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

should he allowed to

remain here until the answer to her petition comes.”

 

The footman, an orderly in uniform, came in.

 

“Ask if Anna Vasilievna is up,” said the General to the orderly,

“and bring some more tea.” Then, turning to Nekhludoff, “Yes, and

what else?”

 

“My other request concerns a political prisoner who is with the

same gang.”

 

“Dear me,” said the General, with a significant shake of the

head.

 

“He is seriously ill—dying, and he will probably he left here in

the hospital, so one of the women prisoners would like to stay

behind with him.”

 

“She is no relation of his?”

 

“No, but she is willing to marry him if that will enable her to

remain with him.”

 

The General looked fixedly with twinkling eyes at his

interlocutor, and, evidently with a wish to discomfit him,

listened, smoking in silence.

 

When Nekhludoff had finished, the General took a book off the

table, and, wetting his finger, quickly turned over the pages and

found the statute relating to marriage.

 

“What is she sentenced to?” he asked, looking up from the book.

 

“She? To hard labour.”

 

“Well, then, the position of one sentenced to that cannot be

bettered by marriage.”

 

“Yes, but—”

 

“Excuse me. Even if a free man should marry her, she would have

to serve her term. The question in such cases is, whose is the

heavier punishment, hers or his?”

 

“They are both sentenced to hard labour.”

 

“Very well; so they are quits,” said the General, with a laugh.

“She’s got what he has, only as he is sick he may be left behind,

and of course what can be done to lighten his fate shall be done.

But as for her, even if she did marry him, she could not remain

behind.”

 

“The Generaless is having her coffee,” the footman announced.

 

The General nodded and continued:

 

“However, I shall think about it. What are their names? Put them

down here.”

 

Nekhludoff wrote down the names.

 

Nekhludoff’s request to be allowed to see the dying man the

General answered by saying, “Neither can I do that. Of course I

do not suspect you, but you take an interest in him and in the

others, and you have money, and here with us anything can be done

with money. I have been told to put down bribery. But how can I

put down bribery when everybody takes bribes? And the lower their

rank the more ready they are to be bribed. How can one find it

out across more than three thousand miles? There any official is

a little Tsar, just as I am here,” and he laughed. “You have in

all likelihood been to see the political prisoners; you gave

money and got permission to see them,” he said, with a smile.

“Is it not so?”

 

“Yes, it is.”

 

“I quite understand that you had to do it. You pity a political

prisoner and wish to see him. And the inspector or the convoy

soldier accepts, because he has a salary of twice twenty copecks

and a family, and he can’t help accepting it. In his place and

yours I should have acted in the same way as you and he did. But

in my position I do not permit myself to swerve an inch from the

letter of the law, just because I am a man, and might be

influenced by pity. But I am a member of the executive, and I

have been placed in a position of trust on certain conditions,

and these conditions I must carry out. Well, so this business is

finished. And now let us hear what is going on in the

metropolis.” And the General began questioning with the evident

desire to hear the news and to show how very human he was.

 

CHAPTER XXIII.

 

THE SENTENCE COMMUTED.

 

“By-the-way, where are you staying?” asked the General as he was

taking leave of Nekhludoff. “At Duke’s? Well, it’s horrid enough

there. Come and dine with us at five o’clock. You speak English?”

 

“Yes, I do.”

 

“That’s good. You see, an English traveller has just arrived

here. He is studying the question of transportation and examining

the prisons of Siberia. Well, he is dining with us to-night, and

you come and meet him. We dine at five, and my wife expects

punctuality. Then I shall also give you an answer what to do

about that woman, and perhaps it may be possible to leave some

one behind with the sick prisoner.”

 

Having made his bow to the General, Nekhludoff drove to the

post-office, feeling himself in an extremely animated and

energetic frame of mind.

 

The post-office was a low-vaulted room. Several officials sat

behind a counter serving the people, of whom there was quite a

crowd. One official sat with his head bent to one side and kept

stamping the envelopes, which he slipped dexterously under the

stamp. Nekhludoff had not long to wait. As soon as he had given

his name, everything that had come for him by post was at once

handed to him. There was a good deal: letters, and money, and

books, and the last number of Fatherland Notes. Nekhludoff took

all these things to a wooden bench, on which a soldier with a

book in his hand sat waiting for something, took the seat by his

side, and began sorting the letters. Among them was one

registered letter in a fine envelope, with a distinctly stamped

bright red seal. He broke the seal, and seeing a letter from

Selenin and some official paper inside the envelope, he felt the

blood rush to his face, and his heart stood still. It was the

answer to Katusha’s petition. What would that answer be?

Nekhludoff glanced hurriedly through the letter, written in an

illegibly small, hard, and cramped hand, and breathed a sigh of

relief. The answer was a favourable one.

 

“Dear friend,” wrote Selenin, “our last talk has made a profound

impression on me. You were right concerning Maslova. I looked

carefully through the case, and see that shocking injustice has

been done her. It could he remedied only by the Committee of

Petitions before which you laid it. I managed to assist at the

examination of the case, and I enclose herewith the copy of the

mitigation of the sentence. Your aunt, the Countess Katerina

Ivanovna, gave me the address which I am sending this to. The

original document has been sent to the place where she was

imprisoned before her trial, and will from there he probably sent

at once to the principal Government office in Siberia. I hasten

to communicate this glad news to you and warmly press your hand.

 

“Yours,

 

“SELENIN.”

 

The document ran thus: “His Majesty’s office for the reception of

petitions, addressed to his Imperial name”—here followed the

date–-“by order of the chief of his Majesty’s office for the

reception of petitions addressed to his Imperial name. The

meschanka Katerina Maslova is hereby informed that his Imperial

Majesty, with reference to her most loyal petition, condescending

to her request, deigns to order that her sentence to hard labour

should be commuted to one of exile to the less distant districts

of Siberia.”

 

This was joyful and important news; all that Nekhludoff could

have hoped for Katusha, and for himself also, had happened. It

was true that the new position she was in brought new

complications with it. While she was a convict, marriage with her

could only be fictitious, and would have had no meaning except

that he would have been in a position to alleviate her condition.

And now there was nothing to prevent their living together, and

Nekhludoff had not prepared himself for that. And, besides, what

of her relations to Simonson? What was the meaning of her words

yesterday? If she consented to a union with Simonson, would it be

well? He could not unravel all these questions, and gave up

thinking about it. “It will all clear itself up later on,” he

thought; “I must not think about it now, but convey the glad news

to her as soon as possible, and set her free.” He thought that the

copy of the document he had received would suffice, so when he

left the post-office he told the isvostchik to drive him to the

prison.

 

Though he had received no order from the governor to visit the

prison that morning, he knew by experience that it was easy to

get from the subordinates what the higher officials would not

grant, so now he meant to try and get into the prison to bring

Katusha the joyful news, and perhaps to get her set free, and at

the same time to inquire about Kryltzoff’s state of health, and

tell him and Mary Pavlovna what the general had said. The prison

inspector was a tall, imposing-looking man, with moustaches and

whiskers that twisted towards the corners of his mouth. He

received Nekhludoff very gravely, and told him plainly that he

could not grant an outsider the permission to interview the

prisoners without a special order from his chief. To Nekhludoff’s

remark that he had been allowed to visit the prisoners even in

the cities he answered:

 

“That may be so, but I do not allow it,” and his tone implied,

“You city gentlemen may think to surprise and perplex us, but we

in Eastern Siberia also know what the law is, and may even teach

it you.” The copy of a document straight from the Emperor’s own

office did not have any effect on the prison inspector either. He

decidedly refused to let Nekhludoff come inside the prison walls.

He only smiled contemptuously at Nekhludoff’s naive conclusion,

that the copy he had received would suffice to set Maslova free,

and declared that a direct order from his own superiors would be

needed before any one could be set at liberty. The only things he

agreed to do were to communicate to Maslova that a mitigation had

arrived for her, and to promise that he would not detain her an

hour after the order from his chief to liberate her would arrive.

He would also give no news of Kryltzoff, saying he could not even

tell if there was such a prisoner; and so Nekhludoff, having

accomplished next to nothing, got into his trap and drove back to

his hotel.

 

The strictness of the inspector was chiefly due to the fact that

an epidemic of typhus had broken out in the prison, owing to

twice the number of persons that it was intended for being

crowded in it. The isvostchik who drove Nekhludoff said, “Quite

a lot of people are dying in the prison every day, some kind of

disease having sprung up among them, so that as many as twenty

were buried in one day.”

 

CHAPTER XXIV.

 

THE GENERAL’S HOUSEHOLD.

 

In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff,

still in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the

Governor’s office to see if the original of the document had

arrived for Maslova. It had not arrived, so Nekhludoff went back

to the hotel and wrote without delay to Selenin and the advocate

about it. When he had finished writing he looked at his watch and

saw it was time to go to the General’s dinner party.

 

On the way he again began wondering how Katusha would receive the

news of the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be

settled? How he should live with her? What about Simonson? What

would his relations to her be? He remembered the change that had

taken place in her, and this reminded him of her past. “I must

forget it for the present,” he thought, and again hastened