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Howard R. Garis - "Dick Hamiliton's Airship"

Jean Baptiste Racine - "Phaedra"

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Resurrection

C >> Count Leo Tolstoy >> Resurrection




"I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house,
was she not? Where's the child?"

"As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so
bad I never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened
the baby quite properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings'. Why
should one let an innocent soul languish when the mother is
dying? Others do like this: they just leave the baby, don't feed
it, and it wastes away. But, thinks I, no; I'd rather take some
trouble, and send it to the Foundlings'. There was money enough,
so I sent it off."

"Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings'
Hospital?"

"Yes, there was a number, but the baby died," she said. "It died
as soon as she brought it there."

"Who is she?"

"That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a
business of it. Her name was Malania. She's dead now. She was a
wise woman. What do you think she used to do? They'd bring her a
baby, and she'd keep it and feed it; and she'd feed it until she
had enough of them to take to the Foundlings'. When she had three
or four, she'd take them all at once. She had such a clever
arrangement, a sort of big cradle--a double one she could put
them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she'd put four
of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they should
not knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She'd
put some pap in a rag into their mouths to keep 'em silent, the
pets."

"Well, go on."

"Well, she took Katerina's baby in the same way, after keeping it
a fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken."

"And was it a fine baby?" Nekhludoff asked.

"Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one.
Your very image," the old woman added, with a wink.

"Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?"

"Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when
it's not one's own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She
said she just managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She
brought a certificate--all in order. She was such a wise woman."

That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.



CHAPTER VI.

REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.

Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out
into the street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting
for him. A few newcomers were standing with them. Among the
women, of whom several had babies in their arms, was the thin
woman with the baby who had the patchwork cap on its head. She
held lightly in her arms the bloodless infant, who kept strangely
smiling all over its wizened little face, and continually moving
its crooked thumbs.

Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who
the woman was.

"It is that very Anisia I told you about," said the elder boy.

Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.

"How do you live?" he asked. "By what means do you gain your
livelihood?"

"How do I live? I go begging," said Anisia, and began to cry.

Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a
10-rouble note. He had not had time to take two steps before
another woman with a baby caught him up, then an old woman, then
another young one. All of them spoke of their poverty, and asked
for help. Nekhludoff gave them the 60 roubles--all in small
notes--which he had with him, and, terribly sad at heart, turned
home, i.e., to the foreman's house.

The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that
the peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff
thanked him, and went straight into the garden to stroll along
the paths strewn over with the petals of apple-blossom and
overgrown with weeds, and to think over all he had seen.

At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the
foreman's house two angry women's voices interrupting each other,
and now and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman.
Nekhludoff listened.

"My strength's at an end. What are you about, dragging the very
cross [those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a
cross round their necks] off my neck," said an angry woman's
voice.

"But she only got in for a moment," said another voice. "Give it
her back, I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the
children, too, who want their milk?"

"Pay, then, or work it off," said the foreman's voice.

Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which
stood two dishevelled women--one of them pregnant and evidently
near her time. On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands
in the pockets of his holland coat, stood the foreman. When they
saw the master, the women were silent, and began arranging the
kerchiefs on their heads, and the foreman took his hands out of
his pockets and began to smile.

This is what had happened. From the foreman's words, it seemed
that the peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and
even their cows into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows
belonging to the families of these two women were found in the
meadow, and driven into the yard. The foreman demanded from the
women 30 copecks for each cow or two days' work. The women,
however, maintained that the cows had got into the meadow of
their own accord; that they had no money, and asked that the
cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without
food, piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it
had to be on the understanding that the price should be worked
off later on.

"How often have I not begged of you," said the smiling foreman,
looking back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a
witness, "if you drive your cattle home at noon, that you should
have an eye on them?"

"I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away."

"Don't run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows."

"And who's to feed the little one? You'd not give him the breast,
I suppose?" said the other woman. "Now, if they had really
damaged the meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but
they only strayed in a moment."

"All the meadows are damaged," the foreman said, turning to
Nekhludoff. "If I exact no penalty there will be no hay."

"There, now, don't go sinning like that; my cows have never been
caught there before," shouted the pregnant woman.

"Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off."

"All right, I'll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don't
torture her with hunger," she cried, angrily. "As it is, I have
no rest day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to
drink; I'm all alone to do all the work, and my strength's at an
end. I wish you'd choke, you and your working it off."

Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and
went back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but
there was nothing more to think about.

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop
wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he
himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly
evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the
dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this
process: there was the great mortality among the children, the
over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the
aged. And so gradually had the people come to this condition that
they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not
complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as
it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief
cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves
knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone
could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.

And how evident it was that the children and the aged died
because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was
no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was
quite evident that all the misery of the people or, at least by
far the greater part of it, was caused by the fact that the land
which should feed them was not in their hands, but in the hands
of those who, profiting by their rights to the land, live by the
work of these people. The land so much needed by men was tilled
by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the
corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy
themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He
understood this as clearly as he understood that horses when they
have eaten all the grass in the inclosure where they are kept
will have to grow thin and starve unless they are put where they
can get food off other land.

This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to
alter it, or at least not to take part in it. "And I will find
them," he thought, as he walked up and down the path under the
birch trees.

In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers
we talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the
means of ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the
only sure means which would certainly lighten their condition,
i.e., giving back to them the land they need so much.

Henry George's fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind
and how he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised
that he could have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one's
property; it cannot be bought or sold any more than water, air,
or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives
to men. And now he knew why he had felt ashamed to remember the
transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving himself. He knew
that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had accepted
this right as his, and had given the peasants something which, in
the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would
not act in this way, and would alter the arrangement in
Kousminski also. And he formed a project in his mind to let the
land to the peasants, and to acknowledge the rent they paid for
it to be their property, to be kept to pay the taxes and for
communal uses. This was, of course, not the single-tax system,
still it was as near an approach to it as could be had under
existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was
that in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of
landed property.

When he returned to the house the foreman, with a specially
pleasant smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now,
expressing the fear that the feast his wife was preparing, with
the help of the girl with the earrings, might be overdone.

The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an
embroidered towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin. A
vieux-saxe soup tureen with a broken handle stood on the table,
full of potato soup, the stock made of the fowl that had put out
and drawn in his black leg, and was now cut, or rather chopped,
in pieces, which were here and there covered with hairs. After
the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was served roasted,
and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great deal of
sugar. Little appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly
noticed what he was eating; he was occupied with the thought
which had in a moment dispersed the sadness with which he had
returned from the village.

The foreman's wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the
frightened maid with the earrings brought in the dishes; and the
foreman smiled more and more joyfully, priding himself on his
wife's culinary skill. After dinner, Nekhludoff succeeded, with
some trouble, in making the foreman sit down. In order to revise
his own thoughts, and to express them to some one, he explained
his project of letting the land to the peasants, and asked the
foreman for his opinion. The foreman, smiling as if he had
thought all this himself long ago, and was very pleased to hear
it, did not really understand it at all. This was not because
Nekhludoff did not express himself clearly, but because according
to this project it turned out that Nekhludoff was giving up his
own profit for the profit of others, and the thought that every
one is only concerned about his own profit, to the harm of
others, was so deeply rooted in the foreman's conceptions that he
imagined he did not understand something when Nekhludoff said
that all the income from the land must be placed to form the
communal capital of the peasants.

"Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages
from that capital," said the foreman, brightening up.

"Dear me! no. Don't you see, I am giving up the land altogether."

"But then you will not get any income," said the foreman, smiling
no longer.

"Yes, I am going to give it up."

The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again. Now he
understood. He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal,
and at once began to consider how he himself could profit by
Nekhludoff's project of giving up the land, and tried to see this
project in such a way that he might reap some advantage from it.
But when he saw that this was impossible he grew sorrowful, and
the project ceased to interest him, and he continued to smile
only in order to please the master.

Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let
him go and sat down by the window-sill, that was all cut about
and inked over, and began to put his project down on paper.

The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh
green, and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff. Just
as he finished his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the
creaking of opening gates from the village, and the voices of the
peasants gathering together for the meeting. He told the foreman
not to call the peasants up to the office, as he meant to go into
the village himself and meet the men where they would assemble.
Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea offered him by the foreman,
Nekhludoff went to the village.



CHAPTER VII.

THE DISINHERITED.

From the crowd assembled in front of the house of the village
elder came the sound of voices; but as soon as Nekhludoff came up
the talking ceased, and all the peasants took off their caps,
just as those in Kousminski had done. The peasants here were of a
much poorer class than those in Kousminski. The men wore shoes
made of bark and homespun shirts and coats. Some had come
straight from their work in their shirts and with bare feet.

Nekhludoff made an effort, and began his speech by telling the
peasants of his intention to give up his land to them altogether.
The peasants were silent, and the expression on their faces did
not undergo any change.

"Because I hold," said Nekhludoff, "and believe that every one
has a right to the use of the land."

"That's certain. That's so, exactly," said several voices.

Nekhludoff went on to say that the revenue from the land ought to
be divided among all, and that he would therefore suggest that
they should rent the land at a price fixed by themselves, the
rent to form a communal fund for their own use. Words of approval
and agreement were still to be heard, but the serious faces of
the peasants grew still more serious, and the eyes that had been
fixed on the gentleman dropped, as if they were unwilling to put
him to shame by letting him see that every one had understood his
trick, and that no one would be deceived by him.

Nekhludoff spoke clearly, and the peasants were intelligent, but
they did not and could not understand him, for the same reason
that the foreman had so long been unable to understand him.

They were fully convinced that it is natural for every man to
consider his own interest. The experience of many generations had
proved to them that the landlords always considered their own
interest to the detriment of the peasants. Therefore, if a
landlord called them to a meeting and made them some kind of a
new offer, it could evidently only be in order to swindle them
more cunningly than before.

"Well, then, what are you willing to rent the land at?" asked
Nekhludoff.

"How can we fix a price? We cannot do it. The land is yours, and
the power is in your hands," answered some voices from among the
crowd.

"Oh, not at all. You will yourselves have the use of the money
for communal purposes."

"We cannot do it; the commune is one thing, and this is another."

"Don't you understand?" said the foreman, with a smile (he had
followed Nekhludoff to the meeting), "the Prince is letting the
land to you for money, and is giving you the money back to form a
capital for the commune."

"We understand very well," said a cross, toothless old man,
without raising his eyes. "Something like a bank; we should have
to pay at a fixed time. We do not wish it; it is hard enough as
it is, and that would ruin us completely."

"That's no go. We prefer to go on the old way," began several
dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.

The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he
would draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him
and by them.

"Why sign? We shall go on working as we have done hitherto. What
is all this for? We are ignorant men."

"We can't agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have
been used to. As it was, so let it continue to be. Only the seeds
we should like to withdraw."

This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be
provided by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide
them.

"Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?"
Nekhludoff asked, addressing a middle-aged, barefooted peasant,
with a tattered coat, and a bright look on his face, who was
holding his worn cap with his left hand, in a peculiarly straight
position, in the same way soldiers hold theirs when commanded to
take them off.

"Just so," said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid
himself of the military hypnotism he had been subjected to while
serving his time.

"It means that you have sufficient land," said Nekhludoff.

"No, sir, we have not," said the ex-soldier, with an artificially
pleased look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him,
as if offering it to any one who liked to make use of it.

"Well, anyhow, you'd better think over what I have said."
Nekhludoff spoke with surprise, and again repeated his offer.

"We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will
be," angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.

"I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds,
send to let me know."

The peasants gave no answer.

So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this
interview.

"If I might make a remark, Prince," said the foreman, when they
got home, "you will never come to any agreement with them; they
are so obstinate. At a meeting these people just stick in one
place, and there is no moving them. It is because they are
frightened of everything. Why, these very peasants--say that
white-haired one, or the dark one, who were refusing, are
intelligent peasants. When one of them comes to the office and
one makes him sit down to cup of tea it's like in the Palace of
Wisdom--he is quite diplomatist," said the foreman, smiling; "he
will consider everything rightly. At a meeting it's a different
man--he keeps repeating one and the same . . ."

"Well, could not some of the more intelligent men he asked to
come here?" said Nekhludoff. "I would carefully explain it to
them."

"That can be done," said the smiling foreman.

"Well, then, would you mind calling them here to-morrow?"

"Oh, certainly I will," said the foreman, and smiled still more
joyfully. "I shall call them to-morrow."

"Just hear him; he's not artful, not he," said a blackhaired
peasant, with an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to
side on a well-fed mare, addressing an old man in a torn coat who
rode by his side. The two men were driving a herd of the
peasants' horses to graze in the night, alongside the highroad
and secretly, in the landlord's forest.

"Give you the land for nothing--you need only sign--have they not
done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your
humbug. Nowadays we have a little sense," he added, and began
shouting at a colt that had strayed.

He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not
remained behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside.
"Bother that son of a Turk; he's taken to getting into the
landowner's meadows," said the dark peasant with the unkempt
beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel stalks that the
neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back from the
scented meadow.

"Do you hear the cracking? We'll have to send the women folk to
weed the meadow when there's a holiday," said the thin peasant
with the torn coat, "or else we'll blunt our scythes."

"Sign," he says. The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of
the landlord's speech. "'Sign,' indeed, and let him swallow you
up."

"That's certain," answered the old man. And then they were
silent, and the tramping of the horses' feet along the highroad
was the only sound to be heard.



CHAPTER VIII.

GOD'S PEACE IN THE HEART.

When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been
arranged as a bedroom for him. A high bedstead, with a feather
bed and two large pillows, had been placed in the room. The bed
was covered with a dark red doublebedded silk quilt, which was
elaborately and finely quilted, and very stiff. It evidently
belonged to the trousseau of the foreman's wife. The foreman
offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which the latter
refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare and
the accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.

The peasants' refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff. On the
contrary, though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he
had even been thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion
and even enmity, he felt contented and joyful.

It was close and dirty in the office. Nekhludoff went out into
the yard, and was going into the garden, but he remembered: that
night, the window of the maid-servant's room, the side porch, and
he felt uncomfortable, and did not like to pass the spot
desecrated by guilty memories. He sat down on the doorstep, and
breathing in the warm air, balmy with the strong scent of fresh
birch leaves, he sat for a long time looking into the dark garden
and listening to the mill, the nightingales, and some other bird
that whistled monotonously in the bush close by. The light
disappeared from the foreman's window; in the cast, behind the
barn, appeared the light of the rising moon, and sheet lightning
began to light up the dilapidated house, and the blooming,
over-grown garden more and more frequently. It began to thunder
in the distance, and a black cloud spread over one-third of the
sky. The nightingales and the other birds were silent. Above the
murmur of the water from the mill came the cackling of geese, and
then in the village and in the foreman's yard the first cocks
began to crow earlier than usual, as they do on warm, thundery
nights. There is a saying that if the cocks crow early the night
will be a merry one. For Nekhludoff the night was more than
merry; it was a happy, joyful night. Imagination renewed the
impressions of that happy summer which he had spent here as an
innocent lad, and he felt himself as he had been not only at that
but at all the best moments of his life. He not only remembered
but felt as he had felt when, at the age of 14, he prayed that
God would show him the truth; or when as a child he had wept on
his mother's lap, when parting from her, and promising to be
always good, and never give her pain; he felt as he did when he
and Nikolenka Irtenieff resolved always to support each other in
living a good life and to try to make everybody happy.

He remembered how he had been tempted in Kousminski, so that he
had begun to regret the house and the forest and the farm and the
land, and he asked himself if he regretted them now, and it even
seemed strange to think that he could regret them. He remembered
all he had seen to-day; the woman with the children, and without
her husband, who was in prison for having cut down trees in his
(Nekhludoff's) forest, and the terrible Matrona, who considered,
or at least talked as if she considered, that women of her
position must give themselves to the gentlefolk; he remembered
her relation to the babies, the way in which they were taken to
the Foundlings' Hospital, and the unfortunate, smiling, wizened
baby with the patchwork cap, dying of starvation. And then he
suddenly remembered the prison, the shaved heads, the cells, the
disgusting smells, the chains, and, by the side of it all, the
madly lavish city lift of the rich, himself included.

The bright moon, now almost full, rose above the barn. Dark
shadows fell across the yard, and the iron roof of the ruined
house shone bright. As if unwilling to waste this light, the
nightingales again began their trills.

Nekhludoff called to mind how he had begun to consider his life
in the garden of Kousminski when deciding what he was going to
do, and remembered how confused he had become, how he could not
arrive at any decision, how many difficulties each question had
presented. He asked himself these questions now, and was
surprised how simple it all was. It was simple because he was not
thinking now of what would be the results for himself, but only
thought of what he had to do. And, strange to say, what he had to
do for himself he could not decide, but what he had to do for
others he knew without any doubt. He had no doubt that he must
not leave Katusha, but go on helping her. He had no doubt that he
must study, investigate, clear up, understand all this business
concerning judgment and punishment, which he felt he saw
differently to other people. What would result from it all he did
not know, but he knew for certain that he must do it. And this
firm assurance gave him joy.

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