‘Why is the carpenter not at the thresher?’
‘I meant to tell you yesterday: the harrows need repair. It’s time for ploughing.’
‘And what about last winter?’
‘And what do you want with the carpenter, sir?’
‘Where are the racks for the calves’ yard?’
‘I ordered them to be put in place. What can you do with these folk?’ said the steward, waving his arm.
‘Not with these people, but with this steward!’ said Levin, flaring up. ‘What on earth do I keep you for!’ he shouted. But remembering that this was not going to help, he stopped in mid-speech and merely sighed. ‘Well, can we start sowing?’ he asked after a pause.
‘Beyond Turkino we can, tomorrow or the day after.’
‘And the clover?’
‘I sent Vassily and Mishka, they’re sowing it. Only I don’t know if they’ll get through: it’s soggy.’
‘How many acres?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Why not the whole of it?’ shouted Levin.
That clover was being sown on only sixteen and not fifty acres was still more vexing. Planting clover, both in theory and in his own experience, was only successful if it was done as early as possible, almost over the snow. And Levin could never get that done.
‘No people. What can you do with these folk? Three didn’t show up. And now Semyon ...’
‘Well, you could have let the straw wait.’
‘That’s what I did.’
‘Where are the people?’
‘Five are making compote‘ (he meant compost). ‘Four are shovelling oats — lest they go bad, Konstantin Dmitrich. ’
Levin knew very well that ‘lest they go bad’ meant that the English seed oats were already spoiled - again what he had ordered had not been done.
‘But I told you back in Lent - the vent pipes!’ he shouted.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get everything done on time.’
Levin waved his hand angrily, went to the barns to have a look at the oats, and returned to the stables. The oats were not spoiled yet. But the workers were transferring them with shovels, whereas they should simply have been dumped directly on the barn floor, and, after giving orders about that and taking two workers from there to plant clover, Levin’s vexation with the steward subsided. Besides, the day was so fine that it was impossible to be angry.
‘Ignat!’ he cried to the coachman, who had rolled up his sleeves and was washing the carriage by the well. ‘Saddle me up ...’
‘Which do you want, sir?’
‘Well, take Kolpik.’
‘Right, sir.’
While the horse was being saddled, Levin again called over the steward, who was hanging around in view, to make it up with him, and began telling him about the impending spring work and his plans for the estate.
The carting of manure had to begin earlier, so that everything would be finished before the early mowing. The far field had to be ploughed continually, so as to keep it fallow. The hay was to be got in not on half shares with the peasants but by hired workers.
The steward listened attentively and obviously made an effort to approve of the master’s suggestions; but all the same he had that hopeless and glum look, so familiar to Levin and always so irritating to him. This look said: ‘That’s all very well, but it’s as God grants.’
Nothing so upset Levin as this tone. But it was a tone common to all stewards, as many of them as he had employed. They all had the same attitude towards his proposals, and therefore he now no longer got angry, but became upset and felt himself still more roused to fight this somehow elemental force for which he could find no other name than ‘as God grants’, and which was constantly opposed to him.
‘If we manage, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said the steward.
‘Why shouldn’t you?’
‘We need to hire more workers, another fifteen men or so. But they don’t come. There were some today, but they asked seventy roubles each for the summer.’
Levin kept silent. Again this force opposed him. He knew that, hard as they tried, they had never been able to hire more than forty workers, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, at the real price; they might get forty, but not more. Yet he could not help fighting even so.
‘Send to Sury, to Chefirovka, if they don’t come. We must look.’
‘So I will,’ Vassily Fyodorovich said glumly. ‘And the horses have also gone weak.’
‘We’ll buy more. Oh, I know,’ he added, laughing, ‘you’d have it all smaller and poorer, but this year I won’t let you do it your way. I’ll do everything myself.’
‘You don’t seem to sleep much as it is. More fun for us, under the master’s eye ...’
‘So they’re sowing clover beyond Birch Dale? I’ll go and have a look,’ he said, mounting the small, light bay Kolpik, brought by the coachman.
‘You won’t get across the brook, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ cried the coachman.
‘Well, through the woods then.’
And at the brisk amble of the good, too-long-inactive little horse, who snorted over the puddles and tugged at the reins, Levin rode across the mud of the yard, out of the gate and into the fields.
If Levin felt happy in the cattle- and farm-yards, he felt still happier in the fields. Swaying rhythmically to the amble of his good little mount, drinking in the warm yet fresh smell of the snow and the air as he went through the forest over the granular, subsiding snow that still remained here and there with tracks spreading in it, he rejoiced at each of his trees with moss reviving on its bark and buds swelling. When he rode out of the forest, green wheat spread before him in a smooth, velvety carpet over a huge space, with not a single bare or marshy patch, and only spotted here and there in the hollows with the remains of the melting snow. Nor was he angered by the sight of a peasant horse and colt trampling his green wheat (he told a muzhik he met to drive them away), nor by the mocking and stupid reply of the muzhik Ipat, whom he met and asked: ‘Well, Ipat, time for sowing?’ ‘Have to plough first, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ replied Ipat. The further he rode, the happier he felt, and plans for the estate, one better than another, arose in his mind: to plant willows along the meridional lines of all the fields, so that the snow would not stay too long under them; to divide them into six fertilized fields and three set aside for grass; to build a cattle-yard at the far end of the field and dig a pond; to set up movable pens for the cattle so as to manure the fields. And then he would have eight hundred acres of wheat, two hundred and fifty of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and not a single acre exhausted.
In such dreams, turning the horse carefully along the borders, so as not to trample his green wheat, he rode up to the workers who were sowing clover. The cart with the seed stood not at the edge but in the field, and the winter wheat was all dug up by the wheels and the horse. The two workers were sitting on a balk, probably taking turns smoking a pipe. The soil in the cart, with which the seed was mixed, had not been rubbed fine, but was caked or frozen in lumps. Seeing the master, the worker Vassily went to the cart, while Mishka started sowing. This was not good, but Levin seldom got angry with hired workers. When Vassily came up, Levin told him to take the horse to the edge.
‘Never mind, sir, it’ll grow back,’ Vassily replied.
‘No discussion, please,’ said Levin, ‘just do as you’ve been told.’