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The horse was not yet ready, but feeling a peculiar concentration of his physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off on foot without waiting for the horse, and told Kouzma to overtake him. At the corner he met a night cabman driving hurriedly. In the little sledge, wrapped in a velvet cloak, sat Lizaveta Petrovna with a kerchief round her head.
"Come, I'll tell you how we'll manage: you drive in our carriage to fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he'll be so good, will drive there and then send his carriage." "Of course; I shall be delighted." "We'll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Yes," answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for him to dress.
The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now. At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt. "Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van," said Kouzma.
On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their household in town. "What does your honor wish to be done?" During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his own horses brought up from the country.
Levin asked Kouzma. "They've just come; they're unpacking the things." "Come quickly," she said to him as she went out of the study, "or else I shall read your letters without you." Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her.
But there had been an important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had calved. "Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern. I'll come and look at her," he said to the bailiff. The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house. Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into the cowhouse.
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.
"I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me." "And you've got a little curl loose," he said, carefully turning her head round. "A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!" Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready. "Have they come from the town?"
"Oh, Agafea Mihalovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, "what salt goose, what herb brandy!...What do you think, isn't it time to start, Kostya?" he added. Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare tree-tops of the forest. "Yes, it's time," he said. "Kouzma, get ready the trap," and he ran downstairs.
Lord have mercy on us and help us!" Levin said, seeing his own horse driving out of the gate. Jumping into the sledge beside Kouzma, he told him to drive to the doctor's. The doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that "he had been up late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon." The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed very busy about them.
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