‘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.