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

sell their shares to the rich.

The rich will again get at the land. Those who live by working

the land will multiply, and land will again be scarce. Then the

rich will again get those who need land into their power.”

 

“Just so,” quickly said the ex-soldier.

 

“Forbid to sell the land; let only him who ploughs it have it,”

angrily interrupted the oven-builder.

 

To this Nekhludoff replied that it was impossible to know who was

ploughing for himself and who for another.

 

The tall, reasonable man proposed that an arrangement be made so

that they should all plough communally, and those who ploughed

should get the produce and those who did not should get nothing.

 

To this communistic project Nekhludoff had also an answer ready.

He said that for such an arrangement it would be necessary that

all should have ploughs, and that all the horses should be alike,

so that none should be left behind, and that ploughs and horses

and all the implements would have to be communal property, and

that in order to get that, all the people would have to agree.

 

“Our people could not be made to agree in a lifetime,” said the

cross old man.

 

“We should have regular fights,” said the white-bearded old man

with the laughing eyes. “So that the thing is not as simple as it

looks,” said Nekhludoff, “and this is a thing not only we but

many have been considering. There is an American, Henry George.

This is what he has thought out, and I agree with him.”

 

“Why, you are the master, and you give it as you like. What’s it

to you? The power is yours,” said the cross old man.

 

This confused Nekhludoff, but he was pleased to see that not he

alone was dissatisfied with this interruption.

 

“You wait a bit, Uncle Simon; let him tell us about it,” said the

reasonable man, in his imposing bass.

 

This emboldened Nekhludoff, and he began to explain Henry

George’s single-tax system “The earth is no man’s; it is God’s,”

he began.

 

“Just so; that it is,” several voices replied.

 

“The land is common to all. All have the same right to it, but

there is good land and bad land, and every one would like to take

the good land. How is one to do in order to get it justly

divided? In this way: he that will use the good land must pay

those who have got no land the value of the land he uses,”

Nekhludoff went on, answering his own question. “As it would be

difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed for

communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good

land should pay the amount of the value of his land to the

commune for its needs. Then every one would share equally. If you

want to use land pay for it—more for the good, less for the bad

land. If you do not wish to use land, don’t pay anything, and

those who use the land will pay the taxes and the communal

expenses for you.”

 

“Well, he had a head, this George,” said the oven-builder, moving

his brows. “He who has good land must pay more.”

 

“If only the payment is according to our strength,” said the tall

man with the bass voice, evidently foreseeing how the matter

would end.

 

“The payment should be not too high and not too low. If it is too

high it will not get paid, and there will be a loss; and if it is

too low it will be bought and sold. There would be a trading in

land. This is what I wished to arrange among you here.”

 

“That is just, that is right; yes, that would do,” said the

peasants.

 

“He has a head, this George,” said the broad-shouldered old man

with the curls. “See what he has invented.”

 

“Well, then, how would it be if I wished to take some land?”

asked the smiling foreman.

 

“If there is an allotment to spare, take it and work it,” said

Nekhludoff.

 

“What do you want it for? You have sufficient as it is,” said the

old man with the laughing eyes.

 

With this the conference ended.

 

Nekhludoff repeated his offer, and advised the men to talk it

over with the rest of the commune and to return with the answer.

 

The peasants said they would talk it over and bring an answer,

and left in a state of excitement. Their loud talk was audible as

they went along the road, and up to late in the night the sound

of voices came along the river from the village.

 

The next day the peasants did not go to work, but spent it in

considering the landlord’s offer. The commune was divided into

two parties—one which regarded the offer as a profitable one to

themselves and saw no danger in agreeing with it, and another

which suspected and feared the offer it did not understand. On

the third day, however, all agreed, and some were sent to

Nekhludoff to accept his offer. They were influenced in their

decision by the explanation some of the old men gave of the

landlord’s conduct, which did away with all fear of deceit. They

thought the gentleman had begun to consider his soul, and was

acting as he did for its salvation. The alms which Nekhludoff had

given away while in Panovo made his explanation seem likely. The

fact that Nekhludoff had never before been face to face with such

great poverty and so bare a life as the peasants had come to in

this place, and was so appalled by it, made him give away money

in charity, though he knew that this was not reasonable. He could

not help giving the money, of which he now had a great deal,

having received a large sum for the forest he had sold the year

before, and also the hand money for the implements and stock in

Kousminski. As soon as it was known that the master was giving

money in charity, crowds of people, chiefly women, began to come

to ask him for help. He did not in the least know how to deal

with them, how to decide, how much, and whom to give to. He felt

that to refuse to give money, of which he had a great deal, to

poor people was impossible, yet to give casually to those who

asked was not wise. The last day he spent in Panovo, Nekhludoff

looked over the things left in his aunts’ house, and in the

bottom drawer of the mahogany wardrobe, with the brass lions’

heads with rings through them, he found many letters, and amongst

them a photograph of a group, consisting of his aunts, Sophia

Ivanovna and Mary Ivanovna, a student, and Katusha. Of all the

things in the house he took only the letters and the photograph.

The rest he left to the miller who, at the smiling foreman’s

recommendation, had bought the house and all it contained, to be

taken down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real value.

 

Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which

he had felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could

have felt this regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at

the deliverance, and a sensation of newness something like that

which a traveller must experience when discovering new countries.

 

CHAPTER X.

 

NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.

 

The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his

return. He came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and

drove from the railway station to his house, where the rooms

still smelt of naphthaline. Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were

both feeling tired and dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel

over those things that seemed made only to be aired and packed

away. Nekhludoff’s room was empty, but not in order, and the way

to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his arrival evidently

hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind of inertia,

was going on in this house. The evident folly of these

proceedings, in which he had once taken part, was so distasteful

to Nekhludoff after the impressions the misery of the life of the

peasants had made on him, that he decided to go to a hotel the

next day, leaving Agraphena Petrovna to put away the things as

she thought fit until his sister should come and finally dispose

of everything in the house.

 

Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very

modest and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach

of the prison, and, having given orders that some of his things

should be sent there, he went to see the advocate. It was cold

out of doors. After some rainy and stormy weather it had turned

out cold, as it often does in spring. It was so cold that

Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light overcoat, and walked

fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled with thoughts of

the peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the poverty

and weariness which he seemed to have seen for the first time,

especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his

calfless little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was

going on in the town. Passing by the butchers’, fishmongers’, and

clothiers’ shops, he was struck, as if he saw them for the first

time, by the appearance of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like

whom you could not find one peasant in the country. These men

were apparently convinced that the pains they took to deceive the

people who did not know much about their goods was not a useless

but rather an important business. The coachmen with their broad

hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the doorkeepers

with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their

aprons and curly fringes, and especially the smart isvostchiks

with the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat lolling

back in their traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute

and contemptuous air, looked well fed. In all these people

Nekhludoff could not now help seeing some of these very peasants

who had been driven into the town by lack of land. Some of the

peasants driven to the town had found means of profiting by the

conditions of town life and had become like the gentlefolk and

were pleased with their position; others were in a worse position

than they had been in the country and were more to be pitied than

the country people.

 

Such seemed the bootmakers Nekhludoff saw in the cellar, the

pale, dishevelled washerwomen with their thin, bare, arms ironing

at an open window, out of which streamed soapy steam; such the

two house-painters with their aprons, stockingless feet, all

bespattered and smeared with paint, whom Nekhludoff met—their

weak, brown arms bared to above the elbows—carrying a pailful of

paint, and quarrelling with each other. Their faces looked

haggard and cross. The dark faces of the carters jolting along in

their carts bore the same expression, and so did the faces of the

tattered men and women who stood begging at the street corners.

The same kind of faces were to be seen at the open, windows of

the eating-houses which Nekhludoff passed. By the dirty tables on

which stood tea things and bottles, and between which waiters

dressed in white shirts were rushing hither and thither, sat

shouting and singing red, perspiring men with stupefied faces.

One sat by the window with lifted brows and pouting lips and

fixed eyes as if trying to remember something.

 

“And why