Resurrection - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (interesting novels in english .TXT) 📗

of it. Her name was Malania. She’s dead now. She was a

wise woman. What do you think she used to do? They’d bring her a

baby, and she’d keep it and feed it; and she’d feed it until she

had enough of them to take to the Foundlings’. When she had three

or four, she’d take them all at once. She had such a clever

arrangement, a sort of big cradle—a double one she could put

them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she’d put four

of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they should

not knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She’d

put some pap in a rag into their mouths to keep ‘em silent, the

pets.”

 

“Well, go on.”

 

“Well, she took Katerina’s baby in the same way, after keeping it

a fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken.”

 

“And was it a fine baby?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one.

Your very image,” the old woman added, with a wink.

 

“Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?”

 

“Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when

it’s not one’s own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She

said she just managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She

brought a certificate—all in order. She was such a wise woman.”

 

That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.

 

Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out

into the street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting

for him. A few newcomers were standing with them. Among the

women, of whom several had babies in their arms, was the thin

woman with the baby who had the patchwork cap on its head. She

held lightly in her arms the bloodless infant, who kept strangely

smiling all over its wizened little face, and continually moving

its crooked thumbs.

 

Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who

the woman was.

 

“It is that very Anisia I told you about,” said the elder boy.

 

Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.

 

“How do you live?” he asked. “By what means do you gain your

livelihood?”

 

“How do I live? I go begging,” said Anisia, and began to cry.

 

Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a

10-rouble note. He had not had time to take two steps before

another woman with a baby caught him up, then an old woman, then

another young one. All of them spoke of their poverty, and asked

for help. Nekhludoff gave them the 60 roubles—all in small

notes—which he had with him, and, terribly sad at heart, turned

home, i.e., to the foreman’s house.

 

The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that

the peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff

thanked him, and went straight into the garden to stroll along

the paths strewn over with the petals of apple-blossom and

overgrown with weeds, and to think over all he had seen.

 

At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the

foreman’s house two angry women’s voices interrupting each other,

and now and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman.

Nekhludoff listened.

 

“My strength’s at an end. What are you about, dragging the very

cross [those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a

cross round their necks] off my neck,” said an angry woman’s

voice.

 

“But she only got in for a moment,” said another voice. “Give it

her back, I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the

children, too, who want their milk?”

 

“Pay, then, or work it off,” said the foreman’s voice.

 

Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which

stood two dishevelled women—one of them pregnant and evidently

near her time. On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands

in the pockets of his holland coat, stood the foreman. When they

saw the master, the women were silent, and began arranging the

kerchiefs on their heads, and the foreman took his hands out of

his pockets and began to smile.

 

This is what had happened. From the foreman’s words, it seemed

that the peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and

even their cows into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows

belonging to the families of these two women were found in the

meadow, and driven into the yard. The foreman demanded from the

women 30 copecks for each cow or two days’ work. The women,

however, maintained that the cows had got into the meadow of

their own accord; that they had no money, and asked that the

cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without

food, piteously lowing, should he returned to them, even if it

had to be on the understanding that the price should be worked

off later on.

 

“How often have I not begged of you,” said the smiling foreman,

looking back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a

witness, “if you drive your cattle home at noon, that you should

have an eye on them?”

 

“I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away.”

 

“Don’t run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows.”

 

“And who’s to feed the little one? You’d not give him the breast,

I suppose?” said the other woman. “Now, if they had really

damaged the meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but

they only strayed in a moment.”

 

“All the meadows are damaged,” the foreman said, turning to

Nekhludoff. “If I exact no penalty there will be no hay.”

 

“There, now, don’t go sinning like that; my cows have never been

caught there before,” shouted the pregnant woman.

 

“Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off.”

 

“All right, I’ll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don’t

torture her with hunger,” she cried, angrily. “As it is, I have

no rest day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to

drink; I’m all alone to do all the work, and my strength’s at an

end. I wish you’d choke, you and your working it off.”

 

Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and

went back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but

there was nothing more to think about.

 

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop

wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he

himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly

evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the

dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this

process: there was the great mortality among the children, the

over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the

aged. And so gradually had the people come to this condition that

they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not

complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as

it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief

cause of the people’s great want was one that they themselves

knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone

could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.

 

And how evident it was that the children and the aged died

because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was

no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was

quite evident that all the misery of the people or, at least by

far the greater part of it, was caused by the fact that the land

which should feed them was not in their hands, but in the hands

of those who, profiting by their rights to the land, live by the

work of these people. The land so much needed by men was tilled

by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the

corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy

themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He

understood this as clearly as he understood that horses when they

have eaten all the grass in the inclosure where they are kept

will have to grow thin and starve unless they are put where they

can get food off other land.

 

This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to

alter it, or at least not to take part in it. “And I will find

them,” he thought, as he walked up and down the path under the

birch trees.

 

In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers

we talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the

means of ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the

only sure means which would certainly lighten their condition,

i.e., giving back to them the land they need so much.

 

Henry George’s fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind

and how he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised

that he could have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one’s

property; it cannot be bought or sold any more than water, air,

or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives

to men. And now he knew why he had felt ashamed to remember the

transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving himself. He knew

that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had accepted

this right as his, and had given the peasants something which, in

the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would

not act in this way, and would alter the arrangement in

Kousminski also. And he formed a project in his mind to let the

land to the peasants, and to acknowledge the rent they paid for

it to be their property, to be kept to pay the taxes and for

communal uses. This was, of course, not the single-tax system,

still it was as near an approach to it as could be had under

existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was

that in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of

landed property.

 

When he returned to the house the foreman, with a specially

pleasant smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now,

expressing the fear that the feast his wife was preparing, with

the help of the girl with the earrings, might be overdone.

 

The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an

embroidered towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin. A

vieux-saxe soup tureen with a broken handle stood on the table,

full of potato soup, the stock made of the fowl that had put out

and drawn in his black leg, and was now cut, or rather chopped,

in pieces, which were here and there covered with hairs. After

the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was served roasted,

and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great deal of

sugar. Little appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly

noticed what he was eating; he was occupied with the thought

which had in a moment dispersed the sadness with which he had

returned from the village.

 

The foreman’s wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the

frightened maid with the earrings brought