Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (i love reading .TXT) đ
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
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âYes, I think so.â
âSuch a splendid old woman,â she said.
There was another pause.
âWell, and as to the hospital?â she suddenly said, and looking at
him with her squinting eyes. âIf you like, I will go, and I shall
not drink any spirits, either.â
Nekhludoff looked into her eyes. They were smiling.
âYes, yes, she is quite a different being,â Nekhludoff thought.
After all his former doubts, he now felt something he had never
before experiencedâthe 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,
Menshoffâs old mother, and the watchmanâs wife. The deaconâs
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 watchmanâs children were in the corridor outside. The
Vladimir woman, with her baby in her arms, and the watchmanâs
wife, with the stocking she was knitting with deft fingers, came
up to Maslova. âWell, have you had a chat?â they asked. Maslova
sat silent on the high bedstead, swinging her legs, which did not
reach to the floor.
âWhatâs the good of snivelling?â said the watchmanâs wife. âThe
chief thingâs not to go down into the dumps. Eh, Katusha? Now,
then!â and she went on, quickly moving her fingers.
Maslova did not answer.
âAnd our women have all gone to wash,â said the Vladimir woman.
âI heard them say much has been given in alms to-day. Quite a lot
has been brought.â
âFinashka,â called out the watchmanâs wife, âwhereâs the little
imp gone to?â
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 womenâs 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.
âWhatâs the matter; is anything wrong?â Theodosia asked, looking
lovingly at Maslova with her clear, blue eyes. âThis is for our
tea,â and she put the rolls on a shelf.
âWhy, surely he has not changed his mind about marrying?â asked
Korableva.
âNo, he has not, but I donât wish to,â said Maslova, âand so I
told him.â
âMore fool you!â muttered Korableva in her deep tones.
âIf oneâs not to live together, whatâs the use of marrying?â said
Theodosia.
âThereâs your husbandâheâs going with you,â said the watchmanâs
wife.
âWell, of course, weâre married,â said Theodosia. âBut why should
he go through the ceremony if he is not to live with her?â
âWhy, indeed! Donât be a fool! You know if he marries her sheâll
roll in wealth,â said Korableva.
âHe says, âWherever they take you, Iâll follow,ââ said Maslova.
âIf he does, itâs 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,â she continued.
âOf course not,â suddenly agreed Korableva, evidently thinking
about something else as she sat examining her bag. âWell, shall
we have a drop?â
âYou have some,â replied Maslova. âI wonât.â
END OF BOOK I.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
PROPERTY IN LAND.
It was possible for Maslovaâs 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 motherâs request, he had
taken a German steward there, and had with him verified the
accounts. The state of things there and the peasantsâ 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
motherâs 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 âthe master.â Nekhludoff had purposely not
told him who he was.
âThat ostentatious German,â 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 accomplishmentsââthat ostentatious German has procured
three light bays, and when he drives out with his ladyâoh, my!
At Christmas he had a Christmas-tree in the big house. I drove
some of the visitors there. It had âlectric lights; you could
not see the like of it in the whole of the government. Whatâs it
to him, he has cribbed a heap of money. I heard say he has bought
an estate.â
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 landlordâs 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 stewardâs 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
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