And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he walked lightly through the swamp toward the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed. - `Fetch it!' Another bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find that either.
He wandered all about the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really do so.
And in the absence of Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his failure, things went no better. There was plenty of snipe still, but Levin made one miss after another.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of water weighed heavily on his leg and squelched at every step; the sweat ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of a bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not touch the barrel of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short, rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs stumbled and staggered over the hummocks and in the swamp, but still he walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he flung his gun and his hat on the ground.
`No, I must control myself,' he said to himself. Picking up his gun and his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got onto dry ground he sat down on a hummock, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked to the marsh, drank some rust-tasting water, moistened the burning hot barrel of his gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.
He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the trigger before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and worse.
He had only five birds in his gamebag when he walked out of the marsh toward the alders, where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevich.
Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevich he saw his dog. Krak, black all over with the stinking mire of the marsh, darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, and, with the air of a conqueror, sniffed Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevich. He came to meet him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the same way.
`Well? You have been popping away!' he said, smiling good-humoredly.
`How have you got on?' queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for he had already seen the full gamebag.
`Oh, pretty fair.'
He had fourteen birds.
`A splendid marsh! I've no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It's awkward too, shooting with one dog,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, to soften his triumph.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 11[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 11 When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevich reached the peasant's hut where Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant's wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.
`I've only just come. Ils ont été charmants .
Just fancy they gave me drink, and fed me! Such bread - it was exquisite! Délicieux ! And the vodka - I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything. And they kept saying: ``Excuse our homely ways.''
`What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?' said the soldier, succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off, together with the blackened stocking.
In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smells of the marsh and the powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay barn swept ready for them, where the coachmen had been making up beds for the gentlemen.
Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.
After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant hay, this delightful broken telega (he supposed it to be broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants who had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting party at Malthus's where he had stayed the previous summer. Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevich described what snipe moors this Malthus had taken on lease in the Tver province, and how they were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged up at the marsh.
`I don't understand you,' said Levin, sitting up in the hay; `how is it such people don't disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is all very pleasant, but don't you dislike just that very sumptuousness?
All these people, just like our tax farmers in the old days, get their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They don't care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains to buy off the contempt they have deserved.'
`Perfectly true!' chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. `Perfectly! Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie , but other people say: ``Well, Oblonsky stays with them.''
