Awaking early the next morning, Nekhludoff remembered what he had done the day before, and was seized with fear.
But in spite of this fear, he was more determined than ever to continue what he had begun.
Conscious of a sense of duty, he left the house and went to see Maslennikoff in order to obtain from him a permission to visit Maslova in prison, and also the Menshoffs—mother and son—about whom Maslova had spoken to him. Nekhludoff had known this Maslennikoff a long time; they had been in the regiment together. At that time Maslennikoff was treasurer to the regiment.
He was a kind-hearted and zealous officer, knowing and wishing to know nothing beyond the regiment and the Imperial family. Now Nekhludoff saw him as an administrator, who had exchanged the regiment for an administrative office in the government where he lived. He was married to a rich and energetic woman, who had forced him to exchange military for civil service. She laughed at him, and caressed him, as if he were her own pet animal. Nekhludoff had been to see them once during the winter, but the couple were so uninteresting to him that he had not gone again.
At the sight of Nekhludoff Maslennikoff’s face beamed all over. He had the same fat red face, and was as corpulent and as well dressed as in his military days. Then, he used to be always dressed in a well-brushed uniform, made according to the latest fashion, tightly fitting his chest and shoulders; now, it was a civil service uniform he wore, and that, too, tightly fitted his well-fed body and showed off his broad chest, and was cut according to the latest fashion. In spite of the difference in age (Maslennikoff was 40), the two men were very familiar with one another.
“Halloo, old fellow! How good of you to come! Let us go and see my wife. I have just ten minutes to spare before the meeting. My chief is away, you know. I am at the head of the Government administration,” he said, unable to disguise his satisfaction.
“I have come on business.”
“What is it?” said Maslennikoff, in an anxious and severe tone, putting himself at once on his guard.
“There is a person, whom I am very much interested in, in prison” (at the word “prison” Maslennikoff’s face grew stern); “and I should like to have an interview in the office, and not in the common visiting-room. I have been told it depended on you.”
“Certainly, mon cher,” said Maslennikoff, putting both hands on Nekhludoff’s knees, as if to tone down his grandeur; “but remember, I am monarch only for an hour.”
“Then will you give me an order that will enable me to see her?”
“It’s a woman?”
“Yes.”
“What is she there for?”
“Poisoning, but she has been unjustly condemned.”
“Yes, there you have it, your justice administered by jury, ils n’en font point d’autres,” he said, for some unknown reason, in French. “I know you do not agree with me, but it can’t be helped, c’est mon opinion bien arretee,” he added, giving utterance to an opinion he had for the last twelve months been reading in the retrograde Conservative paper. “I know you are a Liberal.”
“I don’t know whether I am a Liberal or something else,” Nekhludoff said, smiling; it always surprised him to find himself ranked with a political party and called a Liberal, when he maintained that a man should be heard before he was judged, that before being tried all men were equal, that nobody at all ought to be ill-treated and beaten, but especially those who had not yet been condemned by law. “I don’t know whether I am a Liberal or not; but I do know that however had the present way of conducting a trial is, it is better than the old.”
“And whom have you for an advocate?”
“I have spoken to Fanarin.”
“Dear me, Fanarin!” said Meslennikoff, with a grimace, recollecting how this Fanarin had examined him as a witness at a trial the year before and had, in the politest manner, held him up to ridicule for half an hour.
“I should not advise you to have anything to do with him.Fanarin est un homme tare.”
“I have one more request to make,” said Nekhludoff, without answering him. “There’s a girl whom I knew long ago, a teacher; she is a very pitiable little thing, and is now also imprisoned, and would like to see me. Could you give me a permission to visit her?”
Meslennikoff bent his head on one side and considered.
“She’s a political one?”
“Yes, I have been told so.”
“Well, you see, only relatives get permission to visit political prisoners. Still, I’ll give you an open order.Je sais que vous n’abuserez pas. What’s the name of your protegee? Doukhova?Elle est jolie?”
“Hideuse.”
Maslennikoff shook his head disapprovingly, went up to the table, and wrote on a sheet of paper, with a printed heading: “The bearer, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, is to be allowed to interview in the prison office the meschanka Maslova, and also the medical assistant, Doukhova,” and he finished with an elaborate flourish.
“Now you’ll be able to see what order we have got there. And it is very difficult to keep order, it is so crowded, especially with people condemned to exile; but I watch strictly, and love the work. You will see they are very comfortable and contented. But one must know how to deal with them. Only a few days ago we had a little trouble—insubordination; another would have called it mutiny, and would have made many miserable, but with us it all passed quietly. We must have solicitude on one hand, firmness and power on the other,” and he clenched the fat, white, turquoise-ringed fist, which issued out of the starched cuff of his shirt sleeve, fastened with a gold stud. “Solicitude and firm power.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Nekhludoff. “I went there twice, and felt very much depressed.”
“Do you know, you ought to get acquainted with the Countess Passek,” continued Maslennikoff, growing talkative. “She has given herself up entirely to this sort of work. Elle fait beaucoup de bien. Thanks to her—and, perhaps I may add without false modesty, to me—everything has been changed, changed in such a way that the former horrors no longer exist, and they are really quite comfortable there. Well, you’ll see. There’s Fanarin. I do not know him personally; besides, my social position keeps our ways apart; but he is positively a bad man, and besides, he takes the liberty of saying such things in the court—such things!”
“Well, thank you,” Nekhludoff said, taking the paper, and without listening further he bade good-day to his former comrade.
“And won’t you go in to see my wife?”
“No, pray excuse me; I have no time now.”
“Dear me, why she will never forgive me,” said Maslennikoff, accompanying his old acquaintance down to the first landing, as he was in the habit of doing to persons of not the greatest, but the second greatest importance, with whom he classed Nekhludoff; “now do go in, if only for a moment.”
But Nekhludoff remained firm; and while the footman and the door-keeper rushed to give him his stick and overcoat, and opened the door, outside of which there stood a policeman, Nekhludoff repeated that he really could not come in.
“Well, then; on Thursday, please. It is her ‘at-home.’ I will tell her you will come,” shouted Maslennikoff from the stairs.
Nekhludoff drove that day straight from Maslennikoff’s to the prison, and went to the inspector’s lodging, which he now knew. He was again struck by the sounds of the same piano of inferior quality; but this time it was not a rhapsody that was being played, but exercises by Clementi, again with the same vigour, distinctness, and quickness. The servant with the bandaged eye said the inspector was in, and showed Nekhludoff to a small drawing-room, in which there stood a sofa and, in front of it, a table, with a large lamp, which stood on a piece of crochet work, and the paper shade of which was burnt on one side. The chief inspector entered, with his usual sad and weary look.
“Take a seat, please. What is it you want?” he said, buttoning up the middle button of his uniform.
“I have just been to the vice-governor’s, and got this order from him. I should like to see the prisoner Maslova.”
“Markova?” asked the inspector, unable to bear distinctly because of the music.
“Maslova!”
“Well, yes.” The inspector got up and went to the door whence proceeded Clementi’s roulades.
“Mary, can’t you stop just a minute?” he said, in a voice that showed that this music was the bane of his life. “One can’t hear a word.”
The piano was silent, but one could hear the sound of reluctant steps, and some one looked in at the door.
The inspector seemed to feel eased by the interval of silence, lit a thick cigarette of weak tobacco, and offered one to Nekhludoff.
Nekhludoff refused.
“What I want is to see Maslova.”
“Oh, yes, that can be managed. Now, then, what do you want?” he said, addressing a little girl of five or six, who came into the room and walked up to her father with her head turned towards Nekhludoff, and her eyes fixed on him.
“There, now, you’ll fall down,” said the inspector, smiling, as the little girl ran up to him, and, not looking where she was going, caught her foot in a little rug.
“Well, then, if I may, I shall go.”
“It’s not very convenient to see Maslova to-day,” said the inspector.
“How’s that?”
“Well, you know, it’s all your own fault,” said the inspector, with a slight smile. “Prince, give her no money into her hands. If you like, give it me. I will keep it for her. You see, you gave her some money yesterday; she got some spirits (it’s an evil we cannot manage to root out), and to-day she is quite tipsy, even violent.”
“Can this be true?”
“Oh, yes, it is. I have even been obliged to have recourse to severe measures, and to put her into a separate cell. She is a quiet woman in an ordinary way. But please do not give her any money. These people are so—” What had happened the day before came vividly back to Nekhludoff’s mind, and again he was seized with fear.
“And Doukhova, a political prisoner; might I see her?”
“Yes, if you like,” said the inspector. He embraced the little girl, who was still looking at Nekhludoff, got up, and, tenderly motioning her aside, went into the ante-room. Hardly had he got into the overcoat which the maid helped him to put on, and before he had reached the door, the distinct sounds of Clementi’s roulades again began.
“She entered the Conservatoire, but there is such disorder there. She has a great gift,” said the inspector, as they went down the stairs. “She means to play at concerts.”
The inspector and Nekhludoff arrived at the prison. The gates were instantly opened as they appeared. The jailers, with their fingers lifted to their caps, followed the inspector with their eyes. Four men, with their heads half shaved, who were carrying tubs filled with something, cringed when they saw the inspector. One of them frowned angrily, his black eyes glaring.
“Of course a talent like that must be developed; it would not do to bury it, but in a small lodging, you know, it is rather hard.” The inspector went on with the conversation, taking no notice of the prisoners.
“Who is it you want to see?”
“Doukhova.”
“Oh, she’s in the tower. You’ll have to wait a little,” he said.
“Might I not meanwhile see the prisoners Menshoff, mother and son, who are accused of incendiarism?”
“Oh, yes. Cell No. 21. Yes, they can be sent for.”
“But might I not see Menshoff in his cell?”
“Oh, you’ll find the waiting-room more pleasant.”
“No. I should prefer the cell. It is more interesting.”
“Well, you have found something to be interested in!”
Here the assistant, a smartly-dressed officer, entered the side door.
“Here, see the Prince into Menshoff’s cell, No. 21,” said the inspector to his assistant, “and then take him to the office. And I’ll go and call—What’s her name? Vera Doukhova.”
The inspector’s assistant was young, with dyed moustaches, and diffusing the smell of eau-de-cologne. “This way, please,” he said to Nekhludoff, with a pleasant smile. “Our establishment interests you?”
“Yes, it does interest me; and, besides, I look upon it as a duty to help a man who I heard was confined here, though innocent.”
The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, that may happen,” he said quietly, politely stepping aside to let the visitor enter, the stinking corridor first. “But it also happens that they lie. Here we are.”
The doors of the cells were open, and some of the prisoners were in the corridor. The assistant nodded slightly to the jailers, and cast a side glance at the prisoners, who, keeping close to the wall, crept back to their cells, or stood like soldiers, with their arms at their sides, following the official with their eyes. After passing through one corridor, the assistant showed Nekhludoff into another to the left, separated from the first by an iron door. This corridor was darker, and smelt even worse than the first. The corridor had doors on both sides, with little holes in them about an inch in diameter. There was only an old jailer, with an unpleasant face, in this corridor.
“Where is Menshoff?” asked the inspector’s assistant.
“The eighth cell to the left.”
“And these? Are they occupied?” asked Nekhludoff.
“Yes, all but one.”
“Oh, certainly,” answered the assistant, smiling, and turned to the jailer with some question.
Nekhludoff looked into one of the little holes, and saw a tall young man pacing up and down the cell. When the man heard some one at the door he looked up with a frown, but continued walking up and down.
Nekhludoff looked into another hole. His eye met another large eye looking out of the hole at him, and he quickly stepped aside. In the third cell he saw a very small man asleep on the bed, covered, head and all, with his prison cloak. In the fourth a broad-faced man was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head low down. At the sound of footsteps this man raised his head and looked up. His face, especially his large eyes, bore the expression of hopeless dejection. One could see that it did not even interest him to know who was looking into his cell. Whoever it might be, he evidently hoped for nothing good from him. Nekhludoff was seized with dread, and went to Menshoff’s cell, No. 21, without stopping to look through any more holes. The jailer unlocked the door and opened it. A young man, with long neck, well-developed muscles, a small head, and kind, round eyes, stood by the bed, hastily putting on his cloak, and looking at the newcomers with a frightened face. Nekhludoff was specially struck by the kind, round eyes that were throwing frightened and inquiring glances in turns at him, at the jailer, and at the assistant, and back again.
“Here’s a gentleman wants to inquire into your affair.”
“Thank you kindly.”
“Yes, I was told about you,” Nekhludoff said, going through the cell up to the dirty grated window, “and I should like to hear all about it from yourself.”
Menshoff also came up to the window, and at once started telling his story, at first looking shyly at the inspector’s assistant, but growing gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing, and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff listened, and at the same time kept looking around him—at the low bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place without any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the thought that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured expression on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still more dreadful. This was the story: The village public-house keeper had enticed the young fellow’s wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts of means. But everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the officials, and was acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but she ran away next day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he saw her when he came in, the public-house keeper told him she was not there, and ordered him to go away. He would not go, so the public-house keeper and his servant beat him so that they drew blood. The next day a fire broke out in the public-house, and the young man and his mother were accused of having set the house on fire. He had not set it on fire, but was visiting a friend at the time.
“And it is true that you did not set it on fire?”
“It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did it himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I once did go for him, my heart couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“Can this be true?”
“God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good—” and Nekhludoff had some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. “You see I am perishing without any reason.” His face quivered and he turned up the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the sleeve of his dirty shirt.
“Are you ready?” asked the assistant.
“Yes. Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we can,” said Nekhludoff, and went out. Menshoff stood close to the door, so that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.
Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks, short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him, Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and, besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining it all.
In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in Nekhludoff’s way, bowing to him.
“Please, your honour (we don’t know what to call you), get our affair settled somehow.”
“I am not an official. I know nothing about it.”
“Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody—one of the authorities, if need be,” said an indignant voice. “Show some pity on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for nothing.”
“What do you mean? Why?” said Nekhludoff.
“Why? We ourselves don’t know why, but are sitting here the second month.”
“Yes, it’s quite true, and it is owing to an accident,” said the inspector. “These people were taken up because they had no passports, and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people to their different governments, but are keeping these.”
“What! For no other reason than that?” Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at the door.
A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant stopped them.
“Let some one of you speak.”
A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue. The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the second month, as if they were criminals.
“We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help us.”
Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man’s cheek.
“How’s that? Is it possible for such a reason?” Nekhludoff said, turning to the assistant.
“Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,” calmly said the assistant, “but they seem to have been forgotten or something.”
Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.
“Worse than dogs,” he began.
“Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know—”
“What do I know?” screamed the little man, desperately. “What is our crime?”
“Silence!” shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.
“But what is the meaning of all this?” Nekhludoff thought to himself as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him through the openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met him, making him feel as if he were running the gauntlet.
“Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?” Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.
“What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they are all of them innocent,” said the inspector’s assistant. “But it does happen that some are really imprisoned for nothing.”
“Well, these have done nothing.”
“Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There are such types—desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp. To-day two of that sort had to be punished.”
“Punished? How?”
“Flogged with a birch-rod, by order.”
“But corporal punishment is abolished.”
“Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still liable to it.”
Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity, and moral nausea, that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him more strongly than ever before.
Without listening to the inspector’s assistant, or looking round, he hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The inspector was in the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send for Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when Nekhludoff entered the office.
“Sit down, please. I’ll send for her at once,” said the inspector.
The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large, dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people. In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices. There was a writing table by the window.
The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face, dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner’s clothes, who was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair, and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand, and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it with an angry look on his face.
Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful; her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips, but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes. The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and said something to the mother.
Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to the Scoptsy sect.
At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector’s side, looked round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
“And whom are you waiting for?”
Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his acquaintance.
“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.
“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.
“I? With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.
“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently considering Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.
Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps, approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
“What is he asking you? Who you are?” she inquired with a slight smile, and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind, prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to smile back.
“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”
“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know it is,” said the inspector.
“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he continued gazing up into her face.
“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,” said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how exceptional his establishment was.
“Is it possible?”
“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”
“And that young girl?”
“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, here is Doukhova.”
Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait, the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand. “Do you remember me? Let us sit down.”
“I did not expect to see you like this.”
“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation. Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections, about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had never heard of.
She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, “People’s Freedom,” a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck, her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would lie.
The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their “sub-group,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure to blame for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set this friend free.
Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.
As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all concerned were arrested. “I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story with a piteous smile.
Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme. She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house, the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
“An altruistic, fine character,” said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of Maslova’s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take steps to get her removed into the political prisoner’s ward, or into the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at that time, so that extra nurses were needed.
Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon it.
Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhludoff took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the door, where he stopped to watch what was going on.
The inspector’s order called forth only heightened animation among the prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose and continued to talk standing, some went on talking without rising. A few began crying and taking leave of each other. The mother and her consumptive son seemed especially pathetic. The young fellow kept twisting his bit of paper and his face seemed angry, so great were his efforts not to be infected by his mother’s emotion. The mother, hearing that it was time to part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and sniffed aloud.
The girl with the prominent eyes—Nekhludoff could not help watching her—was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was saying something to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the blue spectacles stood holding his daughter’s hand and nodding in answer to what she said. The young lovers rose, and, holding each other’s hands, looked silently into one another’s eyes.
“These are the only two who are merry,” said a young man with a short coat who stood by Nekhludoff’s side, also looking at those who were about to part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling Nekhludoff’s and the young man’s eyes fixed on them, the lovers—the young man with the rubber coat and the pretty girl—stretched out their arms, and with their hands clasped in each other’s, danced round and round again. “To-night they are going to be married here in prison, and she will follow him to Siberia,” said the young man.
“What is he?”
“A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a little joy, or else it is too painful,” the young man added, listening to the sobs of the consumptive lad’s mother.
“Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse to severe measures,” the inspector said, repeating the same words several times over. “Do, please,” he went on in a weak, hesitating manner. “It is high time. What do you mean by it? This sort of thing is quite impossible. I am now asking you for the last time,” he repeated wearily, now putting out his cigarette and then lighting another.
It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for it, the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of those who were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested itself in this room. And it was apparent that this troubled him sorely. At length the prisoners and their visitors began to go—the first out of the inner, the latter out of the outer door. The man with the rubber jacket passed out among them, and the consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary Pavlovna went out with the boy born in prison.
The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles, stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.
“Yes, a strange state of things this,” said the talkative young man, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he descended the stairs side by side with Nekhludoff. “Yet we have reason to be grateful to the inspector who does not keep strictly to the rules, kind-hearted fellow. If they can get a talk it does relieve their hearts a bit, after all!”
While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as Medinzeff, Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came up to them with weary step.
“If you wish to see Maslova,” he said, apparently desiring to be polite to Nekhludoff, “please come to-morrow.”
“Very well,” answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always felt on entering the prison.
The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed terrible, and not so much his physical suffering as the perplexity, the distrust in the good and in God which he must feel, seeing the cruelty of the people who tormented him without any reason.
Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds of guiltless people simply because something was not written on paper as it should have been. Terrible were the brutalised jailers, whose occupation is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were fulfilling an important and useful duty; but most terrible of all seemed this sickly, elderly, kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part mother and son, father and daughter, who were just the same sort of people as he and his own children.
“What is it all for?” Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not find an answer.