Resurrection
face looked sad and serious.
“It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose opinion
I value confound me with the position I am placed in.” She seemed ready
to cry as she said these last words. And though these words had no
meaning, or at any rate a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to be of
exceptional depth, meaning, or goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he
attracted by the look of the bright eyes which accompanied the words of
this young, beautiful, and well-dressed woman.
Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes from
her face.
“You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you. Why,
everybody knows what you are doing. _C’est le secret de polichinelle_.
And I am delighted with your work, and think highly of you.”
“Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done so
little as Yet.”
“No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her. All
right, all right. I will say nothing more about it,” she said, noticing
displeasure on his face. “But I also understand that after seeing all
the suffering and the horror in the prisons,” Mariette went on, her only
desire that of attracting him, and guessing with her woman’s instinct
what was dear and important to him, “you wish to help the sufferers,
those who are made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty
and indifference. I understand the willingness to give one’s life, and
could give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own fate.”
“Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?”
“I?” she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question could
be put to her. “I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied. But there is a
worm that wakes up--”
“And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that
must be obeyed,” Nekhludoff said, falling into the trap.
Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk with her.
He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as imitations of
his own, and her face, which seemed looking at him with sympathetic
attention when he told her about the terrors of the prison and of his
impressions in the country.
When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old, but
like exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They were
talking about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the
unfortunate, the poverty of the people, yet in reality in the midst of
the sound of their talk their eyes, gazing at each other, kept asking,
“Can you love me?” and answering, “I can,” and the sex-feeling, taking
the most unexpected and brightest forms, drew them to each other. As she
was going away she told him that she would always be willing to serve
him in any way she could, and asked him to come and see her, if only for
a moment, in the theatre next day, as she had a very important thing to
tell him about.
“Yes, and when shall I see you again?” she added, with a sigh, carefully
drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.
“Say you will come.”
Nekhludoff promised.
That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after
putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of
the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of
his having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if
in answer to those thoughts--her look, her sigh, her words, “When shall
I see you again?” and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her,
and he also smiled. “Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And
have I done right in divesting myself of my wealth?” And the answers to
the questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed
into the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed
mixed in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former
sequence of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or
validity.
“And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it
through--supposing I repent of having acted right,” he thought; and
unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had
long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into
a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.
CHAPTER XXV.
LYDIA SHOUSTOVA’S HOME.
Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some
iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember
having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had
evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry
Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should
be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he
would have to go on living as he lived.
He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an
evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions
proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but
evil thoughts generate all evil actions.
An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts
uncontrollably drag one along that path.
When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he
was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts.
However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he
knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however
easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he
knew that state to be death.
Yesterday’s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep
sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a
little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad
and important work that awaits one.
On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the
Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second
floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered
straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly
woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by
the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.
“Whom do you want?” she asked severely, looking at him over her
spectacles.
Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy
appeared on her face.
“Oh, Prince!” she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. “But why
have you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have
nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us,” she said, catching
hold of Nekhludoff’s hand and trying to kiss it.
“I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This
way, this way, please,” said Shoustova’s mother, as she led the way
through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and
pulling at her tucked-up skirt. “My sister’s name is Kornilova. You must
have heard of her,” she added, stopping before a closed door. “She was
mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!”
Shoustova’s mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little
room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with
fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like
her mother’s. She had a striped cotton blouse on.
Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly
bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and
moustaches.
“Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!” he said.
The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind
her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large,
grey eyes.
“So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to
intercede for?” Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.
“Yes, I am,” said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile
disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. “It was aunt who was so anxious to
see you. Aunt!” she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a
door.
“Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much,” said Nekhludoff.
“Take a seat here, or better here,” said Shoustova, pointing to the
battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.
“My cousin, Zakharov,” she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the
young man.
The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova’s,
and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat
by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room
and silently sat down on the window-sill.
“Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt’s, but I hardly know her,”
said Shoustova.
Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather
belt, came in from the next room.
“How do you do? Thanks for coming,” she began as soon as she had taken
the place next Shoustova’s on the sofa.
“Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?”
“She does not complain,” said Nekhludoff. “She says she feels perfectly
happy.”’
“Ah, that’s like Vera. I know her,” said the aunt, smiling and shaking
her head. “One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for
others; nothing for herself.”
“No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your
niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece
was imprisoned for nothing.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said the aunt. “It is a dreadful business. She
suffered, in reality, because of me.”
“Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the
same.”
“Allow me to know better,” said the aunt. “You see,” she went on to
Nekhludoff, “it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep
his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them
to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her
and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should
say from whom she had them.”
“But I never told them,” said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a
lock that was not even out of place.
“I never said you did,” answered the aunt.
“If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me,” said Shoustova,
blushing, and looking round uneasily.
“Don’t speak about it, Lydia dear,” said her mother.
“Why not? I should like to relate it,” said Shoustova, no longer smiling
nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting
redder.
“Don’t forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it.”
“Not at all---Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet.
When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told
him I would not answer.”
“Then this--Petrov--”
“Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard,” put in the aunt, to
explain her niece’s words to Nekhludoff.
“Then he began persuading,” continued Shoustova, excitedly and
hurriedly. “‘Anything you tell me,’ he said, ‘can harm no one; on the
contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people
whom we may be uselessly tormenting.’ Well, I still said I would not
tell. Then he said, ‘All right, don’t tell, but do not deny what I am
going to say.’ And he named Mitin.”
“Don’t talk about it,” said the aunt.
“Oh, aunt, don’t interrupt,” and she went on pulling the lock of hair
and looking round. “And then, only fancy, the next day I hear--they let
me know by knocking at the wall--that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think
I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so--it tormented me so that I
nearly went mad.”
“And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken
up?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know. I think, ‘There, now, I have betrayed him.’ I
walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking.
I think, ‘I have betrayed him.’ I lie down and cover myself up, and hear