by Leo Tolstoy
‘Yes, but she didn’t mean anything of the kind.’
‘Well, that’s just what I can’t make out: did she say it intentionally or not? Maybe she didn’t really wish to agree so suddenly, but it looked very like it. It turned out horribly. I quite played the fool,’ he added, smiling contemptuously at himself.
‘What do you mean? Where have you been?’
The count, omitting his manifold irresolute approaches, related everything as it had happened.
‘I spoilt it myself: I ought to have been bolder. She screamed and ran from the window.’
‘So she screamed and ran away,’ said the cornet, smiling uneasily in answer to the count’s smile, which for such a long time had had so strong an influence over him.
‘Yes, but it’s time to go to sleep.’
The cornet again turned his back to the door and lay silent for about ten minutes. Heaven knows what went on in his soul, but when he turned again, his face bore an expression of suffering and resolve.
‘Count Túrbin!’ he said abruptly.
‘Are you delirious?’ quietly replied the count. ‘… What is it, Cornet Pólozov?’
‘Count Túrbin, you are a scoundrel!’ cried Pólozov, and again jumped out of bed.
XVI
THE squadron left next day. The two officers did not see their hosts again and did not bid them farewell. Neither did they speak to one another. They intended to fight a duel at the first halting-place. But Captain Schulz, a good comrade and splendid horseman, beloved by everyone in the regiment and chosen by the count to act as his second, managed to settle the affair so well that not only did they not fight but no one in the regiment knew anything about the matter, and Túrbin and Pólozov, though no longer on the old friendly footing, still continued to speak in familiar terms to one another and to meet at dinners and card-parties.
1 Freemasonry in Russia was a secret association, the original purpose of which was the moral perfecting of people on the basis of equality and universal brotherhood. Commencing as a mystical-religious movement in the eighteenth century, it became political during the reign of Alexander I, and was suppressed in 1822.
2 The Martinists were a society of Russian Freemasons founded in 1780 and named after the French theosophist, Louis Claude Saint-Martin.
3 The Tugenbund (League of Virtue) was a German association founded in 1808 with the acknowledged purpose of cultivating patriotism, reorganizing the army, and encouraging education, and with the secret aim of throwing off the French yoke. Dissolved on Napoleon’s demand in 1809, it continued to exist secretly, and exerted great influence in 1812. It was suspected of having revolutionary tendencies, and was in very bad odour with the Russian government at the time of the Holy Alliance.
4 M. H. Milorádovich (1770–1825) distinguished himself in the Napoleonic war, became Governor-General of Petersburg, and was killed when suppressing the ‘Decembrist’ mutiny in 1825. He appears in War and Peace.
5 D. V. Davýdov (1784–1839), a popular poet, and leader of a guerrilla force in the war of 1812. A. S. Púshkin (1799–1837), the greatest of Russian poets, was his contemporary.
6 The nobility included not merely those who had titles, but all who in England would be called the gentry.
7 For a Russian bath, as for a Turkish bath, one goes to a public establishment and subjects oneself to heat that produces profuse perspiration.
8 It was not unusual at the bath to associate with a woman.
9 A town in the Tambóv province noted for its horse fair.
10 Réaumur = thirteen below zero Fahrenheit.
11 The game referred to was shtos. The players selected cards for themselves from packs on the table, and placed their stakes on or under their cards. The banker had a pack from which he dealt to right and left alternately. Cards dealt to the right won for him, those dealt to the left won for the players. ‘Pass up’ was a reminder to the players to hand up stakes due to the bank. ‘Simples’ were single stakes. By turning down ‘corners’ of his card a player increased his stake two- or three-fold. A ‘transport’ increased it six-fold. Shtos has long gone out of fashion and been replaced by other forms of gambling.
12 Five-ruble notes were blue and ten-ruble notes red.
13 That is to say, a medal gained in the defence of his country against Napoleon.
14 The custom was, not to dance a whole dance with one lady but to take a few turns round the room, conduct her to her seat, bow to her, thank her, and seek a fresh partner.
15 The zakúska (‘little bite’) consists of a choice of snacks: caviare, salt-fish, cheese, radishes, or what not, with small glasses of vodka or other spirits. It is sometimes served alone, but usually forms an appetizer laid out on a side table and partaken of immediately before dinner or supper. It answers somewhat to the hors-d’œuvre of an English dinner.
16 The same word (ruká) stands for hand or arm in Russian.
17 In Russia god-parents and their god-children, and people having the same god-father or god-mother, were considered to be related.
18 Bémol is French for a flat; but in Russia many people knowing nothing of musical technicalities imagined it to have something to do with excellence in music.
19 Tolstóy seems here to antedate Russia’s intervention in the Hungarian insurrection. The Russian army did not enter Hungary till May 1849 and the war lasted till the end of September that year.
20 ‘They will be putting themselves to expense on our account.’
21 ‘If you please, gentlemen.’
22 In préférence partners play together as in whist. There is a method of scoring ‘with tables’ which increases the gains and losses of the players. The players compete in declaring the number of tricks the cards they hold will enable them to make. The highest bidder decides which suit is to be trumps and has to make the number of tricks he has declared, or be fined. A player declaring misère undertakes to make no tricks, and is fined (puts on a remise) for each trick he or she takes. ‘Ace and king blank’ means that a player holds the two highest cards and no others of a given suit.
23 At the time of this story two currencies were in use simultaneously – the depreciated ‘assignats’ and the ‘silver rubles’, which like the ‘assignats’ were usually paper. The assignats had been introduced in Russia in 1768 and by the end of the Napoleonic wars were much depreciated. They fluctuated till 1841, when a new ‘silver ruble’ was introduced, the value of which was about 38 pence. Paper ‘silver rubles’ were exchangeable for coin at par, and it was decreed that the assignats would be redeemed at the rate of 3 1/2 assignats for one ‘silver ruble’. In out-of-the-way provincial districts the assignats were still in general use.
24 Kvas is a non-intoxicating drink usually made from rye-malt and rye-flour.
A LANDLORD’S MORNING
(PART OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL ‘A RUSSIAN LANDLORD’)
Chapter I
PRINCE NEKHLYÚDOV was nineteen years old when, at the end of his Third Course at the University, he came to his estate for the summer vacation and spent the whole summer there by himself. That autumn, in his unformed boyish hand, he wrote the following letter to his aunt, Countess Belorétski, whom he considered to be his best friend and the cleverest woman in the world. It was in French, and ran as follows:
‘My dear Aunt,
‘I have made a resolution which will affect my destiny for life. I am leaving the university to devote myself to life on my estate, because I feel that I was born for it. For heaven’s sake, dear Aunt, don’t laugh at me. You will say that I am young; perhaps I really am still a child, but that does not prevent me from feeling my vocation – from wishing to do good, and from loving goodness.
‘As I wrote you before, I found affairs here in indescribable disorder. Wishing to put them in order and understand them, I discovered that the chief evil lies in the very pitiable and impoverished condition of the peasants, and that this is an evil that can be remedied only by work and patience. If you could only see two of
my peasants, David and Iván, and the way they and their families live, I am sure that the mere sight of those two unfortunates would do more to convince you than anything I can say to explain my intention. Is it not my sacred and direct duty to care for the welfare of these seven hundred men for whom I must be responsible to God? Would it not be a sin, for the sake of pleasure or ambition, to abandon them to the caprice of harsh elders and stewards? And why should I seek other opportunities of being useful and doing good, when such a noble, brilliant, and immediate duty lies at hand? I feel that I am capable of being a good landlord; and to be so, as I understand the word, one needs neither university diplomas nor official rank, such as you desire for me. Dear Aunt, don’t make ambitious plans for me; accustom yourself to the thought that I have chosen quite a special path, but a good one which I feel will yield me happiness. I have thought much, very much, about my future duties, and have written down rules of conduct for myself; and if God only grants me life and strength, I shall succeed in my undertaking.
‘Don’t show my brother Vásya this letter: I am afraid of his ridicule. He is accustomed to domineer over me and I am accustomed to submit to him. Ványa even if he does not approve of my intentions will at least understand them.’
The countess answered with the following letter, which is here also translated from the French:
‘Your letter, my dear Dmítri, proved nothing to me except that you have an admirable heart, of which I was always convinced. But, my dear boy, our good qualities do us more harm in life than our bad ones. I must not tell you that you are doing a foolish thing and that your action grieves me; I will try to influence you only by persuasion. Let us consider the matter, my dear. You say you feel a vocation for country life, that you wish to make your serfs happy, and hope to be a good proprietor. I must tell you: first, that we feel our vocation only after we have once mistaken it: secondly, that it is easier to make oneself happy than others, and thirdly, that to be a good landlord one must be a cold and austere man, which you will scarcely be, though you may try to make believe that you are.
‘You think your arguments irrefutable and even accept them as rules for the conduct of life, but at my age, my dear, one does not believe in arguments and rules but only in experience; and experience tells me that your plans are childish. I am getting on for fifty and have known many fine men, but have never heard of a young man of good family and ability burying himself in the country in order to do good. You always wished to appear original, but your originality is really nothing but excessive self-esteem. Believe me, my dear, it is better to choose the trodden paths. They lead more easily to success, and success, even if you don’t want it for yourself, is indispensable to enable you to do the good you desire.
‘The poverty of some peasants is an unavoidable evil or one which can be remedied without forgetting all your obligations to society, to your relations, and to yourself. With your intelligence, your heart, and your love of goodness, there is no career in which you would not obtain success; but choose at any rate one worthy of you and which will bring you honour.
‘I believe in your sincerity when you say you are free from ambition, but you are deceiving yourself. At your age and with your capacity ambition is a virtue, though it becomes a defect and a vulgarity when a man is no longer able to satisfy that passion, and you will experience this if you do not change your intention.
‘Goodbye, dear Dmítri. It seems to me that I love you more than ever for your absurd, but noble and magnanimous plan. Do as you think best, but I confess that I cannot agree with you.’
Having received this letter the young man considered it for a long time, and at last, having come to the conclusion that even the cleverest woman may make mistakes, sent in his petition for discharge from the university, and settled down on his estate.
Chapter II
THE young landowner, as he had written to his aunt, had drawn up rules for his estate management and for his life in general, and had allotted his hours, days, and months to different occupations. Sundays were fixed for receiving petitioners – the domestic and other serfs – for visiting the allotments of the poorest peasants and giving them assistance with the assent of the village Commune (the mir) which met each Sunday evening and decided how much help should be distributed and to whom.
More than a year had passed in such activities and the young man was no longer quite a novice either in practical or theoretical knowledge of estate management.
It was a bright Sunday in June when Nekhlyúdov, having drunk his coffee and glanced through a chapter of Maison Rustique, put a note-book and a packet of ruble notes in the pocket of his light overcoat, and started out from the large wooden house with its colonnades and verandas, in which he occupied one small room downstairs, and went along the unswept weed-grown paths of the old English garden, towards the village which lay along both sides of the high road. Nekhlyúdov was a tall well-knit young man, with a mass of thick curly brown hair, a bright sparkle in his dark eyes, a fresh complexion, and rosy lips above which the first down of young manhood was just appearing. Youthful strength, energy, and good-natured self-satisfaction were apparent in his gait and every movement. The peasants, dressed in their Sunday best, were returning from church in motley groups – old men, maidens, children, and women with babies in their arms – and dispersing into their homes, bowing low to the master and stepping out of his way. After going some way along the street Nekhlyúdov stopped, took out his note-book, and looked at the last page, on which in his unformed hand he had written the names of several peasants, with comments: ‘Iván Chúris asks for props’, he read, and went up to the gate of the second hut on his right.
The Chúrises’ domicile consisted of a half-rotten log building, mouldy at the corners, sloping to one side, and so sunk in the ground that a small, broken sash window, with its shutter half torn off, and a still smaller casement window stopped up with tow, were only just above the manure heap. Attached to the principal hut were a boarded passage with a low door and a rotten threshold, another small building, still older, and even lower than the passage, a gate, and a wattled shed. All this had once been covered by one irregular roof, but the thick, black, rotting thatch now hung only over the eaves, so that in places the rafters and laths were visible. In the front of the yard was a well with dilapidated sides and the remains of a post and pulley, and a dirty cattle-trampled puddle in which ducks were splashing. Near the well stood two ancient willows that were split and had scanty pale-green shoots. Under one of these willows, which witnessed to the fact that there had been a time when someone had cared to beautify the place, sat a fair-haired little girl, about eight years old, making a two-year-old baby girl crawl round her. A puppy playing beside them, seeing Nekhlyúdov, rushed headlong under the gate and burst into frightened, quivering barking.
‘Is Iván at home?’ asked Nekhlyúdov.
The elder girl seemed petrified by the question and opened her eyes wider and wider without answering. The younger one opened her mouth and prepared to cry. A little, old-looking woman in a tattered check gown with an old red girdle tied low down, looked out from behind the door, but did not answer either. Nekhlyúdov went up to the door and repeated his question.
‘He is, master,’ said the old woman in a tremulous voice, bowing low and growing more and more frightened and agitated.
When Nekhlyúdov, having greeted her, passed through the passage into the narrow yard, the old woman went up to the door and, resting her chin on her hand and not taking her eyes off the master, began slowly to shake her head.
The yard was a wretched place. Here and there lay old blackened manure left after carting, and on this lay in disorder a rotting block, a pitchfork, and two harrows. The penthouse round the yard had almost no thatch left on the roof, and one side had fallen in so that the rafters no longer lay on the fork-posts but on the manure. On the other side stood a wooden plough, a cart lacking a wheel, and a heap of empty, useless beehives piled one on another. Chúris, with the edge and h
ead of his axe, was getting the wattle wall clear from the roof which had crushed it. Iván Chúris was a peasant of about fifty, below the average height. His tanned, oval face, surrounded by a dark brown beard streaked with grey and thick hair of the same colour, was handsome and expressive. His dark blue half-closed eyes were intelligent and carelessly good-natured, and when he smiled his small regular mouth, sharply defined under his scanty brown moustache, expressed calm self-confidence and a certain ironical indifference to his surroundings. The coarseness of his skin, his deep wrinkles, the sharply marked sinews of his neck, face, and arms, the unnatural stoop of his shoulders, and his crooked bandy legs, showed that his life had been spent in labour beyond his strength. He wore thick white hempen trousers patched with blue on the knees, a dirty shirt of the same material torn at the back and arms, and a low girdle of tape, from which hung a brass key.
‘Good-day,’ said Nekhlyúdov as he entered the yard.
Chúris looked round and then continued his work, and only when he had cleared the wattle from under the roof by an energetic effort did he stick his axe into a log, adjust his girdle, and come out into the middle of the yard.
‘A pleasant holiday, your honour!’ he said, bowing low and then shaking back his hair.
‘Thank you, friend. You see I’ve come to look at your allotment,’ said Nekhlyúdov, looking at the peasant’s garb with boyish friendliness and timidity. ‘Let me see why you want those props you asked me for at the meeting of the Commune.’
‘The props? Why, you know what props are for, your honour! I’d like to prop things up a bit: there, please see for yourself. Only the other day this corner fell in – but thank God the cattle were not inside at the time. Things hardly hold together,’ said Chúris, looking contemptuously at his unthatched, crooked, and dilapidated sheds. ‘The rafters, gable-ends, and cross-pieces now, if you only touch them you won’t find a single piece of timber that’s any use. And where’s a man to get timber from nowadays – you know yourself.’