Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy [top 5 books to read .txt] 📗

her heightened his feeling of pity and tenderness for her, and he wished to comfort her. “I will do what I have said; wherever they take you I shall be with you.”

“What’s the use?” she interrupted hurriedly, though her whole face lighted up.

“Think what you will want on the way⁠—”

“I don’t know of anything in particular, thank you.”

The inspector came up, and without waiting for a remark from him Nekhlúdoff took leave, and went out with peace, joy, and love towards everybody in his heart such as he had never felt before. The certainty that no action of Máslova could change his love for her filled him with joy and raised him to a level which he had never before attained. Let her intrigue with the medical assistant; that was her business. He loved her not for his own but for her sake and for God’s.

And this intrigue, for which Máslova was turned out of the hospital, and of which Nekhlúdoff believed she was really guilty, consisted of the following:

Máslova was sent by the head nurse to get some herb tea from the dispensary at the end of the corridor, and there, all alone, she found the medical assistant, a tall man, with a blotchy face, who had for a long time been bothering her. In trying to get away from him Máslova gave him such a push that he knocked his head against a shelf, from which two bottles fell and broke. The head doctor, who was passing at that moment, heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw Máslova run out, quite red, and shouted to her⁠—

“Ah, my good woman, if you start intriguing here, I’ll send you about your business. What is the meaning of it?” he went on, addressing the medical assistant, and looking at him over his spectacles.

The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor gave no heed to him, but, lifting his head so that he now looked through his spectacles, he entered the ward. He told the inspector the same day to send another more sedate assistant-nurse in Máslova’s place. And this was her “intrigue” with the medical assistant.

Being turned out for a love intrigue was particularly painful to Máslova, because the relations with men, which had long been repulsive to her, had become specially disgusting after meeting Nekhlúdoff. The thought that, judging her by her past and present position, every man, the blotchy assistant among them, considered he had a right to offend her, and was surprised at her refusal, hurt her deeply, and made her pity herself and brought tears to her eyes.

When she went out to Nekhlúdoff this time she wished to clear herself of the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her, and she was silent.

Máslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had never forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second interview, but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she did all he wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and entered the hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he reminded her of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and marry him, it was because she liked repeating the proud words she had once uttered, and because she knew that a marriage with her would be a misfortune for him.

She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that she still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had taken place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had done wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that her sentence was confirmed.

XXX

Máslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore Nekhlúdoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always centred in one person, i.e., Dmítri Ivánovitch Nekhlúdoff, and yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to other people and not to Dmítri Ivánovitch, and they were all interesting and attractive, and there was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly Dmítri Ivánovitch Nekhlúdoff’s occupations always made him feel vexed and irritable; now they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at present occupying Nekhlúdoff could be divided under three headings. He himself, with his usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and accordingly kept the papers referring to it in three different portfolios. The first referred to Máslova, and was chiefly that of taking steps to get her petition to the Emperor attended to, and preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.

The second was about his estates. In Panóvo he had given the land to the peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own communal use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed, and to make his will, in accordance with it. In Kousmínski the state of things was still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive the rent; but the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money he would use to live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants’ use. As he did not know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he could not decide to lose this revenue altogether,