524 525
“Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a
first-rate schoolmistress now. And we’ve started gymnastic exercises.”
“No, thank you, I won’t have any more tea,” said Levin, and con-
scious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversa-
tion, he got up, blushing. “I hear a very interesting conversation,” he
added, and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was
sitting with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was
sitting sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand,
while with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose
and let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black
eyes were looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray
whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks.
The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to
Levin that Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman’s complaints,
which would at once demolish his whole contention, but that in his
position he could not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not
without pleasure, to the landowner’s comic speeches.
The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his
life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-
fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his
shrewd deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperi-
ous tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute
gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring on
the little finger.
Chapter 27.
“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going...such a lot
of trouble wasted...I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go
off like Nikolay Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle Helene,” said the land-
owner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch
Sviazhsky; “so there must be something gained.”
“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor
hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though,
instead of that, you’d never believe it—the drunkenness, the immoral-
ity! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of
a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go and take
him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring
you up before the justice of the peace.”
“But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.
“I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking,
and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works,
for instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What
did the justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order
but their own communal court and their village elder. He’ll flog them
in the good old style! But for that there’d be nothing for it but to give
it all up and run away.”