Chapter 12

The load was tied on.  Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek horse by the bridle.  The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers’ dance.  Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the other loaded carts.  The peasant women, with their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart.  One wild untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a 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 felt as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment.  The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping.  Levin felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the expression of this joy of life.  But he could do nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen.  When the peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world, came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him.  All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labor.  God gave the day, God gave the strength.  And the day and the strength were consecrated to 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 envy of the men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life.

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