“No, I will stick to my determination; I will make the proposition to him, and will do my part,” thought Nekhlyudov, and, letting the horses pass by, he went into Dutlov’s spacious yard. He could see that the manure had lately been removed : the earth was still black and sweaty, and in places, particularly near the gate, lay scattered red-fibred shreds. In the yard, and under the high sheds, stood in good order many carts, ploughs, sleighs, blocks, tubs, and all kinds of peasant possessions. Pigeons flitted to and fro and cooed in the shade under the broad, solid rafters. There was an odour of manure and tar.
In one corner Karp and Ignat were fixing a new transom-bed on a large, three-horse, steel-rimmed cart. Dutlov’s three sons resembled each other very much. The youngest, Ilya, whom Nekhlyildov had met iu the gate, had no beard, and was smaller, ruddier, and more foppishly clad than the other two. The second, Ignat, was taller, more tanned, had a pointed beard, and, although he too wore boots, a driver’s shirt, and a lambskin cap, he did not have the careless, holiday aspect of his younger brother. The eldest, Karp, was taller still, wore bast shoes, a gray caftan, and a shirt without gussets; he had a long red beard, and looked not only solemn, but even gloomy.
“Do you command me to send for father, your Grace? “he said, walking up to the master and bowing slightly and awkwardly.
“No, I will go myself to the apiary; I wish to look at his arrangement of it; but I want to talk with you,” said Nekhlyudov, walking over to the other end of the yard, so that Ignat might not hear what he was going to say to Karp.
The self-confidence and a certain pride, which were noticeable in the whole manner of these two peasants, and that which his nurse had told him, so embarrassed the young master that he found it hard to make up his mind to tell him of the matter in hand. He felt as though he were guilty of something; and it was easier for him to speak to one of the brothers, without being heard by the other. Karp looked somewhat surprised at being asked by the master to step aside, but he followed him.
“It is this,” began Nekhlyudov, hesitating, “I wanted to ask you how many horses you had.”
“There will be some five sets of three; there are also some colts,” Karp answered, freely, scratching his back.
“Do your brothers drive the stage?”
“We drive the stage with three troykas. Ilyushka has been doing some hauling; he has just returned.”
“Do you find that profitable? How much do you earn in this manner?”
“What profit can there be, your Grace? We just feed ourselves and the horses, and God be thanked for that.”
“Then why do you not busy yourselves with something else? You might buy some forest or rent some land.”
“Of course, your Grace, we might rent some land, if it came handy.”
“This is what I want to propose to you. What is the use of teaming, just to earn your feed, when you can rent some thirty desyatinas of me? I will let you have the whole parcel which lies behind Sapov’s, and you can start a large farm.”
Nekhlyudov was now carried away by his plan of a peasant farm, which he had thought over and recited to himself more than once, and he began to expound to Karp, without stammering, his plan of a peasant farm. Karp listened attentively to the words of the master.
“We are very well satisfied with your favour,” he said, when ISTekhlyudov stopped and looked at him, expecting an answer. “Of course, there is nothing bad in this. It is better for a peasant to attend to the soil than to flourish his whip. Peasants of our kind get easily spoilt, when they travel among strange men, and meet all kinds of people. There is nothing better for a peasant than to busy himself with the land.”
“What do you think of it, then?”
“As long as father is alive, your Grace, there is no use in my thinking. His will decides.”
“Take me to the apiary; I will talk to him.”
“This way, if you please,” said Karp, slowly turning toward the barn in the back of the yard. He opened a low gate which led to the beehives, and, letting the master walk through it, and closing it, he walked up to Ignat, and resumed his interrupted work.
XV
NEKHLYUD0V BENT HIS head, and passed through the low gate underneath the shady shed to the apiary, which was back of the yard. The small space, surrounded by straw and a wicker fence which admitted the sunlight, where stood symmetrically arranged the beehives, covered with small boards, and surrounded by golden bees circling noisilу about them, was all bathed in the hot, brilliant rays of the June sun.
A well-trodden path led from the gate through the middle of the apiary to a wooden-roofed cross with a brass-foil image upon it, which shone glaringly in the sun. A few stately linden-trees, which towered with their curly tops above the straw thatch of the neighbouring yard, rustled their fresh dark green foliage almost inaudibly, on account of the buzzing of the bees. All the shadows from the roofed fence, from the lindens, and from the beehives that were covered with boards, fell black and short upon the small, wiry grass that sprouted between the hives.
The small, bent form of an old man, with his uncovered gray, and partly bald, head shining in the sun, was seen near the door of a newly thatched, moss-calked plank building, which was situated between the lindens. Upon hearing the creaking of the gate, the old man turned around and, wiping off his perspiring, sunburnt face with the skirt of his shirt, and smiling gently and joyfully, came to meet the master.
The apiary was so cosy, so pleasant, so quiet, and so sunlit; the face of the gray-haired old man, with the abundant гау-Ике wrinkles about his eyes, in his wide shoes over his bare feet, who, waddling along and smiling good-naturedly and contentedly, welcomed the master in his exclusive possessions, was so simple-hearted and kind, that Nekhlyudov immediately forgot the heavy impressions of the morning, and his favourite dream rose up before him. He saw all his peasants just as rich and good-natured as old Dutlov, and all smiled kindly and joyously at him, because they owed to him alone all their wealth and happiness.
“Will you not have a net, your Grace? The bees are angry now, and they sting,” said the old man, taking down from the fence a dirty linen bag fragrant with honey, which was sewed to a bark hoop, and offering it to the master. “The bees know me, and do not sting me,” he added, with a gentle smile, which hardly ever left his handsome, sunburnt face.
“Then I shall not need it, either. Well, are they swarming already?” asked Nekhlyudov, also smiling, though he knew not why.
“They are swarming, Father Dmitri Nikolaevich,” answered the old man, wishing to express his especial kindness by calling his master by his name and patronymic, “but they have just begun to do it properly. It has been a cold spring, you know.”
“I have read in a book,” began Nekhlyudov, warding off a bee that had lost itself in his hair, and was buzzing over his very ear, “that when the combs are placed straight on little bars, the bees begin to swarm earlier. For this purpose they make hives out of boards — with cross-bea— “
“Please do not wave your hand, it will make it only worse,” said the old man. “Had I not better give you the net?”
Nekhlyudov was experiencing pain, but a certain childish conceit prevented him from acknowledging it; he again refused the net, and continued to tell the old man about the construction of beehives, of which he had read in the “Maison Rustique,” and in which the bees, according to his opinion, would swarm twice as much; but a bee stung his neck, and he stopped confused in the middle of his argument.
“That is so, Father Dmitri Nikolaevich,” said the old man, glancing at the master with fatherly condescension, “they write so in books. But they may write so maliciously. ‘ Let him do,’ they probably say, ‘ as we write, and we will have the laugh on him.’ I believe that is possible! For how are you going to teach the bees where to build their combs? They fix them in the hollow blocks as they please, sometimes crossways, and at others straight. Look here, if you please,” he added, uncorking one of the nearest blocks, and looking through the opening, which was covered with buzzing and creeping bees along the crooked combs.
“Now here, these young ones, they have their mind on a queen bee, but they build the comb straightways and aslant, just as it fits best into the block,” said the old man, obviously carried away by his favourite subject, and not noticing the master’s condition. “They are coming heavily laden to-day, it is a warm day, and everything can be seen,” he added, corking up the hive, and crushing a creeping bee with a rag, and then brushing off with his coarse hand a few bees from his wrinkled brow. The bees did not sting him. But Nekhlyudov could no longer repress his desire to run out of the apiary; the bees had stung
