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

went, all dressed alike, moving a thousand feet all shod

alike, swinging their free arms as if to keep up their spirits.

There were so many of them, they all looked so much alike, and

they were all placed in such unusual, peculiar circumstances,

that they seemed to Nekhludoff to be not men but some sort of

strange and terrible creatures. This impression passed when he

recognised in the crowd of convicts the murderer Federoff, and

among the exiles Okhotin the wit, and another tramp who had

appealed to him for assistance. Almost all the prisoners turned

and looked at the trap that was passing them and at the gentleman

inside. Federoff tossed his head backwards as a sign that he had

recognised Nekhludoff, Okhotin winked, but neither of them bowed,

considering it not the thing.

 

As soon as Nekhludoff came up to the women he saw Maslova; she

was in the second row. The first in the row was a short-legged,

black-eyed, hideous woman, who had her cloak tucked up in her

girdle. This was Koroshavka. The next was a pregnant woman, who

dragged herself along with difficulty. The third was Maslova; she

was carrying her sack on her shoulder, and looking straight

before her. Her face looked calm and determined. The fourth in

the row was a young, lovely woman who was walking along briskly,

dressed in a short cloak, her kerchief tied in peasant fashion.

This was Theodosia.

 

Nekhludoff got down and approached the women, meaning to ask

Maslova if she had got the things he had sent her, and how she

was feeling, but the convoy sergeant, who was walking on that

side, noticed him at once, and ran towards him.

 

“You must not do that, sir. It is against the regulations to

approach the gang,” shouted the sergeant as he came up.

 

But when he recognised Nekhludoff (every one in the prison knew

Nekhludoff) the sergeant raised his fingers to his cap, and,

stopping in front of Nekhludoff, said: “Not now; wait till we get

to the railway station; here it is not allowed. Don’t lag behind;

march!” he shouted to the convicts, and putting on a brisk air,

he ran back to his place at a trot, in spite of the heat and the

elegant new boots on his feet.

 

Nekhludoff went on to the pavement and told the isvostchik to

follow him; himself walking, so as to keep the convicts in sight.

Wherever the gang passed it attracted attention mixed with horror

and compassion. Those who drove past leaned out of the vehicles

and followed the prisoners with their eyes. Those on foot stopped

and looked with fear and surprise at the terrible sight. Some

came up and gave alms to the prisoners. The alms were received by

the convoy. Some, as if they were hypnotised, followed the gang,

but then stopped, shook their heads, and followed the prisoners

only with their eyes. Everywhere the people came out of the gates

and doors, and called others to come out, too, or leaned out of

the windows looking, silent and immovable, at the frightful

procession. At a cross-road a fine carriage was stopped by the

gang. A fat coachman, with a shiny face and two rows of buttons

on his back, sat on the box; a married couple sat facing the

horses, the wife, a pale, thin woman, with a light-coloured

bonnet on her head and a bright sunshade in her hand, the husband

with a top-hat and a well-cut light-coloured overcoat. On the

seat in front sat their children—a well-dressed little girl,

with loose, fair hair, and as fresh as a flower, who also held a

bright parasol, and an eight-year-old boy, with a long, thin neck

and sharp collarbones, a sailor hat with long ribbons on his

head.

 

The father was angrily scolding the coachman because he had not

passed in front of the gang when he had a chance, and the mother

frowned and half closed her eyes with a look of disgust,

shielding herself from the dust and the sun with her silk

sunshade, which she held close to her face.

 

The fat coachman frowned angrily at the unjust rebukes of his

master—who had himself given the order to drive along that

street—and with difficulty held in the glossy, black horses,

foaming under their harness and impatient to go on.

 

The policeman wished with all his soul to please the owner of the

fine equipage by stopping the gang, yet felt that the dismal

solemnity of the procession could not be broken even for so rich

a gentleman. He only raised his fingers to his cap to show his

respect for riches, and looked severely at the prisoners as if

promising in any case to protect the owners of the carriage from

them. So the carriage had to wait till the whole of the

procession had passed, and could only move on when the last of

the carts, laden with sacks and prisoners, rattled by. The

hysterical woman who sat on one of the carts, and had grown calm,

again began shrieking and sobbing when she saw the elegant

carriage. Then the coachman tightened the reins with a slight

touch, and the black trotters, their shoes ringing against the

paving stones, drew the carriage, softly swaying on its rubber

tires, towards the country house where the husband, the wife, the

girl, and the boy with the sharp collarbones were going to amuse

themselves. Neither the father nor the mother gave the girl and

boy any explanation of what they had seen, so that the children

had themselves to find out the meaning of this curious sight. The

girl, taking the expression of her father’s and mother’s faces

into consideration, solved the problem by assuming that these

people were quite another kind of men and women than her father

and mother and their acquaintances, that they were bad people,

and that they had therefore to be treated in the manner they were

being treated.

 

Therefore the girl felt nothing but fear, and was glad when she

could no longer see those people.

 

But the boy with the long, thin neck, who looked at the

procession of prisoners without taking his eyes off them, solved

the question differently.

 

He still knew, firmly and without any doubt, for he had it from

God, that these people were just the same kind of people as he

was, and like all other people, and therefore some one had done

these people some wrong, something that ought not to have been

done, and he was sorry for them, and felt no horror either of

those who were shaved and chained or of those who had shaved and

chained them. And so the boy’s lips pouted more and more, and he

made greater and greater efforts not to cry, thinking it a shame

to cry in such a case.

 

CHAPTER XXXVI.

 

THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD.

 

Nekhludoff kept up with the quick pace of the convicts. Though

lightly clothed he felt dreadfully hot, and it was hard to

breathe in the stifling, motionless, burning air filled with

dust.

 

When he had walked about a quarter of a mile he again got into

the trap, but it felt still hotter in the middle of the street.

He tried to recall last night’s conversation with his

brother-in-law, but the recollections no longer excited him as

they had done in the morning. They were dulled by the impressions

made by the starting and procession of the gang, and chiefly by

the intolerable heat.

 

On the pavement, in the shade of some trees overhanging a fence,

he saw two schoolboys standing over a kneeling man who sold ices.

One of the boys was already sucking a pink spoon and enjoying his

ices, the other was waiting for a glass that was being filled

with something yellowish.

 

“Where could I get a drink?” Nekhludoff asked his isvostchik,

feeling an insurmountable desire for some refreshment.

 

“There is a good eating-house close by,” the isvostchik answered,

and turning a corner, drove up to a door with a large signboard.

The plump clerk in a Russian shirt, who stood behind the counter,

and the waiters in their once white clothing who sat at the

tables (there being hardly any customers) looked with curiosity

at the unusual visitor and offered him their services. Nekhludoff

asked for a bottle of seltzer water and sat down some way from

the window at a small table covered with a dirty cloth. Two men

sat at another table with tea-things and a white bottle in front

of them, mopping their foreheads, and calculating something in a

friendly manner. One of them was dark and bald, and had just such

a border of hair at the back as Rogozhinsky. This sight again

reminded Nekhludoff of yesterday’s talk with his brother-in-law

and his wish to see him and Nathalie.

 

“I shall hardly be able to do it before the train starts,” he

thought; “I’d better write.” He asked for paper, an envelope, and

a stamp, and as he was sipping the cool, effervescent water he

considered what he should say. But his thoughts wandered, and he

could not manage to compose a letter.

 

“My dear Nathalie,—I cannot go away with the heavy impression

that yesterday’s talk with your husband has left,” he began.

“What next? Shall I ask him to forgive me what I said yesterday?

But I only said what I felt, and he will think that I am taking

it back. Besides, this interference of his in my private matters.

… No, I cannot,” and again he felt hatred rising in his heart

towards that man so foreign to him. He folded the unfinished

letter and put it in his pocket, paid, went out, and again got

into the trap to catch up the gang. It had grown still hotter.

The stones and the walls seemed to be breathing out hot air. The

pavement seemed to scorch the feet, and Nekhludoff felt a burning

sensation in his hand when he touched the lacquered splashguard

of his trap.

 

The horse was jogging along at a weary trot, beating the uneven,

dusty road monotonously with its hoofs, the isvostchik kept

falling into a doze, Nekhludoff sat without thinking of anything.

 

At the bottom of a street, in front of a large house, a group of

people had collected, and a convoy soldier stood by.

 

“What has happened?” Nekhludoff asked of a porter.

 

“Something the matter with a convict.”

 

Nekhludoff got down and came up to the group. On the rough

stones, where the pavement slanted down to the gutter, lay a

broadly-built, red-bearded, elderly convict, with his head lower

than his feet, and very red in the face. He had a grey cloak and

grey trousers on, and lay on his back with the palms of his

freckled hands downwards, and at long intervals his broad, high

chest heaved, and he groaned, while his bloodshot eyes were fixed

on the sky. By him stood a cross-looking policeman, a pedlar, a

postman, a clerk, an old woman with a parasol, and a short-haired

boy with an empty basket.

 

“They are weak. Having been locked up in prison they’ve got weak,

and then they lead them through the most broiling heat,” said the

clerk, addressing Nekhludoff, who had just come up.

 

“He’ll die, most likely,” said the woman with the parasol, in a

doleful tone.

 

“His shirt should be untied,” said the postman.

 

The policeman began, with his thick, trembling fingers, clumsily

to untie the tapes that fastened the shirt round the red, sinewy

neck. He was evidently excited and confused, but still thought it

necessary to address the crowd.

 

“What have you collected here for? It is hot enough without your

keeping