Leo Tolstoy
Page 95
‘He’s such a rogue! I told him, but no. Really! In three years he couldn’t collect it,’ a short, stooping landowner, with pomaded hair that hung over the embroidered collar of his uniform, was saying energetically, stomping solidly with the heels of his new boots, evidently donned for the elections. And, casting a displeased glance at Levin, he abruptly turned away.
‘Yes, it’s dirty work, say what you will,’ the little landowner said in a high voice.
After them a whole crowd of landowners, surrounding a fat general, hurriedly came towards Levin. The landowners were obviously looking for a place to talk without being overheard.
‘How dare he say I ordered his trousers stolen! He drank them up, I suppose. I spit on him and his princely rank. He daren’t say that, it’s swinishness!’
‘I beg your pardon! They’re basing it on the article,’ voices came from another group, ‘the wife must be on record as a noblewoman.’
‘The devil I care about the article! I’m speaking from the soul. That’s what makes us nobility. There has to be trust.’
‘Come, your excellency, there’s fine champagne.’*
Another crowd followed after a nobleman who was loudly shouting something: he was one of the three who had been made drunk.
T always advised Marya Semyonovna to lease it, because she can’t make any profit,’ a grey–moustached landowner in the uniform of a colonel of the old general headquarters said in a pleasant voice. This was the landowner Levin had met at Sviyazhsky’s. He recognized him at once. The landowner also looked closer at Levin, and they greeted each other.
‘Delighted! Of course! I remember very well. Last year at Marshal Nikolai Ivanovich’s.’
‘Well, how goes the farming?’ asked Levin.
‘The same – still at a loss,’ the landowner, stopping near Levin, answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of calm conviction that it had to be so. ‘And how have you wound up in our province?’ he asked. ‘Come to take part in our coup d’état)’ he said, pronouncing the French words firmly but poorly. ‘All Russia’s assembled here:
* Superior cognac.
gentlemen of the bedchamber and all but ministers.’ He pointed to the impressive figure of Stepan Arkadyich, in white trousers and the uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, walking about with a general.
‘I must confess that I have a very poor understanding of the significance of these elections among the nobility,’ said Levin.
The landowner looked at him.
‘What’s there to understand? There is no significance. An obsolete institution that goes on moving only by the force of inertia. Look at the uniforms – even they tell you: this is an assembly of justices of the peace, of permanent members and so on, and not of the nobility.’
‘Then why do you come?’ asked Levin.
‘Out of habit, that’s all. And one must also keep up one’s connections. A moral responsibility in a sense. And then, to tell the truth, there is a certain interest. My son–in–law wants to stand as a permanent member; they’re not well–to–do people and I must help him win. But why do these people come?’ he said, pointing to the venomous gentleman who had spoken at the governor’s table.
‘That’s the new generation of nobility.’
‘New it is. But not nobility. They are landlords, and we are landowners. As nobility, they’re committing suicide.’
‘But you yourself say that it’s an outdated institution.’
‘Outdated it is, but still it ought to be treated more respectfully. Take Snetkov … Good or not, we’ve been a thousand years growing. You know, when you want to make a garden in front of your house, you have to lay it out, and there’s a hundred–year–old tree growing in that spot… Though it’s old and gnarled, you still won’t cut the old–timer down for the sake of your flower beds, you’ll lay them out so as to include the tree. It can’t be grown in a year,’ he said cautiously, and immediately changed the subject. ‘Well, and how’s your estate?’
‘Not so good. About five per cent.’
‘Yes, but you’re not counting yourself. You’re also worth something. I’ll tell you about myself. Before I took up farming, I had a salary of three thousand roubles in the service. Now I work more than in the service, and like you I get five per cent, and thank God for that. And my work is done free.’
‘Then why do it, if it’s an outright loss?’
‘You just do! What can I say? A habit, and also knowing that you have to do it. I’ll tell you more,’ the landowner went on, leaning his elbow on the windowsill and warming to the subject. ‘My son has no interest in farming. It’s obvious he’ll be a scholar. So there won’t be anybody to carry on. And still you do it. I’ve just planted a garden.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Levin, ‘it’s perfectly true. I always feel that there’s no real economy in my farming, and yet I do it … You feel a sort of responsibility towards the land.’
‘Here’s what I’ll tell you,’ the landowner went on. ‘I had a merchant for a neighbour. We took a walk round my farm, my garden. "No," he says, "Stepan Vassilyich, you’ve got everything going in good order, but your little garden’s neglected." Though my garden’s in quite good order. "If it was me, I’d cut those lindens down. Only the sap must have risen. You’ve got a thousand lindens here, and each one would yield two good pieces of bast.[10] Bast fetches a nice price these days, and you can cut a good bit of lumber out of the lindens."‘
‘And he’d use the money to buy cattle or land for next to nothing and lease it out to muzhiks,’ Levin finished with a smile, obviously having met with such calculations more than once. ‘And he’ll make a fortune. While you and I – God help us just to hang on to what’s ours and leave it to our children.’
‘You’re married, I hear?’ said the landowner.
‘Yes,’ Levin replied with proud satisfaction. ‘Yes, it’s a strange thing,’ he went on. ‘The way we live like this without reckoning, as if we’ve been appointed, like ancient vestals,[11] to tend some sort of fire.’
The landowner smiled under his white moustache.
‘There are also some among us – our friend Nikolai Ivanych, for instance, or Count Vronsky, who’s settled here now – they want to introduce industry into agronomy; but that hasn’t led to anything yet except the destroying of capital.’
‘But why don’t we do as the merchants do? Cut down the lindens for bast?’ said Levin, going back to a thought that had struck him.
‘It’s tending the fire, as you say. No, that’s no business for noblemen. And our noblemen’s business isn’t done here at the elections, but there in our own corner. There’s also the instinct of your class, what’s done and what isn’t done. And the muzhiks are the same, to look at them sometimes: a good muzhik just takes and rents as much land as he can. No matter how poor it is, he ploughs away. Also without reckoning. For an outright loss.’
‘Just like us,’ said Levin. ‘It’s been very, very nice to meet you again,’ he added, seeing Sviyazhsky approaching them.
‘And here we’ve just met for the first time since we were at your place,’ said the landowner, ‘so we fell to talking.’
‘Well, have you denounced the new ways?’ Sviyazhsky said with a smile.
‘That, too.’
‘Unburdened our souls.’
XXX
Sviyazhsky took Levin under the arm and went with him to their people.
Now it was impossible to avoid Vronsky. He stood with Stepan Arkadyich and Sergei Ivanovich and looked straight at the approaching Levin.
‘Delighted! I believe I had the pleasure of meeting you … at Princess Shcherbatsky’s,’ he said, holding out his hand to Levin.
‘Yes, I remember our meeting very well,’ said Levin and, flushing crimson, he turned away at once and began talking with his brother.
Vronsky smiled slightly and went on talking with Sviyazhsky, evidently having no wish to get into conversation with Levin; but Levin, while talking with his brother,
kept looking back at Vronsky, trying to think up something to say to him to smooth over his rudeness.
‘What comes next?’ asked Levin, looking at Sviyazhsky and Vronsky.
‘Next is Snetkov. He must either refuse or accept,’ replied Sviyazhsky.
‘And what about him, has he accepted or not?’
‘The thing is that he’s done neither,’ said Vronsky.
‘And if he refuses, who’s going to stand?’ asked Levin, who kept looking at Vronsky.
‘Whoever wants to,’ said Sviyazhsky.
‘Will you?’ asked Levin.
‘Certainly not,’ said Sviyazhsky, embarrassed and casting a fearful glance at the venomous gentleman who was standing by Sergei Ivanovich.
‘Who, then? Nevedovsky?’ said Levin, feeling himself at a loss.
But that was worse still. Nevedovsky and Sviyazhsky were the two candidates.
‘Not I, in any case,’ the venomous gentleman replied.
This was Nevedovsky himself. Sviyazhsky introduced him to Levin.
‘What, has it got under your skin, too?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, winking at Vronsky. ‘It’s like a race. We could bet on it.’
‘Yes, it does get under your skin,’ said Vronsky. ‘And once you take something up, you want to go through with it. It’s a battle!’ he said, frowning and clenching his strong jaws.
‘What a mover Sviyazhsky is! Everything’s so clear to him.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Vronsky said distractedly.
Silence followed, during which Vronsky – since one had to look at something – looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing the sullen look directed at him, said, in order to say something:
‘And how is it that you are a permanent country–dweller and not a justice of the peace? You’re not wearing the uniform of a justice of the peace.’
‘Because I think the local court is an idiotic institution,’ Levin replied sullenly, though he had been waiting all along for a chance to strike up a conversation with Vronsky in order to smooth over his initial rudeness.
‘I don’t think so, on the contrary,’ Vronsky said with calm astonishment.
‘It’s a game,’ Levin interrupted him. ‘We don’t need justices of the peace. I haven’t had a single case in eight years. And when I did have one, it was decided inside–out. The justice of the peace lives twenty–five miles from me. I have to send an attorney who costs fifteen roubles on business that’s worth two.’
And he told them how a muzhik stole flour from a miller, and when the miller told him about it, the muzhik sued him for slander. This was all inappropriate and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as he spoke.
‘Oh, what an original!’ said Stepan Arkadyich with his most almond–buttery smile. ‘But come, I think they’re voting …’
And they dispersed.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, who had observed his brother’s awkward escapade, ‘I don’t understand how it’s possible to be deprived of political tact to such a degree. That’s what we Russians lack. The provincial marshal is our opponent and you are ami cochon* with him and ask him to stand. And Count Vronsky … I’m not going to be friends with him – he’s invited me to dinner; I won’t go – but he’s one
* Fast friends.
of us. Why make an enemy of him? And then you ask Nevedovsky if he’s going to stand. It isn’t done.’
‘Ah, I don’t understand any of it! And it’s all trifles,’ Levin replied sullenly.
‘You say it’s all trifles and then you muddle everything up.’
Levin fell silent and together they went into the big room.
The provincial marshal, though he felt that a dirty trick was in the air, prepared for him, and though not everyone had asked him, still decided to stand. The whole room fell silent; the secretary announced stentoriously that Captain of the Guards Mikhail Stepanovich Snetkov was standing for provincial marshal.
The district marshals began circulating with little plates of ballots, from their own tables to the governor’s, and the elections began.
‘Put it on the right,’ Stepan Arkadyich whispered to Levin, as he and his brother followed the marshal to the table. But just then Levin forgot the calculation that had been explained to him and feared that Stepan Arkadyich was mistaken when he said ‘to the right’. For Snetkov was the enemy. As he approached the box, he held the ballot in his right hand, but, thinking he was mistaken, he shifted it to his left hand and then, obviously, put it on the left. An expert who was standing near the box and could tell just from the movement of the elbow where the ballot had been put, winced with displeasure. There was nothing for him to exercise his perspicacity on.
Everyone kept silent and the counting of the ballots could be heard. Then a single voice announced the numbers for and against.
The marshal was elected by a large majority. A hubbub arose and everybody rushed headlong for the door. Snetkov came in and the nobility surrounded him, offering congratulations.
‘Well, is it over now?’ Levin asked Sergei Ivanovich.
‘It’s just beginning,’ Sviyazhsky, smiling, answered for Sergei Ivanovich. ‘The new candidate for marshal may get more votes.’
Again Levin had quite forgotten about that. Only now did he remember that there was some subtlety here, but he found it boring to recall what it was. He was overcome with dejection and wanted to get out of the crowd that instant.
Since no one paid any attention to him and he seemed not to be needed by anyone, he quietly went to the smaller room where refreshments were served and felt greatly relieved to see the servants again. The little old servant offered him something, and Levin accepted. After eating a cutlet with beans and discussing the servant’s former masters with him, Levin, unwilling to enter the big room where he felt so uncomfortable, went for a stroll in the gallery.
The gallery was filled with smartly–dressed women who leaned over the balustrade trying not to miss a word of what was being said below. Beside the ladies sat or stood elegant lawyers, bespectacled high–school teachers and officers. The talk everywhere was about the elections, and how tormenting it was for the marshal, and how good the debate had been. In one group Levin heard his brother praised. A lady said to a lawyer:
‘I’m so glad I heard Koznyshev! It was worth going without dinner. Charming! So lucid. And one can hear everything! In your courts no one ever speaks like that. Only Meidel, and even he is far less eloquent.’
Finding free space by the balustrade, Levin leaned over and began to look and listen.
All the noblemen sat behind their partitions, by districts. In the middle of the room a man in a uniform stood and announced in a loud, high voice:
‘Now standing for provincial marshal of the nobility is Cavalry Staff–Captain Evgeny Ivanovich Opukhtin!’
A dead silence ensued, and one weak old man’s voice was heard:
‘Decline!’
‘Now standing is Court Councillor Pyotr Petrovich Bohl,’ the voice began a(gain.
‘Decline!’ a shrill young voice rang out.