Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 26
Chapter 26
IN 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 any one 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
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