Part Three: Chapter 12

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleekhorse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on theload, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to jointhe women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers' dance.Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the otherloaded carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on theirshoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing,merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild untrainedfemale voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through averse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by halfa hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine,singing in unison.

　　The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he feltas though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder ofmerriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycockon which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and thewagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemedto be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry songwith its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious ofthis health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in theexpression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and hadto lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with theirsinging, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feelingof despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, hisalienation from this world, came over Levin.

　　Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wranglingwith him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely,and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greetedhim goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable ofhaving any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, anyrecollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that wasdrowned in a sea of merry common labor. God gave the day, Godgave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecratedto labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor?What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations--beside the point.

　　Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envyof the men who led this life; but today for the first time,especially under the influence of what he had seen in theattitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presenteditself definitely to his mind that it was in his power toexchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic lifehe was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightfullife.

　　The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gonehome; the people had all separated. Those who lived near hadgone home, while those who came from far were gathered into agroup for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin,unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and stilllooked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained forthe night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summernight. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughingall together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

　　All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightnessof heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was tobe heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased inthe marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over themeadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up fromthe haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night wasover.

　　"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" hesaid to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughtsand feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All thethoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into threeseparate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his oldlife, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gavehim satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series ofthoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to livenow. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he feltclearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was somiserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon thequestion how to effect this transition from the old life to thenew. And there nothing took clear shape for him. "Have a wife?Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buyland? Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasantgirl? How am I to set about it?" he asked himself again, andcould not find an answer. "I haven't slept all night, though,and I can't think it out clearly," he said to himself. "I'llwork it out later. One thing's certain, this night has decidedmy fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not thereal thing," he told himself. "It's all ever so much simpler andbetter..."

　　"How beautiful!" he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudless resting rightover his head in the middle of the sky. "How exquisite it all isin this exquisite night! And when was there time for thatcloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there wasnothing in it--only two white streaks. Yes, and soimperceptibly too my views of life changed!"

　　He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towardsthe village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray andsullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes thedawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.

　　Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at theground. "What's that? Someone coming," he thought, catching thetinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him acarriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towardshim along the grassy road on which he was walking. Theshaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but thedexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts,so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.

　　This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it couldbe, he gazed absently at the coach.

　　In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at thewindow, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding inboth hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of lightand thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that wasremote from Levin, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of thesunrise.

　　At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, thetruthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her facelighted up with wondering delight.

　　He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those inthe world. There was only one creature in the world that couldconcentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. Itwas she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving toErgushovo from the railway station. And everything that had beenstirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutionshe had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror hisdreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriagethat had crossed over to the other side of the road, and wasrapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution ofthe riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon himof late.

　　She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springswas no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. Thebarking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, andall that was left was the empty fields all round, the village infront, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wanderinglonely along the deserted highroad.

　　He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell hehad been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas andfeelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in theleast like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, amysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace ofshell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an evencover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blueand bright; and with the same softness, but with the sameremoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

　　"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicityand toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her."