第147章

Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasants that a landowner's object could be anything else than a desire to squeeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that his real aim (whatever he might say to them) would always be in what he did not say to them. And they themselves, in giving their opinion, said a great deal but never said what was their real object. Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landowner had been right) the peasants made their first and unalterable condition of any agreement whatsoever that they should not be forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new implements. They agreed that the modern plow plowed better, that the scarifier did the work more quickly, but they found thousands of reasons that made it out of the question for them to use either of them; and though he had accepted the conviction that he would have to lower the standard of cultivation, he felt sorry to give up improved methods, the advantages of which were so obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he got his way, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so it seemed to him.

At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the land just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff, on new conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide it up. The cattle yard, the garden, hayfields, and arable land, divided into several parts, had to be made into separate lots. The simplehearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Levin fancied, understood the matter better than any of them, collecting together a gang of workers to help him, principally of his own family, became a partner in the cattle yard. A distant part of the estate, a tract of wasteland that had lain fallow for eight years, was with the help of the clever carpenter, Fiodor Rezunov, taken by six families of peasants on new conditions of partnership and the peasant Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same terms. The remainder of the land was still worked on the old system, but these three items were the first step to a new organization of the whole, and they completely engrossed Levin.

It is true that in the cattle yard things went no better than before, and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made from sour cream, and he asked for wages just as under the old system, and took not the slightest interest in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance out of his future share in the profits.

It is true that Fiodor Rezunov's company did not plow over the ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and Rezunov himself said to Levin: `If you would take a rent for the land, it would save you trouble, and we should be more free.' Moreover, the same peasants kept putting off, on various excuses, the building of a cattle yard and threshing barn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till the winter.

It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had been given to him.

Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when he talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Rezunov, and detected that gleam in Rezunov's eyes which showed so plainly both ironical amusement at Levin, and the firm conviction that, if anyone were to be taken in, it would not be he, Rezunov.

But in spite of all this Levin thought the system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly, and insisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the future the advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go of itself.

These matters, together with the management of the land still left on his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin the whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of August he heard that the Oblonskys had gone away to Moscow - from their servant, who brought back the sidesaddle. He felt that in not answering Darya Alexandrovna's letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would never go to see them again. He had been just as rude with the Sviiazhskys, leaving them without saying good-by. But he would never go to see them again either.

He did not care about that now. The business of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him as completely as though there would never be anything else in his life. He read the books lent him by Sviiazhsky, and ordering from Moscow what he had not had, he read both the economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he had anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken. In the books on political economy - in Mill, for instance - whom he studied first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer to the questions that were engrossing him, he found laws deduced from the condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these laws, which did not apply in Russia, must be general.