4

MARYA PAVLOVNA’S influence was one of the influences to which Maslova surrendered herself. It sprang from Maslova’s affection for Marya Pavlovna. The other influence was that of Simonson, which sprang from the fact that Simonson loved Maslova.

People live and act partly according to their own ideas, and partly because they are influenced by the ideas of others. The extent to which they do the one or the other is one of the chief things that differentiate men. Some people mostly only play at thinking: their minds are like a fly-wheel from which the driving-belt has been removed; their actions are determined by other people’s ideas – by custom, by tradition, by laws. Others on the contrary, regarding their personal ideas as the chief motive power of all their activities, nearly always listen to the dictates of their own reason and submit to it, accepting other people’s opinions only occasionally, and then only after considering them critically. Simonson belonged to the second of these types. He weighed and tested everything according to his own lights, and acted on the decisions thus arrived at.

Having come to the conclusion, while still a schoolboy, that his father’s income as administrator in a government department was dishonestly earned, he told his father that he ought to give it back to the people. And when his father, far from following this advice, rated him soundly for his foolishness, he left home, refusing any longer to accept his father’s assistance. Deciding that all the evil in the world arises out of ignorance, he joined up with the People’s Party as soon as he left the university, became a village school-master and boldly taught and explained to his pupils and to the peasants what he considered to be just, and condemned what he considered false.

He was arrested and tried.

During his trial he came to the conclusion that his judges had no right to sit in judgement upon him, and told them so. When the judges ignored what he said and continued the trial he decided not to answer their questions, and remained resolutely silent. They exiled him to the Province of Arch-angel. There he formulated a religious teaching which governed all his activity. According to this doctrine everything in the world is alive; there is no inert body, but everything hitherto termed lifeless, ‘inorganic’ matter is simply part of an immense organic body which we cannot comprehend, and that the task of man, as a particle of that huge organism, is to preserve its life and that of all its living parts. Therefore he considered it a crime to destroy life, and was opposed to war, capital punishment and killing of every sort, not only of human beings but of animals too. He also had a theory of his own in regard to marriage: to increase and multiply seemed to him only a lower function of man, the higher function being to serve all already existing life. He found a confirmation of this idea in the presence of phagocytes in the blood. Celibates, according to him, were like phagocytes, whose mission it is to strengthen the weak, diseased parts of the organism. From the moment he came to this conclusion he lived accordingly, though as a youth he had led a dissolute life. He regarded himself now, and also Marya Pavlovna, as phagocytes in the body of the universe.

His love for Katusha did not impair this theory, since he loved her platonically, believing that such a love could not interfere with his activity as a phagocyte, but, on the contrary, would still further inspire his efforts on behalf of the weak.

But moral problems were not the only ones that he decided in this original way: he had theories of his own concerning most practical questions, too. He had a theory for every practical affair: he had rules for the number of hours a man should work and rest, the kind of food he should eat, the kind of clothes he should wear, the proper form of heating and lighting for a house, and so on.

At the same time Simonson was exceedingly shy with people, and modest. But once he made up his mind nothing could shake him.

This, then, was the man who had a decisive influence on Maslova, through his love for her. With a woman’s instinct Maslova very soon divined the state of affairs, and the knowledge that she could awaken love in such an unusual man raised her in her own estimation. Nekhlyudov’s offer of marriage was due to generosity and what had happened in the past, but Simonson loved her as she was now, and loved her simply because he loved her. Moreover, she felt that Simonson looked upon her as a woman out of the ordinary, different from all other women, and having certain special, high moral qualities. She did not exactly know what these qualities he attributed to her might be, but, in order to be on the safe side and not disappoint him, she tried with all her might to summon up in herself the best qualities she could think of. And this compelled her to be as good as she knew how to be.

All this had started back in the prison, on a general visiting day for the politicals, when she had become aware of the peculiarly persistent look he fixed on her with his guileless, kindly dark-blue eyes under the overhanging forehead and eyebrows. Even then she had noticed what a strange man he was and how strangely he looked at her, and had remarked the striking combination in one face of severity, emphasized by hair sticking up on end and frowning brows, with good-nature and child-like innocence. Later, at Tomsk, after she had been transferred to the politicals, she saw him again. And though not a word passed between them, the look they exchanged was an admission that they remembered each other and were important to each other. They never had any serious conversation even after that, but Maslova felt that whenever he was talking in her presence his words were meant for her, and that he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as clearly as possible. It was when he started walking with the criminal prisoners that they began to grow specially near to one another.