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

with the

woman punished for the illicit sale of spirits, the boy for

theft, the tramp for tramping, the incendiary for setting a house

on fire, the banker for fraud, and that unfortunate Lydia

Shoustova imprisoned only because they hoped to get such

information as they required from her. Then he thought of the

sectarians punished for violating Orthodoxy, and Gourkevitch for

wanting constitutional government, and Nekhludoff clearly saw

that all these people were arrested, locked up, exiled, not

really because they transgressed against justice or behaved

unlawfully, but only because they were an obstacle hindering the

officials and the rich from enjoying the property they had taken

away from the people. And the woman who sold wine without having

a license, and the thief knocking about the town, and Lydia

Shoustova hiding proclamations, and the sectarians upsetting

superstitions, and Gourkevitch desiring a constitution, were a

real hindrance. It seemed perfectly clear to Nekhludoff that all

these officials, beginning with his aunt’s husband, the Senators,

and Toporoff, down to those clean and correct gentlemen who sat

at the tables in the Ministry Office, were not at all troubled by

the fact that that in such a state of things the innocent had to

suffer, but were only concerned how to get rid of the really

dangerous, so that the rule that ten guilty should escape rather

than that one innocent should be condemned was not observed, but,

on the contrary, for the sake of getting rid of one really

dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous were punished, as,

when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has to cut away

some that is good.

 

This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhludoff; but

its very simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it.

Was it possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so

simple and terrible an explanation? Was it possible that all

these words about justice, law, religion, and God, and so on,

were mere words, hiding the coarsest cupidity and cruelty?

 

CHAPTER XXVIII.

 

THE MEANING OF MARIETTE’S ATTRACTION.

 

Nekhludoff would have left Petersburg on the evening of the same

day, but he had promised Mariette to meet her at the theatre, and

though he knew that he ought not to keep that promise, he

deceived himself into the belief that it would not be right to

break his word.

 

“Am I capable of withstanding these temptations?” he asked

himself not quite honestly. “I shall try for the last time.”

 

He dressed in his evening clothes, and arrived at the theatre

during the second act of the eternal Dame aux Camelias, in which

a foreign actress once again, and in a novel manner, showed how

women die of consumption.

 

The theatre was quite full. Mariette’s box was at once, and with

great deference, shown to Nekhludoff at his request. A liveried

servant stood in the corridor outside; he bowed to Nekhludoff as

to one whom he knew, and opened the door of the box.

 

All the people who sat and stood in the boxes on the opposite

side, those who sat near and those who were in the parterre, with

their grey, grizzly, bald, or curly heads—all were absorbed in

watching the thin, bony actress who, dressed in silks and laces,

was wriggling before them, and speaking in an unnatural voice.

 

Some one called “Hush!” when the door opened, and two streams,

one of cool, the other of hot, air touched Nekhludoff’s face.

 

Mariette and a lady whom he did not know, with a red cape and a

big, heavy head-dress, were in the box, and two men also,

Mariette’s husband, the General, a tall, handsome man with a

severe, inscrutable countenance, a Roman nose, and a uniform

padded round the chest, and a fair man, with a bit of shaved chin

between pompous whiskers.

 

Mariette, graceful, slight, elegant, her low-necked dress showing

her firm, shapely, slanting shoulders, with a little black mole

where they joined her neck, immediately turned, and pointed with

her face to a chair behind her in an engaging manner, and smiled

a smile that seemed full of meaning to Nekhludoff.

 

The husband looked at him in the quiet way in which he did

everything, and bowed. In the look he exchanged with his wife,

the master, the owner of a beautiful woman, was to be seen at

once.

 

When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the

clapping of hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling

silk skirt, went into the back of the box and introduced

Nekhludoff to her husband.

 

The General, without ceasing to smile with his eyes, said he was

very pleased, and then sat inscrutably silent.

 

“I ought to have left to-day, had I not promised,” said

Nekhludoff to Mariette.

 

“If you do not care to see me,” said Mariette, in answer to what

his words implied, “you will see a wonderful actress. Was she not

splendid in the last scene?” she asked, turning to her husband.

 

The husband bowed his head.

 

“This sort of thing does not touch me,” said Nekhludoff. “I have

seen so much real suffering lately that—”

 

“Yes, sit down and tell me.”

 

The husband listened, his eyes smiling more and more ironically.

“I have been to see that woman whom they have set free, and who

has been kept in prison for so long; she is quite broken down.”

 

“That is the woman I spoke to you about,” Mariette said to her

husband.

 

“Oh, yes, I was very pleased that she could be set free,” said

the husband quietly, nodding and smiling under his moustache with

evident irony, so it seemed to Nekhludoff. “I shall go and have a

smoke.”

 

Nekhludoff sat waiting to hear what the something was that

Mariette had to tell him. She said nothing, and did not even try

to say anything, but joked and spoke about the performance, which

she thought ought to touch Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff saw that she

had nothing to tell, but only wished to show herself to him in

all the splendour of her evening toilet, with her shoulders and

little mole; and this was pleasant and yet repulsive to him.

 

The charm that had veiled all this sort of thing from Nekhludoff

was not removed, but it was as if he could see what lay beneath.

Looking at Mariette, he admired her, and yet he knew that she was

a liar, living with a husband who was making his career by means

of the tears and lives of hundreds and hundreds of people, and

that she was quite indifferent about it, and that all she had

said the day before was untrue. What she wanted—neither he nor

she knew why—was to make him fall in love with her. This both

attracted and disgusted him. Several times, on the point of going

away, he took up his hat, and then stayed on.

 

But at last, when the husband returned with a strong smell of

tobacco in his thick moustache, and looked at Nekhludoff with a

patronising, contemptuous air, as if not recognising him,

Nekhludoff left the box before the door was closed again, found

his overcoat, and went out of the theatre. As he was walking home

along the Nevski, he could not help noticing a well-shaped and

aggressively finely-dressed woman, who was quietly walking in

front of him along the broad asphalt pavement. The consciousness

of her detestable power was noticeable in her face and the whole

of her figure. All who met or passed that woman looked at her.

Nekhludoff walked faster than she did and, involuntarily, also

looked her in the face. The face, which was probably painted, was

handsome, and the woman looked at him with a smile and her eyes

sparkled. And, curiously enough, Nekhludoff was suddenly reminded

of Mariette, because he again felt both attracted and disgusted

just as when in the theatre.

 

Having hurriedly passed her, Nekhludoff turned off on to the

Morskaya, and passed on to the embankment, where, to the surprise

of a policeman, he began pacing up and down the pavement.

 

“The other one gave me just such a smile when I entered the

theatre,” he thought, “and the meaning of the smile was the same.

The only difference is, that this one said plainly, ‘If you want

me, take me; if not, go your way,’ and the other one pretended

that she was not thinking of this, but living in some high and

refined state, while this was really at the root. Besides, this

one was driven to it by necessity, while the other amused herself

by playing with that enchanting, disgusting, frightful passion.

This woman of the street was like stagnant, smelling water

offered to those whose thirst was greater than their disgust;

that other one in the theatre was like the poison which,

unnoticed, poisons everything it gets into.”

 

Nekhludoff recalled his liaison with the Marechal’s wife, and

shameful memories rose before him.

 

“The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,” thought

he, “but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it

from the height of our spiritual life and despise it;

and—whether one has fallen or resisted—one remains what one was

before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of

poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship—then we are

swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer

distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful.”

 

Nekhludoff perceived all this now as clearly as he saw the

palace, the sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats, and

the Stock Exchange. And just as on this northern summer night

there was no restful darkness on the earth, but only a dismal,

dull light coming from an invisible source, so in Nekhludoff’s

soul there was no longer the restful darkness, ignorance.

Everything seemed clear. It was clear that everything considered

important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all

the glamour and luxury hid the old, well-known crimes, which not

only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendour

which men were capable of inventing.

 

Nekhludoff wished to forget all this, not to see it, but he could

no longer help seeing it. Though he could not see the source of

the light which revealed it to him any more than he could see the

source of the light which lay over Petersburg; and though the

light appeared to him dull, dismal, and unnatural, yet he could

not help seeing what it revealed, and he felt both joyful and

anxious.

 

CHAPTER XXIX.

 

FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD’S.

 

On his return to Moscow Nekhludoff went at once to the prison

hospital to bring Maslova the sad news that the Senate had

confirmed the decision of the Court, and that she must prepare to

go to Siberia. He had little hope of the success of his petition

to the Emperor, which the advocate had written for him, and which

he now brought with him for Maslova to sign. And, strange to say,

he did not at present even wish to succeed; he had got used to

the thought of going to Siberia and living among the exiled and

the convicts, and he could not easily picture to himself how his

life and Maslova’s would shape if she were acquitted. He

remembered the thought of the American writer, Thoreau, who at

the time when slavery existed in America said that “under a

government that imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just

man is also a prison.” Nekhludoff, especially after his visit to

Petersburg and all he discovered there, thought in the same way.

 

“Yes, the only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the

present time is a prison,” he thought,