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

remembered the doubts

he had about his talent for art. “Well, never mind; only just to

breathe freely. First Constantinople, then Rome. Only just to get

through with this jury business, and arrange with the advocate

first.”

 

Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture

of a prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she

began to cry when the last words of the prisoners had been heard;

and he hurriedly put out his cigarette, pressing it into the

ash-pan, lit another, and began pacing up and down the room. One

after another the scenes he had lived through with her rose in

his mind. He recalled that last interview with her. He remembered

the white dress and blue sash, the early mass. “Why, I loved her,

really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved her

even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the

first time and was writing my composition.” And he remembered

himself as he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth

and fulness of life seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully

sad. The difference between what he had been then and what he was

now, was enormous—just as great, if not greater than the

difference between Katusha in church that night, and the

prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they

judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and

innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he

felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless,

frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating

himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered

how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he

had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been

truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies: in the most

dreadful of lies—lies considered as the truth by all who

surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out

of these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged

himself in it.

 

How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and

her husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his

children in the eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How

choose between the two opposites—the recognition that holding

land was unjust and the heritage from his mother? How atone for

his sin against Katusha? This last, at any rate, could not be

left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he had loved, and

satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save her from

hard labour in Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour.

Atone for a fault by paying money? Had he not then, when he gave

her the money, thought he was atoning for his fault?

 

And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught

her up in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran

away. “Oh, that money!” he thought with the same horror and

disgust he had then felt. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,”

he cried aloud as he had done then. “Only a scoundrel, a knave,

could do such a thing. And I am that knave, that scoundrel!” He

went on aloud: “But is it possible?”—he stopped and stood

still—“is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? …

Well, who but I?” he answered himself. “And then, is this the

only thing?” he went on, convicting himself. “Was not my conduct

towards Mary Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And

my position with regard to money? To use riches considered by me

unlawful on the plea that they are inherited from my mother? And

the whole of my idle, detestable life? And my conduct towards

Katusha to crown all? Knave and scoundrel! Let men judge me as

they like, I can deceive them; but myself I cannot deceive.”

 

And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and

particularly to-day, felt for everybody—the Prince and Sophia

Vasilievna and Corney and Missy—was an aversion for himself.

And, strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness

there was something painful yet joyful and quieting.

 

More than once in Nekhludoff’s life there had been what he called

a “cleansing of the soul.” By “cleansing of the soul” he meant a

state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner

life, a total cessation of its activity, he began to clear out

all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul, and was the

cause of the cessation of the true life. His soul needed

cleansing as a watch does. After such an awakening Nekhludoff

always made some rules for himself which he meant to follow

forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which he

hoped never to change again. “Turning over a new leaf,” he called

it to himself in English. But each time the temptations of the

world entrapped him, and without noticing it he fell again, often

lower than before.

 

Thus he had several times in his life raised and cleansed

himself. The first time this happened was during the summer he

spent with his aunts; that was his most vital and rapturous

awakening, and its effects had lasted some time. Another

awakening was when he gave up civil service and joined the army

at war time, ready to sacrifice his life. But here the choking-up

process was soon accomplished. Then an awakening came when he

left the army and went abroad, devoting himself to art.

 

From that time until this day a long period had elapsed without

any cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of

his conscience and the life he was leading was greater than it

had ever been before. He was horror-struck when he saw how great

the divergence was. It was so great and the defilement so

complete that he despaired of the possibility of getting

cleansed. “Have you not tried before to perfect yourself and

become better, and nothing has come of it?” whispered the voice

of the tempter within. “What is the use of trying any more? Are

you the only one?—All are alike, such is life,” whispered the

voice. But the free spiritual being, which alone is true, alone

powerful, alone eternal, had already awakened in Nekhludoff, and

he could not but believe it. Enormous though the distance was

between what he wished to be and what he was, nothing appeared

insurmountable to the newly-awakened spiritual being.

 

“At any cost I will break this lie which binds me and confess

everything, and will tell everybody the truth, and act the truth,”

he said resolutely, aloud. “I shall tell Missy the truth, tell

her I am a profligate and cannot marry her, and have only

uselessly upset her. I shall tell Mary Vasilievna… Oh, there

is nothing to tell her. I shall tell her husband that I,

scoundrel that I am, have been deceiving him. I shall dispose of

the inheritance in such a way as to acknowledge the truth. I

shall tell her, Katusha, that I am a scoundrel and have sinned

towards her, and will do all I can to ease her lot. Yes, I will

see her, and will ask her to forgive me.

 

“Yes, I will beg her pardon, as children do.” … He

stopped–“will marry her if necessary.” He stopped again, folded

his hands in front of his breast as he used to do when a little

child, lifted his eyes, and said, addressing some one: “Lord,

help me, teach me, come enter within me and purify me of all this

abomination.”

 

He prayed, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse

him; and what he was praying for had happened already: the God

within him had awakened his consciousness. He felt himself one

with Him, and therefore felt not only the freedom, fulness and

joy of life, but all the power of righteousness. All, all the

best that a man could do he felt capable of doing.

 

His eyes filled with tears as he was saying all this to himself,

good and bad tears: good because they were tears of joy at the

awakening of the spiritual being within him, the being which had

been asleep all these years; and bad tears because they were

tears of tenderness to himself at his own goodness.

 

He felt hot, and went to the window and opened it. The window

opened into a garden. It was a moonlit, quiet, fresh night; a

vehicle rattled past, and then all was still. The shadow of a

tall poplar fell on the ground just opposite the window, and all

the intricate pattern of its bare branches was clearly defined on

the clean swept gravel. To the left the roof of a coach-house

shone white in the moonlight, in front the black shadow of the

garden wall was visible through the tangled branches of the

trees.

 

Nekhludoff gazed at the roof, the moonlit garden, and the shadows

of the poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.

 

“How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful” he

said, meaning that which was going on in his soul.

 

CHAPTER XXIX.

 

MASLOVA IN PRISON.

 

Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and

footsore, having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10

miles on the stony road that day. She was crushed by the

unexpectedly severe sentence and tormented by hunger. During the

first interval of her trial, when the soldiers were eating bread

and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her mouth watered and she

realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath her dignity to

beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had passed, and

she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected

sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could

not imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not

believe what she heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces

of judges and jury, who heard this news as if it were perfectly

natural and expected, she grew indignant, and proclaimed loudly

to the whole Court that she was not guilty. Finding that her cry

was also taken as something natural and expected, and feeling

incapable of altering matters, she was horror-struck and began to

weep in despair, knowing that she must submit to the cruel and

surprising injustice that had been done her. What astonished her

most was that young men—or, at any rate, not old men—the same

men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the

public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had

condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners’ room

before the trial and during the intervals, she saw these men

looking in at the open door pretending they had to pass there on

some business, or enter the room and gaze on her with approval.

And then, for some unknown reason, these same men had condemned

her to hard labour, though she was innocent of the charge laid

against her. At first she cried, but then quieted down and sat

perfectly stunned in the prisoners’ room, waiting to be led back.

She wanted only two things now—tobacco and strong drink. In this

state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into

the same room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to

scold her, and call her a “convict.”

 

“Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What

you have deserved, that you’ve got. Out in Siberia you’ll give up

your finery, no fear!”

 

Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves,