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

whom the matter

depended.

 

After the impressions received during the last few days,

Nekhludoff felt perfectly hopeless of getting anything done. The

plans he had formed in Moscow seemed now something like the

dreams of youth, which are inevitably followed by disillusion

when life comes to be faced. Still, being now in Petersburg, he

considered it his duty to do all he had intended, and he resolved

next day, after consulting Bogotyreff, to act on his advice and

see the person on whom the case of the sectarians depended.

 

He got out the sectarians’ petition from his portfolio, and began

reading it over, when there was a knock at his door, and a

footman came in with a message from the Countess Katerina

Ivanovna, who asked him to come up and have a cup of tea with

her.

 

Nekhludoff said he would come at once, and having put the papers

back into the portfolio, he went up to his aunt’s. He looked out

of a window on his way, and saw Mariette’s pair of bays standing

in front of the house, and he suddenly brightened and felt

inclined to smile.

 

Mariette, with a hat on her head, not in black but with a light

dress of many shades, sat with a cup in her hand beside the

Countess’s easy chair, prattling about something while her

beautiful, laughing eyes glistened. She had said something

funny—something indecently funny—just as Nekhludoff entered the

room. He knew it by the way she laughed, and by the way the

good-natured Countess Katerina Ivanovna’s fat body was shaking

with laughter; while Mariette, her smiling mouth slightly drawn

to one side, her head a little bent, a peculiarly mischievous

expression in her merry, energetic face, sat silently looking at

her companion. From a few words which he overheard, Nekhludoff

guessed that they were talking of the second piece of Petersburg

news, the episode of the Siberian Governor, and that it was in

reference to this subject that Mariette had said something so

funny that the Countess could not control herself for a long

time.

 

“You will kill me,” she said, coughing.

 

After saying “How d’you do?” Nekhludoff sat down. He was about to

censure Mariette in his mind for her levity when, noticing the

serious and even slightly dissatisfied look in his eyes, she

suddenly, to please him, changed not only the expression of her

face, but also the attitude of her mind; for she felt the wish to

please him as soon as she looked at him. She suddenly turned

serious, dissatisfied with her life, as if seeking and striving

after something; it was not that she pretended, but she really

reproduced in herself the very same state of mind that he was in,

although it would have been impossible for her to express in

words what was the state of Nekhludoff’s mind at that moment.

 

She asked him how he had accomplished his tasks. He told her

about his failure in the Senate and his meeting Selenin.

 

“Oh, what a pure soul! He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et

sans reproche. A pure soul!” said both ladies, using the epithet

commonly applied to Selenin in Petersburg society.

 

“What is his wife like?” Nekhludoff asked.

 

“His wife? Well, I do not wish to judge, but she does not

understand him.”

 

“Is it possible that he, too, was for rejecting the appeal?”

Mariette asked with real sympathy. “It is dreadful. How sorry I

am for her,” she added with a sigh.

 

He frowned, and in order to change the subject began to speak

about Shoustova, who had been imprisoned in the fortress and was

now set free through the influence of Mariette’s husband. He

thanked her for her trouble, and was going on to say how dreadful

he thought it, that this woman and the whole of her family had

suffered merely, because no one had reminded the authorities

about them, but Mariette interrupted him and expressed her own

indignation.

 

“Say nothing about it to me,” she said. “When my husband told me

she could be set free, it was this that struck me, ‘What was she

kept in prison for if she is innocent?’” She went on expressing

what Nekhludoff was about to say.

 

“It is revolting—revolting.”

 

Countess Katerina Ivanovna noticed that Mariette was coquetting

with her nephew, and this amused her. “What do you think?” she

said, when they were silent. “Supposing you come to Aline’s

tomorrow night. Kiesewetter will be there. And you, too,” she

said, turning to Mariette. “Il vous a remarque,” she went on to

her nephew. “He told me that what you say (I repeated it all to

him) is a very good sign, and that you will certainly come to

Christ. You must come absolutely. Tell him to, Mariette, and come

yourself.”

 

“Countess, in the first place, I have no right whatever to give

any kind of advice to the Prince,” said Mariette, and gave

Nekhludoff a look that somehow established a full comprehension

between them of their attitude in relation to the Countess’s

words and evangelicalism in general. “Secondly, I do not much

care, you know.”

 

“Yes, I know you always do things the wrong way round, and

according to your own ideas.”

 

“My own ideas? I have faith like the most simple peasant woman,”

said Mariette with a smile. “And, thirdly, I am going to the

French Theatre tomorrow night.”

 

“Ah! And have you seen that—What’s her name?” asked Countess

Katerina Ivanovna. Mariette gave the name of a celebrated French

actress.

 

“You must go, most decidedly; she is wonderful.”

 

“Whom am I to see first, ma tante—the actress or the preacher?”

Nekhludoff said with a smile.

 

“Please don’t catch at my words.”

 

“I should think the preacher first and then the actress, or else

the desire for the sermon might vanish altogether,” said

Nekhludoff.

 

“No; better begin with the French Theatre, and do penance

afterwards.”

 

“Now, then, you are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher

is the preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep

in order to be saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure

to be gay.”

 

“You, ma tante, preach better than any preacher.”

 

“Do you know what?” said Mariette. “Come into my box tomorrow.”

 

“I am afraid I shall not be able to.”

 

The footman interrupted the conversation by announcing a visitor.

It was the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the

Countess was president.

 

“Oh, that is the dullest of men. I think I shall receive him out

there, and return to you later on. Mariette, give him his tea,”

said the Countess, and left the room, with her quick, wriggling

walk.

 

Mariette took the glove off her firm, rather flat hand, the

fourth finger of which was covered with rings.

 

“Want any?” she said, taking hold of the silver teapot, under

which a spirit lamp was burning, and extending her little finger

curiously. Her face looked sad and serious.

 

“It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose

opinion I value confound me with the position I am placed in.”

She seemed ready to cry as she said these last words. And though

these words had no meaning, or at any rate a very indefinite

meaning, they seemed to be of exceptional depth, meaning, or

goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he attracted by the look of

the bright eyes which accompanied the words of this young,

beautiful, and well-dressed woman.

 

Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes

from her face.

 

“You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you.

Why, everybody knows what you are doing. _C’est le secret de

polichinelle_. And I am delighted with your work, and think highly

of you.”

 

“Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done

so little as Yet.”

 

“No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her.

All right, all right. I will say nothing more about it,” she

said, noticing displeasure on his face. “But I also understand

that after seeing all the suffering and the horror in the

prisons,” Mariette went on, her only desire that of attracting

him, and guessing with her woman’s instinct what was dear and

important to him, “you wish to help the sufferers, those who are

made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty and

indifference. I understand the willingness to give one’s life,

and could give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own

fate.”

 

“Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?”

 

“I?” she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question

could be put to her. “I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied.

But there is a worm that wakes up—”

 

“And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice

that must he obeyed,” Nekhludoff said, failing into the trap.

 

Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk

with her. He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as

imitations of his own, and her face, which seemed looking at him

with sympathetic attention when he told her about the terrors of

the prison and of his impressions in the country.

 

When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old,

but like exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They

were talking about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of

the unfortunate, the poverty of the people, yet in reality in the

midst of the sound of their talk their eyes, gazing at each

other, kept asking, “Can you love me?” and answering, “I can,”

and the sex-feeling, taking the most unexpected and brightest

forms, drew them to each other. As she was going away she told

him that she would always he willing to serve him in any way she

could, and asked him to come and see her, if only for a moment,

in the theatre next day, as she had a very important thing to

tell him about.

 

“Yes, and when shall I see you again?” she added, with a sigh,

carefully drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.

 

“Say you will come.”

 

Nekhludoff promised.

 

That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down

after putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of

Maslova, of the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow

her in any case, of his having given up the land. The face of

Mariette appeared to him as if in answer to those thoughts—her

look, her sigh, her words, “When shall I see you again?” and her

smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her, and he also smiled.

“Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And have I done

right in divesting myself of my wealth?” And the answers to the

questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight

streamed into the window from under the blind, were quite

indefinite. All seemed mixed in his head. He recalled his former

state of mind, and the former sequence of his thoughts, but they

had no longer their former power or validity.

 

“And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it

through—supposing I repent of having acted right,” he thought;

and unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair

as he had long not felt. Unable to free himself from his

perplexity, he fell into a heavy sleep, such as he had slept

after a heavy loss at cards.

 

CHAPTER XXV.

 

LYDIA SHOUSTOVA’S HOME.

 

Nekhludoff awoke next morning