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

in the dishes; and the

foreman smiled more and more joyfully, priding himself on his

wife’s culinary skill. After dinner, Nekhludoff succeeded, with

some trouble, in making the foreman sit down. In order to revise

his own thoughts, and to express them to some one, he explained

his project of letting the land to the peasants, and asked the

foreman for his opinion. The foreman, smiling as if he had

thought all this himself long ago, and was very pleased to hear

it, did not really understand it at all. This was not because

Nekhludoff did not express himself clearly, but because according

to this project it turned out that Nekhludoff was giving up his

own profit for the profit of others, and the thought that every

one is only concerned about his own profit, to the harm of

others, was so deeply rooted in the foreman’s conceptions that he

imagined he did not understand something when Nekhludoff said

that all the income from the land must be placed to form the

communal capital of the peasants.

 

“Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages

from that capital,” said the foreman, brightening up.

 

“Dear me! no. Don’t you see, I am giving up the land altogether.”

 

“But then you will not get any income,” said the foreman, smiling

no longer.

 

“Yes, I am going to give it up.”

 

The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again. Now he

understood. He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal,

and at once began to consider how he himself could profit by

Nekhludoff’s project of giving up the land, and tried to see this

project in such a way that he might reap some advantage from it.

But when he saw that this was impossible he grew sorrowful, and

the project ceased to interest him, and he continued to smile

only in order to please the master.

 

Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let

him go and sat down by the windowsill, that was all cut about

and inked over, and began to put his project down on paper.

 

The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh

green, and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff. Just

as he finished his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the

creaking of opening gates from the village, and the voices of the

peasants gathering together for the meeting. He told the foreman

not to call the peasants up to the office, as he meant to go into

the village himself and meet the men where they would assemble.

Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea offered him by the foreman,

Nekhludoff went to the village.

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

THE DISINHERITED.

 

From the crowd assembled in front of the house of the village

elder came the sound of voices; but as soon as Nekhludoff came up

the talking ceased, and all the peasants took off their caps,

just as those in Kousminski had done. The peasants here were of a

much poorer class than those in Kousminski. The men wore shoes

made of bark and homespun shirts and coats. Some had come

straight from their work in their shirts and with bare feet.

 

Nekhludoff made an effort, and began his speech by telling the

peasants of his intention to give up his land to them altogether.

The peasants were silent, and the expression on their faces did

not undergo any change.

 

“Because I hold,” said Nekhludoff, “and believe that every one

has a right to the use of the land.”

 

“That’s certain. That’s so, exactly,” said several voices.

 

Nekhludoff went on to say that the revenue from the land ought to

be divided among all, and that he would therefore suggest that

they should rent the land at a price fixed by themselves, the

rent to form a communal fund for their own use. Words of approval

and agreement were still to be heard, but the serious faces of

the peasants grew still more serious, and the eyes that had been

fixed on the gentleman dropped, as if they were unwilling to put

him to shame by letting him see that every one had understood his

trick, and that no one would be deceived by him.

 

Nekhludoff spoke clearly, and the peasants were intelligent, but

they did not and could not understand him, for the same reason

that the foreman had so long been unable to understand him.

 

They were fully convinced that it is natural for every man to

consider his own interest. The experience of many generations had

proved to them that the landlords always considered their own

interest to the detriment of the peasants. Therefore, if a

landlord called them to a meeting and made them some kind of a

new offer, it could evidently only be in order to swindle them

more cunningly than before.

 

“Well, then, what are you willing to rent the land at?” asked

Nekhludoff.

 

“How can we fix a price? We cannot do it. The land is yours, and

the power is in your hands,” answered some voices from among the

crowd.

 

“Oh, not at all. You will yourselves have the use of the money

for communal purposes.”

 

“We cannot do it; the commune is one thing, and this is another.”

 

“Don’t you understand?” said the foreman, with a smile (he had

followed Nekhludoff to the meeting), “the Prince is letting the

land to you for money, and is giving you the money back to form a

capital for the commune.”

 

“We understand very well,” said a cross, toothless old man,

without raising his eyes. “Something like a bank; we should have

to pay at a fixed time. We do not wish it; it is hard enough as

it is, and that would ruin us completely.”

 

“That’s no go. We prefer to go on the old way,” began several

dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.

 

The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he

would draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him

and by them.

 

“Why sign? We shall go on working as we have done hitherto. What

is all this for? We are ignorant men.”

 

“We can’t agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have

been used to. As it was, so let it continue to be. Only the seeds

we should like to withdraw.”

 

This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be

provided by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide

them.

 

“Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?”

Nekhludoff asked, addressing a middleaged, barefooted peasant,

with a tattered coat, and a bright look on his face, who was

holding his worn cap with his left hand, in a peculiarly straight

position, in the same way soldiers hold theirs when commanded to

take them off.

 

“Just so,” said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid

himself of the military hypnotism he had been subjected to while

serving his time.

 

“It means that you have sufficient land,” said Nekhludoff.

 

“No, sir, we have not,” said the ex-soldier, with an artificially

pleased look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him,

as if offering it to any one who liked to make use of it.

 

“Well, anyhow, you’d better think over what I have said.”

Nekhludoff spoke with surprise, and again repeated his offer.

 

“We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will

be,” angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.

 

“I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds,

send to let me know.”

 

The peasants gave no answer.

 

So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this

interview.

 

“If I might make a remark, Prince,” said the foreman, when they

got home, “you will never come to any agreement with them; they

are so obstinate. At a meeting these people just stick in one

place, and there is no moving them. It is because they are

frightened of everything. Why, these very peasants—say that

white-haired one, or the dark one, who were refusing, are

intelligent peasants. When one of them comes to the office and

one makes him sit down to cup of tea it’s like in the Palace of

Wisdom—he is quite diplomatist,” said the foreman, smiling; “he

will consider everything rightly. At a meeting it’s a different

man—he keeps repeating one and the same …”

 

“Well, could not some of the more intelligent men he asked to

come here?” said Nekhludoff. “I would carefully explain it to

them.”

 

“That can he done,” said the smiling foreman.

 

“Well, then, would you mind calling them here tomorrow?”

 

“Oh, certainly I will,” said the foreman, and smiled still more

joyfully. “I shall call them tomorrow.”

 

“Just hear him; he’s not artful, not he,” said a blackhaired

peasant, with an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to

side on a well-fed mare, addressing an old man in a torn coat who

rode by his side. The two men were driving a herd of the

peasants’ horses to graze in the night, alongside the highroad

and secretly, in the landlord’s forest.

 

“Give you the land for nothing—you need only sign—have they not

done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your

humbug. Nowadays we have a little sense,” he added, and began

shouting at a colt that had strayed.

 

He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not

remained behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside.

“Bother that son of a Turk; he’s taken to getting into the

landowner’s meadows,” said the dark peasant with the unkempt

beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel stalks that the

neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back from the

scented meadow.

 

“Do you hear the cracking? We’ll have to send the women folk to

weed the meadow when there’s a holiday,” said the thin peasant

with the torn coat, “or else we’ll blunt our scythes.”

 

“Sign,” he says. The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of

the landlord’s speech. “‘Sign,’ indeed, and let him swallow you

up.”

 

“That’s certain,” answered the old man. And then they were

silent, and the tramping of the horses’ feet along the highroad

was the only sound to be heard.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

GOD’S PEACE IN THE HEART.

 

When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been

arranged as a bedroom for him. A high bedstead, with a feather

bed and two large pillows, had been placed in the room. The bed

was covered with a dark red doublebedded silk quilt, which was

elaborately and finely quilted, and very stiff. It evidently

belonged to the trousseau of the foreman’s wife. The foreman

offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which the latter

refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare and

the accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.

 

The peasants’ refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff. On the

contrary, though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he

had even been thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion

and even enmity, he felt contented and joyful.

 

It was close and dirty in the office. Nekhludoff went out into

the yard, and was going into the garden, but he remembered: that

night, the window of the maid-servant’s room, the side porch, and

he felt uncomfortable, and did not like to pass the spot

desecrated by guilty memories. He sat down on the doorstep, and

breathing in the warm air, balmy with the strong scent of fresh

birch leaves, he sat for