Resurrection
She asked it in a tone as if Kolosoff’s opinion would decide all doubts,
and each word of this opinion be worthy of being immortalised. Kolosoff
found fault both with the play and its author, and that led him to
express his views on art. Princess Sophia Vasilievna, while trying at
the same time to defend the play, seemed impressed by the truth of his
arguments, either giving in at once, or at least modifying her opinion.
Nekhludoff looked and listened, but neither saw nor heard what was going
on before him.
Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed
that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and
that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to
move the muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that
Kolosoff, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy.
Not tipsy like the peasants who drink seldom, but like people to
whom drinking wine has become a habit. He did not reel about or talk
nonsense, but he was in a state that was not normal; excited and
self-satisfied. Nekhludoff also noticed that during the conversation
Princess Sophia Vasilievna kept glancing uneasily at the window, through
which a slanting ray of sunshine, which might vividly light up her aged
face, was beginning to creep up.
“How true,” she said in reference to some remark of Kolosoff’s, touching
the button of an electric bell by the side of her couch. The doctor
rose, and, like one who is at home, left the room without saying
anything. Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes and continued the
conversation.
“Please, Philip, draw these curtains,” she said, pointing to the window,
when the handsome footman came in answer to the bell. “No; whatever you
may say, there is some mysticism in him; without mysticism there can be
no poetry,” she said, with one of her black eyes angrily following the
footman’s movements as he was drawing the curtains. “Without poetry,
mysticism is superstition; without mysticism, poetry is--prose,” she
continued, with a sorrowful smile, still not losing sight of the footman
and the curtains. “Philip, not that curtain; the one on the large
window,” she exclaimed, in a suffering tone. Sophia Vasilievna was
evidently pitying herself for having to make the effort of saying these
words; and, to soothe her feelings, she raised to her lips a scented,
smoking cigarette with her jewel-bedecked fingers.
The broad-chested, muscular, handsome Philip bowed slightly, as
if begging pardon; and stepping lightly across the carpet with his
broad-calved, strong, legs, obediently and silently went to the other
window, and, looking at the princess, carefully began to arrange the
curtain so that not a single ray dared fall on her. But again he did
not satisfy her, and again she had to interrupt the conversation about
mysticism, and correct in a martyred tone the unintelligent Philip,
who was tormenting her so pitilessly. For a moment a light flashed in
Philip’s eyes.
“‘The devil take you! What do you want?’ was probably what he said to
himself,” thought Nekhludoff, who had been observing all this scene. But
the strong, handsome Philip at once managed to conceal the signs of his
impatience, and went on quietly carrying out the orders of the worn,
weak, false Sophia Vasilievna.
“Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso’s teaching,” said
Kolosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasilievna
with sleepy eyes; “but he over-stepped the mark. Oh, yes.”
“And you? Do you believe in heredity?” asked Sophia Vasilievna, turning
to Nekhludoff, whose silence annoyed her. “In heredity?” he asked. “No,
I don’t.” At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images
that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side
of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the
nude figure of Kolosoff as an artist’s model; with his stomach like a
melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the
same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and
velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental
picture was too horrid and he tried to drive it away.
“Well, you know Missy is waiting for you,” she said. “Go and find her.
She wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting.”
“She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for
some reason or other,” thought Nekhludoff, rising and pressing Sophia
Vasilievna’s transparent and bony, ringed hand.
Katerina Alexeevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in
French, as usual:
“I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you.”
“Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits to-day, and have no right to weary
others by my presence,” said Nekhludoff.
“Why are you in low spirits?”
“Allow me not to speak about that,” he said, looking round for his hat.
“Don’t you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the
truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not
wish to speak out now? Don’t you remember, Missy?” she said, turning to
Missy, who had just come in.
“We were playing a game then,” said Nekhludoff, seriously; “one may
tell the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad--I mean I am so
bad--that I, at least, cannot tell the truth.”
“Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why _we_ are so bad,”
said Katerina Alexeevna, playing with her words and pretending not to
notice how serious Nekhludoff was.
“Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits,” said Missy.
“I never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits.”
Nekhludoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make
it submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and
to-day he felt less than ever inclined to draw.
“Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up.”
He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave.
Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
“Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends,”
she said. “Are you coming tomorrow?”
“I hardly expect to,” said Nekhludoff; and feeling ashamed, without
knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
“What is it? _Comme cela m’intrigue_,” said Katerina Alexeevna. “I must
find it out. I suppose it is some _affaire d’amour propre; il est tres
susceptible, notre cher Mitia_.”
“_Plutot une affaire d’amour sale_,” Missy was going to say, but stopped
and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone--a very
different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She would
not mention to Katerina Alexeevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only said,
“We all have our good and our bad days.”
“Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?” she thought; “after all
that has happened it would be very bad of him.”
If Missy had had to explain what she meant by “after all that has
happened,” she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that
he had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No
definite words had passed between them--only looks and smiles and hints;
and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be very
hard.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE AWAKENING.
“Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!” Nekhludoff kept saying to
himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression
he had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that,
looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the right, for he had
never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made
her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her,
had promised to be hers. And yet to-day he felt with his whole being
that he could not marry her.
“Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!” he repeated to himself, with
reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest.
“Everything is horrid and shameful,” he muttered, as he stepped into the
porch of his house. “I am not going to have any supper,” he said to
his manservant Corney, who followed him into the dining-room, where the
cloth was laid for supper and tea. “You may go.”
“Yes, sir,” said Corney, yet he did not go, but began clearing the
supper off the table. Nekhludoff looked at Corney with a feeling
of ill-will. He wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that
everybody was bothering him in order to spite him. When Corney had gone
away with the supper things, Nekhludoff moved to the tea urn and
was about to make himself some tea, but hearing Agraphena Petrovna’s
footsteps, he went hurriedly into the drawing-room, to avoid being seen
by her, and shut the door after him. In this drawing-room his mother had
died three months before. On entering the room, in which two lamps with
reflectors were burning, one lighting up his father’s and the other his
mother’s portrait, he remembered what his last relations with his mother
had been. And they also seemed shameful and horrid. He remembered how,
during the latter period of her illness, he had simply wished her to
die. He had said to himself that he wished it for her sake, that she
might be released from her suffering, but in reality he wished to be
released from the sight of her sufferings for his own sake.
Trying to recall a pleasant image of her, he went up to look at her
portrait, painted by a celebrated artist for 800 roubles. She was
depicted in a very low-necked black velvet dress. There was something
very revolting and blasphemous in this representation of his mother as
a half-nude beauty. It was all the more disgusting because three months
ago, in this very room, lay this same woman, dried up to a mummy. And he
remembered how a few days before her death she clasped his hand with her
bony, discoloured fingers, looked into his eyes, and said: “Do not judge
me, Mitia, if I have not done what I should,” and how the tears came
into her eyes, grown pale with suffering.
“Ah, how horrid!” he said to himself, looking up once more at the
half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms, and the
triumphant smile on her lips. “Oh, how horrid!” The bared shoulders of
the portrait reminded him of another, a young woman, whom he had seen
exposed in the same way a few days before. It was Missy, who had devised
an excuse for calling him into her room just as she was ready to go to
a ball, so that he should see her in her ball dress. It was with disgust
that he remembered her fine shoulders and arms. “And that father of
hers, with his doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her
mother, with her doubtful reputation.” All this disgusted him, and also
made him feel ashamed. “Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!”
“No, no,” he thought; “freedom from all these false relations with the
Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and from all the rest
must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go abroad, to Rome and work at
my picture!” He remembered the doubts he had about his talent for art.
“Well, never mind; only just to breathe freely. First Constantinople,
then Rome. Only just to get through with this jury business, and arrange
with the advocate first.”
Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture of a
prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she began to cry
when the last words of the prisoners had been heard; and he hurriedly
put out his cigarette, pressing it into the ash-pan, lit another, and
began pacing up and down the room. One after another the scenes he had
lived through with her rose in his mind. He recalled that last interview
with her. He remembered the white dress and blue sash, the early mass.