Chapter 15
They 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 his work 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 this work was necessary for him so 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 disadvantageous condition of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and from misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was a civilization from without, abnormally grafted upon Russia - especially facilities of communication such 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, next in turn, of the organization of agriculture.While he was at his writing, she was thinking how unnaturally cordial her husband had been to young Prince Charsky, who had, with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. `He's jealous,' she thought. `My God! How sweet and silly he is! He's jealous of me! If he only knew that all others are no more to me than 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 resplendence,' he muttered, stopped writing, 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.
| Previous chapter | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark | Next chapter/page |