His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut.
"I will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body," he
thought, comparing Tit's row, which looked as if it had been cut
with a line, with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.
The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row
happened to be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still
Levin had to strain every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left
behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He
heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's
upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut
grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling
before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the
row, where would come the rest.
Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it
was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on
his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval
for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had
blown up, and big raindrops were falling. Some of the peasants
went to their coats and put them on; others--just like Levin
himself--merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant
coolness of it.
Another row, and yet another row, followed--long rows and short
rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense
of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early
now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him
immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were
moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all
easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as
smooth and well cut as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected what
he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once
conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was
badly mown.
On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top
of the meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going
up to the old man said something in a low voice to him. They
both looked at the sun. "What are they talking about, and why
doesn't he go back?" thought Levin, not guessing that the
peasants had been mowing no less than four hours without
stopping, and it was time for their lunch.