Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

“Yes, I think so.”

“Such a splendid old woman,” she said.

There was another pause.

“Well, and as to the hospital?” she suddenly said, and looking at

him with her squinting eyes. “If you like, I will go, and I shall

not drink any spirits, either.”

Nekhludoff looked into her eyes. They were smiling.

“Yes, yes, she is quite a different being,” Nekhludoff thought.

After all his former doubts, he now felt something he had never

before experienced—the certainty that love is invincible.

When Maslova returned to her noisome cell after this interview,

she took off her cloak and sat down in her place on the shelf

bedstead with her hands folded on her lap. In the cell were only

the consumptive woman, the Vladimir woman with her baby,

Menshoff’s old mother, and the watchman’s wife. The deacon’s

daughter had the day before been declared mentally diseased and

removed to the hospital. The rest of the women were away, washing

clothes. The old woman was asleep, the cell door stood open, and

the watchman’s children were in the corridor outside. The

Vladimir woman, with her baby in her arms, and the watchman’s

wife, with the stocking she was knitting with deft fingers, came

up to Maslova. “Well, have you had a chat?” they asked. Maslova

sat silent on the high bedstead, swinging her legs, which did not

reach to the floor.

“What’s the good of snivelling?” said the watchman’s wife. “The

chief thing’s not to go down into the dumps. Eh, Katusha? Now,

then!” and she went on, quickly moving her fingers.

Maslova did not answer.

“And our women have all gone to wash,” said the Vladimir woman.

“I heard them say much has been given in alms to-day. Quite a lot

has been brought.”

“Finashka,” called out the watchman’s wife, “where’s the little

imp gone to?”

She took a knitting needle, stuck it through both the ball and

the stocking, and went out into the corridor.

At this moment the sound of women’s voices was heard from the

corridor, and the inmates of the cell entered, with their prison

shoes, but no stockings on their feet. Each was carrying a roll,

some even two. Theodosia came at once up to Maslova.

“What’s the matter; is anything wrong?” Theodosia asked, looking

lovingly at Maslova with her clear, blue eyes. “This is for our

tea,” and she put the rolls on a shelf.

“Why, surely he has not changed his mind about marrying?” asked

Korableva.

“No, he has not, but I don’t wish to,” said Maslova, “and so I

told him.”

“More fool you!” muttered Korableva in her deep tones.

“If one’s not to live together, what’s the use of marrying?” said

Theodosia.

“There’s your husband—he’s going with you,” said the watchman’s

wife.

“Well, of course, we’re married,” said Theodosia. “But why should

he go through the ceremony if he is not to live with her?”

“Why, indeed! Don’t be a fool! You know if he marries her she’ll

roll in wealth,” said Korableva.

“He says, ‘Wherever they take you, I’ll follow,’” said Maslova.

“If he does, it’s well; if he does not, well also. I am not going

to ask him to. Now he is going to try and arrange the matter in

Petersburg. He is related to all the Ministers there. But, all

the same, I have no need of him,” she continued.

“Of course not,” suddenly agreed Korableva, evidently thinking

about something else as she sat examining her bag. “Well, shall

we have a drop?”

“You have some,” replied Maslova. “I won’t.”

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

PROPERTY IN LAND.

It was possible for Maslova’s case to come before the Senate in a

fortnight, at which time Nekhludoff meant to go to Petersburg,

and, if need be, to appeal to the Emperor (as the advocate who

had drawn up the petition advised) should the appeal be

disregarded (and, according to the advocate, it was best to be

prepared for that, since the causes for appeal were so slight).

The party of convicts, among whom was Maslova, would very likely

leave in the beginning of June. In order to be able to follow her

to Siberia, as Nekhludoff was firmly resolved to do, he was now

obliged to visit his estates, and settle matters there.

Nekhludoff first went to the nearest, Kousminski, a large estate

that lay in the black earth district, and from which he derived

the greatest part of his income.

He had lived on that estate in his childhood and youth, and had

been there twice since, and once, at his mother’s request, he had

taken a German steward there, and had with him verified the

accounts. The state of things there and the peasants’ relations

to the management, i.e., the landlord, had therefore been long

known to him. The relations of the peasants to the administration

were those of utter dependence on that management. Nekhludoff

knew all this when still a university student, he had confessed

and preached Henry Georgeism, and, on the basis of that teaching,

had given the land inherited from his father to the peasants. It

is true that after entering the army, when he got into the habit

of spending 20,000 roubles a year, those former occupations

ceased to be regarded as a duty, and were forgotten, and he not

only left off asking himself where the money his mother allowed

him came from, but even avoided thinking about it. But his

mother’s death, the coming into the property, and the necessity

of managing it, again raised the question as to what his position

in reference to private property in land was. A month before

Nekhludoff would have answered that he had not the strength to

alter the existing order of things; that it was not he who was

administering the estate; and would one way or another have eased

his conscience, continuing to live far from his estates, and

having the money sent him. But now he decided that he could not

leave things to go on as they were, but would have to alter them

in a way unprofitable to himself, even though he had all these

complicated and difficult relations with the prison world which

made money necessary, as well as a probable journey to Siberia

before him. Therefore he decided not to farm the land, but to let

it to the peasants at a low rent, to enable them to cultivate it

without depending on a landlord. More than once, when comparing

the position of a landowner with that of an owner of serfs,

Nekhludoff had compared the renting of land to the peasants

instead of cultivating it with hired labour, to the old system by

which serf proprietors used to exact a money payment from their

serfs in place of labour. It was not a solution of the problem,

and yet a step towards the solution; it was a movement towards a

less rude form of slavery. And it was in this way he meant to

act.

Nekhludoff reached Kousminski about noon. Trying to simplify his

life in every way, he did not telegraph, but hired a cart and

pair at the station. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen

coat, with a belt below his long waist. He was glad to talk to

the gentleman, especially because while they were talking his

broken-winded white horse and the emaciated spavined one could go

at a foot-pace, which they always liked to do.

The driver spoke about the steward at Kousminski without knowing

that he was driving “the master.” Nekhludoff had purposely not

told him who he was.

“That ostentatious German,” said the driver (who had been to town

and read novels) as he sat sideways on the box, passing his hand

from the top to the bottom of his long whip, and trying to show

off his accomplishments—“that ostentatious German has procured

three light bays, and when he drives out with his lady–oh, my!

At Christmas he had a Christmas-tree in the big house. I drove

some of the visitors there. It had ‘lectric lights; you could

not see the like of it in the whole of the government. What’s it

to him, he has cribbed a heap of money. I heard say he has bought

an estate.”

Nekhludoff had imagined that he was quite indifferent to the way

the steward managed his estate, and what advantages the steward

derived from it. The words of the long-waisted driver, however,

were not pleasant to hear.

A dark cloud now and then covered the sun; the larks were soaring

above the fields of winter corn; the forests were already covered

with fresh young green; the meadows speckled with grazing cattle

and horses. The fields were being ploughed, and Nekhludoff

enjoyed the lovely day. But every now and then he had an

unpleasant feeling, and, when he asked himself what it was caused

by, he remembered what the driver had told him about the way the

German was managing Kousminski. When he got to his estate and set

to work this unpleasant feeling vanished.

Looking over the books in the office, and a talk with the

foreman, who naively pointed out the advantages to be derived

from the facts that the peasants had very little land of their

own and that it lay in the midst of the landlord’s fields, made

Nekhludoff more than ever determined to leave off farming and to

let his land to the peasants.

From the office books and his talk with the foreman, Nekhludoff

found that two-thirds of the best of the cultivated land was

still being tilled with improved machinery by labourers receiving

fixed wages, while the other third was tilled by the peasants at

the rate of five roubles per desiatin [about two and

three-quarter acres]. So that the peasants had to plough each

desiatin three times, harrow it three times, sow and mow the

corn, make it into sheaves, and deliver it on the threshing

ground for five roubles, while the same amount of work done by

wage labour came to at least 10 roubles. Everything the peasants

got from the office they paid for in labour at a very high price.

They paid in labour for the use of the meadows, for wood, for

potato-stalks, and were nearly all of them in debt to the office.

Thus, for the land that lay beyond the cultivated fields, which

the peasants hired, four times the price that its value would

bring in if invested at five per cent was taken from the

peasants.

Nekhludoff had known all this before, but he now saw it in a new

light, and wondered how he and others in his position could help

seeing how abnormal such conditions are. The steward’s arguments

that if the land were let to the peasants the agricultural

implements would fetch next to nothing, as it would be impossible

to get even a quarter of their value for them, and that the

peasants would spoil the land, and how great a loser Nekhludoff

would be, only strengthened Nekhludoff in the opinion that he was

doing a good action in letting the land to the peasants and thus

depriving himself of a large part of his income. He decided to

settle this business now, at once, while he was there. The

reaping and selling of the corn he left for the steward to manage

in due season, and also the selling of the agricultural

implements and useless buildings. But he asked his steward to

call the peasants of the three neighbouring villages that lay in

the midst of his estate (Kousminski) to a meeting, at which he

would tell them of