Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

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 manner. “It is high time. What do you mean by

it? This sort of thing is quite impossible. I am now asking you

for the last time,” he repeated wearily, now putting out his

cigarette and then lighting another.

It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices

enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for

it, the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of

those who were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested

itself in this room. And it was apparent that this troubled him

sorely. At length the prisoners and their visitors began to

go—the first out of the inner, the latter out of the outer door.

The man with the rubber jacket passed out among them, and the

consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary Pavlovna went out

with the boy born in prison.

The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles,

stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.

“Yes, a strange state of things this,” said the talkative young

man, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he

descended the stairs side by side with Nekhludoff. “Yet we have

reason to be grateful to the inspector who does not keep strictly

to the rules, kind-hearted fellow. If they can get a talk it does

relieve their hearts a bit, after all!”

While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as

Medinzeff, Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came

up to them with weary step.

“If you wish to see Maslova,” he said, apparently desiring to be

polite to Nekhludoff, “please come tomorrow.”

“Very well,” answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing

more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always

felt on entering the prison.

The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed

terrible, and not so much his physical suffering as the

perplexity, the distrust in the good and in God which he must

feel, seeing the cruelty of the people who tormented him without

any reason.

Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds

of guiltless people simply because something was not written on

paper as it should have been. Terrible were the brutalised

jailers, whose occupation is to torment their brothers, and who

were certain that they were fulfilling an important and useful

duty; but most terrible of all seemed this sickly, elderly,

kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part mother and son,

father and daughter, who were just the same sort of people as he

and his own children.

“What is it all for?” Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not

find an answer.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE VICE-GOVERNOR’S “AT-HOME”.

The next day Nekhludoff went to see the advocate, and spoke to

him about the Menshoffs’ case, begging him to undertake their

defence. The advocate promised to look into the case, and if it

turned out to be as Nekhludoff said he would in all probability

undertake the defence free of charge. Then Nekhludoff told him of

the 130 men who were kept in prison owing to a mistake. “On whom

did it depend? Whose fault was it?”

The advocate was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to give a

correct reply.

“Whose fault is it? No one’s,” he said, decidedly. “Ask the

Procureur, he’ll say it is the Governor’s; ask the Governor,

he’ll say it is the Procureur’s fault. No one is in fault.”

“I am just going to see the Vice-Governor. I shall tell him.”

“Oh, that’s quite useless,” said the advocate, with a smile. “He

is such a—he is not a relation or friend of yours?—such a

blockhead, if I may say so, and yet a crafty animal at the same

time.”

Nekhludoff remembered what Maslennikoff had said about the

advocate, and did not answer, but took leave and went on to

Maslennikoff’s. He had to ask Maslennikoff two things: about

Maslova’s removal to the prison hospital, and about the 130

passportless men innocently imprisoned. Though it was very hard

to petition a man whom he did not respect, and by whose orders

men were flogged, yet it was the only means of gaining his end,

and he had to go through with it.

As he drove up to Maslennikoff’s house Nekhludoff saw a number of

different carriages by the front door, and remembered that it was

Maslennikoff’s wife’s “at-home” day, to which he had been

invited. At the moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage

in front of the door, and a footman in livery, with a cockade in

his hat, was helping a lady down the doorstep. She was holding up

her train, and showing her thin ankles, black stockings, and

slippered feet. Among the carriages was a closed landau, which he

knew to be the Korchagins’.

The greyhaired, red-checked coachman took off his hat and bowed

in a respectful yet friendly manner to Nekhludoff, as to a

gentleman he knew well. Nekhludoff had not had time to inquire

for Maslennikoff, when the latter appeared on the carpeted

stairs, accompanying a very important guest not only to the first

landing but to the bottom of the stairs. This very important

visitor, a military man, was speaking in French about a lottery

for the benefit of children’s homes that were to be founded in

the city, and expressed the opinion that this was a good

occupation for the ladies. “It amuses them, and the money comes.”

_”Qu’elles s’amusent et que le bon dieu les benisse. M.

Nekhludoff!_ How d’you do? How is it one never sees you?” he

greeted Nekhludoff. “Allez presenter vos devoirs a Madame. And

the Korchagins are here et Nadine Bukshevden. _Toutes les jolies

femmes de la ville,_” said the important guest, slightly raising

his uniformed shoulders as he presented them to his own richly

liveried servant to have his military overcoat put on. “_Au

revoir, mon cher._” And he pressed Maslennikoff’s hand.

“Now, come up; I am so glad,” said Maslennikoff, grasping

Nekhludoff’s hand. In spite of his corpulency Maslennikoff

hurried quickly up the stairs. He was in particularly good

spirits, owing to the attention paid him by the important

personage. Every such attention gave him the same sense of

delight as is felt by an affectionate dog when its master pats

it, strokes it, or scratches its ears. It wags its tail, cringes,

jumps about, presses its ears down, and madly rushes about in a

circle. Maslennikoff was ready to do the same. He did not notice

the serious expression on Nekhludoff’s face, paid no heed to his

words, but pulled him irresistibly towards the drawing-room, so

that it was impossible for Nekhludoff not to follow. “Business

after wards. I shall do whatever you want,” said Meslennikoff, as

he drew Nekhludoff through the dancing hall. “Announce Prince

Nekhludoff,” he said to a footman, without stopping on his way.

The footman started off at a trot and passed them.

“Vous n’avez qu’ a ordonner. But you must see my wife. As it is,

I got it for letting you go without seeing her last time.”

By the time they reached the drawing-room the footman had already

announced Nekhludoff, and from between the bonnets and heads that

surrounded it the smiling face of Anna Ignatievna, the

Vice-Governor’s wife, beamed on Nekhludoff. At the other end of

the drawing-room several ladies were seated round the tea-table,

and some military men and some civilians stood near them. The

clatter of male and female voices went on unceasingly.

“Enfin! you seem to have quite forgotten us. How have we

offended?” With these words, intended to convey an idea of

intimacy which had never existed between herself and Nekhludoff,

Anna Ignatievna greeted the newcomer.

“You are acquainted?—Madam Tilyaevsky, M. Chernoff. Sit down a

bit nearer. Missy vene donc a notre table on vous apportera votre

the … And you,” she said, having evidently forgotten his

name, to an officer who was talking to Missy, “do come here. A

cup of tea, Prince?”

“I shall never, never agree with you. It’s quite simple; she did

not love,” a woman’s voice was heard saying.

“But she loved tarts.”

“Oh, your eternal silly jokes!” put in, laughingly, another lady

resplendent in silks, gold, and jewels.

“C’est excellent these little biscuits, and so light. I think

I’ll take another.”

“Well, are you moving soon?”

“Yes, this is our last day. That’s why we have come. Yes, it must

be lovely in the country; we are having a delightful spring.”

Missy, with her hat on, in a dark-striped dress of some kind that

fitted her like a skin, was looking very handsome. She blushed

when she saw Nekhludoff.

“And I thought you had left,” she said to him.

“I am on the point of leaving. Business is keeping me in town,

and it is on business I have come here.”

“Won’t you come to see mamma? She would like to see you,” she

said, and knowing that she was saying what was not true, and that

he knew it also, she blushed still more.

“I fear I shall scarcely have time,” Nekhludoff said gloomily,

trying to appear as if he had not noticed her blush. Missy

frowned angrily, shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards an

elegant officer, who grasped the empty cup she was holding, and

knocking his sword against the chairs, manfully carried the cup

across to another table.

“You must contribute towards the Home fund.”

“I am not refusing, but only wish to keep my bounty fresh for the

lottery. There I shall let it appear in all its glory.”

“Well, look out