"No, I think I had better go and see them at once," said Nekhludoff, with an unexpected feeling of shyness and shame at the thought of the conversation he was going to have with the peasants. He was going to fulfil a wish of the peasants, the fulfilment of which they did not even dare to hope for--to let the land to them at a low price, i.e., to confer a great boon; and yet he felt ashamed of something. When Nekhludoff came up to the peasants, and the fair, the curly, the bald, the grey heads were bared before him, he felt so confused that he could say nothing. The rain continued to come down in small drops, that remained on the hair, the beards, and the fluff of the men's rough coats. The peasants looked at "the master," waiting for him to speak, and he was so abashed that he could not speak. This confused silence was broken by the sedate, self-assured German steward, who considered himself a good judge of the Russian peasant, and who spoke Russian remarkably well. This strong, over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself, presented a striking contrast to the peasants, with their thin, wrinkled faces and the shoulder blades protruding beneath their coarse coats.
"Here's the Prince wanting to do you a favor, and to let the land to you; only you are not worthy of it," said the steward.
"How are we not worthy of it, Vasili Karlovitch? Don't we work for you? We were well satisfied with the deceased lady--God have mercy on her soul--and the young Prince will not desert us now. Our thanks to him," said a redhaired, talkative peasant.
"Yes, that's why I have called you together. I should like to let you have all the land, if you wish it."
The peasants said nothing, as if they did not understand or did not believe it.
"Let's see. Let us have the land? What do you mean?" asked a middleaged man.
"To let it to you, that you might have the use of it, at a low rent."
"A very agreeable thing," said an old man.
"If only the pay is such as we can afford," said another.
"There's no reason why we should not rent the land."
"We are accustomed to live by tilling the ground."
"And it's quieter for you, too, that way. You'll have to do nothing but receive the rent. Only think of all the sin and worry now!" several voices were heard saying.
"The sin is all on your side," the German remarked. "If only you did your work, and were orderly."
"That's impossible for the likes of us," said a sharp-nosed old man. "You say, 'Why do you let the horse get into the corn?' just as if I let it in. Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind, the livelong day, till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell asleep while watching the herd of horses at night, and it got into your oats, and now you're skinning me."
"And you should keep order."
"It's easy for you to talk about order, but it's more than our strength will bear," answered a tall, dark, hairy middleaged man.
"Didn't I tell you to put up a fence?"
"You give us the wood to make it of," said a short, plain-looking peasant. "I was going to put up a fence last year, and you put me to feed vermin in prison for three months. That was the end of that fence."
"What is it he is saying?" asked Nekhludoff, turning to the steward.
"Der ersto Dieb im Dorfe," [The greatest thief in the village] answered the steward in German. "He is caught stealing wood from the forest every year." Then turning to the peasant, he added, "You must learn to respect other people's property."
"Why, don't we respect you?" said an old man. "We are obliged to respect you. Why, you could twist us into a rope; we are in your hands."
"Eh, my friend, it's impossible to do you. It's you who are ever ready to do us," said the steward.
"Do you, indeed. Didn't you smash my jaw for me, and I got nothing for it? No good going to law with the rich, it seems."
"You should keep to the law."
A tournament of words was apparently going on without those who took part in it knowing exactly what it was all about; but it was noticeable that there was bitterness on one side, restricted by fear, and on the other a consciousness of importance and power. It was very trying to Nekhludoff to listen to all this, so he returned to the question of arranging the amount and the terms of the rent.
"Well, then, how about the land? Do you wish to take it, and what price will you pay if I let you have the whole of it?"
"The property is yours: it is for you to fix the price."
Nekhludoff named the price. Though it was far below that paid in the neighbourhood, the peasants declared it too high, and began bargaining, as is customary among them. Nekhludoff thought his offer would be accepted with pleasure, but no signs of pleasure were visible.
One thing only showed Nekhludoff that his offer was a profitable one to the peasants. The question as to who would rent the land, the whole commune or a special society, was put, and a violent dispute arose among those peasants who were in favour of excluding the weak and those not likely to pay the rent regularly, and the peasants who would have to be excluded on that score. At last, thanks to the steward, the amount and the terms of the rent were fixed, and the peasants went down the hill towards their villages, talking noisily, while Nekhludoff and the steward went into the office to make up the agreement. Everything was settled in the way Nekhludoff wished and expected it to be. The peasants had their land 30 per cent. cheaper than they could have got it anywhere in the district, the revenue from the land was diminished by half, but was more than sufficient for Nekhludoff, especially as there would be money coming in for a forest he sold, as well as for the agricultural implements, which would be sold, too. Everything seemed excellently arranged, yet he felt ashamed of something. He could see that the peasants, though they spoke words of thanks, were not satisfied, and had expected something greater. So it turned out that he had deprived himself of a great deal, and yet not done what the peasants had expected.
The next day the agreement was signed, and accompanied by several old peasants, who had been chosen as deputies, Nekhludoff went out, got into the steward's elegant equipage (as the driver from the station had called it), said "good-bye" to the peasants, who stood shaking their heads in a dissatisfied and disappointed manner, and drove off to the station. Nekhludoff was dissatisfied with himself without knowing why, but all the time he felt sad and ashamed of something.
CHAPTER III.
OLD ASSOCIATIONS.
From Kousminski Nekhludoff went to the estate he had inherited from his aunts, the same where he first met Katusha. He meant to arrange about the land there in the way he had done in Kousminski. Besides this, he wished to find out all he could about Katusha and her baby, and when and how it had died. He got to Panovo early one morning, and the first thing that struck him when he drove up was the look of decay and dilapidation that all the buildings bore, especially the house itself. The iron roofs, which had once been painted green, looked red with rust, and a few sheets of iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the planks which covered the house from outside were torn away in several places; these were easier to get by breaking the rusty nails that held them. Both porches, but especially the side porch he remembered so well, were rotten and broken; only the banister remained. Some of the windows were boarded up, and the building in which the foreman lived, the kitchen, the stables--all were grey and decaying. Only the garden had not decayed, but had grown, and was in full bloom; from over the fence the cherry, apple, and plum trees looked like white clouds. The lilac bushes that formed the hedge were in full bloom, as they had been when, 14 years ago, Nekhludoff had played gorelki with the 15-year-old Katusha, and had fallen and got his hand stung by the nettles behind one of those lilac bushes. The larch that his aunt Sophia had planted near the house, which then was only a short stick, had grown into a tree, the trunk of which would have made a beam, and its branches were covered with soft yellow green needles as with down. The river, now within its banks, rushed noisily over the mill dam. The meadow the other side of the river was dotted over by the peasants' mixed herds. The foreman, a student, wh
o had left the seminary without finishing the course, met Nekhludoff in the yard, with a smile on his face, and, still smiling, asked him to come into the office, and, as if promising something exceptionally good by this smile, he went behind a partition. For a moment some whispering was heard behind the partition. The isvostchik who had driven Nekhludoff from the station, drove away after receiving a tip, and all was silent. Then a barefooted girl passed the window; she had on an embroidered peasant blouse, and long earrings in her ears; then a man walked past, clattering with his nailed boots on the trodden path.
Nekhludoff sat down by the little casement, and looked out into the garden and listened. A soft, fresh spring breeze, smelling of newly-dug earth, streamed in through the window, playing with the hair on his damp forehead and the papers that lay on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife.
"Tra-pa-trop, tra-pa-trop," comes a sound from the river, as the women who were washing clothes there slapped them in regular measure with their wooden bats, and the sound spread over the glittering surface of the mill pond while the rhythmical sound of the falling water came from the mill, and a frightened fly suddenly flew loudly buzzing past his ear.
And all at once Nekhludoff remembered how, long ago, when he was young and innocent, he had heard the women's wooden bats slapping the wet clothes above the rhythmical sound from the mill, and in the same way the spring breeze had blown about the hair on his wet forehead and the papers on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife, and just in the same way a fly had buzzed loudly past his car.
It was not exactly that he remembered himself as a lad of 15, but he seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, with the same freshness and purity, and full of the same grand possibilities for the future, and at the same time, as it happens in a dream, he knew that all this could be no more, and he felt terribly sad. "At what time would you like something to eat?" asked the foreman, with a smile.
"When you like; I am not hungry. I shall go for a walk through the village."
"Would you not like to come into the house? Everything is in order there. Have the goodness to look in. If the outside---"
"Not now; later on. Tell me, please, have you got a woman here called Matrona Kharina?" (This was Katusha's aunt, the village midwife.)
"Oh, yes; in the village she keeps a secret pot-house. I know she does, and I accuse her of it and scold her; but as to taking her up, it would be a pity. An old woman, you know; she has grandchildren," said the foreman, continuing to smile in the same manner, partly wishing to be pleasant to the master, and partly because he was convinced that Nekhludoff understood all these matters just as well as he did himself.
"Where does she live? I shall go across and see her."
"At the end of the village; the further side, the third from the end. To the left there is a brick cottage, and her hut is beyond that. But I'd better see you there," the foreman said with a graceful smile.
"No, thanks, I shall find it; and you be so good as to call a meeting of the peasants, and tell them that I want to speak to them about the land," said Nekhludoff, with the intention of coming to the same agreement with the peasants here as he had done in Kousminski, and, if possible, that same evening.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PEASANTS' LOT.
When Nekhludoff came out of the gate he met the girl with the long earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture ground, overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long, brightly-coloured apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in front of herself as she stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With her right arm she was pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with red comb shaking, seemed perfectly calm; he only rolled up his eyes and stretched out and drew in one black leg, clawing the girl's apron. When the girl came nearer to "the master," she began moving more slowly, and her run changed into a walk. When she came up to him she stopped, and, after a backward jerk with her head, bowed to him; and only when he had passed did she recommence to run homeward with the cock. As he went down towards the well, he met an old woman, who had a coarse dirty blouse on, carrying two pails full of water, that hung on a yoke across her bent back. The old woman carefully put down the pails and bowed, with the same backward jerk of her head.
After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a bright, hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o'clock. At intervals the sun was hidden by the gathering clouds. An unpleasant, sharp smell of manure filled the air in the street. It came from carts going up the hillside, but chiefly from the disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts, by the open gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants, barefooted, their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look at the tall, stout gentleman with the glossy silk ribbon on his grey hat who was walking up the village street, touching the ground every other step with a shiny, bright-knobbed walking-stick. The peasants returning from the fields at a trot and jotting in their empty carts, took off their hats, and, in their surprise, followed with their eyes the extraordinary man who was walking up their street. The women came out of the gates or stood in the porches of their huts, pointing him out to each other and gazing at him as he passed.
When Nekhludoff was passing the fourth gate, he was stopped by a cart that was coming out, its wheels creaking, loaded high with manure, which was pressed down, and was covered with a mat to sit on. A six-year-old boy, excited by the prospect of a drive, followed the cart. A young peasant, with shoes plaited out of bark on his feet, led the horse out of the yard. A long-legged colt jumped out of the gate; but, seeing Nekhludoff, pressed close to the cart, and scraping its legs against the wheels, jumped forward, past its excited, gently-neighing mother, as she was dragging the heavy load through the gateway. The next horse was led out by a barefooted old man, with protruding shoulder-blades, in a dirty shirt and striped trousers.
When the horses got out on to the hard road, strewn over with bits of dry, grey manure, the old man returned to the gate, and bowed to Nekhludoff.
"You are our ladies' nephew, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am their nephew."
"You've kindly come to look us up, eh?" said the garrulous old man.
"Yes, I have. Well, how are you getting on?"
"How do we get on? We get on very badly," the old man drawled, as if it gave him pleasure.
"Why so badly?" Nekhludoff asked, stepping inside the gate.
"What is our life but the very worst life?" said the old man, following Nekhludoff into that part of the yard which was roofed over.
Nekhludoff stopped under the roof.
"I have got 12 of them there," continued the old man, pointing to two women on the remainder of the manure heap, who stood perspiring with forks in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off their heads, with their skirts tucked up, showing the calves of their dirty, bare legs. "Not a month passes but I have to buy six poods [a pood is 36 English pounds] of corn, and where's the money to come from?"
"Have you not got enough corn of your own?"
"My own?" repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; "why I have only got land for three, and last year we had not enough to last till Christmas."
"What do you do then?"
"What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I borrowed some money from your honour. We spent it all before Lent, and the tax is not paid yet."
"And how much is the tax?"
"Why, it's 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life!
One hardly knows one's self how one manages to live it."
"May I go into your hut?" asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the yard over the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked up by the forks, and were giving off a strong smell.
"Why not? Come in," said the old man, and stepping quickly with his bare feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his toes, he passed Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.
The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down their skirts, and stood l
ooking with surprise at the clean gentleman with gold studs to his sleeves who was entering their house. Two little girls, with nothing on but coarse chemises, rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff took off his hat, and, stooping to get through the low door, entered, through a passage into the dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food, and where much space was taken up by two weaving looms. In the hut an old woman was standing by the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her thin, sinewy brown arms.
"Here is our master come to see us," said the old man.
"I'm sure he's very welcome," said the old woman, kindly.
"I would like to see how you live."
"Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might kill one any day; but my old man he says it's good enough, and so we live like kings," said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking her head. "I'm getting the dinner; going to feed the workers."
"And what are you going to have for dinner?"
"Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a kind of sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course, kvas and bread," said the old woman, showing her teeth, which were half worn away.