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

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, childlike

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

windowsill.

“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 something whispering, ‘Betrayed!

betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!’ I know it is an hallucination,

but cannot help listening. I wish to fall asleep, I cannot. I

wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is terrible!” and as

Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and twisted and

untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.

“Lydia, dear, be calm,” the mother said, touching her shoulder.

But Shoustova could not stop herself.

“It is all the more terrible—” she began again, but did not

finish, and jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.

Her mother turned to follow her.

“They ought to be hanged, the rascals!” said the schoolboy who

was sitting on the windowsill.

“What’s that?” said the mother.

“I only said—Oh, it’s nothing,” the schoolboy answered, and

taking a cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.

CHAPTER XXVI.

LYDIA’S AUNT.

“Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young,” said

the aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.

“I should say for every one,” Nekhludoff replied.

“No, not for all,” answered the aunt. “For the real

revolutionists, I have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who

is wanted by the police lives in continual anxiety, material

want, and fear for himself and others, and for his cause, and at

last, when he is taken up and it is all over, and all

responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and rest. I have

been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the young

and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia),

for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive

you of freedom; and the bad food and bad air—all that is

nothing. Three times as many privations would be easily borne if

it were not for the moral shock when one is first taken.”

“Have you experienced it?”

“I? I was twice in prison,” she answered, with a sad, gentle

smile. “When I was arrested for the first time I had done

nothing. I was 22, had a child, and was expecting another. Though

the loss of freedom and the parting with my child and husband

were hard, they were nothing when compared with what I felt when

I found out that I had ceased being a human creature and had

become a thing. I wished to say goodbye to my little daughter. I

was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was being

taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I

asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been

examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison

clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me

in, and left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up

and down in front of my door, and every now and then looked in

through a crack—I felt terribly depressed. What struck me most

at the time was that the gendarme officer who examined me offered

me a cigarette. So he knew that people liked smoking, and must

know that they liked freedom and light; and that mothers love

their children, and children their mothers. Then how could they

tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and lock me up

in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not be

borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men,

and believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it

after all that. I have ceased to believe in