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

offer, she would not marry. She felt

that life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting

her would be too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.

 

She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of

the old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student,

came to stay with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to

acknowledge it even to herself, fell in love with him.

 

Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his

aunts before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night

before he left he betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a

100-rouble note, went away. Five months later she knew for

certain that she was to be a mother. After that everything seemed

repugnant to her, her only thought being how to escape from the

shame that awaited her. She began not only to serve the ladies in

a half-hearted and negligent way, but once, without knowing how

it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice, a thing

she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing

something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a

housemaid’s place in a police-officer’s house, but stayed there

only three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began

to torment her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising

mood, she fired up, called him “a fool and old devil,” and gave

him such a knock in the chest that he fell. She was turned out

for her rudeness. It was useless to look for another situation,

for the time of her confinement was drawing near, so she went to

the house of a village midwife, who also sold wine. The

confinement was easy; but the midwife, who had a case of fever in

the village, infected Katusha, and her baby boy had to be sent to

the foundlings’ hospital, where, according to the words of the

old woman who took him there, he at once died. When Katusha went

to the midwife she had 127 roubles in all, 27 which she had

earned and 100 given her by her betrayer. When she left she had

but six roubles; she did not know how to keep money, but spent it

on herself, and gave to all who asked. The midwife took 40

roubles for two months’ board and attendance, 25 went to get the

baby into the foundlings’ hospital, and 40 the midwife borrowed

to buy a cow with. Twenty roubles went just for clothes and

dainties. Having nothing left to live on, Katusha had to look out

for a place again, and found one in the house of a forester. The

forester was a married man, but he, too, began to annoy her from

the first day. He disgusted her, and she tried to avoid him. But

he, more experienced and cunning, besides being her master, who

could send her wherever he liked, managed to accomplish his

object. His wife found it out, and, catching Katusha and her

husband in a room all by themselves, began beating her. Katusha

defended herself, and they had a fight, and Katusha got turned

out of the house without being paid her wages.

 

Then Katusha went to live with her aunt in town. The aunt’s

husband, a bookbinder, had once been comfortably off, but had

lost all his customers, and had taken to drink, and spent all he

could lay hands on at the public-house. The aunt kept a little

laundry, and managed to support herself, her children, and her

wretched husband. She offered Katusha the place of an assistant

laundress; but seeing what a life of misery and hardship her

aunt’s assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and applied to a

registry office for a place. One was found for her with a lady

who lived with her two sons, pupils at a public day school. A

week after Katusha had entered the house the elder, a big fellow

with moustaches, threw up his studies and made love to her,

continually following her about. His mother laid all the blame on

Katusha, and gave her notice.

 

It so happened that, after many fruitless attempts to find a

situation, Katusha again went to the registry office, and there

met a woman with bracelets on her bare, plump arms and rings on

most of her fingers. Hearing that Katusha was badly in want of a

place, the woman gave her her address, and invited her to come to

her house. Katusha went. The woman received her very kindly, set

cake and sweet wine before her, then wrote a note and gave it to

a servant to take to somebody. In the evening a tall man, with

long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the room, and sat down

at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with glistening

eyes. He began joking with her. The hostess called him away into

the next room, and Katusha heard her say, “A fresh one from the

country,” Then the hostess called Katusha aside and told her that

the man was an author, and that he had a great deal of money, and

that if he liked her he would not grudge her anything. He did

like her, and gave her 25 roubles, promising to see her often.

The 25 roubles soon went; some she paid to her aunt for board and

lodging; the rest was spent on a hat, ribbons, and such like. A

few days later the author sent for her, and she went. He gave her

another 25 roubles, and offered her a separate lodging.

 

Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived

a jolly young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love. She

told the author, and moved to a little lodging of her own. The

shopman, who promised to marry her, went to Nijni on business

without mentioning it to her, having evidently thrown her up, and

Katusha remained alone. She meant to continue living in the

lodging by herself, but was informed by the police that in this

case she would have to get a license. She returned to her aunt.

Seeing her fine dress, her hat, and mantle, her aunt no longer

offered her laundry work. As she understood things, her niece had

risen above that sort of thing. The question as to whether she

was to become a laundress or not did not occur to Katusha,

either. She looked with pity at the thin, hard-worked

laundresses, some already in consumption, who stood washing or

ironing with their thin arms in the fearfully hot front room,

which was always full of soapy steam and draughts from the

windows, and thought with horror that she might have shared the

same fate.

 

Katusha had begun to smoke some time before, and since the young

shopman had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the

habit of drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that

tempted her as the fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting

the misery she suffered, making her feel more unrestrained and

more confident of her own worth, which she was not when quite

sober; without wine she felt sad and ashamed. Just at this time a

woman came along who offered to place her in one of the largest

establishments in the city, explaining all the advantages and

benefits of the situation. Katusha had the choice before her of

either going into service or accepting this offer—and she chose

the latter. Besides, it seemed to her as though, in this way, she

could revenge herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all

those who had injured her. One of the things that tempted her,

and was the cause of her decision, was the woman telling her she

might order her own dresses—velvet, silk, satin, low-necked ball

dresses, anything she liked. A mental picture of herself in a

bright yellow silk trimmed with black velvet with low neck and

short sleeves conquered her, and she gave up her passport. On the

same evening the procuress took an isvostchik and drove her to

the notorious house kept by Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.

 

From that day a life of chronic sin against human and divine laws

commenced for Katusha Maslova, a life which is led by hundreds of

thousands of women, and which is not merely tolerated but

sanctioned by the Government, anxious for the welfare of its

subjects; a life which for nine women out of ten ends in painful

disease, premature decrepitude, and death.

 

Katusha Maslova lived this life for seven years. During these

years she twice changed houses, and had once been to the

hospital. In the seventh year of this life, when she was

twenty-six years old, happened that for which she was put in

prison and for which she was now being taken to be tried, after

more than three months of confinement with thieves and murderers

in the stifling air of a prison.

 

CHAPTER III.

 

NEKHLUDOFF.

 

When Maslova, wearied out by the long walk, reached the building,

accompanied by two soldiers, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff,

who had seduced her, was still lying on his high bedstead, with a

feather bed on the top of the spring mattress, in a fine, clean,

well-ironed linen night shirt, smoking a cigarette, and

considering what he had to do to-day, and what had happened

yesterday.

 

Recalling the evening he had spent with the Korchagins, a wealthy

and aristocratic family, whose daughter every one expected he

would marry, he sighed, and, throwing away the end of his

cigarette, was going to take another out of the silver case; but,

changing his mind, he resolutely raised his solid frame, and,

putting down his smooth, white legs, stepped into his slippers,

threw his silk dressing gown over his broad shoulders, and passed

into his dressing-room, walking heavily and quickly. There he

carefully cleaned his teeth, many of which were filled, with

tooth powder, and rinsed his mouth with scented elixir. After

that he washed his hands with perfumed soap, cleaned his long

nails with particular care, then, from a tap fixed to his marble

washstand, he let a spray of cold water run over his face and

stout neck. Having finished this part of the business, he went

into a third room, where a shower bath stood ready for him.

Having refreshed his full, white, muscular body, and dried it

with a rough bath sheet, he put on his fine undergarments and his

boots, and sat down before the glass to brush his black beard and

his curly hair, that had begun to get thin above the forehead.

Everything he used, everything belonging to his toilet, his

linen, his clothes, boots, necktie, pin, studs, was of the best

quality, very quiet, simple, durable and costly.

 

Nekhludoff dressed leisurely, and went into the dining-room. A

table, which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in

the shape of lions’ paws, and a huge sideboard to match, stood

in the oblong room, the floor of which had been polished by three

men the day before. On the table, which was covered with a fine,

starched cloth, stood a silver coffeepot full of aromatic coffee,

a sugar basin, a jug of fresh cream, and a bread basket filled

with fresh rolls, rusks, and biscuits; and beside the plate lay

the last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, a newspaper, and

several letters.

 

Nekhludoff was just going to open his letters, when a stout,

middleaged woman in mourning, a lace cap covering the widening

parting of her hair, glided into the room. This was Agraphena

Petrovna, formerly lady’s maid to Nekhludoff’s mother. Her

mistress had died quite recently in this very house, and she

remained with the