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

grew up between Nekhludoff and Katusha those

peculiar relations which often exist between a pure young man and

girl who are attracted to each other.

 

When Katusha came into the room, or even when he saw her white

apron from afar, everything brightened up in Nekhludoff’s eyes,

as when the sun appears everything becomes more interesting, more

joyful, more important. The whole of life seemed full of

gladness. And she felt the same. But it was not only Katusha’s

presence that had this effect on Nekhludoff. The mere thought

that Katusha existed (and for her that Nekhludoff existed) had

this effect.

 

When he received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could

not get on with his essay, or felt the unreasoning sadness that

young people are often subject to, he had only to remember

Katusha and that he should see her, and it all vanished. Katusha

had much work to do in the house, but she managed to get a little

leisure for reading, and Nekhludoff gave her Dostoievsky and

Tourgeneff (whom he had just read himself) to read. She liked

Tourgeneff’s Lull best. They had talks at moments snatched when

meeting in the passage, on the veranda, or the yard, and

sometimes in the room of his aunts’ old servant, Matrona

Pavlovna, with whom he sometimes used to drink tea, and where

Katusha used to work.

 

These talks in Matrona Pavlovna’s presence were the pleasantest.

When they were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to

say something very different and far more important than what

their mouths uttered. Their lips puckered, and they felt a kind

of dread of something that made them part quickly. These

relations continued between Nekhludoff and Katusha during the

whole time of his first visit to his aunts’. They noticed it, and

became frightened, and even wrote to Princess Elena Ivanovna,

Nekhludoff’s mother. His aunt, Mary Ivanovna, was afraid Dmitri

would form an intimacy with Katusha; but her fears were

groundless, for Nekhludoff, himself hardly conscious of it, loved

Katusha, loved her as the pure love, and therein lay his

safety—his and hers. He not only did not feel any desire to

possess her, but the very thought of it filled him with horror.

The fears of the more poetical Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with

his thoroughgoing, resolute character, having fallen in love with

a girl, might make up his mind to marry her, without considering

either her birth or her station, had more ground.

 

Had Nekhludoff at that time been conscious of his love for

Katusha, and especially if he had been told that he could on no

account join his life with that of a girl in her position, it

might have easily happened that, with his usual straightforwardness, he would have come to the conclusion that there

could be no possible reason for him not to marry any girl

whatever, as long as he loved her. But his aunts did not

mention their fears to him; and, when he left, he was still

unconscious of his love for Katusha. He was sure that what he

felt for Katusha was only one of the manifestations of the joy of

life that filled his whole being, and that this sweet, merry

little girl shared this joy with him. Yet, when he was going

away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the porch, and looked

after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled with tears,

he felt, after all, that he was leaving something beautiful,

precious, something which would never reoccur. And he grew very

sad.

 

“Goodbye, Katusha,” he said, looking across Sophia Ivanovna’s

cap as he was getting into the trap. “Thank you for everything.”

 

“Goodbye, Dmitri Ivanovitch,” she said, with her pleasant,

tender voice, keeping back the tears that filled her eyes—and

ran away into the hall, where she could cry in peace.

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

LIFE IN THE ARMY.

 

After that Nekhludoff did not see Katusha for more than three

years. When he saw her again he had just been promoted to the

rank of officer and was going to join his regiment. On the way he

came to spend a few days with his aunts, being now a very

different young man from the one who had spent the summer with

them three years before. He then had been an honest, unselfish

lad, ready to sacrifice himself for any good cause; now he was

depraved and selfish, and thought only of his own enjoyment. Then

God’s world seemed a mystery which he tried enthusiastically and

joyfully to solve; now everything in life seemed clear and

simple, defined by the conditions of the life he was leading.

Then he had felt the importance of, and had need of intercourse

with, nature, and with those who had lived and thought and felt

before him—philosophers and poets. What he now considered

necessary and important were human institutions and intercourse

with his comrades. Then women seemed mysterious and

charming—charming by the very mystery that enveloped them; now

the purpose of women, all women except those of his own family

and the wives of his friends, was a very definite one: women were

the best means towards an already experienced enjoyment. Then

money was not needed, and he did not require even one-third of

what his mother allowed him; but now this allowance of 1,500

roubles a month did not suffice, and he had already had some

unpleasant talks about it with his mother.

 

Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy

strong animal I that he looked upon as himself.

 

And all this terrible change had come about because he had ceased

to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had

done because it was too difficult to live believing one’s self;

believing one’s self, one had to decide every question not in

favour of one’s own animal life, which is always seeking for easy

gratifications, but almost in every case against it. Believing

others there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided

already, and decided always in favour of the animal I and against

the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self he was

always exposing himself to the censure of those around him;

believing others he had their approval. So, when Nekhludoff had

talked of the serious matters of life, of God, truth, riches, and

poverty, all round him thought it out of place and even rather

funny, and his mother and aunts called him, with kindly irony,

notre cher philosophe. But when he read novels, told improper

anecdotes, went to see funny vaudevilles in the French theatre

and gaily repeated the jokes, everybody admired and encouraged

him. When he considered it right to limit his needs, wore an old

overcoat, took no wine, everybody thought it strange and looked

upon it as a kind of showing off; but when he spent large sums on

hunting, or on furnishing a peculiar and luxurious study for

himself, everybody admired his taste and gave him expensive

presents to encourage his hobby. While he kept pure and meant to

remain so till he married his friends prayed for his health, and

even his mother was not grieved but rather pleased when she found

out that he had become a real man and had gained over some French

woman from his friend. (As to the episode with Katusha, the

princess could not without horror think that he might possibly

have married her.) In the same way, when Nekhludoff came of age,

and gave the small estate he had inherited from his father to the

peasants because he considered the holding of private property in

land wrong, this step filled his mother and relations with dismay

and served as an excuse for making fun of him to all his

relatives. He was continually told that these peasants, after

they had received the land, got no richer, but, on the contrary,

poorer, having opened three public-houses and left off doing any

work. But when Nekhludoff entered the Guards and spent and

gambled away so much with his aristocratic companions that Elena

Ivanovna, his mother, had to draw on her capital, she was hardly

pained, considering it quite natural and even good that wild oats

should be sown at an early age and in good company, as her son

was doing. At first Nekhludoff struggled, but all that he had

considered good while he had faith in himself was considered bad

by others, and what he had considered evil was looked upon as

good by those among whom he lived, and the struggle grew too

hard. And at last Nekhludoff gave in, i.e., left off believing

himself and began believing others. At first this giving up of

faith in himself was unpleasant, but it did not long continue to

be so. At that time he acquired the habit of smoking, and

drinking wine, and soon got over this unpleasant feeling and even

felt great relief.

 

Nekhludoff, with his passionate nature, gave himself thoroughly

to the new way of life so approved of by all those around, and he

entirely stifled the inner voice which demanded something

different. This began after he moved to St. Petersburg, and

reached its highest point when he entered the army.

 

Military life in general depraves men. It places them in

conditions of complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful

work; frees them of their common human duties, which it replaces

by merely conventional ones to the honour of the regiment, the

uniform, the flag; and, while giving them on the one hand

absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of

servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.

 

But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service

with its honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and

murder, there is added the depraving influence of riches and

nearness to and intercourse with members of the Imperial family,

as is the case in the chosen regiment of the Guards in which all

the officers are rich and of good family, then this depraving

influence creates in the men who succumb to it a perfect mania of

selfishness. And this mania of selfishness attacked Nekhludoff

from the moment he entered the army and began living in the way

his companions lived. He had no occupation whatever except to

dress in a uniform, splendidly made and well brushed by other

people, and, with arms also made and cleaned and handed to him by

others, ride to reviews on a fine horse which had been bred,

broken in and fed by others. There, with other men like himself,

he had to wave a sword, shoot off guns, and teach others to do

the same. He had no other work, and the highly-placed persons,

young and old, the Tsar and those near him, not only sanctioned

his occupation but praised and thanked him for it.

 

After this was done, it was thought important to eat, and

particularly to drink, in officers’ clubs or the salons of the

best restaurants, squandering large sums of money, which came

from some invisible source; then theatres, ballets, women, then

again riding on horseback, waving of swords and shooting, and

again the squandering of money, the wine, cards, and women. This

kind of life acts on military men even more depravingly than on

others, because if any other than a military man lead such a life

he cannot help being ashamed of it in the depth of his heart. A

military man is, on the contrary, proud of a life of this kind

especially at war time, and Nekhludoff had entered the army just

after war with the Turks had been declared. “We are prepared to

sacrifice our lives at the wars, and therefore a gay, reckless

life is not only pardonable, but absolutely necessary for us, and