Not only moral, but also most practical questions he decided in his own way. He applied a theory of his own to all practical business, had rules relating to the number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of food to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all this Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made up his mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided influence on Maslova through his love for her. With a woman’s instinct Maslova very soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that she could awaken love in a man of that kind raised her in her own estimation. It was Nekhludoff’s magnanimity and what had been in the past that made him offer to marry her, but Simonson loved her such as she was now, loved her simply because of the love he bore her. And she felt that Simonson considered her to be an exceptional woman, having peculiarly high moral qualities. She did not quite know what the qualities he attributed to her were, but in order to be on the safe side and that he should not be disappointed in her, she tried with all her might to awaken in herself all the highest qualities she could conceive, and she tried to be as good as possible. This had begun while they were still in prison, when on a common visiting day she had noticed his kindly dark blue eyes gazing fixedly at her from under his projecting brow. Even then she had noticed that this was a peculiar man, and that he was looking at her in a peculiar manner, and had also noticed the striking combination of sternness—the unruly hair and the frowning forehead gave him this appearance—with the child-like kindness and innocence of his look. She saw him again in Tomsk, where she joined the political prisoners. Though they had not uttered a word, their looks told plainly that they had understood one another. Even after that they had had no serious conversation with each other, but Maslova felt that when he spoke in her presence his words were addressed to her, and that he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as plainly as he could; but it was when he started walking with the criminal prisoners that they grew specially near to one another.
V
The political prisoners.
Until they left Perm Nekhludoff only twice managed to see Katusha, once in Nijni, before the prisoners were embarked on a barge surrounded with a wire netting, and again in Perm in the prison office. At both these interviews he found her reserved and unkind. She answered his questions as to whether she was in want of anything, and whether she was comfortable, evasively and bashfully, and, as he thought, with the same feeling of hostile reproach which she had shown several times before. Her depressed state of mind, which was only the result of the molestations from the men that she was undergoing at the time, tormented Nekhludoff. He feared lest, influenced by the hard and degrading circumstances in which she was placed on the journey, she should again get into that state of despair and discord with her own self which formerly made her irritable with him, and which had caused her to drink and smoke excessively to gain oblivion. But he was unable to help her in any way during this part of the journey, as it was impossible for him to be with her. It was only when she joined the political prisoners that he saw how unfounded his fears were, and at each interview he noticed that inner change he so strongly desired to see in her becoming more and more marked. The first time they met in Tomsk she was again just as she had been when leaving Moscow. She did not frown or become confused when she saw him, but met him joyfully and simply, thanking him for what he had done for her, especially for bringing her among the people with whom she now was.
After two months’ marching with the gang, the change that had taken place within her became noticeable in her appearance. She grew sunburned and thinner, and seemed older; wrinkles appeared on her temples and round her mouth. She had no ringlets on her forehead now, and her hair was covered with the kerchief; in the way it was arranged, as well as in her dress and her manners, there was no trace of coquetry left. And this change, which had taken place and was still progressing in her, made Nekhludoff very happy.
He felt for her something he had never experienced before. This feeling had nothing in common with his first poetic love for her, and even less with the sensual love that had followed, nor even with the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled, not unmixed with self-admiration, with which he decided to marry her after the trial. The present feeling was simply one of pity and tenderness. He had felt it when he met her in prison for the first time, and then again when, after conquering his repugnance, he forgave her the imagined intrigue with the medical assistant in the hospital (the injustice done her had since been discovered); it was the same feeling he now had, only with this difference, that formerly it was momentary, and that now it had become permanent. Whatever he was doing, whatever he was thinking now, a feeling of pity and tenderness dwelt with him, and not only pity and tenderness for her, but for everybody. This feeling seemed to have opened the floodgates of love, which had found no outlet in Nekhludoff’s soul, and the love now flowed out to every one he met.
During this journey Nekhludoff’s feelings were so stimulated that he could not help being attentive and considerate to everybody, from the coachman and the convoy soldiers to the prison inspectors and governors whom he had to deal with. Now that Maslova was among the political prisoners, Nekhludoff could not help becoming acquainted with many of them, first in Ekaterinburg, where they had a good deal of freedom and were kept altogether in a large cell, and then on the road when Maslova was marching with three of the men and four of the women. Coming in contact with political exiles in this way made Nekhludoff completely change his mind concerning them.
From the very beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but especially since that first of March, when Alexander II was murdered, Nekhludoff regarded the revolutionists with dislike and contempt. He was repulsed by the cruelty and secrecy of the methods they employed in their struggles against the government, especially the cruel murders they committed, and their arrogance also disgusted him. But having learned more intimately to know them and all they had suffered at the hands of the government, he saw that they could not be other than they were.
Terrible and endless as were the torments which were inflicted on the criminals, there was at least some semblance of justice shown them before and after they were sentenced, but in the case of the political prisoners there was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw in the case of Sholostova and that of many and many of his new acquaintances. These people were dealt with like fish caught with a net; everything that gets into the nets is pulled ashore, and then the big fish which are required are sorted out and the little ones are left to perish unheeded on the shore. Having captured hundreds that were evidently guiltless, and that could not be dangerous to the government, they left them imprisoned for years, where they became consumptive, went out of their minds or committed suicide, and kept them only because they had no inducement to set them free, while they might be of use to elucidate some question at a judicial inquiry, safe in prison. The fate of these persons, often innocent even from the government point of view, depended on the whim, the humour of, or the amount of leisure at the disposal of some police officer or spy, or public prosecutor, or magistrate, or governor, or minister. Some one of these officials feels dull, or inclined to distinguish himself, and makes a number of arrests, and imprisons or sets free, according to his own fancy or that of the higher authorities. And the higher official, actuated by like motives, according to whether he is inclined to distinguish himself, or to what his relations to the minister are, exiles men to the other side of the world or keeps them in solitary confinement, condemns them to Siberia, to hard labour, to death, or sets them free at the request of some lady.