434 435
She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not
speak to Levin of her misery.
Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it
showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it, he
was thinking in his heart: “No, I won’t be artificial and talk French with
my children; but my children won’t be like that. All one has to do is not
spoil children, not to distort their nature, and they’ll be delightful. No,
my children won’t be like that.”
He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.
Chapter 11.In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin’s sister’s
estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on
how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income
on his sister’s estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years
the hay had been bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three
acres. When Levin took over the management of the estate, he thought
on examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed
the price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would
not give that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.
Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass
cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a certain proportion of
the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they could in the way
of this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first year the
meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year—
which was the third year—the peasants had maintained the same
opposition to the arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same
system. This year the peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of
the hay crop, and the village elder had come now to announce that the
hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-
house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked
together eleven stacks as the owner’s share. From the vague answers
to his question how much hay had been cut on the principal meadow,
from the hurry of the village elder who had made the division, not
asking leave, from the whole tone of the peasant, Levin perceived that
there was something wrong in the division of the hay, and made up his
mind to drive over himself to look into the matter.
Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the cot-
tage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother’s wet-nurse,
Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house, wanting to find out
from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old
man, gave Levin a very warm welcome, showed him all he was doing,
told him everything about his bees and the swarms of that year; but
gave vague and unwilling answers to Levin’s inquiries about the mow-
ing. This confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the
hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly
contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Levin
ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up directly,
to lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out to be only
thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village elder’s assertions
about the compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the
stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in the fear of
God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been divided without
his orders, and that, therefore, he would not accept that hay as fifty
loads to a stack. After a prolonged dispute the matter was decided by
the peasants taking these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads
each. The arguments and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole