would be there. We are going there,’ said Dolly.
‘Well, and what are you doing?’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
falling back from the rest and walking beside him.
‘Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,’ answered Levin. ‘Well, and what about you? Come for long?
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We have been expecting you for such a long time.’
‘Only for a fortnight. I’ve a great deal to do in Moscow.’
At these words the brothers’ eyes met, and Levin, in spite
of the desire he always had, stronger than ever just now, to
be on affectionate and still more open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He dropped his
eyes and did not know what to say.
Casting over the subjects of conversation that would
be pleasant to Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off
the subject of the Servian war and the Slavonic question, at
which he had hinted by the allusion to what he had to do in
Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch’s book.
‘Well, have there been reviews of your book?’ he asked.
Sergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of
the question.
‘No one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone,’ he said. ‘Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have
a shower,’ he added, pointing with a sunshade at the white
rain clouds that showed above the aspen tree-tops.
And these words were enough to re-establish again
between the brothers that tone—hardly hostile, but chilly—
which Levin had been so longing to avoid.
Levin went up to Katavasov.
‘It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,’ he
said to him.
‘I’ve been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have
some discussion, we’ll see to that. Have you been reading
Spencer?’
‘No, I’ve not finished reading him,’ said Levin. ‘But I
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don’t need him now.’
‘How’s that? that’s interesting. Why so?’
‘I mean that I’m fully convinced that the solution of the
problems that interest me I shall never find in him and his
like. Now…’
But Katavasov’s serene and good-humored expression
suddenly struck him, and he felt such tenderness for his
own happy mood, which he was unmistakably disturbing
by this conversation, that he remembered his resolution and
stopped short.
‘But we’ll talk later on,’ he added. ‘If we’re going to the
bee house, it’s this way, along this little path,’ he said, addressing them all.
Going along the narrow path to a little uncut meadow
covered on one side with thick clumps of brilliant heart’sease among which stood up here and there tall, dark green
tufts of hellebore, Levin settled his guests in the dense, cool
shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps purposely put there for visitors to the bee house who might be
afraid of the bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get
bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to regale them with.
Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible,
and listening to the bees that buzzed more and more frequently past him, he walked along the little path to the hut.
In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught in his
beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the shady
outer room, he took down from the wall his veil, that hung
on a peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his hands into
his pockets, he went into the fenced-in bee-garden, where
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there stood in the midst of a closely mown space in regular
rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the hives he knew so
well, the old stocks, each with its own history, and along the
fences the younger swarms hived that year. In front of the
openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy to watch the
bees and drones whirling round and round about the same
spot, while among them the working bees flew in and out
with spoils or in search of them, always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime trees and back to
the hives.
His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various
notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying quickly
off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the excited buzz
of the bees on guard protecting their property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of the fence
the old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did
not see Levin. Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives
and did not call him.
He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the
influence of ordinary actual life, which had already depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already
had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show coolness to
his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov.
‘Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it
pass and leave no trace?’ he thought. But the same instant,
going back to his mood, he felt with delight that something
new and important had happened to him. Real life had only
for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it
was still untouched within him.
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Just as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing
him and distracting his attention, prevented him from enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain his
movements to avoid them, so had the petty cares that had
swarmed about him from the moment he got into the trap
restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so long
as he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was still
unaffected, in spite of the bees, so too was the spiritual
strength that he had just become aware of.
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Chapter 15
‘Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way here?’ said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and
honey to the children; ‘with Vronsky! He’s going to Servia.’
‘And not alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at
his own expense,’ said Katavasov.
‘That’s the right thing for him,’ said Levin. ‘Are volunteers still going out then?’ he added, glancing at Sergey
Ivanovitch.
Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with
a blunt knife getting a live bee covered with sticky honey
out of a cup full of white honeycomb.
‘I should think so! You should have seen what was going
on at the station yesterday!’ said Katavasov, biting with a
juicy sound into a cucumber.
‘Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do
explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?’ asked the old
prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had
sprung up in Levin’s absence.
‘With the Turks,’ Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling
serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout aspen
leaf.
‘But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan Ivano1400
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vitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by
Madame Stahl?’
‘No one has declared war, but people sympathize with
their neighbors’ sufferings and are eager to help them,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘But the prince is not speaking of help,’ said Levin, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, ‘but of war. The
prince says that private persons cannot take part in war
without the permission of the government.’
‘Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!’ said
Dolly, waving away a wasp.
‘But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,’ said Levin.
‘Well now, well, what’s your own theory?’ Katavasov said
to Levin with a smile, distinctly challenging him to a discussion. ‘Why have not private persons the right to do so?’
‘Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak
of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a
government, which is called upon to do this, and is driven
inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political science and common sense teach us that in matters of state,
and especially in the matter of war, private citizens must
forego their personal individual will.’
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready,
and both began speaking at the same time.
‘But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases
when the government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the public asserts its will,’ said Katavasov.
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But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this
answer. His brows contracted at Katavasov’s words and he
said something else.
‘You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no
question here of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers, one with
us in religion and in race, are being massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor fellow-Christians,
but simply children, women, old people, feeling is aroused
and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities.
Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken
men beating a woman or a child—I imagine you would not
stop to inquire whether war had been declared on the men,
but would throw yourself on them, and protect the victim.’
‘But I should not kill them,’ said Levin.
‘Yes, you would kill them.’
‘I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And such a
momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot be, in the
case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.’
‘Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. ‘There are
traditions still extant among the people of Slavs of the true
faith suffering under the yoke of the ‘unclean sons of Hagar.’
The people have heard of the sufferings of their brethren
and have spoken.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Levin evasively; ‘but I don’t see it. I’m
one of the people myself, and I don’t feel it.’
‘Here am I too,’ said the old prince. ‘I’ve been staying
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abroad and reading the papers, and I must own, up to the
time of the Bulgarian atrocities, I couldn’t make out why
it was all the Russians were all of a sudden so fond of their
Slavonic brethren, while I didn’t feel the slightest affection
for
