Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕

we’re in the very depths of poverty. They will say, ‘Since you starved one to death, it will be the same with my daughter.’ Who is to give her?” she added, shaking her head dubiously. “Give us your advice, excellency.”

“Well, what can I do?”

“Think of someone for us, kind sir,” repeated Arína urgently. “What are we to do?”

“How can I think of anyone? I can’t do anything at all for you as things are.”

“Who will help us if you do not?” said Arína, drooping her head, and spreading her palms with an expression of melancholy discontent.

“Here you ask for grain, and so I will give orders for some to be delivered to you,” said the prince after a short silence, during which Arína sighed, and Davidka imitated her. “But I cannot do anything more.”

Nekhliudof went into the entry. Mother and son with low bows followed the prince.

XII

“O-okh! alas for my wretchedness!” exclaimed Arína, sighing deeply.

She paused, and looked angrily at her son. Davidka immediately turned around, and, clumsily lifting his stout leg encased in a huge dirty boot over the threshold, took refuge in the opposite door.

“What shall I do with him, father?” continued Arína, turning to the prince. “You yourself see what he is. He is not a bad man;165 doesn’t get drunk, and is peaceable; wouldn’t hurt a little child. It’s a sin to say hard things of him. There’s nothing bad about him, and God knows what has taken place in him to make him so bad to himself. You see he himself does not like it. Would you believe it, father,166 my heart bleeds when I look at him, and see what suffering he undergoes. You see, whatever he is, he is my son. I pity him. Oh, how I pity him!⁠ ⁠… You see, it isn’t as though he had done anything against me or his father or the authorities. But, no: he’s a bashful man, almost like a child. How can he bear to be a widower? Help us out, benefactor,” she said once more, evidently desirous of removing the unfavorable impression which her bitter words might have left upon the prince. “Father, your excellency, I”⁠—She went on to say in a confidential whisper, “My wit does not go far enough to explain him. It seems as though bad men had spoiled him.”

She paused for a moment.

“If we could find the men, we might cure him.”

“What nonsense you talk, Arína! How can he be spoiled?”

“My father, they spoil him so that they make him a no-man forever! Many bad people in the world! Out of ill-will they take a handful of earth from out of one’s path, or something of that sort; and one is made a no-man forever after. Isn’t that a sin? I think to myself, Might I not go to the old man Danduk, who lives at Vorobyevka? He knows all sorts of words; and he knows herbs, and he can make charms; and he finds water with a cross. Wouldn’t he help me?” said the woman. “Maybe he will cure him.”

“What abjectness and superstition!” thought the young prince, shaking his head gloomily, and walking back with long strides through the village.

“What’s to be done with him? To leave him in this situation is impossible, both for myself and for the others and for him⁠—impossible,” he said to himself, counting off on his fingers these reasons.

“I cannot bear to see him in this plight; but how extricate him? He renders nugatory all my best plans for the management of the estate. If such peasants are allowed, none of my dreams will ever be realized,” he went on, experiencing a feeling of despite and anger against the peasant in consequence of the ruin of his plans. “To send him to Siberia, as Yakof suggests, against his will, would that be good for him? or to make him a soldier? That is best. At least I should be quit of him, and I could replace him by a decent peasant.”

Such was his decision.

He thought about this with satisfaction; but at the same time something obscurely told him that he was thinking with only one side of his mind, and not wholly right.

He paused.

“I will think about it some more,” he said to himself. “To send him off as a soldier⁠—why? He is a good man, better than many; and I know.⁠ ⁠… Shall I free him?” he asked himself, putting the question from a different side of his mind. “It wouldn’t be fair. Yes, it’s impossible.”

But suddenly a thought occurred to him that greatly pleased him. He smiled with the expression of a man who has decided a difficult question.

“I will take him to the house,” he said to himself. “I will look after him myself; and by means of kindness and advice, and selecting his employment, I will teach him to work, and reform him.”

XIII

“That’s the way I’ll do,” said Nekhliudof to himself with a pleasant self-consciousness; and then, recollecting that he had still to go to the rich peasant Dutlof, he directed his steps toward a lofty and ample establishment, with two chimneys, standing in the midst of the village.

As he passed a neighboring hut on his way thither, he stopped to speak with a tall, disorderly-looking peasant-woman of forty summers, who came to meet him.

“A pleasant holiday, father,”167 she said, with some show of assurance, stopping at a little distance from him with a pleased smile and a low obeisance.

“Good morning, my nurse. How are you? I was just going to see your neighbor.”

“Pretty well, your excellency, my father. It’s a good idea. But won’t you come in? I beg you to. My old man would be very pleased.”

“Well, I’ll come; and we’ll have a little talk with you, nurse. Is this your house?”

“It is, sir.”168

And the nurse led the way into the hut. Nekhliudof followed her into the entry, and sat