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

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 Matróna Pávlovna who had come to the door. She came in with a blanket over her arm, looked reproachfully at Nekhlúdoff, and began scolding Katúsha for having taken the wrong blanket.

Nekhlúdoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed. He could see by Matróna Pávlovna’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 Katúsha, 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 Matróna Pávlovna watched her closely.

XVII

And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed. Nekhlúdoff’s aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matróna Pávlovna was now with them in their bedroom so that Katúsha 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. Nekhlúdoff 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 Katúsha sat alone by the table, looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhlúdoff 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 Katúsha’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 someone inside had called her. Nekhlúdoff 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.

Nekhlúdoff walked up and down behind the corner of the house, and once or twice got into a puddle. Then he 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 Matróna Pávlovna called out angrily, “Katúsha!”

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. Nekhlúdoff 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