Resurrection
It was only now that the memory of all those terrible nights came
vividly back to her, especially one during the carnival when she was
expecting a student who had promised to buy her out. She remembered how
she--wearing her low necked silk dress stained with wine, a red bow in
her untidy hair, wearied, weak, half tipsy, having seen her visitors
off, sat down during an interval in the dancing by the piano beside the
bony pianiste with the blotchy face, who played the accompaniments
to the violin, and began complaining of her hard fate; and how this
pianiste said that she, too, was feeling how heavy her position was and
would like to change it; and how Clara suddenly came up to them; and how
they all three decided to change their life. They thought that the night
was over, and were about to go away, when suddenly the noise of tipsy
voices was heard in the ante-room. The violinist played a tune and the
pianiste began hammering the first figure of a quadrille on the piano,
to the tune of a most merry Russian song. A small, perspiring man,
smelling of spirits, with a white tie and swallow-tail coat, which he
took off after the first figure, came up to her, hiccoughing, and
caught her up, while another fat man, with a beard, and also wearing a
dress-coat (they had come straight from a ball) caught Clara up, and for
a long time they turned, danced, screamed, drank. . . . And so it
went on for another year, and another, and a third. How could she help
changing? And he was the cause of it all. And, suddenly, all her former
bitterness against him reawoke; she wished to scold, to reproach him.
She regretted having neglected the opportunity of repeating to him once
more that she knew him, and would not give in to him--would not let him
make use of her spiritually as he had done physically.
And she longed for drink in order to stifle the feeling of pity to
herself and the useless feeling of reproach to him. And she would have
broken her word if she had been inside the prison. Here she could not
get any spirits except by applying to the medical assistant, and she was
afraid of him because he made up to her, and intimate relations with
men were disgusting to her now. After sitting a while on a form in the
passage she returned to her little room, and without paying any heed to
her companion’s words, she wept for a long time over her wrecked life.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN ARISTOCRATIC CIRCLE.
Nekhludoff had four matters to attend to in Petersburg. The first was
the appeal to the Senate in Maslova’s case; the second, to hand in
Theodosia Birukoff’s petition to the committee; the third, to comply
with Vera Doukhova’s requests--i.e., try to get her friend Shoustova
released from prison, and get permission for a mother to visit her son
in prison. Vera Doukhova had written to him about this, and he was
going to the Gendarmerie Office to attend to these two matters, which he
counted as one.
The fourth matter he meant to attend to was the case of some sectarians
who had been separated from their families and exiled to the Caucasus
because they read and discussed the Gospels. It was not so much to
them as to himself he had promised to do all he could to clear up this
affair.
Since his last visit to Maslennikoff, and especially since he had been
in the country, Nekhludoff had not exactly formed a resolution but felt
with his whole nature a loathing for that society in which he had lived
till then, that society which so carefully hides the sufferings of
millions in order to assure ease and pleasure to a small number of
people, that the people belonging to this society do not and cannot
see these sufferings, nor the cruelty and wickedness of their life.
Nekhludoff could no longer move in this society without feeling ill at
ease and reproaching himself. And yet all the ties of relationship and
friendship, and his own habits, were drawing him back into this society.
Besides, that which alone interested him now, his desire to help Maslova
and the other sufferers, made it necessary to ask for help and service
from persons belonging to that society, persons whom he not only could
not respect, but who often aroused in him indignation and a feeling of
contempt.
When he came to Petersburg and stopped at his aunt’s--his mother’s
sister, the Countess Tcharsky, wife of a former minister--Nekhludoff at
once found himself in the very midst of that aristocratic circle which
had grown so foreign to him. This was very unpleasant, but there was no
possibility of getting out of it. To put up at an hotel instead of at
his aunt’s house would have been to offend his aunt, and, besides, his
aunt had important connections and might be extremely useful in all
these matters he meant to attend to.
“What is this I hear about you? All sorts of marvels,” said the Countess
Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, as she gave him his coffee immediately after
his arrival. “_Vous posez pour un Howard_. Helping criminals, going the
round of prisons, setting things right.”
“Oh, no. I never thought of it.”
“Why not? It is a good thing, only there seems to be some romantic story
connected with it. Let us hear all about it.”
Nekhludoff told her the whole truth about his relations to Maslova.
“Yes, yes, I remember your poor mother telling me about it. That was
when you were staying with those old women. I believe they wished to
marry you to their ward (the Countess Katerina Ivanovna had always
despised Nekhludoff’s aunts on his father’s side). So it’s she. _Elle
est encore jolie?_”
Katerina Ivanovna was a strong, bright, energetic, talkative woman of
60. She was tall and very stout, and had a decided black moustache
on her lip. Nekhludoff was fond of her and had even as a child been
infected by her energy and mirth.
“No, ma tante, that’s at an end. I only wish to help her, because she is
innocently accused. I am the cause of it and the cause of her fate being
what it is. I feel it my duty to do all I can for her.”
“But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?”
“Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it.”
Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping
eyeballs, in silent amazement. Suddenly her face changed, and with a
look of pleasure she said: “Well, she is wiser than you. Dear me, you
are a fool. And you would have married her?”
“Most certainly.”
“After her having been what she was?”
“All the more, since I was the cause of it.”
“Well, you are a simpleton,” said his aunt, repressing a smile, “a
terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible
simpleton that I love you.” She repeated the word, evidently liking it,
as it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew’s
moral state. “Do you know--What a lucky chance. Aline has a wonderful
home--the Magdalene Home. I went there once. They are terribly
disgusting. After that I had to pray continually. But Aline is devoted
to it, body and soul, so we shall place her there--yours, I mean.”
“But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about
it. This is one of my requests to you.”
“Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?”
“To the Senate.”
“Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in
the heraldry department, and I don’t know any of the real ones. They are
all some kind of Germans--Gay, Fay, Day--tout l’alphabet, or else all
sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos,
Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l’autre monde. Well, it is all the
same. I’ll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts of people.
I’ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me.
Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it. C’est
un parti pris, every one understands but only not he.”
At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a
silver platter.
“There now, from Aline herself. You’ll have a chance of hearing
Kiesewetter.”
“Who is Kiesewetter?”
“Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He
speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their
knees and weep and repent.”
The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however
little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a
staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of
Christianity lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings
where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled
the “faithful” in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all
ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every
room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the
Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
“There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,”
said the Countess. “Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a
wonderful man.”
“It does not interest me, ma tante.”
“But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you
may go. What else do you want of me? _Videz votre sac_.”
“The next is in the fortress.”
“In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron
Kriegsmuth. _Cest un tres brave homme_. Oh, but you know him; he was a
comrade of your father’s. _Il donne dans le spiritisme_. But that does
not matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?”
“I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned
there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on
Tcherviansky.”
“I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband; we might ask
her. She will do it for me. _Elle est tres gentille_.”
“I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without
knowing what for.”
“No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it
serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their
hair short, like men] ones.”
“We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer.
You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are
so pitiless.”
“That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what
is disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to
love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot
bear them.”
“Why can you not bear them?”
“You ask why, after the 1st of March?” [The Emperor Alexander II was
killed on the first of March, old style.]
“They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.”
“Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs.
It’s not women’s business.”
“Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.”
“Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want
to teach everybody.”
“Not to teach but simply to help the people.”
“One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.”
“But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the
country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very
limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are
living in the greatest luxury?” said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by
his aunt’s good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
“What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?”
“No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work
and all eat.” He could not help smiling as he said it.
Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him
curiously. “_Mon cher vous finirez mal_,” she said.
Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky’s husband,
a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
“Ah, Dmitri, how d’you do?” he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to