Resurrection
new companions opened out to her a life full of interests such as she
had never dreamed of. People so wonderful (as she expressed it) as those
whom she was now going with she had not only never met but could not
even have imagined.
“There now, and I cried when I was sentenced,” she said. “Why, I must
thank God for it all the days of my life. I have learned to know what I
never should have found out else.”
The motives she understood easily and without effort that guided these
people, and, being of the people, fully sympathised with them. She
understood that these persons were for the people and against the
upper classes, and though themselves belonging to the upper classes
had sacrificed their privileges, their liberty and their lives for the
people. This especially made her value and admire them. She was charmed
with all the new companions, but particularly with Mary Pavlovna,
and she was not only charmed with her, but loved her with a peculiar,
respectful and rapturous love. She was struck by the fact that this
beautiful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three
languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like
the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly,
paying no heed to her appearance. This trait and a complete absence
of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to
Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased
to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on
men was not at all pleasing to her; she was even afraid of it, and felt
an absolute disgust to all love affairs. Her men companions knew it, and
if they felt attracted by her never permitted themselves to show it to
her, but treated her as they would a man; but with strangers, who often
molested her, the great physical strength on which she prided herself
stood her in good stead.
“It happened once,” she said to Katusha, “that a man followed me in the
street and would not leave me on any account. At last I gave him such a
shaking that he was frightened and ran away.”
She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to
the life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the
common people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time
in the servants’ hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the
drawing-room.
“And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with
our gentlemen and ladies,” she said. “Then when I came to understand
things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I
did not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and
went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand.”
After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to
town and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press.
There she was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. Mary Pavlovna
said nothing about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary
Pavlovna was sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the
police and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she
pleaded guilty.
As soon as she had learned to know Mary Pavlovna, Katusha noticed
that, whatever the conditions she found herself in, Mary Pavlovna never
thought of herself, but was always anxious to serve, to help some one,
in matters small or great. One of her present companions, Novodvoroff,
said of her that she devoted herself to philanthropic amusements. And
this was true. The interest of her whole life lay in the search for
opportunities of serving others. This kind of amusement had become the
habit, the business of her life. And she did it all so naturally that
those who knew her no longer valued but simply expected it of her.
When Maslova first came among them, Mary Pavlovna felt repulsed and
disgusted. Katusha noticed this, but she also noticed that, having made
an effort to overcome these feelings, Mary Pavlovna became particularly
tender and kind to her. The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon
a being touched Maslova so much that she gave her whole heart, and
unconsciously accepting her views, could not help imitating her in
everything.
This devoted love of Katusha touched Mary Pavlovna in her turn, and she
learned to love Katusha.
These women were also united by the repulsion they both felt to sexual
love. The one loathed that kind of love, having experienced all its
horrors, the other, never having experienced it, looked on it as
something incomprehensible and at the same time as something repugnant
and offensive to human dignity.
CHAPTER IV.
SIMONSON.
Mary Pavlovna’s influence was one that Maslova submitted to because she
loved Mary Pavlovna. Simonson influenced her because he loved her.
Everybody lives and acts partly according to his own, partly according
to other people’s, ideas. This is what constitutes one of the great
differences among men. To some, thinking is a kind of mental game; they
treat their reason as if it were a fly-wheel without a connecting strap,
and are guided in their actions by other people’s ideas, by custom or
laws; while others look upon their own ideas as the chief motive power
of all their actions, and always listen to the dictates of their own
reason and submit to it, accepting other people’s opinions only on rare
occasions and after weighing them critically. Simonson was a man of the
latter sort; he settled and verified everything according to his own
reason and acted on the decisions he arrived at. When a schoolboy
he made up his mind that his father’s income, made as a paymaster in
government office was dishonestly gained, and he told his father that it
ought to be given to the people. When his father, instead of listening
to him, gave him a scolding, he left his father’s house and would not
make use of his father’s means. Having come to the conclusion that all
the existing misery was a result of the people’s ignorance, he joined
the socialists, who carried on propaganda among the people, as soon as
he left the university and got a place as a village schoolmaster.
He taught and explained to his pupils and to the peasants what he
considered to be just, and openly blamed what he thought unjust. He was
arrested and tried. During his trial he determined to tell his judges
that his was a just cause, for which he ought not to be tried or
punished. When the judges paid no heed to his words, but went on with
the trial, he decided not to answer them and kept resolutely silent when
they questioned him. He was exiled to the Government of Archangel. There
he formulated a religious teaching which was founded on the theory that
everything in the world was alive, that nothing is lifeless, and that
all the objects we consider to be without life or inorganic are only
parts of an enormous organic body which we cannot compass. A man’s task
is to sustain the life of that huge organism and all its animate parts.
Therefore he was against war, capital punishment and every kind of
killing, not only of human beings, but also of animals. Concerning
marriage, too, he had a peculiar idea of his own; he thought that
increase was a lower function of man, the highest function being to
serve the already existing lives. He found a confirmation of his
theory in the fact that there were phacocytes in the blood. Celibates,
according to his opinion, were the same as phacocytes, their function
being to help the weak and the sickly particles of the organism. From
the moment he came to this conclusion he began to consider himself as
well as Mary Pavlovna as phacocytes, and to live accordingly, though
as a youth he had been addicted to vice. His love for Katusha did not
infringe this conception, because he loved her platonically, and such
love he considered could not hinder his activity as a phacocytes, but
acted, on the contrary, as an inspiration.
Not only moral, but also most practical questions he decided in his own
way. He applied a theory of his own to all practical business, had rules
relating to the number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of
food to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all
this Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made
up his mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided
influence on Maslova through his love for her. With a woman’s instinct
Maslova very soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that
she could awaken love in a man of that kind raised her in her own
estimation. It was Nekhludoff’s magnanimity and what had been in the
past that made him offer to marry her, but Simonson loved her such as
she was now, loved her simply because of the love he bore her. And she
felt that Simonson considered her to be an exceptional woman, having
peculiarly high moral qualities. She did not quite know what the
qualities he attributed to her were, but in order to be on the safe side
and that he should not be disappointed in her, she tried with all her
might to awaken in herself all the highest qualities she could conceive,
and she tried to be as good as possible. This had begun while they
were still in prison, when on a common visiting day she had noticed his
kindly dark blue eyes gazing fixedly at her from under his projecting
brow. Even then she had noticed that this was a peculiar man, and that
he was looking at her in a peculiar manner, and had also noticed the
striking combination of sternness--the unruly hair and the frowning
forehead gave him this appearance--with the child-like kindness and
innocence of his look. She saw him again in Tomsk, where she joined the
political prisoners. Though they had not uttered a word, their looks
told plainly that they had understood one another. Even after that they
had had no serious conversation with each other, but Maslova felt that
when he spoke in her presence his words were addressed to her, and that
he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as plainly as he could;
but it was when he started walking with the criminal prisoners that they
grew specially near to one another.
CHAPTER V.
THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
Until they left Perm Nekhludoff only twice managed to see Katusha, once
in Nijni, before the prisoners were embarked on a barge surrounded with
a wire netting, and again in Perm in the prison office. At both these
interviews he found her reserved and unkind. She answered his questions
as to whether she was in want of anything, and whether she was
comfortable, evasively and bashfully, and, as he thought, with the same
feeling of hostile reproach which she had shown several times
before. Her depressed state of mind, which was only the result of the
molestations from the men that she was undergoing at the time, tormented
Nekhludoff. He feared lest, influenced by the hard and degrading
circumstances in which she was placed on the journey, she should again
get into that state of despair and discord with her own self which
formerly made her irritable with him, and which had caused her to drink
and smoke excessively to gain oblivion. But he was unable to help her in
any way during this part of the journey, as it was impossible for him to
be with her. It was only when she joined the political prisoners that he
saw how unfounded his fears were, and at each interview he noticed that
inner change he so strongly desired to see in her becoming more and more
marked. The first time they met in Tomsk she was again just as she had
been when leaving Moscow. She did not frown or become confused when she
saw him, but met him joyfully and simply, thanking him for what he had
done for her, especially for bringing her among the people with whom she
now was.
After two months’ marching with the gang, the change that had taken