor a question.
‘Consequently, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, no further existence is possible?’ he asked.
The professor, vexed and apparently mentally hurt by the interruption, turned to look at this strange questioner who resembled a barge-hauler rather than a philosopher, and then looked at Koznyshev, as if asking, ‘What can one say to this?’
But Koznyshev, who did not speak with anything like the same effort, or as one-sidedly, as the professor, and had room in his head for an answer to his opponent as well as for comprehension of the simple and natural point of view from which the question arose, smiled and said:
‘That question we have as yet no right to decide . . .’
‘We have not the data . . .’ added the professor and went back to his arguments. ‘No,’ said he; ‘I point out that if as Pripasov definitely states, sensation is based on impressions, we must still carefully distinguish between these two perceptions.’
Levin listened no longer but sat waiting for the professor to go.

Chapter 8

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WHEN the professor had gone, Koznyshev turned to his stepbrother.
‘I am very glad you have come. Are you here for long? How do you get on with your farming?’
Levin knew that farming did not interest his elder brother and that the question was merely a concession; therefore he replied generally as to the sale of wheat and money matters. He wanted to tell his brother of his intended marriage and to ask his advice. He had even firmly made up his mind to do so, but when he saw his brother and heard his conversation with the professor, and afterward noticed the involuntarily patronizing tone in which he asked him about the business of their estate (this estate which they had jointly inherited from their mother had not been divided, and Levin was managing the whole of it), he felt that something prevented him from beginning to speak to his brother about his intention to marry. He felt that his brother would not look at the matter as he wished him to.
‘Well, and how is your Zemstvo getting on?’ asked Koznyshev, who took a keen interest in the rural administration and attached great importance to it.
‘I really don’t know.’
‘What? But you are a Member?’
‘No, I am no longer on it. I resigned,’ answered Levin, ‘and don’t attend the Meetings any more.’
‘That’s a pity!’ said Koznyshev, and frowned. To justify himself Levin began to relate what used to happen at the Meetings in his district.
‘There now! It’s always the same,’ interrupted Koznyshev. ‘We Russians are always like that. It may be a good trait in us — this capacity to see our own faults — but we overdo it, and comfort ourselves with sarcasm, which is always ready on our tongues. I can only tell you, that with such rights as we have in our rural institutions, any other European nation — the English or the Germans — would have secured their freedom, while we only jeer at our Zemstvos!’
‘But what is to be done?’ said Levin guiltily. ‘That was my last attempt. And I tried with my whole soul. . . . But I can’t do it! I’m incapable.’
‘Incapable!’ said Koznyshev. ‘No, you don’t look at it from the right point of view.’
‘That may be,’ said Levin mournfully.
‘Do you know that our brother Nicholas is here again?’
Nicholas was Constantine Levin’s elder brother, and Koznyshev’s half-brother. He was a ruined man who had squandered the greater part of his fortune, mixed with the strangest and worst society, and quarrelled with his brothers.
‘You don’t mean to say so!’ cried Levin, horror-struck. ‘How do you know?’
‘Prokofy met him in the street.’
‘Here, in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?’ Levin rose from his chair as if meaning to go at once.
‘I am sorry I told you,’ said Koznyshev, shaking his head at his brother’s excitement. ‘I sent to find out where he is living, and forwarded him a note of hand he had given to Trubin, which I had paid. And this is the answer I received.’
Koznyshev took a note from under a paper-weight and handed it to his brother.
Levin read the note, written in a curious but familiar hand:
‘I humbly beg you to leave me alone. That is all I demand of my dear brothers. — NICHOLAS LEVIN.’
When Levin had read the note, holding it in his hand, he remained standing in front of Koznyshev without lifting his head.
A struggle was going on within him between the desire to forget his unfortunate brother for the present, and the consciousness that this would be wrong.
‘He evidently wants to offend me,’ continued Koznyshev, ‘but he cannot do that. I wish with all my heart I could help him, but I know it can’t be done.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Levin, ‘I understand, and appreciate your attitude toward him; but personally I shall go to see him.’
‘Go if you like, but I don’t advise it,’ said Koznyshev. ‘That’s to say, I’m not afraid of it on my own account, he will not make mischief between us, but on your account I don’t advise it. You had better not go. It’s impossible to help him. However, do as you please!’
‘It may be impossible to help him, but I feel — especially at this moment . . . but that’s a different matter — I feel that I cannot be at peace. . . .’
‘Well, I don’t understand that,’ said Koznyshev. ‘But what I do understand is a lesson in humility. I have begun to look differently, more leniently, at what is called rascality, since brother Nicholas became what he is. Do you know what he has done?’
‘Ah, it’s dreadful, dreadful!’ Levin repeated.
Having got the address from Koznyshev’s footman Levin thought of going at once to see his brother; but, on reflection, decided to put off the visit till the evening. To obtain peace of mind it was necessary first of all to decide the business that had brought him to Moscow. He therefore went to Oblonsky’s office, and having received news of the Shcherbatskys he drove to the place where he was told he could see Kitty.