1
MASLOVA’S case was likely to come before the Senate in a fortnight’s time, and Nekhlyudov meant to be in Petersburg by then, so that if matters went wrong he would be able to petition the Emperor, as the lawyer who had drawn up the appeal had advised him to do. Should the appeal prove fruitless – and according to the lawyer it was best to be prepared for that, since the grounds for appeal were so slight – the party of convicts which included Maslova might start off early in June. Therefore, in order to be ready to follow her to Siberia, which was Nekhlyudov’s firm intention, it was necessary for him to visit his estates and settle matters there.
Nekhlyudov went first to the nearest, Kuzminskoye, a large estate in the black soil belt, from which he derived the bulk of his income. He had lived on this estate in his childhood and youth, and had been there twice since. On one occasion, at his mother’s request, he had taken a German bailiff with him and gone over the whole property, so that he was familiar with the condition of the estate and knew the relations the peasants bore to the ‘office’ (that is, to the landlord). These relations were such that the peasants were – to put it nicely – entirely dependent on his management, or – to speak plainly – in a state of servitude to the office. It was not active serfdom such as had been abolished in the year 1861 (the thraldom of certain persons to their master) but a general state of serfdom among persons owning no land, or very little, vis-à-vis the great landlords in general and primarily, and sometimes solely, those among whom the peasants lived. Nekhlyudov knew this, he could not be ignorant of it, since the economy of his estates was based on this serfdom, and he had assisted in the setting up of this economy. But not only was this known to Nekhlyudov – he knew, too, that it was unjust and cruel, and had known it since he was a university student, when he had accepted and advocated the teaching of Henry George and, in accordance with that teaching, had given to the peasants the land left to him by his father, considering the ownership of land just such a sin in our time as the ownership of serfs had been fifty years ago. It is true that when he left the army, where he got into the habit of spending some twenty thousand roubles a year, he ceased to regard his former views as binding, and they were forgotten, and he not only entirely left off inquiring into his attitude to property and where the money came from that his mother allowed him but tried not to think about it. But his mother’s death, his own subsequent inheritance and the necessity of managing his estate, that is, the land, brought up again the question of his attitude to the private ownership of land. A month ago Nekhlyudov would have told himself that he could not change the existing order of things, that it was not he who was managing the estate; and one way or another would have eased his conscience, living as he did at a distance from his estates and having the money sent to him. But now he decided that he could not leave matters as they stood, even though he had the journey to Siberia before him, as well as a complicated and difficult relationship with the prison world, which would require money: he must make a change, though he would be the loser by it. Therefore he decided not to farm the land himself but to let it out to the peasants at a low rent, thus giving them a chance to become independent of the landowner in general. Many a time, comparing the position of a landowner with that of an owner of serfs, Nekhlyudov had equated the renting of land to the peasants (instead of cultivating it with hired labour) with the old system of making serfs pay quit-rent in lieu of their labour. This was not a solution to the problem, but it was a step in that direction: it was a change from a harsh to a less harsh form of tyranny. And this was what he meant to do. Nekhlyudov arrived at Kuzminskoye around noon. Trying to simplify his life in every respect, he did not telegraph but at the station hired a peasant trap with two horses. The driver was a young fellow in a long-waisted, full-skirted nankeen coat, belted low. He sat sideways on the box, like a country driver, and was glad to talk to the gentleman since while they were talking his jaded, lame white wheeler and the emaciated, broken-winded trace-horse could go at a foot-pace, which was what they always liked.
The driver spoke about the bailiff at Kuzminskoye, not knowing that he was driving ‘the master’. Nekhlyudov had purposely not told him who he was.
‘Aproper swell, that German fellow,’ said the driver, who had lived in the town and read novels. He was sitting sideways, half turned towards his fare, grasping his long whip now at the top, now at the bottom, and obviously showing off his education. ‘Got ’isself a troika of light bays, an’ when ’e drives out with ’is lady – oh my!’ he went on. ‘At Christmas ’e ’ad a tree up at the big ’ouse. I drove some of the company. It ’ad ’lectric lights. There wasn’t the like of it in the ’ole countryside. The money ‘e ‘as raked in – you wouldn’t believe! ’E can ’ave any mortal thing ‘e wants. They say ’e’s bought ’isself a fine estate.’
Nekhlyudov had imagined that he was quite indiffèrent to the way the German managed and made use of his estate. But the long-waisted driver’s story was disagreeable hearing. He enjoyed the beautiful day; the heavy darkening clouds that every now and again obscured the sun; the fields of spring grain where the peasants were walking behind their ploughs, hoeing the young oats; the thickly sprouting verdure with the larks soaring overhead; the woods with the trees – except for the tardy oak – all covered with young foliage; the meadows dotted with grazing cattle and horses; and the fields and the ploughmen in the distance – but no, no, it suddenly came back to him that something disagreeable had happened, and when he asked himself what it was he remembered the driver’s story about the way his German bailiff had been managing his Kuzminskoye estate.
But once he reached Kuzminskoye and set to work Nekhlyudov forgot about the unpleasant feeling he had had.
An examination of the account books and a talk with the bailiff, who artlessly pointed out the advantages deriving from the fact that the peasants had very little land of their own, and what they had was surrounded by the landlord’s fields, made Nekhlyudov all the more determined to give up farming and let all the land to the peasants. From the ledgers and discussion with the bailiff he discovered that, as before, two-thirds of the finest arable land was being worked by hired labour and improved machinery, while the remaining third was tilled by peasants who were paid five roubles a desyatina1 – that is to say, for five roubles a peasant had to plough each desyatina three times, harrow it three times, sow and reap the corn, tie it into sheaves or scythe and deliver it to the threshing-floor: in other words, perform work which at the cheapest hired rate would cost at least ten roubles. Moreover, the peasants paid with their labour – and dearly, too – for everything they got from the estate. They paid with their labour for the use of meadow-land, for wood and potato tops, and nearly all of them were in debt to the office. Thus the peasants paid four times as much for the land which they rented beyond the cultivated fields as the owner could have got by selling it and investing the proceeds at five per cent.
Nekhlyudov had known all this before, but it now struck him as something fresh, and he only marvelled how it was that he and others in his position could help seeing the abnormity of such a state of affairs. The bailiff’s arguments that if the land were let to the peasants the agricultural implements would fetch next to nothing – they could not be sold for a quarter of their value; the peasants would ruin the land; and in general Nekhlyudov would lose a great deal through the transfer, only strengthened Nekhlyudov’s conviction that he was doing the right thing in giving the land to the peasants and depriving himself of a large part of his income. He decided to settle the business on the spot, while he was there. The harvesting, the selling of the crops and agricultural implements and of the useless out-buildings, he would leave to the bailiff after his departure. But now he asked the bailiff to call a meeting for the next day of the peasants from the three villages lying in the midst of his Kuzminskoye estate, so that he could tell them what he meant to do and arrange the terms at which they were to rent the land.
Pleased with himself for the firmness he had shown in face of the bailiff’s arguments and for his readiness to make a sacrifice, Nekhlyudov left the office and, thinking over the business before him, strolled round the outside of the house through the neglected flower-garden (this year flowers had been planted only in front of the bailiff’s house), across the tennis court, now overgrown with succory, and along the avenue of lime-trees where he used to go to smoke his cigar and where he had flirted with the pretty Kirimova girl when she had been staying with his mother three years ago. After he had planned the speech he would make to the peasants next day he went back to the bailiff and over tea discussed with him again how to wind up the whole estate. Then he withdrew, quite calm and contented, to the bedroom prepared for him in the big house which had always been used for guests.
A clean bed with a spring mattress had been placed in this neat little room, with views of Venice on the walls, a looking-glass between the two windows and a small table on which stood a decanter of water, some matches and a candle-snuffer. On a large table by the looking-glass lay his open portmanteau, showing his dressing-case and some books he had brought with him: one in Russian, dealing with research into the laws of criminality, another in German and a third in English on the same subject, which he meant to read during his leisure moments while travelling to and fro between his estates, but it was too late today, and he prepared to go to bed so as to be able to get up early and be ready for the meeting with the peasants.
An old-fashioned inlaid mahogany arm-chair stood in one corner of the room, and the sight of this chair, which Nekhlyudov remembered as having been in his mother’s bedroom, suddenly evoked a totally unexpected emotion in his heart. All at once he felt sorry for the house that would tumble to ruin, the garden that would run wild, the forest that would be cut down, and all the barns, stables, tool-sheds, the machinery, the horses and the cows, which he knew had cost so much effort – though not to himself – to acquire and to maintain. He had thought it would be easy to give it all up, but now he regretted not only all this but the land, too, and the loss of half his income, which he might so well have need of now. And instantly arguments to show that it would not be proper to give the land to the peasants and destroy his estate came to his aid.
‘I have no right to own land. And if I don’t I can’t keep up the house and the farm. Besides, I shall very soon be going to Siberia, and then I shall have no need of either the house or the farm,’ said one voice. ‘All that is true,’ said another, ‘but, to begin with, you are not going to spend all your life in Siberia. And if you marry, there may be children, and just as you received the estate in good condition, so you must hand it over to them. There is a duty to the land, too. It is easy enough to give it all up and let it go to ruin, but acquiring it was far from easy. But most important of all – you ought to take time for reflection and consider what it is you intend to do with your life, and arrange for your property accordingly. But are you sure of yourself? Then again – are you acting sincerely, as your conscience dictates, or are you posing for effect, to win people’s applause?’ Nekhlyudov asked himself, and was forced to admit that he was influenced by the thought of what people would say about him. And the longer he pondered, the more questions presented themselves and the more unsolvable they became. To escape from his thoughts he got into his spotless bed and tried to go to sleep, in the hope of waking with a clear head which would find the answer to the problems that were now such an enigma to him. But he could not sleep for a long time. Together with the crisp air and the moonlight, the croaking of frogs poured in through the open windows, broken by the clicking and trilling of the nightingales far away in the park – and one close to the window, in a lilac bush in bloom. Listening to the nightingales and the frogs, Nekhlyudov remembered the playing of the superintendent’s daughter; then he thought of the superintendent; that brought him to Maslova, whose Lips had quivered, like the croaking of the frogs, when she said, ‘You leave me alone.’ Then the German bailiff began going down to the frogs, and had to be held back, but he not only got right down but turned into Maslova, saying with reproach: ‘You are a prince, and I am a convict.’
‘No, I won’t give up,’ thought Nekhlyudov, waking, and he asked himself: ‘Well, am I doing right or wrong? I don’t know, and anyway it makes no difference to me. No difference at all. The thing is to get to sleep.’ And now he himself started to slip slowly down where the bailiff and Maslova had gone, and there he knew no more.