24

ON leaving the Senate Nekhlyudov walked on with the lawyer, who gave orders for his carriage to follow and began to tell Nekhlyudov about the head of a Government department whom the senators had been discussing – who had been found out and, instead of being sent to the mines (which is what should have happened to him according to the law), was to be appointed governor of a province in Siberia. Having come to the end of this story with all its unsavoury details, and also expatiated with particular relish on an account of how a number of highly placed personages had stolen money destined for the construction of the still unfinished monument they had passed that morning; and how So-and-so’s mistress had made millions on the Stock Exchange; and how one man had sold and another bought a wife, the lawyer started on another tale about a swindle and all sorts of crimes committed by persons in high places, who occupied, not prison cells but presidential chairs in various official institutions. These stories, of which there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply, gave the lawyer much pleasure, showing as they did perfectly clearly that the means he, the lawyer, employed to earn money were quite lawful and innocent in comparison with the means employed for the same purpose by the highest functionaries of Petersburg. He was therefore very much surprised when Nekhlyudov, without listening to the end of his last story about crime at the top, said good-bye, hailed a cab and drove home to his aunt’s house on the embankment.

Nekhlyudov’s spirits were very low. He was saddened chiefly by the rejection of the appeal by the Senate, who thus confirmed the senseless torture Maslova was enduring, and also because this rejection made his unalterable decision to join his lot with hers still more difficult. The terrible tales of evil reigning triumphant which the lawyer had related with such gusto still further deepened his depression; nor could he forget for a moment the cold, hostile look that the once sweet-natured, frank, noble-minded Selyenin had given him.

When Nekhlyudov got in, the doorkeeper handed him a note, which he said rather contemptuously had been written by some woman or other in the hall. It was a note from Lydia Shustova’s mother. She wrote that she had come to thank her daughter’s benefactor and saviour, and to beg and implore him to call at their house on Vassilyevsky Island, Fifth Avenue, number so and so. This was extremely important for Vera Bogodoukhovskaya, she wrote. He need have no fear that they would weary him with expressions of gratitude: they would not speak of gratitude but simply be glad to see him. If possible, would he not come tomorrow morning?

There was another note from a former fellow officer, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, one Bogatyrev, whom Nekhlyudov had asked to pass in person to the Emperor the petition on behalf of the sectarians. Bogatyrev wrote in his large firm handwriting that he would put the petition into the Emperor’s own hands as he had promised, but that the thought had just occurred to him – might it not be better for Nekhlyudov to go and see the person on whom the matter depended, and petition him in the first place?

After the impressions of the last few days in Petersburg Nekhlyudov felt quite hopeless about getting anything done. The plans he had formed in Moscow now appeared to him mere youthful dreams of the sort that are inevitably disappointed when it comes to facing life. Still, being now in Petersburg, he considered it his duty to do all he had set out to do, and so he resolved to call on Bogatyrev the very next day, after which he would follow his advice and see the person on whom the affair of the sectarians depended.

He took the petition of the sectarians out of his portfolio and was reading it over when there was a knock on the door and a footman came in with a message from Countess Katerina Ivanovna, inviting him upstairs to a cup of tea with her.

Nekhlyudov said that he would come at once and putting his papers back in his portfolio went upstairs to his aunt. Looking out of a window on his way, and seeing Mariette’s pair of bays standing in front of the house, he suddenly brightened and felt inclined to smile again.

Mariette, wearing a hat and no longer in black but in a light gaily-coloured dress, was sitting beside the countess’s easy chair, holding a cup of tea in her hand and chattering away, while her beautiful eyes sparkled with laughter. Nekhlyudov entered the room just as Mariette finished telling a funny story – funny and improper, Nekhlyudov guessed from the way they were laughing. The good-natured countess with the dark shadow of down on her upper lip was laughing helplessly, her fat body shaking, while Mariette, her smiling mouth twisted slightly to one side, her head a little bent, sat silently looking at her companion, with a peculiarly mischievous expression on her merry energetic face.

From a few words he had overheard Nekhlyudov could tell that they had been discussing the next most interesting piece of Petersburg news, the episode of the new Siberian governor, and that it was about this that Mariette had said something so funny that it was a long time before the countess could control herself.

‘You will be the death of me,’ she gasped, after a fit of coughing.

Nekhlyudov greeted them and drew up a chair near by. He was on the point of condemning Mariette for her frivolity when, noticing the serious and even somewhat disapproving look on his face, she suddenly, to please him, changed not only her own expression but her attitude of mind, too – which she had wanted to do the moment she saw him. In a twinkling she became grave, dissatisfied with her life, seeking something, striving after something. She was not pretending – she really had appropriated to herself the very same state of mind that Nekhlyudov was in, although she would not have been able to put into words what Nekhlyudov’s state of mind actually was.

She asked him how he had got on with his various interests. He told her about his failure at the Senate and of his meeting with Selyenin.

‘Ah, there’s a pure creature. A real chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. A pure creature,’ both ladies repeated, using the epithet commonly bestowed on Selyenin in society.

‘What is his wife like?’ asked Nekhlyudov.

‘His wife? Well, I don’t want to criticize her, but she does not understand him. Is it possible that he, too, was in favour of dismissing the appeal?’ Mariette asked, with genuine sympathy. ‘It is dreadful. How I pity her!’ she added with a sigh.

He frowned, and wishing to change the subject began to speak about Lydia Shustova, who had been imprisoned in the Fortress and was now released, owing to Mariette’s intervention. He thanked her for influencing her husband and was going on to say how terrible it was that this woman and all her family should have suffered merely because no one had reminded the authorities of them, but before he could finish she interrupted him to give expression to her own indignation.

‘Don’t talk to me about it,’ she said. ‘When my husband told me she could be set free the first thought that came to my mind was: Why has she been kept there, if she is innocent?’ she went on, anticipating what Nekhlyudov was about to say. ‘It is shocking – shocking!’

Countess Katerina Ivanovna saw that Mariette was flirting with her nephew, and this amused her.

’I tell you what,’ she said, when there was a silence. ‘Do come to Aline’s tomorrow night. Kiesewetter will be there. And you come too,’ she turned to Mariette.

‘Il vous a remarque,’¹ she said to her nephew. ‘He told me that what you say – I repeated it all to him – is a very good sign that you will surely come to Christ. You absolutely must come over tomorrow. Tell him to, Mariette, and come yourself ’

‘In the first place, countess, I have no right whatever to offer any kind of advice to the prince,’ said Mariette, and gave Nekhlyudov a look that somehow established a full understanding between them of their attitude in relation to the countess’s words and to evangelism in general, ‘and, secondly, I do not much care, as you know…’

‘Yes, you always do everything contrariwise, according to your own ideas.’

‘My own ideas? I am a believer, like the simplest peasant woman,’ she said, smiling. ‘And, thirdly, I am going to the French theatre tomorrow night…’

‘Ah! And have you seen that – what is her name?’ the countess asked Nekhlyudov.

Mariette mentioned the name of a celebrated French actress.

‘Be sure and go. She is wonderful.’

‘Well, whom shall I go to see first, ma tante, the actress or the preacher?’ said Nekhlyudov, smiling.

‘Don’t you take me up on my own words!’

’I should think the preacher first, and then the French actress, or else the desire for a sermon might vanish altogether,’ said Nekhlyudov.

‘No, better start with the French theatre and do penance afterwards,’ said Mariette.

‘Stop making fun of me, both of you. The preacher is one thing, the theatre another. There is no need to pull a face a yard long and weep all the time, in order to be saved. One must have faith, and then one is happy.’

‘You preach better than any preacher, ma tante.’

‘Do you know what,’ said Mariette thoughtfully. ‘Why not come to my box tomorrow?’

‘I am afraid I shan’t be able…’

The conversation was interrupted by the footman announcing a visitor. It was the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the countess was president.

‘Oh, he’s a fearfully tedious person. I had better sec him in the other room. I will return to you later. Mariette, give him some tea,’ said the countess, and waddled briskly into the hall with her fidgety gait.

Mariette removed a glove from her firm, rather flat hand, the fourth finger of which was covered with rings.

‘Will you have a cup?’ she said, taking the silver teapot from the spirit stand and holding her little finger out in a curious manner.

Her face was grave and sad.

‘It is always terribly painful to me to think that people whose opinion I value confuse me with the position in which I am placed.’

She seemed ready to cry as she said these last words. And though, if one were to analyse them, the words either had no meaning at all, or only a very vague meaning, they seemed to Nekhlyudov to be exceptionally profound, sincere and good, so attracted was he by the look in the shining eyes which accompanied the words of this young, beautiful and well-dressed woman.

Nekhlyudov gazed at her in silence, unable to tear his eyes from her face.

‘You think I don’t understand you and what is going on within you. Why, everybody knows what you have done. C’est le secret de polichinelle.¹ And I admire you and approve.’

‘Really, there is nothing to admire. I have accomplished so little as yet.’

‘That makes no difference. I understand how you feel, and I understand her – Very well, I will say no more.’ She broke off, noticing displeasure on his face. ‘But I can also understand that seeing all the misery, all the horror of what happens in prison,’ Mariette went on, desiring only one thing – to attract him – and divining with her woman’s instinct what was dear and important to him, ‘you want to help those who suffer, and suffer so terribly, at the hands of other men, through indifference or cruelty…. I understand how one can give up one’s life to this, and I would give up mine. But to each his own fate…’

‘Surely you aren’t dissatisfied with your fate?’

’I?’ she asked, as though struck with surprise that such a question could be put to her. ’I have to be content, and I am. But there is a worm that sometimes wakes up…’

‘… And ought not to be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that must be trusted,’ Nekhlyudov said, falling into the trap.

Later, Nekhlyudov often remembered this conversation with shame. He would recall her words, which were not so much deliberate falsehoods as an unconscious echo of his own, and the expression of eager attention with which she listened when he told her of the horrors of the gaol and of his experiences in the country.

When the countess returned, they were conversing not merely like old friends but like intimate friends, two people who alone understood each other among an uncomprehending crowd.

They talked of the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the unfortunate, of the poverty of the people, but in reality their eyes, gazing at each other through the sounds of their conversation, kept asking: ‘Can you love me?’ and answering ‘I can,’ and physical desire, assuming the most unexpected and radiant forms, was drawing them together.

As she was leaving she said how willing she would always be to help him in any way she could, and asked him to be sure and come to see her in the theatre on the following evening, if only for a moment, as she had one other very important matter to discuss with him.

‘For when shall I see you again?’ she added with a sigh, carefully pulling a glove over her beringed hand. ‘Say that you will come.’

Nekhlyudov promised.

That night, when Nekhlyudov was alone in his room and had gone to bed and put out the candle, he could not get to sleep for a long time. While he was thinking of Maslova, of the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her all the same and to give up his rights to the land, suddenly, as though in response to his thoughts, Mariette’s face appeared before him with her sigh, and the glance as she said: ‘When shall I see you again?’ and her smile – all so distinctly that he smiled back as though he saw her. ‘Am I doing right in going to Siberia? And shall I be doing right in giving up my wealth?’ he asked himself.

The white Petersburg night streamed in through the half-drawn window-blinds, but the answers to these questions were vague and confused. Everything was tangled in his mind. He thought back to his former mood and remembered how his ideas ran then; but now those ideas of his had lost something of their power to convince.

‘What if it should all turn out to be an empty vision and I can’t live up to it?’ he said to himself, and, unable to arrive at any solution, he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had not known for a long time. Failing to find his way through his maze of doubts, he fell into the sort of heavy sleep that he used to sink into after losing a vast sum at cards.