9

IT was almost daybreak before Nekhlyudov fell asleep and so he awoke late the next day.

At noon the seven peasants who had been chosen and summoned by the bailiff assembled in the orchard under the apple-trees, where the bailiff had arranged a table and benches over posts driven into the ground. It was some time before the peasants could be persuaded to put on their caps and sit down on the benches. The ex-soldier especially, who today was wearing clean leg-rags and bast shoes, persisted in holding his torn cap in front of him, in the way laid down in army regulations for funerals. But when one of them, a venerable, broad-shouldered old man with a curly grey beard like Michelangelo’s Moses and thick grey hair waving round his bald sunburnt forehead, put on his large cap, wrapped his homespun coat round him, climbed over the bench and sat down, the others followed his example.

As soon as they were all seated Nekhlyudov sat down opposite them and, leaning with his elbows over the paper on which he had drawn up his project, he began to expound it to them.

Whether it was because there were fewer peasants present, or because he was occupied not with himself but with the business in hand, this time Nekhlyudov felt perfectly at ease. Without meaning to, he addressed himself mainly to the broad-shouldered old man with the curly white beard, looking to him for approval or opposition. But Nekhlyudov had mistaken his man. The venerable old patriarch, though he nodded his handsome head approvingly, or shook it and frowned when the others raised objections, obviously had great difficulty in understanding what Nekhlyudov was saying, even after the other peasants had explained it to him in their own words. A little old fellow, practically beardless and blind in one eye, in a patched nankeen coat and old boots worn down on one side, who was sitting next to the patriarch – he was a stove-maker, Nekhlyudov found out later – understood him much better. He kept moving his eyebrows in an effort to take in everything, and immediately repeated what Nekhlyudov said in his own words. Equally quick at seizing his meaning was a short, stocky old man with a white beard and bright intelligent eyes, who never missed an opportunity to interject ironical jokes, which he evidently prided himself on. The ex-soldier, too, might have understood were his wits not blunted by army life, and if he would not confuse himself with the inane language he had adopted. Most serious of all in regard to the matter in hand was a tall man with a long nose and a small beard, who spoke in a deep bass voice and was wearing clean home-spun clothes and new bast shoes. He took in everything, and spoke only when it was necessary. The remaining two – one of them, the toothless old man who the day before had shouted a flat refusal to every suggestion Nekhlyudov made, and a lame old chap with a kindly face, tall and pale, his thin legs tightly wrapped round with strips of linen – were almost entirely silent, though they listened attentively.

First of all Nekhlyudov explained his ideas about the private ownership of land.

‘To my mind land ought neither to be bought nor sold, because if it can be sold people with money can buy it all up and then exact anything they like for the use of it from those who have none. They will take money for the right to stand on the earth,’ he added, making use of an argument of Spencer’s.

‘The on’y thing left would be to tie on a pair of wings and fly,’ said the old man with the white beard and laughing eyes.

‘That’s right,’ said the long-nosed man in his deep bass.

‘All correct,’ said the ex-soldier.

‘A woman picks a ‘andful of grass for ’er cow, she’s caught – an’ to the lock-up with ’er,’ remarked the lame old man with the kindly face.

‘Our land is three or four miles from ’ere, an’ as to rentin’ any, it’s not to be thought of: they’ve put the price so ’igh we’d never make it pay,’ added the toothless, cross-grained old man. ‘They twist us round their little fingers, it’s worse than when we was serfs.’

‘That is what I think myself,’ said Nekhlyudov, ‘and I consider it a sin to own land. So I want to give it away.’

‘Well, that would be a good thing,’ said the patriarchal old man with the curly beard like Michelangelo’s Moses, apparently thinking that Nekhlyudov meant to let the land.

‘I have come here for this reason: I no longer wish to own any land, and now we must consider how I am to get rid of it.’

‘Why, jus’ give it to the peasants, that’s all you ‘ave to do,’ said the toothless, cross-grained old man.

Nekhlyudov hesitated for a moment, feeling that these words implied a doubt as to the sincerity of his intentions. But he quickly recovered his composure and took advantage of the remark to express what was in his mind.

‘I should be glad to do that,’ he said, ‘but to whom, and how? To which peasants? Why should I give it to you rather than to the peasants at Deminskoye?’ (This was a neighbouring village with very little land.)

No one spoke, except the ex-soldier who exclaimed, ‘All correct!’

‘Now tell me,’ Nekhlyudov went on, ‘if the Tsar said that me land was to be taken from the landowners and divided among the peasants…’

‘Why, is there talk of that?’ asked the same old man.

‘No, the Tsar doesn’t come into it. I was simply saying that if the Tsar were to say, “Take the land from the landowners and give it to the peasants,” how would you set about it?’

‘ ’Ow would we set about it? Divide it equally, a course, so much for every man, gentry and peasant alike,’ said the stove-maker, rapidly raising and lowering his eyebrows.

‘How else? Equal shares,’ confirmed the kindly lame man with the white strips of linen round his legs.

Everybody agreed that this solution would be satisfactory.

‘What do you mean, so much per man?’ asked Nekhlyudov. ‘Would that include the indoor servants, too?’

‘Oh no,’ said the ex-soldier, trying to look amused.

But the thoughtful, tall peasant did not agree with him.

‘If it’s a question of dividin’, then everyone must ’ave equal shares,’ he said in his deep bass voice, after reflection.

‘It can’t be done,’ said Nekhlyudov, having prepared his objection in advance. ‘If we are all to share alike, those who do no work themselves – the gentry, footmen, cooks, officials in offices, clerks, all the people who live in towns and have never used a plough – will take their shares and sell them to the rich. And again the land will get into the hands of the rich, while those who live by working their own holding will multiply, and there will be no land left for them. Again the rich will gain control of those who need land.’

‘All correct,’ the ex-soldier hurriedly confirmed.

‘Make it against the law to sell land, and only let them ’ave it ’oo ploughs it theirselves,’ said the stove-maker, angrily interrupting the ex-soldier.

To this Nekhlyudov replied by asking how anyone could tell whether a man was ploughing his own land for himself or was doing it for someone else.

Here the tall, thoughtful man suggested a partnership arrangement whereby those who ploughed shared the produce. And those who did not got nothing, he argued in his imperative bass.

Nekhlyudov had his answers ready against this communistic project too, and said that this would mean every man having his own plough and horses as good as his neighbours’, and that nobody should lag behind, or else that everything – horses, ploughs, threshing-machines and all farming implements – should be held in common, and to put that into practice everybody would have to be of one mind.

‘You’re never goin’ to make our people agree, not in a ’ole lifetime,’ said the cross-grained old man.

‘They’d never stop fighting,’ said the old man with the white beard and laughing eyes. ‘The women would be at each other’s throats.’

‘And how about the kind of land?’ said Nekhlyudov

‘Why should one man get black loam, and another clay and sand?’

‘Divide it up into small lots, so as everyone gets the same,’ said the stove-maker.

To this Nekhlyudov answered that it was not only a question of sharing out the land in one commune but a general division of land in different provinces. If the land were to be given away free, why should some peasants have good holdings and others bad ones? They would all want good soil.

‘That’s correct,’ said the soldier.

The rest remained silent.

‘So you see, it is not as simple as it seems,’ said Nekhlyudov. ‘And not only are we thinking about it – many other people are too. There is an American, Henry George, who has reasoned it out like this, and I agree with him –’

‘But you’re the master, you give it away as you like. What’s to stop you? You’re at liberty to do so,’ said the cross-grained old man.

This interruption annoyed Nekhlyudov; but he was delighted to see that he was not the only one to resent it.

‘Wait a moment, Uncle Simeon, let ’im tell us about it,’ said the thoughtful peasant with the imposing bass voice.

This encouraged Nekhlyudov and he began to expound Henry George’s single-tax system to them.

‘The land is not anybody’s, it belongs to God,’ he began.

‘That’s so. That’s true,’ several voices put in.

‘The land is common property. Everyone has an equal right to it. But there is good land and bad. And everybody wants to get the good soil. What are we to do to make things fair all round? Like this: let the man who owns good land pay the value of it to those who have none,’ Nekhlyudov went on, answering his own question. ‘But as it would be difficult to decide who should pay and who should be paid, and as money has to be collected for the needs of the community, it ought to be so arranged that whoever owns any land pays into the public fund what his land is worth. Then everyone would share equally. If you want land, pay for it – more for good land, less for bad land. If you don’t want land, you don’t pay anything and those who own land will pay the taxes and other communal expenses for you.’

‘That’s right,’ said the stove-maker, moving his eyebrows. ‘The man who has the better land must pay more.’

‘ ’E ’ad a ’ead on ’im, that ’enry George,’ said the imposing old man with the curly beard.

‘If on’y we ain’t got to pay more’n we got the money for,’ said the tall man with the bass voice, evidently beginning to make out what it was all leading to.

‘The payment must be neither too high nor too low.… If it is too high, it won’t be paid and there will be a loss, and if it is too low, everybody will start trying to buy from each other, and there will be speculation in land,’ said Nekhlyudov. ‘Well, now you understand what it is I want to do with you here.’

‘That’s right, that’s fair. Yes, that ain’t bad at all,’ said the peasants.

‘That George man ’ad a ’ead on ’im,’ repeated the broad-shouldered old peasant with the curly beard. ‘Thought it out clever.’

‘How will it be if I want to have some land?’ asked the bailiff, smiling.

‘If there is a holding to spare, you may take it and work it,’ said Nekhlyudov.

‘What you want land for? You’re well enough off as it is,’ said the old man with the laughing eyes.

With this the conference ended.

Nekhlyudov repeated his offer again but did not ask for an immediate answer: instead, he advised them to talk things over with the whole village and then come back and tell him their decision.

The peasants said that they would discuss it with the others and bring an answer, and taking their leave went away in a great state of excitement. It was a long time before the clamour of their voices receded into the distance, and late into the night the sound of talking echoed up the river from the village.

*

Next day the peasants did not go to work but spent their time discussing the master’s offer. The village was split into two factions: those who saw the offer as a profitable one which could do them no harm, and those who thought there was a catch in it, which they could not detect and therefore feared all the more. By the third day, however, they all agreed to accept the proposal made to them, and came to Nekhlyudov to announce their decision. The village had been much influenced by the opinion of an aged woman, which the old men accepted and which did away with all fear that they were being cheated, that the master was acting so because he had begun to be anxious about his soul and was doing this in the hope of salvation. This explanation was further confirmed by the generous alms which Nekhlyudov had distributed while at Panovo. His alms-giving here came about because never before had he known such a degree of poverty and misery as had overtaken the peasants: he was appalled by their poverty, and though he realized that it was unwise he could not resist giving them money, of which he happened just then to have particularly large sums available – receipts from the sale of a forest at Kuzminskoye the year before, and also certain deposits on the sale of stock and implements.

No sooner was it discovered that the master was giving money to anyone who asked for it, than crowds of peasants, chiefly women, began to come to him from all the surrounding country, begging for help. He was utterly at a loss to know how to deal with them: how to decide how much to give, and to whom. He felt that to refuse to give money, of which he had so much, to those who asked him for it and who were obviously poor, was impossible. At the same time it was not wise to give indiscriminately to all who came begging to him. The only way out seemed to be to depart, and this he hurried to do.

During the last day of his stay at Panovo Nekhlyudov went into the house and looked over the things that were left there. Rummaging through an old mahogany chiffonier with a bow front and brass lion’s-head handles with rings through them that had belonged to his aunts, he found a number of letters in a lower drawer, and among them a photograph of a group – Sophia Ivanovna and Marya Ivanovna, himself as a student, and Katusha, pure, untouched and innocent, and full of the joy of living. Of all the things in the house he took only the letters and this photograph. Everything else he left for the miller, who, at the instance of the smiling bailiff, had bought the house, to be pulled down, and all it contained – for a tenth of their real value.

Looking back at the sense of regret he had experienced at the loss of his Kuzminskoye property, Nekhlyudov wondered how it was he could have had such a feeling. Now he felt nothing but a never-ending sensation of deliverance and novelty, such as a traveller must feel when he discovers new lands.