‘We are only peasants: how can we dare …’ began the woman with a sob.
‘Hold your jabber,’ Chúris addressed her again.
‘It’s impossible for you to live in this hut. It’s nonsense!’ said Nekhlyúdov after a pause. ‘Now this is what we’ll do, friend …’
‘Yes, sir,’ Chúris replied.
‘You’ve seen those brick cottages with hollow walls that I have been building in the new village?’
‘Of course I have,’ answered Chúris, showing his still sound and white teeth in a smile. ‘We were quite surprised at the way they were laid. Tricky cottages! The children were laughing and asked if they were going to be store-houses, and the walls filled in to keep the rats out.… Grand cottages!’ he finished, shaking his head with a look of ironical perplexity. ‘Just like jails!’
‘Yes, they are fine cottages, warm and dry, and not so likely to catch on fire,’ said the master with a frown on his young face, evidently annoyed by the peasant’s irony.
‘No gainsaying, your honour – grand cottages!’
‘Well then, one of them is quite ready. It is twenty-three feet square, with a passage and a larder, and is quite ready. I might let you have it at cost price and you could pay me when you can,’ said the master with a self-satisfied smile which he could not control at the thought of his benevolence. ‘You can pull down this old one and use it to build a granary, and we will move the yard buildings too. There is good water there. I will allot you fresh land for your vegetable plots and you will have arable land quite close. You’ll soon live well. Now, don’t you like it?’ he added, noticing that as soon as he spoke of settling somewhere else, Chúris stood quite motionless and looked at the ground no longer smiling.
‘It’s as your honour pleases,’ he said without looking up.
The old woman came forward as if touched to the quick, and prepared to say something, but her husband forestalled her.
‘It’s as your honour pleases,’ he replied, firmly and yet submissively, looking up at his master and tossing back his hair, ‘but it won’t do for us to live in the new village.’
‘Why not?’
‘No, your honour. If you move us there – we’re in a bad way as it is, but there we should never be proper peasants. What sort of peasants should we be there? Why, a man couldn’t possibly live there … but just as you please.’
‘Why not?’
‘We should be quite ruined, your honour.’
‘But why couldn’t a man live there?’
‘What kind of life would it be? Just think. The place has never been lived in, the water not tested, and there’s no pasture. Our hemp plots here have been manured from olden times, but what is there there? There’s nothing! All bare! No wattles, no corn-kilns, no sheds – nothing at all. We shall be ruined, your honour, if you drive us there, we shall be ruined completely. The place is new, unknown …’ he repeated thoughtfully but shaking his head decisively.
Nekhlyúdov began to argue that the change would on the contrary be very advantageous for him, that wattles and sheds would be erected, that the water was good there, and so on; but Chúris’s dull silence confused him and he felt he was not saying the right things. Chúris did not reply, but when his master stopped, remarked with a slight smile that it would be better to house the old domestic serfs and Alëshka, the fool, in the new village, to watch over the grain there.
‘That would be fine,’ he remarked, and laughed calmly. ‘No, it’s a hopeless business, your honour!’
‘Well, what if the place is uninhabited?’ Nekhlyúdov insisted patiently. ‘This place was uninhabited once, but now people live here; and you will be the first to settle in the new village and will bring luck.… You must certainly settle there …’
‘Oh sir, your honour, how can they be compared?’ said Chúris with animation, as if afraid the master might take a definite decision. ‘Here we are in the Commune – it’s lively, and we’re accustomed to it. We have the road, and the pond here for the wife to wash the clothes and water the cattle, and our whole peasant establishment here from days of old: the threshing-floor and little vegetable plot, and these willows that my parents planted. My grandfather and father breathed their last here and if only I can end my days here, your honour, I don’t ask anything more. If you will have the goodness to let my hut be mended, we shall be very grateful for your kindness. If not, we’ll manage to live somehow in the old one to the end of our days. Let us pray for you all our lives,’ he continued, bowing low. ‘Don’t turn us from our nest, master.…’
While Chúris was speaking, louder and louder sobs came from the place under the bunks where his wife stood, and when her husband said ‘master’ she unexpectedly sprang forward and threw herself on her knees at Nekhlyúdov’s feet, weeping bitterly.
‘Don’t ruin us, benefactor! You are like father and mother to us! How could we move? We are old, lonely people. As God, so you …’ and she began her lamentations again.
Nekhlyúdov jumped up from the bench to raise the old woman, but she beat her head on the earthen floor in a kind of passionate despair and pushed away his hand.
‘What are you doing? Please get up. If you don’t wish to go, you needn’t. I won’t force you,’ he said, waving his arms and stepping towards the door.
When Nekhlyúdov had again sat down on the bench and the silence in the hut was only interrupted by the wailing of the woman who had retired under the bunk and stood there wiping her tears with the sleeve of her smock, he realized for the first time what the tumble-down hovel, the broken-down well with the muddy puddle, the rotting sheds and outhouse, and the broken willows which he saw through the crooked window, meant to Chúris and his wife, and he felt depressed, sad, and without knowing why, ashamed.
‘Why didn’t you tell the Commune last Sunday that you needed a cottage, Iván? I don’t know now how to help you. I told you all at the first meeting that I have settled on the estate to devote my life to you; and I was ready to deprive myself of everything to make you contented and happy, and I swear before God that I will keep my word,’ said the young proprietor, ignorant of the fact that outpourings of that kind are ill adapted to arouse faith in anyone, and least of all in a Russian, who likes not words but deeds, and dislikes the expression of feelings however fine.
But the simple-hearted young man was so pleased with the feeling he experienced that he could not help pouring it out.
Chúris bent his head to one side, and blinking slowly listened to his master with forced attention, as to one who had to be listened to though he was saying things that were not very nice, and did not at all concern ‘us’.
‘But I can’t give everybody all I am asked for. If I did not refuse some who ask me for timber, I should soon not have any left myself and should be unable to give to those who really need it. That is why I gave the “Crown wood” for the betterment of the peasants’ buildings, and handed it over completely to the Commune. That wood is now not mine, but belongs to you peasants. I can no longer dispose of it, but the Commune does what it sees fit with it. Come to the meeting to-night. I will tell them of your request, and if they resolve to give you wood for a new hut it will be all right, but I have no timber now. I wish to help you with all my heart, but if you don’t want to move, the matter is not in my hands but rests with the Commune. Do you understand me?’
‘We are very grateful for your kindness, your honour,’ answered Chúris, abashed. ‘If you will oblige us with the timber for the building, we will get straight that way.… Anyhow, what’s the Commune? Everybody knows.…’
‘No, you must come.’
‘Yes, I’ll come. Why not? But all the same I won’t beg of the Commune.’
Chapter IV