Resurrection, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read this summer .txt] 📗

went up to

her with determination and a terrible, ungovernable animal

passion took possession of him.

 

With his arm round he made her sit down on the bed; and feeling

that there was something more to be done he sat down beside her.

 

“Dmitri Ivanovitch, dear! please let me go,” she said, with a

piteous voice. “Matrona Pavlovna is coming,” she cried, tearing

herself away. Some one was really coming to the door.

 

“Well, then, I’ll come to you in the night,” he whispered.

“You’ll be alone?”

 

“What are you thinking of? On no account. No, no!” she said, but

only with her lips; the tremulous confusion of her whole being

said something very different.

 

It was Matrona Pavlovna who had come to the door. She came in

with a. blanket over her arm, looked reproachfully at Nekhludoff,

and began scolding Katusha for having taken the wrong blanket.

 

Nekhludoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed.

He could see by Matrona Pavlovna’s face that she was blaming him,

he knew that she was blaming him with reason and felt that he was

doing wrong, but this novel, low animal excitement, having freed

itself of all the old feelings of real love for Katusha, ruled

supreme, leaving room for nothing else. He went about as if

demented all the evening, now into his aunts’, then back into his

own room, then out into the porch, thinking all the time how he

could meet her alone; but she avoided him, and Matrona Pavlovna

watched her closely.

 

CHAPTER XVII.

 

NEKHLUDOFF AND KATUSHA.

 

And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.

Nekhludoff’s aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona

Pavlovna was now with them in their bedroom so that Katusha was

sure to be alone in the maids’ sitting-room. He again went out

into the porch. It was dark, damp and warm out of doors, and that

white spring mist which drives away the last snow, or is diffused

by the thawing of the last snow, filled the air. From the river

under the hill, about a hundred steps from the front door, came a

strange sound. It was the ice breaking. Nekhludoff came down the

steps and went up to the window of the maids’ room, stepping over

the puddles on the bits of glazed snow. His heart was beating so

fiercely in his breast that he seemed to hear it, his laboured

breath came and went in a burst of long-drawn sighs. In the

maids’ room a small lamp was burning, and Katusha sat alone by

the table, looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhludoff stood

a long time without moving and waited to see what she, not

knowing that she was observed, would do. For a minute or two she

did not move; then she lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head

as if chiding herself, then changed her pose and dropped both her

arms on the table and again began gazing down in front of her. He

stood and looked at her, involuntarily listening to the beating

of his own heart and the strange sounds from the river. There on

the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing labour went on,

and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping, being

shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of

ice as they broke against each other like glass.

 

There he stood, looking at Katusha’s serious, suffering face,

which betrayed the inner struggle of her soul, and he felt pity

for her; but, strange though it may seem, this pity only

confirmed him in his evil intention.

 

He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an

electric shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of horror

came into her face. Then she jumped up, approached the window and

brought her face up to the pane. The look of terror did not leave

her face even when, holding her hands up to her eyes like

blinkers and peering through the glass, she recognised him. Her

face was unusually grave; he had never seen it so before. She

returned his smile, but only in submission to him; there was no

smile in her soul, only fear. He beckoned her with his hand to

come out into the yard to him. But she shook her head and

remained by the window. He brought his face close to the pane and

was going to call out to her, but at that moment she turned to

the door; evidently some one inside had called her. Nekhludoff

moved away from the window. The fog was so dense that five steps

from the house the windows could not be seen, but the light from

the lamp shone red and huge out of a shapeless black mass. And on

the river the same strange sounds went on, sobbing and rustling

and cracking and tinkling. Somewhere in the fog, not far off, a

cock crowed; another answered, and then others, far in the

village took up the cry till the sound of the crowing blended

into one, while all around was silent excepting the river. It was

the second time the cocks crowed that night.

 

Nekhludoff walked up and down behind the corner of the house, and

once or twice got into a puddle. Then again came up to the

window. The lamp was still burning, and she was again sitting

alone by the table as if uncertain what to do. He had hardly

approached the window when she looked up. He knocked. Without

looking who it was she at once ran out of the room, and he heard

the outside door open with a snap. He waited for her near the

side porch and put his arms round her without saying a word. She

clung to him, put up her face, and met his kiss with her lips.

Then the door again gave the same sort of snap and opened, and

the voice of Matrona Pavlovna called out angrily, “Katusha!”

 

She tore herself away from him and returned into the maids’ room.

He heard the latch click, and then all was quiet. The red light

disappeared and only the mist remained, and the bustle on the

river went on. Nekhludoff went up to the window, nobody was to be

seen; he knocked, but got no answer. He went back into the house

by the front door, but could not sleep. He got up and went with

bare feet along the passage to her door, next Matrona Pavlovna’s

room. He heard Matrona Pavlovna snoring quietly, and was about to

go on when she coughed and turned on her creaking bed, and his

heart fell, and he stood immovable for about five minutes. When

all was quiet and she began to snore peacefully again, he went

on, trying to step on the boards that did not creak, and came to

Katusha’s door. There was no sound to be heard. She was probably

awake, or else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as

he had whispered “Katusha” she jumped up and began to persuade

him, as if angrily, to go away.

 

“Open! Let me in just for a moment! I implore you!” He hardly knew

what he was saying.

 

*

 

When she left him, trembling and silent, giving no answer to his

words, he again went out into the porch and stood trying to

understand the meaning of what had happened.

 

It was getting lighter. From the river below the creaking and

tinkling and sobbing of the breaking ice came still louder and a

gurgling sound could now also be heard. The mist had begun to

sink, and from above it the waning moon dimly lighted up

something black and weird.

 

“What was the meaning of it all? Was it a great joy or a great

misfortune that had befallen him?” he asked himself.

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

 

AFTERWARDS.

 

The next day the gay, handsome, and brilliant Schonbock joined

Nekhludoff at his aunts’ house, and quite won their hearts by his

refined and amiable manner, his high spirits, his generosity, and

his affection for Dmitri.

 

But though the old ladies admired his generosity it rather

perplexed them, for it seemed exaggerated. He gave a rouble to

some blind beggars who came to the gate, gave 15 roubles in tips

to the servants, and when Sophia Ivanovna’s pet dog hurt his paw

and it bled, he tore his hemstitched cambric handkerchief into

strips (Sophia Ivanovna knew that such handkerchiefs cost at

least 15 roubles a dozen) and bandaged the dog’s foot. The old

ladies had never met people of this kind, and did not know that

Schonbock owed 200,000 roubles which he was never going to pay,

and that therefore 25 roubles more or less did not matter a bit

to him. Schonbock stayed only one day, and he and Nekhludoff

both, left at night. They could not stay away from their regiment

any longer, for their leave was fully up.

 

At the stage which Nekhludoff’s selfish mania had now reached he

could think of nothing but himself. He was wondering whether his

conduct, if found out, would be blamed much or at all, but he did

not consider what Katusha was now going through, and what was

going to happen to her.

 

He saw that Schonbock guessed his relations to her and this

flattered his vanity.

 

“Ah, I see how it is you have taken such a sudden fancy to your

aunts that you have been living nearly a week with them,”

Schonbock remarked when he had seen Katusha. “Well, I don’t

wonder—should have done the same. She’s charming.” Nekhludoff

was also thinking that though it was a pity to go away before

having fully gratified the cravings of his love for her, yet the

absolute necessity of parting had its advantages because it put a

sudden stop to relations it would have been very difficult for

him to continue. Then he thought that he ought to give her some

money, not for her, not because she might need it, but because it

was the thing to do.

 

So he gave her what seemed to him a liberal amount, considering

his and her station. On the day of his departure, after dinner,

he went out and waited for her at the side entrance. She flushed

up when she saw him and wished to pass by, directing his

attention to the open door of the maids’ room by a look, but he

stopped her.

 

“I have come to say goodbye,” he said, crumbling in his hand an

envelope with a 100-rouble note inside. “There, I” …

 

She guessed what he meant, knit her brows, and shaking her head

pushed his hand away.

 

“Take it; oh, you must!” he stammered, and thrust the envelope

into the bib of her apron and ran back to his room, groaning and

frowning as if he had hurt himself. And for a long time he went

up and down writhing as in pain, and even stamping and groaning

aloud as he thought of this last scene. “But what else could I

have done? Is it not what happens to every one? And if every one

does the same … well I suppose it can’t be helped.” In this

way he tried to get peace of mind, but in vain. The recollection

of what had passed burned his conscience. In his soul—in the

very depths of his soul—he knew that he had acted in a base,

cruel, cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his

must prevent him, not only from finding fault with any one else,

but even from looking straight into other people’s eyes; not