Resurrection - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (interesting novels in english .TXT) 📗

RESURRECTION

 

BY LEO TOLSTOY

 

Translated by

 

MRS. LOUISE MAUDE

 

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

 

Opinions about Tolstoy and his work differ, but on one point

there surely might be unanimity. A writer of world-wide

reputation should be at least allowed to know how to spell his

own name. Why should any one insist on spelling it “Tolstoi”

(with one, two or three dots over the “i”), when he himself

writes it “Tolstoy”? The only reason I have ever heard suggested

is, that in England and America such outlandish views are

attributed to him, that an outlandish spelling is desirable to

match those views.

 

This novel, written in the rough by Tolstoy some years ago and

founded upon an actual occurrence, was completely rewritten by

him during the last year and a half, and all the proceeds have

been devoted by him to aiding the Doukhobors, a sect who were

persecuted in the Caucasus (especially from 1895 to 1898) for

refusing to learn war. About seven thousand three hundred of them

are settled in Canada, and about a hundred of the leaders are

exiled to the remote parts of Siberia.

 

Anything I may receive for my work in translating the book will

go to the same cause. “Prevention is better than cure,” and I

would rather help people to abstain from killing and wounding

each other than devote the money to patch up their wounds after

the battle.

 

LOUISE MAUDE

 

RESURRECTION

 

CHAPTER I.

 

MASLOVA IN PRISON.

 

Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to

disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded

together, by paying the ground with stones, scraping away every

vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds

and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and

coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.

 

The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did

not get scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the

paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the

boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry

unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the limes were

expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons,

filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready;

the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine.

All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the

children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off

cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not

this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of

consideration not the beauty of God’s world, given for a joy to

all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to

harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving

one another.

 

Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the

fact that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of

spring that was considered sacred and important, but that a

notice, numbered and with a superscription, had come the day

before, ordering that on this 28th day of April, at 9 a.m., three

prisoners at present detained in the prison, a man and two women

(one of these women, as the chief criminal, to be conducted

separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th of

April, at 8 o’clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder

with curly grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed

with gold, with a blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a

look of suffering on her face, came into the corridor.

 

“You want Maslova?” she asked, coming up to the cell with the

jailer who was on duty.

 

The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the

cell, from which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that

in the corridor, and called out, “Maslova! to the Court,” and

closed the door again.

 

Even into the prison yard the breeze had brought the fresh

vivifying air from the fields. But in the corridor the air was

laden with the germs of typhoid, the smell of sewage,

putrefaction, and tar; every newcomer felt sad and dejected in

it. The woman warder felt this, though she was used to bad air.

She had just come in from outside, and entering the corridor, she

at once became sleepy.

 

From inside the cell came the sound of bustle and women’s voices,

and the patter of bare feet on the floor.

 

“Now, then, hurry up, Maslova, I say!” called out the jailer, and

in a minute or two a small young woman with a very full bust came

briskly out of the door and went up to the jailer. She had on a

grey cloak over a white jacket and petticoat. On her feet she

wore linen stockings and prison shoes, and round her head was

tied a white kerchief, from under which a few locks of black hair

were brushed over the forehead with evident intent. The face of

the woman was of that whiteness peculiar to people who have lived

long in confinement, and which puts one in mind of shoots of

potatoes that spring up in a cellar. Her small broad hands and

full neck, which showed from under the broad collar of her cloak,

were of the same hue. Her black, sparkling eyes, one with a

slight squint, appeared in striking contrast to the dull pallor

of her face.

 

She carried herself very straight, expanding her full bosom.

 

With her head slightly thrown back, she stood in the corridor,

looking straight into the eyes of the jailer, ready to comply

with any order.

 

The jailer was about to lock the door when a wrinkled and

severe-looking old woman put out her grey head and began speaking

to Maslova. But the jailer closed the door, pushing the old

woman’s head with it. A woman’s laughter was heard from the cell,

and Maslova smiled, turning to the little grated opening in the

cell door. The old woman pressed her face to the grating from the

other side, and said, in a hoarse voice:

 

“Now mind, and when they begin questioning you, just repeat over

the same thing, and stick to it; tell nothing that is not

wanted.”

 

“Well, it could not be worse than it is now, anyhow; I only wish

it was settled one way or another.”

 

“Of course, it will be settled one way or another,” said the

jailer, with a superior’s self-assured witticism. “Now, then, get

along! Take your places!”

 

The old woman’s eyes vanished from the grating, and Maslova

stepped out into the middle of the corridor. The warder in front,

they descended the stone stairs, past the still fouler, noisy

cells of the men’s ward, where they were followed by eyes looking

out of every one of the gratings in the doors, and entered the

office, where two soldiers were waiting to escort her. A clerk

who was sitting there gave one of the soldiers a paper reeking of

tobacco, and pointing to the prisoner, remarked, “Take her.”

 

The soldier, a peasant from Nijni Novgorod, with a red,

pockmarked face, put the paper into the sleeve of his coat,

winked to his companion, a broad-shouldered Tchouvash, and then

the prisoner and the soldiers went to the front entrance, out of

the prison yard, and through the town up the middle of the

roughly-paved street.

 

Isvostchiks [cabmen], tradespeople, cooks, workmen,

and government clerks, stopped and looked curiously at the

prisoner; some shook their heads and thought, “This is what evil

conduct, conduct unlike ours, leads to.” The children stopped and

gazed at the robber with frightened looks; but the thought that

the soldiers were preventing her from doing more harm quieted

their fears. A peasant, who had sold his charcoal, and had had

some tea in the town, came up, and, after crossing himself, gave

her a copeck. The prisoner blushed and muttered something; she

noticed that she was attracting everybody’s attention, and that

pleased her. The comparatively fresh air also gladdened her, but

it was painful to step on the rough stones with the ill-made

prison shoes on her feet, which had become unused to walking.

Passing by a corn-dealer’s shop, in front of which a few pigeons

were strutting about, unmolested by any one, the prisoner almost

touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it fluttered up and flew

close to her car, fanning her with its wings. She smiled, then

sighed deeply as she remembered her present position.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

MASLOVA’S EARLY LIFE.

 

The story of the prisoner Maslova’s life was a very common one.

 

Maslova’s mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman,

employed on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who

were landowners. This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and,

as often happens among the village people, each one of these

undesired babies, after it had been carefully baptised, was

neglected by its mother, whom it hindered at her work, and left

to starve. Five children had died in this way. They had all been

baptised and then not sufficiently fed, and just left to die.

The sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp, would have shared

the same fate, had it not so happened that one of the maiden

ladies came into the farmyard to scold the dairymaids for sending

up cream that smelt of the cow. The young woman was lying in the

cowshed with a fine, healthy, new-born baby. The old maiden lady

scolded the maids again for allowing the woman (who had just been

confined) to lie in the cowshed, and was about to go away, but

seeing the baby her heart was touched, and she offered to stand

godmother to the little girl, and pity for her little

god-daughter induced her to give milk and a little money to the

mother, so that she should feed the baby; and the little girl

lived. The old ladies spoke of her as “the saved one.” When the

child was three years old, her mother fell ill and died, and the

maiden ladies took the child from her old grandmother, to whom

she was nothing but a burden.

 

The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so

full of spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.

 

The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood

godmother to the girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters;

Maria Ivanovna, the elder, was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna

dressed the little girl in nice clothes, and taught her to read

and write, meaning to educate her like a lady. Maria Ivanovna

thought the child should be brought up to work, and trained her

to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished, and, when

in a bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under

these two different influences, the girl turned out half servant,

half young lady. They called her Katusha, which sounds less

refined than Katinka, but is not quite so common as Katka. She

used to sew, tidy up the rooms, polish the metal cases of the

icons and do other light work, and sometimes she sat and read to

the ladies.

 

Though she had more than one