LITMIR.BIZ

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with sleeves rolled up was washing a carriage at the pump, ‘saddle me …’

      ‘Which, sir?’

      ‘Oh, Kolpik.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      While the horse was being saddled Levin again called the steward, who was hanging about within sight, in order to make it up with him, and began to talk about the spring work that lay before them and his plans for the estate.

      ‘Carting manure must be started early so that it should be over before the first hay harvest, and the far field will have to be ploughed continually so as to keep the earth clean. We must hire labour for the hay harvest and not pay in kind.’

      The foreman listened attentively and evidently tried to approve of his master’s plans: but his face still wore that hopeless and despondent expression so familiar to Levin. This expression seemed to say, ‘That’s all very well, but it will be as God wills.’

      Nothing grieved Levin so much as this manner, but it was a manner common to all the numerous stewards he had employed. They all took up the same attitude toward his plans, and therefore he now no longer grew angry with them, but he was grieved, feeling all the more stimulated to resist this, so to say, elemental force for which he could find no other name but ‘as God wills’, which always obstructed him.

      ‘We’ll see if we can manage it!’ said the steward.

      ‘Why should you not manage it?’

      ‘We must have at least fifteen more labourers; but you see they don’t come. Some came to-day, but they wanted seventy roubles each for the summer.’

      Levin was silent. That force was opposing him again. He knew that try as they would they had never managed to get more than from thirty-seven to forty labourers at the proper price. Forty could be hired, but never more than forty. Yet all the same he could not but continue the struggle.

      ‘Send to Sury and to Chefirovka, if they don’t come. We must try and find men.’

      ‘I’ll send right enough,’ said Vasily Fedorich, the steward, despondently. ‘But the horses too are getting weak.’

      ‘We will buy some more. But don’t I know,’ he added laughing, ‘that you always want less of everything and worse? However, this year I will not let you have your way. I’ll see to everything myself.’

      ‘You don’t sleep much as it is, I think. It’s always pleasanter for us when the master’s eye is on us …’

      ‘Then it’s down in the Birch Valley that they are sowing the clover? I’ll ride over and see,’ said Levin, mounting the little light bay horse, Kolpik, which the coachman had brought.

      ‘You won’t be able to cross the brook, Constantine Dmitrich,’ the coachman called out.

      ‘Well then, I’ll go through the forest.’

      And Levin rode across the muddy yard and out of the gate into the field at a brisk amble, his fresh little horse snorting at the puddles and pulling at the bridle.

      If he had felt light-hearted in the cattle and farm yards, he felt still more so in the fields. Gently swayed by the ambling pace of his good little horse, and drinking in the warm smell with the freshness of snow and air in it, he rode through the forest over the crumbling sinking snow that melted at each footstep, and rejoiced at the sight of each one of his trees with its swelling buds and the moss reviving on its bark. When he had passed the forest, a vast expanse of velvety green unrolled before him without a single bare spot, and only sprinkled here and there in the hollows with patches of unmelted snow. He was not irritated either by the sight of a peasant’s horse and colt treading down the young growth (he told a peasant he met to drive them off), nor by the jeering and stupid answer the peasant, Ipat, whom he happened to meet, gave him in reply to his question:

      ‘Well, Ipat, will it soon be time to sow?’

      ‘We must plough first, Constantine Dmitrich,’ said Ipat.

      The further he went the happier he felt, and all sorts of plans for his estate, each better than the last, presented themselves to him: to plant rows of willows with a southern aspect on all the fields, so that the snow should not remain long under them; to divide the fields, tilling six and keeping three under grass; to build a new cattle-yard at the further end of the field; to dig a pond, and to make folds for the cattle for manuring purposes. Then he would have three hundred desyatinas of wheat, one hundred of potatoes, and one hundred and fifty of clover, and not a single desyatina exhausted.

      Dreaming such dreams, carefully guiding his horse so as not to trample down his young growth, he rode up to the labourers who were sowing the clover. The cart with the seed was standing not on the border but in a field of winter-wheat, which was being cut up by the wheels and trampled by the horse’s feet. Both the labourers were sitting on the narrow path between the fields, probably sharing a pipe of tobacco. The earth in the cart with which the seeds were mixed was not rubbed fine, but was pressed or frozen into lumps. On seeing the master the labourer Vasily moved toward the cart, and Mishka began to sow. This was not right, but Levin seldom got angry with the hired men. When Vasily came up Levin told him to take the cart and horse on to the border.

      ‘It won’t matter, sir, the wheat will recover.’

      ‘Please don’t argue,’ said Levin, ‘but do as you are told.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Vasily, and took hold of the horse’s head.

      ‘But the sowing, Constantine Dmitrich, is getting on first-rate,’ he said making up to the master. ‘Only the walking is dreadful. You drag half a hundredweight on your boots.’

      ‘And why has not the earth been sifted?’ said Levin.

      ‘Oh, but we crumble it up,’ said Vasily, taking a handful and rubbing the earth between his palms.

      Vasily was not to blame that they had given him unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.

      Having more than once successfully tested a patent remedy for conquering vexation and making all that seemed wrong right again, Levin employed it now. He looked at the strides Mishka took dragging the enormous lumps of earth that stuck to his feet, dismounted, took the seed-basket from Vasily, and prepared to sow.

      ‘Where did you stop?’

      Vasily pointed to a mark with his foot and Levin began scattering the seeds and earth as best he could. It was hard walking, and having done a row Levin, wet with perspiration, stopped and gave back the basket.

      ‘Mind, sir, and don’t scold me for this row when summer comes,’ said Vasily.

      ‘Why?’ said Levin merrily, feeling that his remedy was acting well.

      ‘Oh, you’ll see when the summer comes. You’ll distinguish it. You just look where I sowed last spring, how regularly I scattered it over. Why, Constantine Dmitrich, I don’t think I could try harder if I was working for my own father. I don’t like to do things badly myself, and I see that others don’t. What’s good for the master is good for us too. When one looks over there it makes one’s heart rejoice,’ said Vasily, pointing to the field.

      ‘A fine spring, isn’t it, Vasily?’

      ‘It’s a spring such as the old men don’t remember. I’ve been home, and my old father also has sown three measures of wheat. They say it has caught up the rye.’

      ‘And have you been sowing wheat long?’

      ‘Why, it was you who taught us to sow it. The year before last you gave me a bushel of seed yourself. We sowed a quarter of it and sold the rest.’

      ‘Well, mind and rub the lumps,’ said Levin, going up to his horse, ‘and keep an eye on Mishka, and if the clover comes up well you shall have fifty kopeks for each desyatina.’

      ‘Thank you kindly. We are very grateful to you as it is.’

      Levin mounted his horse and rode to the

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