Chapter XI
In the middle of July the elder of the
village on Levin’s sister’s estate, about fifteen miles from
Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on how things were going there
and on the hay. The chief source of income on his sister’s estate
was from the riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been
bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When
Levin took over the management of the estate, he thought on
examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed
the price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants
would not give that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other
purchasers. Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to
have the grass cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a
certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every
hindrance they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it was
carried out, and the first year the meadows had yielded a profit
almost double. The previous year—which was the third year—the
peasants had maintained the same opposition to the arrangement, and
the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the peasants
were doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the
village elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut,
and that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-house clerk
over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked together
eleven stacks as the owner’s share. From the vague answers to his
question how much hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from
the hurry of the village elder who had made the division, not
asking leave, from the whole tone of the peasant, Levin perceived
that there was something wrong in the division of the hay, and made
up his mind to drive over himself to look into the matter.
Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his
horse at the cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his
brother’s wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his
bee-house, wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay.
Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm
welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him everything about his
bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and unwilling
answers to Levin’s inquiries about the mowing. This confirmed Levin
still more in his suspicions. He went to the hay-fields and
examined the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty
wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Levin ordered the
wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up directly, to lift
one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out to be only
thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village elder’s
assertions about the compressibility of hay, and its having settled
down in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done
in the fear of God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been
divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not
accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged
dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking these eleven
stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments and the
division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon. When the last
of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the superintendence
of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock
marked off by a stake of willow, and looked admiringly at the
meadow swarming with peasants.
In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond
the marsh, moved a bright-colored line of peasant women, and the
scattered hay was being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over
the pale green stubble. After the women came the men with
pitchforks, and from the gray rows there were growing up broad,
high, soft haycocks. To the left, carts were rumbling over the
meadow that had been already cleared, and one after another the
haycocks vanished, flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place
there were rising heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the
horses’ hind-quarters.
“What weather for haying! What hay it’ll be!” said
an old man, squatting down beside Levin. “It’s tea, not hay! It’s
like scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!” he
added, pointing to the growing haycocks. “Since dinner-time they’ve
carried a good half of it.”
“The last load, eh?” he shouted to a young peasant,
who drove by, standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the
cord reins.
“The last, dad!” the lad shouted back, pulling in
the horse, and, smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-cheeked
peasant girl who sat in the cart smiling too, and drove on.
“Who’s that? Your son?” asked Levin.
“My baby,” said the old man with a tender
smile.
“What a fine fellow!”
“The lad’s all right.”
“Married already?”
“Yes, it’s two years last St. Philip’s day.”1
“Any children?”
“Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was
innocent as a babe himself, and bashful too,” answered the old man.
“Well, the hay! It’s as fragrant as tea!” he repeated, wishing to
change the subject.
Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and
his wife. They were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from
him. Ivan Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in
place, and stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty
young wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then
on the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and
dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her
fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it, then
with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of her body
on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red belt she
drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the white smock,
with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung the bundle
of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to save
her every minute of unnecessary labor, made haste, opening his arms
to clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together
what was left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay
that had fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief
that had dropped forward over her white brow, not browned like her
face by the sun, she crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan
directed her how to fasten the cord to the crosspiece, and at
something she said he laughed aloud. In the expressions of both
faces was to be seen vigorous, young, freshly awakened love.