29

THE first thing Nekhlyudov did on his return to Moscow was to drive to the prison hospital to tell Maslova the sad news that the Senate had confirmed the decision of the court and she must prepare for the journey to Siberia.

He had little hope in the petition to the Emperor which the lawyer had drawn up for him and which he now brought to the prison for Maslova to sign. And, strangely enough, he was no longer anxious for its success. He had got used to the idea of going to Siberia and living among deportees and convicts, and he found it hard to imagine what arrangements he should make for Maslova and himself if she were to be acquitted. He remembered what the American writer Thoreau had said, at the time when slavery existed in America, that the only proper place for an honest man in a country where slavery is legalized and protected was the gaol. After his visit to Petersburg, especially, and all he had discovered there, Nekhlyudov thought the same.

‘Yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison,’ he reflected, and he even had a direct sensation of this as he drove up to the gaol and entered within its walls.

The porter at the hospital recognized Nekhlyudov and informed him at once that Maslova was no longer there.

‘Where is she, then?’

‘Back in the lock-up.’

‘Why was she transferred?’ asked Nekhlyudov.

‘Ah, Your Excellency, what can you expect from people like that,’ said the doorkeeper, smiling contemptuously. ‘She started running after the medical assistant, so the head doctor sent her away.’

Nekhlyudov would never have believed that Maslova and the state of her affections could touch him so closely. The news stunned him. He felt as people feel when some unexpected calamity befalls them. He was painfully upset. His first sensation on hearing the news was one of mortification. It made him ridiculous in his own eyes to remember how happy he had felt at the spiritual change he had supposed was taking place in her. All that talk of hers about being unwilling to accept his sacrifice, the tears, the reproaches – they were all, he thought, simply devices of a depraved woman out to make use of him to the best possible advantage. It now seemed to him that on his last visit he had noticed signs of the incorrigible viciousness which had now come to light. All this flashed through his mind while he mechanically put on his hat and left the hospital.

‘But what am I to do now?’ he wondered. ‘Am I still bound to her? Does not this behaviour of hers set me free?’ he asked himself.

But the moment he put these questions to himself he immediately realized that to consider himself liberated and to abandon her would be to punish, not her, which is what he wished to do, but himself, and he was seized with fear.

‘No, what has happened cannot alter my resolve – it can only strengthen it. Let her do what she must. If it is carrying on with the medical assistant, then let her carry on with the medical assistant: that is her affair. My business is to do what my conscience demands of me,’ he said to himself. ‘And my conscience demands that I should sacrifice my freedom in expiation of my sin; and my determination to marry her, even if it is a marriage in name only, and to follow her wherever she may be sent, remains unchanged,’ he said to himself with bitter obstinacy, as he left the hospital and walked resolutely to the big gates of the prison.

At the gates he asked the warder on duty to tell the chief warder that he wished to see Maslova. The warder knew Nekhlyudov and speaking as to an old acquaintance told him an important piece of prison news: the old senior warder had retired and a new chief, who was very strict, had been appointed in his place.

‘The severe measures here now – it’s frightful,’ said the keeper. ‘He’s in there, I’ll let him know at once.’

The senior warder was indeed in the prison and came out to Nekhlyudov almost immediately. The new man was tall and angular, with projecting cheek-bones, morose, and very slow in his movements.

‘Interviews are only allowed on certain days in the visiting-room,’ he said, without looking at Nekhlyudov.

‘But I have a petition to the Emperor which I want signed.’

‘You may leave it with me.’

‘I must see the prisoner myself. I was always allowed to before.’

‘Yes, that was before,’ said the senior warder, with a cursory glance at Nekhlyudov.

‘I have the governor’s permission,’ insisted Nekhlyudov, taking out his pocket-book.

‘Allow me,’ said the senior warder, still not looking him in the eyes, and with his dry, long white fingers – there was a gold ring on the forefinger – he took the paper which Nekhlyudov handed to him, and read it slowly. ‘Will you come into the office ?’ he said.

There was no one in the office. The senior warder sat down at a table and began looking through some papers lying on it, evidently intending to be present at the interview. When Nekhlyudov asked him whether he might also see the political prisoner Bogodoukhovskaya, the senior warder answered shortly that it was impossible.

‘Interviews with political prisoners are not allowed,’ he said, and again became engrossed in his papers.

Having a letter to Bogodoukhovskaya in his pocket, Nekhlyudov felt like a guilty person whose plans have been discovered and frustrated.

When Maslova entered the office the senior warder raised his head and, without looking either at her or Nekhlyudov, remarked, ‘You may talk,’ and continued to busy himself with the papers.

Maslova had on the clothes she wore before: a white bodice, skirt and kerchief. When she came up to Nekhlyudov and saw his cold unfriendly face she flushed scarlet and fingering the edge of her bodice lowered her eyes. Her confusion was confirmation for Nekhlyudov of the hospital porter’s story.

Nekhlyudov had meant to treat her in the same way as before but could not bring himself to hold out his hand, so repugnant was she to him now.

‘I have brought you bad news,’ he said in a flat voice, without looking at her or extending his hand. ‘The Senate has rejected the appeal.’

‘I knew they would,’ she said with difficulty, as though gasping for breath.

Before, Nekhlyudov would have asked her why she said that she knew they would; now he only looked at her. Her eyes were filled with tears.

But this did not mollify him: on the contrary, it roused his irritation against her still further.

The senior warder rose and began to walk up and down the room.

In spite of the aversion Nekhlyudov now felt for Maslova, he still felt that he must express regret to her at the Senate’s decision.

‘You mustn’t despair,’ he said. ‘The petition to His Majesty may be successful, and I hope –’

‘I don’t care about that,’ she said, giving him a piteous look with her squinting tearful eyes.

‘What is the matter then?’

‘You have been to the hospital, and no doubt they told you I –’

‘Well, that’s your own affair,’ said Nekhlyudov coldly, with a frown.

The cruel feeling of wounded pride rose to the surface again with renewed force when she mentioned the hospital. ‘He, a man of the world, whom any girl from high society would consider herself lucky to marry, had offered himself as a husband to this woman, and she could not even wait but had to start an intrigue with a doctor’s assistant,’ he thought, and looked at her with hatred.

‘Sign this petition now,’ he said, taking a large envelope from his pocket and laying it on the table. She wiped away her tears with a corner of her kerchief, and sat down at the table, asking him where and what to write.

He showed her what and where to write, and she sat down, arranging the cuff of her right sleeve with her left hand, while he stood behind her, silently looking down at her back bent over the table and which every now and then was convulsed with repressed sobs; and two conflicting emotions of evil and good struggled in his breast: wounded pride and pity for the suffering girl – and it was pity that won.

He never could remember which came first – was it pity for her that first entered his heart, or did he first think back on himself, on his own sins, his own contemptible life – exactly what he condemned in her? Anyhow, all of a sudden he was conscious of his own guilt and that he pitied her.

When she had signed the petition and wiped an inky finger on her skirt she got up and looked at him.

‘No matter what comes of it, and no matter what happens, nothing will alter my decision,’ said Nekhlyudov.

The thought that he was forgiving her increased his sense of pity and tenderness, and he wanted to comfort her.

‘I will do what I said. Wherever they send you, I shall be with you. ‘

‘What’s the use?’ she interrupted him quickly, but her face was radiant.

‘You had better think what you may need for the journey.’

‘I don’t know of anything in particular, thank you.’

The senior warder walked over to them, and Nekhlyudov, anticipating what he was going to say, bade her good-bye and went out, with such quiet joy, peace and love towards all men as he had never experienced before. The certainty that nothing Maslova might do could alter his love for her rejoiced and lifted him to heights unknown till now. Let her flirt with the medical orderly – that was her business: he loved her, not selfishly, but for her own sake and for God’s.

As for the flirtation with the doctor’s assistant for which Maslova was turned out of the hospital, and which Nekhlyudov believed to be true, it amounted to this : sent by the ward sister to fetch some herb-tea from the dispensary at the end of the corridor, Maslova found Ustinov, the doctor’s assistant alone there, a tall fellow with a pimply face, who had been pestering her for some time. Trying to get away from him, she gave him such a violent push that he knocked against a shelf, from which two bottles fell down and smashed. The senior doctor who happened to be going along the corridor at that moment, hearing the crash of broken glass and seeing Maslova running out of the room, her face all red, shouted to her angrily:

‘Look here, my good woman, unless you can behave yourself, I shall have to send you away. What’s the trouble in here?’ he went on to the medical orderly, looking at him sternly over his spectacles.

The assistant, smiling, began to make his excuses. The doctor lifted his head, so that he was now looking through his spectacles, and went on into the ward without waiting to hear the end; and that same day told the head warder to send him a more sedate person in Maslova’s place. That was all there was to Maslova’s flirtation with the medical orderly. Dismissal from the hospital for carrying on with men was particularly painful to Maslova, since after meeting Nekhlyudov again all relations with men, which had long been distasteful to her, had become especially revolting. What hurt her terribly and made her pity herself to the point of weeping, was that everybody, the pimply assistant included, knowing what her past life had been, and her present situation, considered they had a right to insult her and were surprised when she resisted. Now, going into the office to see Nekhlyudov, she had intended to clear herself of the false accusation which she knew he would hear about sooner or later. But when she began to explain she felt that he did not believe her and that her explanations would only confirm his suspicions. Tears choked her and she broke off.

Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had not forgiven him, and hated him, as she had told him at their second interview, but the truth was that she really loved him again, and so much so, that she could not help trying to do all she could to please him: she had given up drinking and smoking, she no longer flirted, and she had gone to work in the hospital. All this she had done because she knew he wished it. And if every time he referred to it, she refused so determinedly to accept his sacrifice and marry him, this was partly because she enjoyed repeating the proud words she had once used to him, but above all because she knew that a marriage with her would be a misfortune for him. She had firmly made up her mind not to accept his sacrifice, yet the thought that he despised her and believed that she was still what she had been, and that he had not noticed the change that had taken place in her, was very painful. That he might still be thinking that she had done something wrong in the hospital upset her far more than the news that her sentence was confirmed.