The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (174 page)

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The peasants did not work the following day, but discussed their master's proposition. The community was divided into two factions. One declared the proposition profitable and safe; the other saw in the proposition a plot which it feared the more because it could not understand it. On the third day, however, the proposition was accepted, the fears of the peasants having been allayed by an old woman who explained the master's action by the suggestion that he began to think of saving his soul. This explanation was confirmed by the large amount of money Nekhludoff had distributed while he remained in Panov. These money gifts were called forth by the fact that here, for the first time, he learned to what poverty the peasants had been reduced and though he knew that it was unwise, he could not help distributing such money as he had, which was considerable.

As soon as it became known that the master was distributing money, large crowds of people from the entire surrounding country came to him asking to be helped. He had no means of determining the respective needs of the individuals, and yet he could not help giving these evidently poor people money. Again, to distribute money indiscriminately was absurd. His only way out of the difficulty was to depart, which he hastened to do.

On the third day of his visit to Panov, Nekhludoff, while looking over the things in the house, in one of the drawers of his aunt's chiffonnier, found a picture representing a group of Sophia Ivanovna, Catherine Ivanovna, himself, as student, and Katiousha--neat, fresh, beautiful and full of life. Of all the things in the house Nekhludoff removed this picture and the letters. The rest he sold to the miller for a tenth part of its value.

Recalling now the feeling of pity over the loss of his property which he had experienced in Kusminskoie, Nekhludoff wondered how he could have done so. Now he experienced the gladness of release and the feeling of novelty akin to that experienced by an explorer who discovers new lands.

CHAPTER VI.

It was evening when Nekhludoff arrived in the city, and as he drove through the gas-lit streets to his house, it looked to him like a new city. The odor of camphor still hung in the air through all the rooms, and Agrippina, Petrovna and Kornei seemed tired out and dissatisfied, and even quarreled about the packing of the things, the use of which seemed to consist chiefly in being hung out, dried and packed away again. His room was not occupied, but was not arranged for his coming, and the trunks blocked all the passages, so that his coming interfered with those affairs which, by some strange inertia, were taking place in this house. This evident foolishness, to which he had once been a party, seemed so unpleasant to Nekhludoff, after the impressions he had gained of the want in the villages, that he decided to move to a hotel the very next day, leaving the packing to Agrippina until the arrival of his sister.

He left the house in the morning, hired two modest and not over-clean furnished rooms near the prison, and went to his lawyer.

After the storms and rains came those cold, piercing winds that usually occur in the fall. Protected only by a light overcoat, Nekhludoff was chilled to the bone. He walked quickly in order to warm himself.

The village scenes came to his mind--the women, children and old men, whose poverty and exhaustion he had noticed as if for the first time, especially that oldish child which twisted its little calfless legs--and he involuntarily compared them with the city folks. Passing by the butcher, fish and clothing shops, he was struck, as if it was the first time he looked upon them--by the physical evidences of the well-being of such a large number of clean, well-fed shopkeepers which was not to be seen anywhere in the villages. Equally well fed were the drivers in quilted coats and buttons on their backs, porters, servant girls, etc. In all these people he now involuntarily saw those same village folks whom privation had driven to the city. Some of them were able to take advantage of the conditions in the city and became happy proprietors themselves; others were reduced to even greater straits and became even more wretched. Such wretchedness Nekhludoff saw in a number of shoemakers that he saw working near the window of a basement; in the lean, pale, disheveled washerwomen ironing with bare hands before open windows from which soap-laden steam poured out; in two painters, aproned and bare-footed, who were covered with paint from temple to heel. In their sunburnt, sinewy, weak hands, bared above the elbows, they carried a bucket of paint and incessantly cursed each other. Their faces were wearied and angry. The same expression of weariness and anger he saw in the dusty faces of the truck drivers; on the swollen and tattered men, women and children who stood begging on the street corners. Similar faces were seen in the windows of the tea-houses which Nekhludoff passed. Around the dirty tables, loaded with bottles and tea services, perspiring men with red, stupefied faces sat shouting and singing, and white-aproned servants flitted to and fro.

"Why have they all gathered here?" thought Nekhludoff, involuntarily inhaling, together with the dust, the odor of rancid oil spread by the fresh paint.

On one of the streets he suddenly heard his name called above the rattling of the trucks. It was Shenbok, with curled and stiffened mustache and radiant face. Nekhludoff had lost sight of him long ago, but heard that on leaving his regiment and joining the cavalry, notwithstanding his debts he managed to hold his own in rich society.

"I am glad I met you. There is not a soul in the city. How old you have grown, my boy! I only recognized you by your walk. Well, shall we have dinner together? Where can we get a good meal here?"

"I hardly think I will have the time," answered Nekhludoff, who wished to get rid of his friend without offending him. "What brings you here?" he asked.

"Business, my boy. Guardianship affairs. I am a guardian, you know. I have charge of Samanoff's business--the rich Samanoff, you know. He is a spendthrift, and there are fifty-four thousand acres of land!" he said with particular pride, as if he had himself made all these acres. "The affairs were fearfully neglected. The land was rented to the peasants, who did not pay anything and were eighty thousand rubles in arrears. In one year I changed everything, and realized seventy per cent. more for the estate. Eh?" he asked, with pride.

Nekhludoff recalled a rumor that for the very reason that Shenbok squandered his own wealth and was inextricably in debt, he was appointed guardian over a rich old spendthrift, and was now evidently obtaining an income from the guardianship.

Nekhludoff refused to take dinner with Shenbok, or accompany him to the horse races, to which the latter invited him, and after an exchange of commonplaces the two parted.

"Is it possible that I was like him?" thought Nekhludoff. "Not exactly, but I sought to be like him, and thought that I would thus pass my life."

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The lawyer received him immediately on his arrival, although it was not his turn. The lawyer expressed himself strongly on the detention of the Menshovs, declaring that there was not a particle of evidence against them on record.

"If the case is tried here, and not in the district, I will stake anything on their discharge. And the petition in behalf of Theodosia Brinkova is ready. You had better take it with you to St. Petersburg and present it there. Otherwise there will begin an inquiry which will have no end. Try to reach some people who have influence with the commission on petitions. Well, that's all, isn't it?"

"No. Here they write me----"

"You seem to be the funnel into which all the prison complaints are poured. I fear you will not hold them all."

"But this case is simply shocking," said Nekhludoff, and related the substance of it.

"What is it that surprises you?"

"Everything. I can understand the orderly who acted under orders, but the assistant prosecutor who drew the indictment is an educated man----"

"That is the mistake. We are used to think that the prosecuting officers--the court officers generally--are a kind of new, liberal men. And so they were at one time, but not now. The only thing that concerns these officers is to draw their salaries on the 20th of every month. Their principles begin and end with their desire to get more. They will arrest, try and convict anybody----. I am always telling these court officers that I never look upon them without gratitude," continued the lawyer, "because it is due to their kindness that I, you and all of us are not in jail. To deprive any one of us of all civil rights and send him to Siberia is the easiest thing imaginable."

"But if everything depends on the pleasure of the prosecutor, who can enforce the law or not, then what is the use of the courts?"

The lawyer laughed merrily.

"That is the question you are raising. Well, my dear sir, that is philosophy. However, we can discuss that. Come to my house next Saturday. You will find there scholars, litterateurs, artists. We will have a talk on social questions," said the lawyer, pronouncing the words "social questions" with ironical pathos. "Are you acquainted with my wife? Call on Saturday."

"I will try," answered Nekhludoff, feeling that he was saying an untruth; that if there was anything he would try hard to do it was not to be present at the lawyer's amid the scholars, litterateurs and artists.

The laughter with which the lawyer met Nekhludoff's remark concerning the uselessness of courts if the prosecutors can do what they please, and the intonation with which he pronounced the words "philosophy" and "social questions," showed how utterly unlike himself were the lawyer and the people of his circle, both in character and in views of life.

CHAPTER VII.

It was late and the distance to the prison was long, so Nekhludoff hired a trap. On one of the streets the driver, who was a middle-aged man with an intelligent and good-natured face, turned to Nekhludoff and pointed to an immense building going up.

"What a huge building there is going up!" he said with pride, as if he had a part in the building of it.

It was really a huge structure, built in a complex, unusual style. A scaffolding of heavy pine logs surrounded the structure, which was fenced in by deal boards. It was as busy a scene as an ant hill.

Nekhludoff wondered that these people, while their wives were killing themselves with work at home, and their children starving, should think it necessary to build that foolish and unnecessary house for some foolish and unnecessary man.

"Yes, a foolish building," he spoke his thought aloud.

"How foolish?" retorted the offended driver. "Thanks to them, the people get work. It is not foolish."

"But the work is unnecessary."

"It must be necessary if they are building it," said the driver. "It gives the people food."

Nekhludoff became silent, the more so because it was too noisy to be heard. When they had reached the macadamized road near the prison the driver again turned to Nekhludoff.

"And what a lot of people are coming to the city--awful," he said, turning around on the box and pointing to a party of laborers with saws, axes, coats and sacks thrown over their shoulders, and coming from the opposite direction.

"More than in former years?" asked Nekhludoff.

"No comparison. The masters are kicking them about like shavings. The market places are glutted with them."

"What is the reason?"

"They have multiplied. They have no homes."

"And what if they have multiplied! Why do they not remain in the villages?"

"There is nothing to do there. There is no land."

Nekhludoff experienced that which happens with a sore place--it is struck oftener than any other part of the body. But it only seems so because it is more noticeable.

"Can it be possible that it is everywhere the same?" he thought, and asked the driver how much land there was in his village; how much he himself owned, and why he lived in the city.

"There is but an acre to every person. We are renting three acres. There is my father and brother. Another brother is in the army. They are managing it. But there is really nothing to manage, and my brother intended to go to Moskow."

"Is there no land for rent?"

"Where could one get land nowadays? The masters' children have squandered theirs. The merchants have it all in their hands. One cannot rent it from them; they cultivate it themselves. Our lands are held by a Frenchman who bought them of the former landlord. He won't rent any of it, and that is all."

"What Frenchman?"

"Dufar, the Frenchman--you may have heard. He is making wigs for the actors. He is now our master, and does what he pleases with us. He is a good man himself, but his wife is Russian--and what a cur! She is robbing the people--simply awful! But here is the prison. Shall I drive up to the front? I think they don't admit through the front."

CHAPTER VIII.

With a faint heart and with horror at the thought that he might find Maslova in an inebriate condition and persistently antagonistic, and at the mystery which she was to him, Nekhludoff rang the bell and inquired of the inspector about Maslova. She was in the hospital.