Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (i love reading .TXT) 📖

to

drive her out of his mind. “When the time comes I shall see,” he

said to himself, and began to think of what he ought to say to

the General.

 

The dinner at the General’s, with the luxury habitual to the

lives of the wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhludoff

had been accustomed, was extremely enjoyable after he had been so

long deprived not only of luxury but even of the most ordinary

comforts. The mistress of the house was a Petersburg grande dame

of the old school, a maid of honour at the court of Nicholas I.,

who spoke French quite naturally and Russian very unnaturally.

She held herself very erect and, moving her hands, she kept her

elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and, somewhat sadly

considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to all her

visitors, though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour

according to their position. She received Nekhludoff as if he

were one of them, and her fine, almost imperceptible flattery

made him once again aware of his virtues and gave him a feeling

of satisfaction. She made him feel that she knew of that honest

though rather singular step of his which had brought him to

Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man. This refined

flattery and the elegance and luxury of the General’s house had

the effect of making Nekhludoff succumb to the enjoyment of the

handsome surroundings, the delicate dishes and the case and

pleasure of intercourse with educated people of his own class, so

that the surroundings in the midst of which he had lived for the

last months seemed a dream from which he had awakened to reality.

Besides those of the household, the General’s daughter and her

husband and an aide-de-camp, there were an Englishman, a merchant

interested in gold mines, and the governor of a distant Siberian

town. All these people seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff. The

Englishman, a healthy man with a rosy complexion, who spoke very

bad French, but whose command of his own language was very good

and oratorically impressive, who had seen a great deal, was very

interesting to listen to when he spoke about America, India,

Japan and Siberia.

 

The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a

peasant, whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond

studs to his shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely

to philanthropic work, and held liberal European views, seemed

pleasant to Nekhludoff as a sample of a quite new and good type

of civilised European culture, grafted on a healthy, uncultivated

peasant stem.

 

The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who

had been so much talked about in Petersburg at the time

Nekhludoff was there. He was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft

blue eyes, carefully-tended white hands, with rings on the

fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the lower part of his

body. The master of the house valued this governor because of all

the officials he was the only one who would not be bribed. The

mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a very good

pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and

played duets with her.

 

Nekhludoff was in such good humour that even this man was not

unpleasant to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The

bright, energetic aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was

continually offering his services, pleased Nekhludoff by his good

nature. But it was the charming young couple, the General’s

daughter and her husband, who pleased Nekhludoff best. The

daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young woman, wholly

absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had fallen in

love with and married after a long struggle with her parents, was

a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a

modest and intellectual young man in Government service, who made

up statistics and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he

liked and tried to save from dying out.

 

All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhludoff, but

evidently pleased to see him, as a new and interesting

acquaintance. The General, who came in to dinner in uniform and

with a white cross round his neck, greeted Nekhludoff as a

friend, and asked the visitors to the side table to take a glass

of vodka and something to whet their appetites. The General asked

Nekhludoff what he had been doing since he left that morning, and

Nekhludoff told him he had been to the post-office and received

the news of the mitigation of that person’s sentence that he had

spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a permission to

visit the prison.

 

The General, apparently displeased that business should be

mentioned at dinner, frowned and said nothing.

 

“Have a glass of vodka” he said, addressing the Englishman, who

had just come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and

said he had been to see the cathedral and the factory, but would

like to visit the great transportation prison.

 

“Oh, that will just fit in,” said the General to Nekhludoff.

“You will he able to go together. Give them a pass,” he added,

turning to his aide-de-camp.

 

“When would you like to go?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening,” the Englishman

answered. “All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find

them all as they are.”

 

“Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I

have written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let

him find out from foreign publications,” the General said, and

went up to the dinner table, where the mistress of the house was

showing the visitors their places. Nekhludoff sat between his

hostess and the Englishman. In front of him sat the General’s

daughter and the ex-director of the Government department in

Petersburg. The conversation at dinner was carried on by fits and

starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now

the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of,

now the universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these

topics did not interest Nekhludoff much.

 

But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhludoff and the

Englishman began a very interesting conversation about Gladstone,

and Nekhludoff thought he had said many clever things which were

noticed by his interlocutor. And Nekhludoff felt it more and more

pleasant to be sipping his coffee seated in an easy-chair among

amiable, well-bred people. And when at the Englishman’s request

the hostess went up to the piano with the ex-director of the

Government department, and they began to play in well-practised

style Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Nekhludoff fell into a mental

state of perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been a

stranger, as though he had only just found out what a good fellow

he was.

 

The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well

performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, who knew and

liked that symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt

a tickling in his nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.

 

Nekhludoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been

deprived of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when

the daughter of the house came up to him with a determined look

and said, with a blush, “You asked about my children. Would you

like to see them?”

 

“She thinks that everybody wants to see her children,” said her

mother, smiling at her daughter’s winning tactlessness. “The

Prince is not at all interested.”

 

“On the contrary, I am very much interested,” said Nekhludoff,

touched by this overflowing, happy mother-love. “Please let me

see them.”

 

“She’s taking the Prince to see her babies,” the General shouted,

laughing from the card-table, where he sat with his son-in-law,

the mine owner and the aide-de-camp. “Go, go, pay your tribute.”

 

The young woman, visibly excited by the thought that judgment was

about to be passed on her children, went quickly towards the

inner apartments, followed by Nekhludoff. In the third, a lofty

room, papered with white and lit up by a shaded lamp, stood two

small cots, and a nurse with a white cape on her shoulders sat

between the cots. She had a kindly, true Siberian face, with its

high cheek-bones.

 

The nurse rose and bowed. The mother stooped over the first cot,

in which a two-year-old little girl lay peacefully sleeping with

her little mouth open and her long, curly hair tumbled over the

pillow.

 

“This is Katie,” said the mother, straightening the white and

blue crochet coverlet, from under which a little white foot

pushed itself languidly out.

 

“Is she not pretty? She’s only two years old, you know.”

 

“Lovely.”

 

“And this is Vasiuk, as ‘grandpapa’ calls him. Quite a different

type. A Siberian, is he not?”

 

“A splendid boy,” said Nekhludoff, as he looked at the little

fatty lying asleep on his stomach.

 

“Yes,” said the mother, with a smile full of meaning.

 

Nekhludoff recalled to his mind chains, shaved heads, fighting

debauchery, the dying Kryltzoff, Katusha and the whole of her

past, and he began to feel envious and to wish for what he saw

here, which now seemed to him pure and refined happiness.

 

After having repeatedly expressed his admiration of the children,

thereby at least partially satisfying their mother, who eagerly

drank in this praise, he followed her back to the drawing-room,

where the Englishman was waiting for him to go and visit the

prison, as they had arranged. Having taken leave of their hosts,

the old and the young ones, the Englishman and Nekhludoff went

out into the porch of the General’s house.

 

The weather had changed. It was snowing, and the snow fell

densely in large flakes, and already covered the road, the roof

and the trees in the garden, the steps of the porch, the roof of

the trap and the back of the horse.

 

The Englishman had a trap of his own, and Nekhludoff, having told

the coachman to drive to the prison, called his isvostchik and

got in with the heavy sense of having to fulfil an unpleasant

duty, and followed the Englishman over the soft snow, through

which the wheels turned with difficulty.

 

CHAPTER XXV.

 

MASLOVA’S DECISION.

 

The dismal prison house, with its sentinel and lamp burning under

the gateway, produced an even more dismal impression, with its

long row of lighted windows, than it had done in the morning, in

spite of the white covering that now lay over everything—the

porch, the roof and the walls.

 

The imposing inspector came up to the gate and read the pass that

had been given to Nekhludoff and the Englishman by the light of

the lamp, shrugged his fine shoulders in surprise, but, in

obedience to the order, asked the visitors to follow him in. He

led them through the courtyard and then in at a door to the right

and up a staircase into the office. He offered them a seat and

asked what he could do for them, and when he heard that

Nekhludoff would like to see Maslova at once, he sent a jailer to

fetch her. Then he prepared himself to answer the questions which

the Englishman began to put to him, Nekhludoff acting as

interpreter.

 

“How many persons is the prison built to hold?” the Englishman

asked. “How many are confined in it? How many men? How many

women? Children? How many sentenced to the mines? How many

exiles? How many sick persons?”

 

Nekhludoff translated the Englishman’s and the inspector’s words

without paying any attention