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

legs, they must be building this stupid and

useless palace for some stupid and useless person—one of those

who spoil and rob them,” Nekhludoff thought, while looking at the

house.

 

“Yes, it is a stupid house,” he said, uttering his thought out

aloud.

 

“Why stupid?” replied the isvostchik, in an offended tone.

“Thanks to it, the people get work; it’s not stupid.”

 

“But the work is useless.”

 

“It can’t be useless, or why should it be done?” said the

isvostchik. “The people get bread by it.”

 

Nekhludoff was silent, and it would have been difficult to talk

because of the clatter the wheels made.

 

When they came nearer the prison, and the isvostchik turned off

the paved on to the macadamised road, it became easier to talk,

and he again turned to Nekhludoff.

 

“And what a lot of these people are flocking to the town

nowadays; it’s awful,” he said, turning round on the box and

pointing to a party of peasant workmen who were coming towards

them, carrying saws, axes, sheepskins, coats, and bags strapped

to their shoulders.

 

“More than in other years?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“By far. This year every place is crowded, so that it’s just

terrible. The employers just fling the workmen about like chaff.

Not a job to be got.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

“They’ve increased. There’s no room for them.”

 

“Well, what if they have increased? Why do not they stay in the

village?”

 

“There’s nothing for them to do in the village—no land to be

had.”

 

Nekhludoff felt as one does when touching a sore place. It feels

as if the bruised part was always being hit; yet it is only

because the place is sore that the touch is felt.

 

“Is it possible that the same thing is happening everywhere?” he

thought, and began questioning the isvostchik about the quantity

of land in his village, how much land the man himself had, and

why he had left the country.

 

“We have a desiatin per man, sir,” he said. “Our family have

three men’s shares of the land. My father and a brother are at

home, and manage the land, and another brother is serving in the

army. But there’s nothing to manage. My brother has had thoughts

of coming to Moscow, too.”

 

“And cannot land be rented?”

 

“How’s one to rent it nowadays? The gentry, such as they were,

have squandered all theirs. Men of business have got it all into

their own hands. One can’t rent it from them. They farm it

themselves. We have a Frenchman ruling in our place; he bought

the estate from our former landlord, and won’t let it—and

there’s an end of it.”

 

“Who’s that Frenchman?”

 

“Dufour is the Frenchman’s name. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He

makes wigs for the actors in the big theatre; it is a good

business, so he’s prospering. He bought it from our lady, the

whole of the estate, and now he has us in his power; he just

rides on us as he pleases. The Lord be thanked, he is a good man

himself; only his wife, a Russian, is such a brute that—God have

mercy on us. She robs the people. It’s awful. Well, here’s the

prison. Am I to drive you to the entrance? I’m afraid they’ll not

let us do it, though.”

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

NURSE MASLOVA.

 

When he rang the bell at the front entrance Nekhludoff’s heart

stood still with horror as he thought of the state he might find

Maslova in to-day, and at the mystery that he felt to be in her

and in the people that were collected in the prison. He asked the

jailer who opened the door for Maslova. After making the

necessary inquiry the jailer informed him that she was in the

hospital. Nekhludoff went there. A kindly old man, the hospital

doorkeeper, let him in at once and, after asking Nekhludoff whom

he wanted, directed him to the children’s ward. A young doctor

saturated with carbolic acid met Nekhludoff in the passage and

asked him severely what he wanted. This doctor was always making

all sorts of concessions to the prisoners, and was therefore

continually coming into conflict with the prison authorities and

even with the head doctor. Fearing lest Nekhludoff should demand

something unlawful, and wishing to show that he made no

exceptions for any one, he pretended to be cross. “There are no

women here; it is the children’s ward,” he said.

 

“Yes, I know; but a prisoner has been removed here to be an

assistant nurse.”

 

“Yes, there are two such here. Then whom do you want?”

 

“I am closely connected with one of them, named Maslova,”

Nekhludoff answered, “and should like to speak to her. I am going

to Petersburg to hand in an appeal to the Senate about her case

and should like to give her this. It is only a photo,” Nekhludoff

said, taking an envelope out of his pocket.

 

“All right, you may do that,” said the doctor, relenting, and

turning to an old woman with a white apron, he told her to call

the prisoner—Nurse Maslova.

 

“Will you take a seat, or go into the waiting-room?”

 

“Thanks,” said Nekhludoff, and profiting by the favourable change

in the manner of the doctor towards him asked how they were

satisfied with Maslova in the hospital.

 

“Oh, she is all right. She works fairly well, if you the

conditions of her former life into account. But here she is.”

 

The old nurse came in at one of the doors, followed by Maslova,

who wore a blue striped dress, a white apron, a kerchief that

quite covered her hair. When she saw Nekhludoff her face flushed,

and she stopped as if hesitating, then frowned, and with downcast

eyes went quickly towards him along the strip of carpet in the

middle of the passage. When she came up to Nekhludoff she did not

wish to give him her hand, and then gave it, growing redder

still. Nekhludoff had not seen her since the day when she begged

forgiveness for having been in a passion, and he expected to find

her the same as she was then. But to-day she quite different.

There was something new in the expression of her face, reserve

and shyness, and, as it seemed to him, animosity towards him. He

told her what he had already said to the doctor, i.e., that he

was going to Petersburg, and he handed her the envelope with the

photograph which he had brought from Panovo.

 

“I found this in Panovo—it’s an old photo; perhaps you would like

it. Take it.”

 

Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her

squinting eyes, as if asking, “What is this for?” took the photo

silently and put it in the bib of her apron.

 

“I saw your aunt there,” said Nekhludoff.

 

“Did you?” she said, indifferently.

 

“Are you all right here?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“Oh, yes, it’s all right,” she said.

 

“Not too difficult?”

 

“Oh, no. But I am not used to it yet.”

 

“I am glad, for your sake. Anyhow, it is better than there.”

 

“Than where—there?” she asked, her face flushing again.

 

“There—in the prison,” Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.

 

“Why better?” she asked.

 

“I think the people are better. Here are none such as there must

be there.”

 

“There are many good ones there,” she said.

 

“I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be

liberated,” said Nekhludoff.

 

“God grant they may. Such a splendid old woman,” she said, again

repeating her opinion of the old woman, and slightly smiling.

 

“I am going to Petersburg to-day. Your case will come on soon,

and I hope the sentence will be repealed.”

 

“Whether it is repealed or not won’t matter now,” she said.

 

“Why not now?”

 

“So,” she said, looking with a quick, questioning glance into his

eyes.

 

Nekhludoff understood the word and the look to mean that she

wished to know whether he still kept firm to his decision or had

accepted her refusal.

 

“I do not know why it does not matter to you,” he said. “It

certainly does not matter as far as I am concerned whether you

are acquitted or not. I am ready to do what I told you in any

case,” he said decidedly.

 

She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed

on him and beyond him, and her face beamed with joy. But the

words she spoke were very different from what her eyes said.

 

“You should not speak like that,” she said.

 

“I am saying it so that you should know.”

 

“Everything has been said about that, and there is no use

speaking,” she said, with difficulty repressing a smile.

 

A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a

child crying.

 

“I think they are calling me,” she said, and looked round

uneasily.

 

“Well, goodbye, then,” he said. She pretended not to see his

extended hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily

walked along the strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she

felt.

 

“What is going on in her? What is she thinking? What does she

feel? Does she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive

me? Is it that she cannot or that she will not express what she

feels and thinks? Has she softened or hardened?” he asked

himself, and could find no answer. He only knew that she had

altered and that an important change was going on in her soul,

and this change united him not only to her but also to Him for

whose sake that change was being wrought. And this union brought

on a state of joyful animation and tenderness.

 

When she returned to the ward, in which there stood eight small

beds, Maslova began, in obedience to the nurse’s order, to

arrange one of the beds; and, bending over too far with the

sheet, she slipped and nearly fell down.

 

A little convalescent boy with a bandaged neck, who was looking

at her, laughed. Maslova could no longer contain herself and

burst into loud laughter, and such contagious laughter that

several of the children also burst out laughing, and one of the

sisters rebuked her angrily.

 

“What are you giggling at? Do you think you are where you used to

be? Go and fetch the food.” Maslova obeyed and went where she was

sent; but, catching the eye of the bandaged boy who was not

allowed to laugh, she again burst out laughing.

 

Whenever she was alone Maslova again and again pulled the

photograph partly out of the envelope and looked at it

admiringly; but only in the evening when she was off duty and

alone in the bedroom which she shared with a nurse, did she take

it quite out of the envelope and gaze long at the faded yellow

photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail of faces and

clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which served

as a background to his and hers and his aunts’ faces, and could

not cease from admiring especially herself—her pretty young face

with the curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that

she did not hear her fellow-nurse come into the room.

 

“What is it that he’s given you?” said the good-natured, fat

nurse, stooping over the photograph.

 

“Who’s this? You?”

 

“Who else?” said Maslova, looking into her companion’s face with

a smile.

 

“And who’s this?”

 

“Himself.”

 

“And is this his mother?”

 

“No, his aunt. Would you not have known