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

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 Panóvo.

“I found this in Panóvo⁠—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 Nekhlúdoff.

“Did you?” she said, indifferently.

“Are you all right here?” Nekhlúdoff 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,” Nekhlúdoff 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 Menshóffs, and hope they will be liberated,” said Nekhlúdoff.

“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 today. Your case will come on soon, and I hope the sentence will be repealed.”

“Whether it is repealed or not won’t matter now,” she said.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

Nekhlúdoff 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, Máslova 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. Máslova 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.” Máslova 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 Máslova 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 Máslova, 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 me?”

“Never. The whole face is altered. Why, it must be ten years since then.”

“Not years, but a lifetime,” said Máslova. And suddenly her animation went, her face grew gloomy, and a deep line appeared between her brows.

“Why so? Your way of life must have been an easy one.”

“Easy, indeed,” Máslova reiterated, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “It is hell.”

“Why, what makes it so?”

“What makes it so! From eight till four in the morning, and every night the same!”

“Then why don’t they give it up?”

“They can’t give it up if they want to. But what’s the use of talking?” Máslova said, jumping up and throwing the photograph into the drawer of the table. And with difficulty repressing angry tears, she ran out into the passage and slammed the door.

While looking at the group she imagined herself such as she was there and dreamt of her happiness then and of the possibility of happiness with him now. But her companion’s words reminded her of what she was now