Resurrection
blaming himself for not having told her the principal thing at the first
interview, and was now determined to tell her that he would marry her.
She was sitting at the further side of the table. Nekhludoff sat down
opposite her. It was light in the room, and Nekhludoff for the first
time saw her face quite near. He distinctly saw the crowsfeet round her
eyes, the wrinkles round her mouth, and the swollen eyelids. He felt
more sorry than before. Leaning over the table so as not to be heard by
the jailer--a man of Jewish type with grizzly whiskers, who sat by the
window--Nekhludoff said:
“Should this petition come to nothing we shall appeal to the Emperor.
All that is possible shall be done.”
“There, now, if we had had a proper advocate from the first,” she
interrupted. “My defendant was quite a silly. He did nothing but pay me
compliments,” she said, and laughed. “If it had then been known that I
was acquainted with you, it would have been another matter. They think
every one’s a thief.”
“How strange she is to-day,” Nekhludoff thought, and was just going to
say what he had on his mind when she began again:
“There’s something I want to say. We have here an old woman; such a fine
one, d’you know, she just surprises every one; she is imprisoned for
nothing, and her son, too, and everybody knows they are innocent, though
they are accused of having set fire to a house. D’you know, hearing I
was acquainted with you, she says: ‘Tell him to ask to see my son; he’ll
tell him all about it.”’ Thus spoke Maslova, turning her head from side
to side, and glancing at Nekhludoff. “Their name’s Menshoff. Well, will
you do it? Such a fine old thing, you know; you can see at once she’s
innocent. You’ll do it, there’s a dear,” and she smiled, glanced up at
him, and then cast down her eyes.
“All right. I’ll find out about them,” Nekhludoff said, more and more
astonished by her free-and-easy manner. “But I was going to speak to you
about myself. Do you remember what I told you last time?”
“You said a lot last time. What was it you told me?” she said,
continuing to smile and to turn her head from side to side.
“I said I had come to ask you to forgive me,” he began.
“What’s the use of that? Forgive, forgive, where’s the good of--”
“To atone for my sin, not by mere words, but in deed. I have made up my
mind to marry you.”
An expression of fear suddenly came over her face. Her squinting eyes
remained fixed on him, and yet seemed not to be looking at him.
“What’s that for?” she said, with an angry frown.
“I feel that it is my duty before God to do it.”
“What God have you found now? You are not saying what you ought to. God,
indeed! What God? You ought to have remembered God then,” she said, and
stopped with her mouth open. It was only now that Nekhludoff noticed
that her breath smelled of spirits, and that he understood the cause of
her excitement.
“Try and be calm,” he said.
“Why should I be calm?” she began, quickly, flushing scarlet. “I am a
convict, and you are a gentleman and a prince. There’s no need for you
to soil yourself by touching me. You go to your princesses; my price is
a ten-rouble note.”
“However cruelly you may speak, you cannot express what I myself am
feeling,” he said, trembling all over; “you cannot imagine to what
extent I feel myself guilty towards you.”
“Feel yourself guilty?” she said, angrily mimicking him. “You did not
feel so then, but threw me 100 roubles. That’s your price.”
“I know, I know; but what is to be done now?” said Nekhludoff. “I have
decided not to leave you, and what I have said I shall do.”
“And I say you sha’n’t,” she said, and laughed aloud.
“Katusha,” he said, touching her hand.
“You go away. I am a convict and you a prince, and you’ve no business
here,” she cried, pulling away her hand, her whole appearance
transformed by her wrath. “You’ve got pleasure out of me in this life,
and want to save yourself through me in the life to come. You are
disgusting to me--your spectacles and the whole of your dirty fat mug.
Go, go!” she screamed, starting to her feet.
The jailer came up to them.
“What are you kicking up this row for?’ That won’t--”
“Let her alone, please,” said Nekhludoff.
“She must not forget herself,” said the jailer. “Please wait a little,”
said Nekhludoff, and the jailer returned to the window.
Maslova sat down again, dropping her eyes and firmly clasping her small
hands.
Nekhludoff stooped over her, not knowing what to do.
“You do not believe me?” he said.
“That you mean to marry me? It will never be. I’ll rather hang myself.
So there!”
“Well, still I shall go on serving you.”
“That’s your affair, only I don’t want anything from you. I am telling
you the plain truth,” she said. “Oh, why did I not die then?” she added,
and began to cry piteously.
Nekhludoff could not speak; her tears infected him.
She lifted her eyes, looked at him in surprise, and began to wipe her
tears with her kerchief.
The jailer came up again and reminded them that it was time to part.
Maslova rose.
“You are excited. If it is possible, I shall come again tomorrow; you
think it over,” said Nekhludoff.
She gave him no answer and, without looking up, followed the jailer out
of the room.
“Well, lass, you’ll have rare times now,” Korableva said, when Maslova
returned to the cell. “Seems he’s mighty sweet on you; make the most
of it while he’s after you. He’ll help you out. Rich people can do
anything.”
“Yes, that’s so,” remarked the watchman’s wife, with her musical voice.
“When a poor man thinks of getting married, there’s many a slip ‘twixt
the cup and the lip; but a rich man need only make up his mind and it’s
done. We knew a toff like that duckie. What d’you think he did?”
“Well, have you spoken about my affairs?” the old woman asked.
But Maslova gave her fellow-prisoners no answer; she lay down on the
shelf bedstead, her squinting eyes fixed on a corner of the room, and
lay there until the evening.
A painful struggle went on in her soul. What Nekhludoff had told her
called up the memory of that world in which she had suffered and which
she had left without having understood, hating it. She now feared to
wake from the trance in which she was living. Not having arrived at any
conclusion when evening came, she again bought some vodka and drank with
her companions.
CHAPTER XLIX.
VERA DOUKHOVA.
“So this is what it means, this,” thought Nekhludoff as he left the
prison, only now fully understanding his crime. If he had not tried to
expiate his guilt he would never have found out how great his crime was.
Nor was this all; she, too, would never have felt the whole horror of
what had been done to her. He only now saw what he had done to the soul
of this woman; only now she saw and understood what had been done to
her.
Up to this time Nekhludoff had played with a sensation of
self-admiration, had admired his own remorse; now he was simply filled
with horror. He knew he could not throw her up now, and yet he could not
imagine what would come of their relations to one another.
Just as he was going out, a jailer, with a disagreeable, insinuating
countenance, and a cross and medals on his breast, came up and handed
him a note with an air of mystery.
“Here is a note from a certain person, your honour,” he said to
Nekhludoff as he gave him the envelope.
“What person?”
“You will know when you read it. A political prisoner. I am in that
ward, so she asked me; and though it is against the rules, still
feelings of humanity--” The jailer spoke in an unnatural manner.
Nekhludoff was surprised that a jailer of the ward where political
prisoners were kept should pass notes inside the very prison walls, and
almost within sight of every one; he did not then know that this was
both a jailer and a spy. However, he took the note and read it on coming
out of the prison.
The note was written in a bold hand, and ran as follows: “Having heard
that you visit the prison, and are interested in the case of a criminal
prisoner, the desire of seeing you arose in me. Ask for a permission
to see me. I can give you a good deal of information concerning your
protegee, and also our group.--Yours gratefully, VERA DOUKHOVA.”
Vera Doukhova had been a school-teacher in an out-of-the-way village of
the Novgorod Government, where Nekhludoff and some friends of his had
once put up while bear hunting. Nekhludoff gladly and vividly recalled
those old days, and his acquaintance with Doukhova. It was just before
Lent, in an isolated spot, 40 miles from the railway. The hunt had
been successful; two bears had been killed; and the company were having
dinner before starting on their return journey, when the master of the
hut where they were putting up came in to say that the deacon’s daughter
wanted to speak to Prince Nekhludoff. “Is she pretty?” some one asked.
“None of that, please,” Nekhludoff said, and rose with a serious look
on his face. Wiping his mouth, and wondering what the deacon’s daughter
might want of him, he went into the host’s private hut.
There he found a girl with a felt hat and a warm cloak on--a sinewy,
ugly girl; only her eyes with their arched brows were beautiful.
“Here, miss, speak to him,” said the old housewife; “this is the prince
himself. I shall go out meanwhile.”
“In what way can I be of service to you?” Nekhludoff asked.
“I--I--I see you are throwing away your money on such nonsense--on
hunting,” began the girl, in great confusion. “I know--I only want one
thing--to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I know
nothing--” Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her expression of
resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that Nekhludoff, as
it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in her position,
understood, and sympathised.
“What can I do, then?”
“I am a teacher, but should like to follow a course of study; and I
am not allowed to do so. That is, not that I am not allowed to; they’d
allow me to, but I have not got the means. Give them to me, and when I
have finished the course I shall repay you. I am thinking the rich kill
bears and give the peasants drink; all this is bad. Why should they not
do good? I only want 80 roubles. But if you don’t wish to, never mind,”
she added, gravely.
“On the contrary, I am very grateful to you for this opportunity. . . .
I will bring it at once,” said Nekhludoff.
He went out into the passage, and there met one of his comrades, who
had been overhearing his conversation. Paying no heed to his chaffing,
Nekhludoff got the money out of his bag and took it to her.
“Oh, please, do not thank me; it is I who should thank you,” he said.
It was pleasant to remember all this now; pleasant to remember that
he had nearly had a quarrel with an officer who tried to make an
objectionable joke of it, and how another of his comrades had taken his
part, which led to a closer friendship between them. How successful the
whole of that hunting expedition had been, and how happy he had felt
when returning to the railway station that night. The line of sledges,
the horses in tandem, glide quickly along the narrow road that lies
through the forest, now between high trees, now between low firs weighed
down by the snow, caked in heavy lumps on their branches. A red light
flashes in the dark, some one lights an aromatic cigarette. Joseph, a
bear driver, keeps running from sledge to sledge, up to his knees in
snow, and while putting things to rights he speaks about the elk which
are now going about on the deep snow and gnawing the bark off the aspen
trees, of the bears that are lying asleep in their deep hidden dens, and
his breath comes warm through the opening in the sledge cover. All this