The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents)

by Leo Tolstoy

  Nekhludoff tore himself loose, and, without bowing or saying anything, gloomily passed through the reception-room, the parlor and by the lackeys, who sprang to their feet in the ante-chamber, to the street.

  "What is the matter with him? What did you do to him?" Annette asked her husband.

  "That is à la française," said some one.

  "Rather à la zoulon."

  "Oh, he has always been queer."

  Some one arose, some one arrived, and the chirping continued.

  The following morning Nekhludoff received from Maslenikoff a letter on heavy, glossy paper, bearing a coat-of-arms and seals, written in a fine, firm hand, in which he said that he had written to the prison physician asking that Maslova be transferred, and that he hoped his request would be acceded to. It was signed, "Your loving senior comrade," followed by a remarkably skillful flourish.

  "Fool!" Nekhludoff could not help exclaiming, especially because he felt that by the word "comrade" Maslenikoff was condescending, i. e., although he considered himself a very important personage, he nevertheless was not too proud of his greatness, and called himself his comrade.

  CHAPTER LVII.

  One of the most popular superstitions consists in the belief that every man is endowed with definite qualities--that some men are kind, some wicked; some wise, some foolish; some energetic, some apathetic, etc. This is not true. We may say of a man that he is oftener kind than wicked; oftener wise than foolish; oftener energetic than apathetic, and vice versa. But it would not be true to say of one man that he is always kind or wise, and of another that he is always wicked or foolish. And yet we thus divide people. This is erroneous. Men are like rivers--the water in all of them, and at every point, is the same, but every one of them is now narrow, now swift, now wide, now calm, now clear, now cold, now muddy, now warm. So it is with men. Every man bears within him the germs of all human qualities, sometimes manifesting one quality, sometimes another; and often does not resemble himself at all, manifesting no change. With some people these changes are particularly sharp. And to this class Nekhludoff belonged. These changes in him had both physical and spiritual causes; and one of these changes he was now undergoing.

  That feeling of solemnity and joy of rejuvenation which he had experienced after the trial and after his first meeting with Katiousha had passed away, and, after the last meeting, fear and even disgust toward her had taken its place. He was also conscious that his duty was burdensome to him. He had decided not to leave her, to carry out his intention of marrying her, if she so desired; but this was painful and tormenting to him.

  On the day following his visit to Maslenikoff he again went to the prison to see her.

  The inspector permitted him to see her; not in the office, however, nor in the lawyer's room, but in the women's visiting-room. Notwithstanding his kind-heartedness, the inspector was more reserved than formerly. Evidently Nekhludoff's conversations with Maslenikoff had resulted in instructions being given to be more careful with this visitor.

  "You may see her," he said, "only please remember what I told you as to giving her money. And as to her transfer to the hospital, about which His Excellency has written, there is no objection to it, and the physician also consented. But she herself does not wish it. 'I don't care to be chambermaid to that scurvy lot,' she said. That is the kind of people they are, Prince," he added.

  Nekhludoff made no answer and asked to be admitted to her. The inspector sent the warden, and Nekhludoff followed him into the empty visiting-room.

  Maslova was already there, quietly and timidly emerging from behind the grating. She approached close to Nekhludoff, and, looking past him, quietly said:

  "Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovich; I have spoken improperly the other day."

  "It is not for me to forgive you----" Nekhludoff began.

  "But you must leave me," she added, and in the fearfully squinting eyes with which she glanced at him Nekhludoff again saw a strained and spiteful expression.

  [Illustration: EASTER SERVICES.]

  "But why should I leave you?"

  "So."

  "Why so?"

  She again looked at him with that spiteful glance, as it seemed to him.

  "Well, then, I will tell you," she said. "You leave me--I tell you that truly. I cannot. You must drop that entirely," she said, with quivering lips, and became silent. "That is true. I would rather hang myself."

  Nekhludoff felt that in this answer lurked a hatred for him, an unforgiven wrong, but also something else--something good and important. This reiteration of her refusal in a perfectly calm state destroyed in Nekhludoff's soul all his doubts, and brought him back to his former grave, solemn and benign state of mind.

  "Katiousha, I repeat what I said," he said, with particular gravity. "I ask you to marry me. If, however, you do not wish to, and so long as you do not wish to, I will be wherever you will be, and follow you wherever you may be sent."

  "That is your business. I will speak no more," she said, and again her lips quivered.

  He was also silent, feeling that he had no strength to speak.

  "I am now going to the country, and from there to St. Petersburg," he said finally. "I will press your--our case, and with God's help the sentence will be set aside."

  "I don't care if they don't. I deserved it, if not for that, for something else," she said, and he saw what great effort she had to make to repress her tears.

  "Well, have you seen Menshova?" she asked suddenly, in order to hide her agitation. "They are innocent, are they not?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Such a wonderful little woman!" she said.

  He related everything he had learned from Menshova, and asked her if she needed anything. She said she needed nothing.

  They were silent again.

  "Well, and as to the hospital," she said suddenly, casting on him her squinting glance, "if you wish me to go, I will go; and I will stop wine drinking, too."

  Nekhludoff silently looked in her eyes. They were smiling.

  "That is very good," was all he could say.

  "Yes, yes; she is an entirely different person," thought Nekhludoff, for the first time experiencing, after his former doubts, the to him entirely new feeling of confidence in the invincibility of love.

  * * * * *

  Returning to her ill-smelling cell, Maslova removed her coat and sat down on her cot, her hands resting on her knees. In the cell were only the consumptive with her babe, the old woman, Menshova, and the watch-woman with her two children. The deacon's daughter had been removed to the hospital; the others were washing. The old woman lay on the cot sleeping; the children were in the corridor, the door to which was open. The consumptive with the child in her arms and the watch-woman, who did not cease knitting a stocking with her nimble fingers, approached Maslova.

  "Well, have you seen him?" they asked.

  Maslova dangled her feet, which did not reach the floor, and made no answer.

  "What are you whimpering about?" said the watch-woman. "Above all, keep up your spirits. Oh, Katiousha! Well?" she said, rapidly moving her fingers.

  Maslova made no answer.

  "The women went washing. They say that to-day's alms were larger. Many things have been brought, they say," said the consumptive.

  "Finashka!" shouted the watch-woman. "Where are you, you little rogue?" She drew out one of the knitting needles, stuck it into the ball of thread and stocking, and went out into the corridor.

  At this moment the inmates of the cell, with bare feet in their prison shoes, entered, each bearing a loaf of twisted bread, some even two. Theodosia immediately approached Maslova.

  "Why, anything wrong?" she asked, lovingly, looking with her bright, blue eyes at Maslova. "And here is something for our tea," and she placed the leaves on the shelf.

  "Well, has he changed his mind about marrying you?" asked Korableva.

  "No, he has not, but I do not wish to," answered Maslova, "and I told him so."

  "What a fool!"
said Korableva, in her basso voice.

  "What is the good of marrying if they cannot live together?" asked Theodosia.

  "Is not your husband going with you?" answered the watch-woman.

  "We are legally married," said Theodosia. "But why should he marry her legally if he cannot live with her?"

  "What a fool! Why, if he marries her he will make her rich!"

  "He said: 'Wherever you may be, I will be with you,'" said Maslova.

  "He may go if he likes; he needn't if he don't. I will not ask him. He is now going to St. Petersburg to try to get me out. All the ministers there are his relatives," she continued, "but I don't care for them."

  "Sure enough," Korableva suddenly assented, reaching down into her bag, and evidently thinking of something else. "What do you say--shall we have some wine?"

  "Not I," answered Maslova. "Drink yourselves."

  PART SECOND

  CHAPTER I.

  The Senate could hear the case in two weeks, and by that time Nekhludoff intended to be in St. Petersburg, and, in case of an adverse decision, to petition the Emperor, as the lawyer had advised. In case the appeal failed, for which, his lawyer had told him, he must be prepared, as the grounds of appeal were very weak, the party of convicts to which Maslova belonged would be transported in May. It was therefore necessary, in order to be prepared to follow Maslova to Siberia, upon which Nekhludoff was firmly resolved, to go to the villages and arrange his affairs there.

  First of all, he went to the Kusminskoie estate, the nearest, largest black-earth estate, which brought the greatest income. He had lived on the estate in his childhood and youth, and had also twice visited it in his manhood, once when, upon the request of his mother, he brought a German manager with whom he went over the affairs of the estate. So that he knew its condition and the relations the peasants sustained toward the office, i. e., the landowner. Their relations toward the office were such that they have always been in absolute dependence upon it. Nekhludoff had already known it when as a student he professed and preached the doctrines of Henry George, and in carrying out which he had distributed his father's estate among the peasants. True, after his military career, when he was spending twenty thousand rubles a year, those doctrines ceased to be necessary to the life he was leading, were forgotten, and not only did he not ask himself where the money came from, but tried not to think of it. But the death of his mother, the inheritance, and the necessity of taking care of his property, i. e., his lands, again raised the question in his mind of his relation to private ownership of land. A month before Nekhludoff would have argued that he was powerless to change the existing order of things; that he was not managing the estate, and living and receiving his income far away from the estate, would feel more or less at ease. But now he resolved that, although there was before him a trip to Siberia and complex and difficult relations to the prison world, for which social standing, and especially money, were necessary, he could not, nevertheless, leave his affairs in their former condition, but must, to his own detriment, change them. For this purpose he had decided not to work the land himself, but, by renting it at a low price to the peasants, to make it possible for them to live independent of the landlord. Often, while comparing the position of the landlord with that of the owner of serfs, Nekhludoff found a parallel in the renting of the land to the peasants, instead of working it by hired labor, to what the slave-owners did when they substituted tenancy for serfdom. That did not solve the question, but it was a step toward its solution; it was a transition from a grosser to a less gross form of ownership of man. He also intended to act thus.

  Nekhludoff arrived at Kusminskoie about noon. In everything simplifying his life, he did not wire from the station of his arrival, but hired a two-horse country coach. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen regulation coat, belted below the waist, sitting sidewise on the box. He was the more willing to carry on a conversation because the broken-down, lame, emaciated, foaming shaft-horse could then walk, which these horses always preferred.

  The driver spoke about the manager of the Kusminskoie estate, not knowing that he was carrying its master, Nekhludoff purposely refrained from enlightening him.

  "A dandy German," he said, turning half around, cracking his long whip now over the heads, now under the horses. "There is nothing here to compare with his fine team of three bay horses. You ought to see him driving out with his wife! I took some guests to his house last Christmas--he had a fine tree. You couldn't find the like of it in the whole district! He robbed everybody, right and left. But what does he care? He is bossing everybody. They say he bought a fine estate."

  Nekhludoff thought that he was indifferent to the manner of the German's management, and to the way he was profiting by it. But the story of the driver with the long waist was unpleasant to him. He was enchanted with the fine weather; the darkening clouds, sometimes obscuring the sun; the fields over which the larks soared; the woods, just covering up the top and bottom with green; the meadows on which the flocks and horses browsed, and the fields on which plowmen were already seen--but a feeling of dissatisfaction crept over him. And when he asked himself the reason for it, he recalled the driver's account of the German's management.

  But by the time he was busying himself with the affairs of Kusminskoie he had forgotten it.

  After an examination of the books and his conversation with the clerk, who artlessly set forth the advantages of the peasants having small holdings and the fact that they were hemmed in by the master's land, Nekhludoff grew only more determined to put an end to his ownership, and give the land to the peasants. From the books and his conversations with the clerk he learned that, as before, two-thirds of the best arable land was cultivated by his own men, and the rest by peasants who were paid five rubles per acre--that is to say, for five rubles the peasant undertook to plow, harrow and sow an acre of land three times, then mow it, bind or press it, and carry it to the barn. In other words, he was paid five rubles for what hired, cheap labor would cost at least ten rubles. Again, the prices paid by the peasants to the office for necessaries were enormous. They worked for meadow, for wood, for potatoe seed, and they were almost all in debt to the office. Thus, the rent charged the peasants for lands beyond the fields was four times as great as it could bring on a five per cent. basis.

  Nekhludoff knew all that before, but he was now learning it as something new, and only wondered why he and all those who stood in a similar position could fail to see the enormity of such relations. The arguments of the clerk that not one-fourth of the value of the stock could be realized on a sale, that the peasants would permit the land to run to waste, only strengthened his determination and confirmed him in his belief that he was doing a good deed by giving the land to the peasants, and depriving himself of the greater part of his income. Desiring to dispose of the land forthwith, he asked the manager to call together the peasants of the three villages surrounded by his lands the very next day, for the purpose of declaring to them his intention and agreeing with them as to the price.

  With a joyful consciousness of his firmness, in spite of the arguments of the manager, and his readiness to make sacrifices for the peasants, Nekhludoff left the office, and, reflecting on the coming arrangement, he strolled around the house, through the flower-garden, which lay opposite the manager's house, and was neglected this year; over the lawn-tennis ground, overgrown with chicory, and through the alleys lined with lindens, where it had been his wont to smoke his cigar, and where, three years before, the pretty visitor, Kirimova, flirted with him. Having made an outline of a speech, which he was to deliver to the peasants the following day, Nekhludoff went to the manager's house, and after further deliberating upon the proper disposition of the stock, he calmly and contentedly retired to a room prepared for him in the large building.

  In this clean room, the walls of which were covered with views of Venice, and with a mirror hung between two windows, there was placed a clean spring bedstead and a small table with water and matches. On
a large table near the mirror lay his open traveling-bag with toilet articles and books which he brought with him; one Russian book on criminology, one in German, and a third in English treating of the same subject. He intended to read them in spare moments while traveling through the villages, but as he looked on them now he felt that his mind was far from these subjects. Something entirely different occupied him.

  In one corner of the room there stood an ancient arm-chair with incrustations, and the sight of this chair standing in his mother's bed-room suddenly raised in his soul an unexpected feeling. He suddenly felt sorry for the house that would decay, the gardens which would be neglected, the woods which would be cut down, and all the cattle-houses, courts, stables, sheds, machinery, horses, cows which had been accumulated with such effort, although not by him. At first it seemed to him easy to abandon all that, but now he was loth to part with it, as well as the land and one-half of the income which would be so useful now. And immediately serviceable arguments come to his aid, by which it appeared that it was not wise to give the land to the peasants and destroy his estate.