3
FROM Kuzminskoye Nekhlyudov drove to the estate he had inherited from his aunts – the one where he first met Katusha. He meant to make the same arrangement about the land there as he had at Kuzminskoye; he also wanted to find out everything he could about Katusha and their child: whether it was true that it had died, and how it had died. He got to Panovo early in the morning and the first thing that struck him as he drove into the courtyard was the air of decay and neglect that hung over all the buildings, and particularly the house itself. The sheet-iron roof, which had once been green but had not been painted for a long time, was now red with rust, and several sheets were bent back, probably after a storm; some of the weather-boarding had been torn away wherever it could be easily got at by loosening the rusty nails. Both porches, especially the one at the back which he remembered so well, were rotten and broken down: only the joists remained. Some of the windows were boarded up where the glass had been broken, and the wing occupied by the bailiff, and the kitchen and the stables, were all dilapidated and grey. Only the garden had not fallen into decay but, on the contrary, had grown lush and was in full bloom; on the other side of the fence he could see flowering cherry-, apple – and plum-trees looking like white clouds. The lilac hedge was in blossom, too, just as it had been fourteen years ago when Nekhlyudov had played catch with the eighteen-year-old Katusha and had fallen and stung himself in the nettles behind one of those same lilac bushes. The larch his Aunt Sophia Ivanovna had planted near the house – he remembered it as a slender sapling – was now a tall tree with a trunk fit for a good solid beam and its branches were covered with soft yellow-green needles like down. The river, now within its banks, rushed noisily over the mill dam. All kinds of cattle belonging to the peasants were grazing in the meadow across the river. The bailiff, a student who had left the seminary without finishing the course, met Nekhlyudov in the courtyard with a smile on his face, still smiling invited him into the office and, smiling again and seeming to promise something especially pleasant, went behind the partition. Here there was some whispering, and then silence. The driver who had brought Nekhlyudov from the station, having received his tip, drove away with tinkling bells, and all was quiet. Then a barefooted girl in an embroidered peasant blouse and fluffy ear-rings1 ran past the window, followed quickly by a peasant, clattering with his nailed boots on the hard-trodden path.
Nekhlyudov sat down by the window, looking out into the garden and listening. A fresh spring breeze wafted the scent of newly turned soil through the little casement window, lightly stirring the hair on his damp forehead and the papers lying on the window-sill, which had been hacked all over by a knife. From the river came the tra-pa-tap, tra-pa-tap of the wooden paddles with which the women beat the clothes they were washing, the sounds echoing over the glittering sunlit surface of the mill pool; and he could hear the rhythmical fall of the water over the wheel, and the loud buzzing of a started fly close to his ear.
And suddenly Nekhlyudov remembered how, in just the same way, long ago, when he was young and innocent, he had heard, above the rhythmical sound of the mill, the women’s wooden paddles beating the wet clothes, how in just the same manner the spring breeze had blown the hair about on his damp forehead and stirred the papers on the knife-scarred window-sill, and another startled fly had flown past his ear; and it was not exactly that he remembered himself as the lad of eighteen he had been then, but he seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, possessed of the same freshness and purity, and a future full of great possibilities, and at the same time, as happens in a dream, he knew that all dus could be no more, and he felt terribly sad.
‘When would you like something to eat?’ asked the bailiff, with a smile.
‘Oh, any time – I am not hungry. I’m going to take a turn down to the village.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to come into the house? I keep everything in good order indoors, even though outside it may look… Won’t you please look in…’
‘Not now, thank you; later on. I wonder if you know of a woman here by the name of Matriona Kharina?’ (This was Katusha’s aunt.)
‘Oh yes, in the village. I can’t do anything with her. She keeps a pot-house. I know it perfectly well, and I’ve told her so over and over again, and threatened her, but when it comes to taking her up, I haven’t the heart to: she’s an old woman, and has grandchildren with her,’ said the bailiff with his everlasting smile, which expressed both his desire to please ‘the master’ and his conviction that Nekhlyudov looked upon these matters in the same way as himself.
‘Where does she live? I should like to walk over and see her.’
‘At the end of the village, on the other side of the street, the third cottage from the end. On the left there is a brick cottage and her hovel is beyond that. But I’d better take you,’ said the bailiff, smiling happily.
‘No, thanks, I shall find it all right. And in the meantime please call a meeting of the peasants, and say that I want to speak to them about the land,’ Nekhlyudov ordered, intending to make the same sort of agreement with the peasants as he had at Kuzminskoye, and, if possible, that very evening.