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

and a porter with a white apron carefully carried out the

long-faced Princess in her folding chair. The sisters greeted

each other, and French sentences began flying about. Would the

Princess go in a closed or an open carriage? At last the

procession started towards the exit, the lady’s maid, with her

curly fringe, parasol and leather case in the rear.

Nekhludoff not wishing to meet them and to have to take leave

over again, stopped before he got to the door, waiting for the

procession to pass.

The Princess, her son, Missy, the doctor, and the maid went out

first, the old Prince and his sister-in-law remained behind.

Nekhludoff was too far to catch anything but a few disconnected

French sentences of their conversation One of the sentences

uttered by the Prince, as it often happens, for some

unaccountable reason remained in his memory with all its

intonations and the sound of the voice.

“Oh, il est du vrai grand monde, du vrai grand monde,” said the

Prince in his loud, self-assured tone as he went out of the

station with his sister-in-law, accompanied by the respectful

guards and porters.

At this moment from behind the corner of the station suddenly

appeared a crowd of workmen in bark shoes, wearing sheepskin

coats and carrying bags on their backs. The workmen went up to

the nearest carriage with soft yet determined steps, and were

about to get in, but were at once driven away by a guard. Without

stopping, the workmen passed on, hurrying and jostling one

another, to the next carriage and began getting in, catching

their bags against the corners and door of the carriage, but

another guard caught sight of them from the door of the station,

and shouted at them severely. The workmen, who had already got

in, hurried out again and went on, with the same soft and firm

steps, still further towards Nekhludoff’s carriage. A guard was

again going to stop them, but Nekhludoff said there was plenty of

room inside, and that they had better get in. They obeyed and got

in, followed by Nekhludoff.

The workmen were about to take their seats, when the gentleman

with the cockade and the two ladies, looking at this attempt to

settle in their carriage as a personal insult to themselves,

indignantly protested and wanted to turn them out. The

workmen—there were 20 of them, old men and quite young ones, all

of them wearied, sunburnt, with haggard faces—began at once to

move on through the carriage, catching the seats, the walls, and

the doors with their bags. They evidently felt they had offended

in some way, and seemed ready to go on indefinitely wherever they

were ordered to go.

“Where are you pushing to, you fiends? Sit down here,” shouted

another guard they met.

“Voild encore des nouvelles,” exclaimed the younger of the two

ladies, quite convinced that she would attract Nekhludoff’s

notice by her good French.

The other lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and making faces,

and remarked something about how pleasant it was to sit with

smelly peasants.

The workmen, who felt the joy and calm experienced by people who

have escaped some kind of danger, threw off their heavy bags with

a movement of their shoulders and stowed them away under the

seats.

The gardener had left his own seat to talk with Taras, and now

went back, so that there were two unoccupied seats opposite and

one next to Taras. Three of the workmen took these seats, but

when Nekhludoff came up to them, in his gentleman’s clothing,

they got so confused that they rose to go away, but Nekhludoff

asked them to stay, and himself sat down on the arm of the seat,

by the passage down the middle of the carriage.

One of the workmen, a man of about 50, exchanged a surprised and

even frightened look with a young man. That Nekhludoff, instead

of scolding and driving them away, as was natural to a gentleman,

should give up his seat to them, astonished and perplexed them.

They even feared that this might have some evil result for them.

However, they soon noticed that there was no underlying plot when

they heard Nekhludoff talking quite simply with Taras, and they

grew quiet and told one of the lads to sit down on his bag and

give his seat to Nekhludoff. At first the elderly workman who sat

opposite Nekhludoff shrank and drew back his legs for fear of

touching the gentleman, but after a while he grew quite friendly,

and in talking to him and Taras even slapped Nekhludoff on the

knee when he wanted to draw special attention to what he was

saying.

He told them all about his position and his work in the peat

bogs, whence he was now returning home. He had been working there

for two and a half months, and was bringing home his wages, which

only came to 10 roubles, since part had been paid beforehand when

he was hired. They worked, as he explained, up to their knees in

water from sunrise to sunset, with two hours’ interval for

dinner.

“Those who are not used to it find it hard, of course,” he said;

“but when one’s hardened it doesn’t matter, if only the food is

right. At first the food was bad. Later the people complained,

and they got good food, and it was easy to work.”

Then he told them how, during 28 years he went out to work, and

sent all his earnings home. First to his father, then to his

eldest brother, and now to his nephew, who was at the head of the

household. On himself he spent only two or three roubles of the

50 or 60 he earned a year, just for luxuries—tobacco and

matches.

“I’m a sinner, when tired I even drink a little vodka sometimes,”

he added, with a guilty smile.

Then he told them how the women did the work at home, and how the

contractor had treated them to half a pail of vodka before they

started to-day, how one of them had died, and another was

returning home ill. The sick workman he was talking about was in

a corner of the same carriage. He was a young lad, with a pale,

sallow face and bluish lips. He was evidently tormented by

intermittent fever. Nekhludoff went up to him, but the lad looked

up with such a severe and suffering expression that Nekhludoff

did not care to bother him with questions, but advised the elder

man to give him quinine, and wrote down the name of the medicine.

He wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he

would pay for it himself.

“Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a

gentleman before. Instead of punching your head, he actually

gives up his place to you,” said the old man to Taras. “It seems

there are all sorts of gentlefolk, too.”

“Yes, this is quite a new and different world,” thought

Nekhludoff, looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse,

home-made garments, and sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking

faces, and feeling himself surrounded on all sides with new

people and the serious interests, joys, and sufferings of a life

of labour.

“Here is_ le vrai grand monde_,” thought Nekhludoff, remembering

the words of Prince Korchagin and all that idle, luxurious world

to which the Korchagins belonged, with their petty, mean

interests. And he felt the joy of a traveller on discovering a

new, unknown, and beautiful world.

END OF BOOK II.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS.

The gang of prisoners to which Maslova belonged had walked about

three thousand three hundred miles. She and the other prisoners

condemned for criminal offences had travelled by rail and by

steamboats as far as the town of Perm. It was only here that

Nekhludoff succeeded in obtaining a permission for her to

continue the journey with the political prisoners, as Vera

Doukhova, who was among the latter, advised him to do. The

journey up to Perm had been very trying to Maslova both morally

and physically. Physically, because of the overcrowding, the

dirt, and the disgusting vermin, which gave her no peace;

morally, because of the equally disgusting men. The men, like the

vermin, though they changed at each halting-place, were

everywhere alike importunate; they swarmed round her, giving her

no rest. Among the women prisoners and the men prisoners, the

jailers and the convoy soldiers, the habit of a kind of cynical

debauch was so firmly established that unless a female prisoner

was willing to utilise her position as a woman she had to be

constantly on the watch. To be continually in a state of fear and

strife was very trying. And Maslova was specially exposed to

attacks, her appearance being attractive and her past known to

every one. The decided resistance with which she now met the

importunity of all the men seemed offensive to them, and awakened

another feeling, that of ill-will towards her. But her position

was made a little easier by her intimacy with Theodosia, and

Theodosia’s husband, who, having heard of the molestations his

wife was subject to, had in Nijni been arrested at his own desire

in order to be able to protect her, and was now travelling with

the gang as a prisoner. Maslova’s position became much more

bearable when she was allowed to join the political prisoners,

who were provided with better accomodations, better food, and

were treated less rudely, but besides all this Maslova’s

condition was much improved because among the political prisoners

she was no longer molested by the men, and could live without

being reminded of that past which she was so anxious to forget.

But the chief advantage of the change lay in the fact that she

made the acquaintance of several persons who exercised a decided

and most beneficial influence on her character. Maslova was

allowed to stop with the political prisoners at all the

halting-places, but being a strong and healthy woman she was

obliged to march with the criminal convicts. In this way she

walked all the way from Tomsk. Two political prisoners also

marched with the gang, Mary Pavlovna Schetinina, the girl with

the hazel eyes who had attracted Nekhludoff’s attention when he

had been to visit Doukhova in prison, and one Simonson, who was

on his way to the Takoutsk district, the dishevelled dark young

fellow with deeplying eyes, whom Nekhludoff had also noticed

during that visit. Mary Pavlovna was walking because she had

given her place on the cart to one of the criminals, a woman

expecting to be confined, and Simonson because he did not dare to

avail himself of a class privilege.

These three always started early in the morning before the rest

of the political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.

They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town,

where a new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.

It was early on a dull September morning. It kept raining and

snowing alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts. The

whole gang of prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty

women, was already assembled in the court of the halting station.

Some of them were crowding round the chief of the convoy, who was

giving to specially appointed prisoners money for two days’ keep

to distribute among the rest, while others were purchasing food

from women who had been let into the courtyard. One could hear

the voices of the prisoners counting their money and making their

purchases, and the shrill voices of the women with the food.

Simonson, in his