Resurrection
in the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send
for Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when
Nekhludoff entered the office.
“Sit down, please. I’ll send for her at once,” said the inspector.
CHAPTER LIV.
PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.
The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,
dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for
measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a
large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people.
In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty
persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices.
There was a writing table by the window.
The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair
beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face,
dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman
with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and
gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue
spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner’s clothes, who
was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on
his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of
lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked
energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair,
and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied
with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in
black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in
the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying
to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began
several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand,
and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it
with an angry look on his face.
Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent
eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping
mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful;
her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips,
but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes.
The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when
Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and
said something to the mother.
Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat
angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to
the Scoptsy sect.
At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more
concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about
what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector’s side, looked
round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair
came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
“And whom are you waiting for?”
Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and
seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed
on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his
acquaintance.
“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.
“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.
“I? With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.
“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently considering
Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.
Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s
attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps,
approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
“What is he asking you? Who you are?” she inquired with a slight smile,
and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind,
prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever
that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so
sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to
smile back.
“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”
“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know
it is,” said the inspector.
“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s
mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he
continued gazing up into her face.
“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,”
said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how
exceptional his establishment was.
“Is it possible?”
“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”
“And that young girl?”
“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his
shoulders. “Besides, here is Doukhova.”
CHAPTER LV.
VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.
Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait,
the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand. “Do you
remember me? Let us sit down.”
“I did not expect to see you like this.”
“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire
nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright
in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the
terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty
collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation.
Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as
propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections,
about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had
never heard of.
She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, “People’s
Freedom,” a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was
pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck,
her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these
strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied
her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault
of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the
confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself
a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could
hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would
lie.
The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was
the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their
“sub-group,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five
months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because
some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had
been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure
to blame for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had
connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set
this friend free.
Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for
another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the
Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some
scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised
to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.
As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course
of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the
Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary
movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations
and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an
important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all
concerned were arrested. “I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But
what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story
with a piteous smile.
Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent
eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a
general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was
arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme.
She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret
printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house,
the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and
began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police
forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally
wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that
it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her
hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now
condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
“An altruistic, fine character,” said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned
Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of
Maslova’s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take
steps to get her removed into the political prisoner’s ward, or into
the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at
that time, so that extra nurses were needed.
Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon
it.
CHAPTER LVI.
NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.
Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the
time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhludoff
took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the door, where he stopped to
watch what was going on.
The inspector’s order called forth only heightened animation among the
prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose
and continued to talk standing, some went on talking without rising.
A few began crying and taking leave of each other. The mother and
her consumptive son seemed especially pathetic. The young fellow kept
twisting his bit of paper and his face seemed angry, so great were his
efforts not to be infected by his mother’s emotion. The mother, hearing
that it was time to part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and
sniffed aloud.
The girl with the prominent eyes--Nekhludoff could not help watching
her--was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was saying something
to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the blue spectacles stood
holding his daughter’s hand and nodding in answer to what she said. The
young lovers rose, and, holding each other’s hands, looked silently into
one another’s eyes.
“These are the only two who are merry,” said a young man with a short
coat who stood by Nekhludoff’s side, also looking at those who were
about to part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling Nekhludoff’s and
the young man’s eyes fixed on them, the lovers--the young man with the
rubber coat and the pretty girl--stretched out their arms, and with
their hands clasped in each other’s, danced round and round again.
“To-night they are going to be married here in prison, and she will
follow him to Siberia,” said the young man.
“What is he?”
“A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a
little joy, or else it is too painful,” the young man added, listening
to the sobs of the consumptive lad’s mother.
“Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse
to severe measures,” the inspector said, repeating the same words
several times over. “Do, please,” he went on in a weak, hesitating