“I am listening, sir,” Churis interrupted him.
“Have you seen the stone huts, with the hollow walls, that I have had built in the new hamlet?”
“Of course I have, sir,” rephed Churis, showing his good white teeth in his smile. “We marvelled a great deal as they were building them, — wonderful huts! The boys made sport of them, saying that the hollow walls were storehouses, to keep rats away. Fine huts! “he concluded, with an expression of sarcastic incredulity, shaking his head. “Regular jails!”
“Yes, excellent huts, dry and warm, and not so likely to take fire,” retorted the master, with a frown on his youthful face, obviously dissatisfied with the peasant’s sarcasm.
“No question about that, your Grace, fine huts.”
“Now, one of those huts is all ready. It is a thirty-foot hut, with vestibules and a storeroom, ready for occupancy. I will let you have it at your price; you will pay me when you can,” said the master, with a self-satisfied smile, which he could not keep back, at the thought that he was doing a good act. “You will break down your old hut,” he continued; “it will do yet for a barn. We will transfer the outhouses in some way. There is excellent water there. I will cut a garden for you out of the cleared ground, and also will lay out a piece of land for you in three parcels. You will be happy there. Well, are you not satisfied? “asked Nekhlyiidov, when he noticed that the moment he mentioned changing quarters Churis stood in complete immobility and, without a smile, gazed at the floor.
“It is your Grace’s will,” he answered, without lifting his eyes.
The old woman moved forward, as if touched to the quick, and was about to say something, but her husband anticipated her.
“It is your Grace’s will,” he repeated, firmly, and at the same time humbly, looking at his master, and shaking his hair, “but it will not do for us to live in the new hamlet.”
“Why?”
“No, your Grace! We are badly off here, but if you transfer us there, we sha’n’t stay peasants long. What kind of peasants can we be there? It is impossible to live there, saving your Grace!”
“Why not?”
“We shall be completely ruined, your Grace!”
“But why is it impossible to hve there?”
“What life will it be? You judge for yourself : the place has never been inhabited; the quality of the water is unknown; there is no place to drive the cattle to. Our hemp plots have been manured here since time immemorial, but how is it there? Why, there is nothing but barrenness there. Neither fences, nor kilns, nor sheds, — nothing. We shall be ruined, your Grace, if you insist upon our going there, completely ruined! It is a new place, an unknown place— “he repeated, with a melancholy, but firm, shake of his head.
Nekhlyudov began to prove to the peasant that the transfer would be very profitable to him, that fences and sheds would be put up, that the water was good there, and so forth; but Churis’s dull silence embarrassed him, and he felt that he was not saying what he ought to. Churls did not reply; but when the master grew silent, he remarked, with a light smile, that it would be best to settle the old domestic servants and Aleshka the fool in that hamlet, to keep a watch on the grain.
“Now that would be excellent,” he remarked, and smiled again. “It is a useless affair, your Grace!”
“What of it if it is an uninhabited place? “Nekhlyudov expatiated, patiently. “Here was once an uninhabited place, and people are living in it now. And so you had better settle there in a lucky hour — Yes, you had better settle there— “
“But, your Grace, there is no comparison! “Churis answered with animation, as if afraid that the master might have taken his final resolution. “Here is a cheery place, a gay place, and we are used to it, and to the road, and the pond, where the women wash the clothes and the cattle go to water; and all our peasant surroundings have been here since time immemorial, — the threshing-floor, the garden, and the willows that my parents have set out. My grandfather and father have given their souls to God here, and I ask nothing else, your Grace, but to be able to end my days here. If it should be your favour to mend the hut, we shall be greatly obliged to your Grace; if not, we shall manage to end our days in the old hut. Let us pray to the Lord all our days,” he continued, making low obeisances. “Drive us not from our nest, sir.”
While Churis was speaking, ever louder and louder sobs were heard under the beds, in the place where his wife stood, and when her husband pronounced the word “sir,” his wife suddenly rushed out and, weeping, threw herself down at the master’s feet :
“Do not ruin us, benefactor! You are our father, you are our mother! What business have we to move? We are old and lonely people. Both God and you— “She burst out in tears.
Nekhlyudov jumped up from his seat, and wanted to raise the old woman, but she struck the earth floor with a certain voluptuousness of despair, and pushed away the master’s hand.
“What are you doing? Get up, please! If you do not wish, you do not have to,” he said, waving his hands, and retreating to the door.
When Nekhlyudov seated himself again on the bench, and silence reigned in the hut, interrupted only by the blubbering of the old woman, who had again removed herself to her place under the beds, and was there wiping off her tears with the sleeve of her shirt, the young proprietor comprehended what meaning the dilapidated wretched hut, the broken well with the dirty puddle, the rotting stables and barns, and the spht willows that could be seen through the crooked window, had for Churis and his wife, and a heavy, melancholy feeling came over him, and he was embarrassed.
“Why did you not say at the meeting of last week that you needed a hut? I do not know now how to help you. I told you all at the first meeting that I was settled in the estate, and that I meant to devote my Hfe to you; that I was prepared to deprive myself of everything in order to see you contented and happy, — and I vow before God that I will keep my word,” said the youthful proprietor, unconscious of the fact that such ebullitions were unable to gain the confidence of any man, least of all a Kussian, who loves not words but deeds, and who is averse to the expression of feelings, however beautiful.
The simple-hearted young man was so happy in the sentiment which he was experiencing that he could not help pouring it out.
Churis bent his head sideways and, blinking slowly, listened with forced attention to his master as to a man who must be listened to, though he may say things that are not very agreeable and have not the least reference to the listener.
“But I cannot give everybody all they ask of me. If I did not refuse anybody who asks me for timber, I should soon be left with none myself, and would be unable to give to him who is really in need of it. That is why I have put aside a part of the forest to be used for mending the peasant buildings, and have turned it over to the Commune. That forest is no longer mine, but yours, the peasants’, and I have no say about it, but the Commune controls it as it sees fit. Come this evening to the meeting; I will tell the Commune of your need : if it resolves to give you a new hut, it is well, but I have no forest. I am anxious to help you with all my heart; but if you do not want to move, the Commune will have to arrange it for you, and not I. Do you understand me?”
“We are very well satisfied with your favour,” answered the embarrassed Churis. “If you will deign to let me have a little timber for the outbuildings, I will manage one way or other. The Commune? Well, we know— “
“No, you had better come.”
“Your servant, sir. I shall be there. Why should I not go? Only I will not ask the Commune for anything.”
IV
THE YOUNG PROPRIETOR evidently wanted to ask the peasant people something else; he did not rise from the bench, and with indecision looked now at Churis, and now into the empty, cold oven.
“Have you had your dinner? “he finally asked them.
Under Churis’s moustache played a sarcastic smile, as though it amused him to hear the master ask such foolish questions; he did not answer.
“What dinner, benefactor? “said the old woman, with a deep sigh. “We have eaten some bread. That was our dinner. There was no time to-day to go for some sorrel, and so there was nothing to make soup with, and what kvas there was I gave to the children.”
“To-day we have a hunger fast, your Grace,” Churis chimed in, glossing his wife’s words. “Bread and onions, — such is our peasant food. Thank the Lord I have some little bread; by your favour it has lasted until now; but the rest of our peasants
