And he related the circumstances of the case.
“How have you come to know of this?” said Maslennikoff, looking uneasy and dissatisfied.
“I went to see a prisoner, and these men came and surrounded me in the corridor, and asked . . .”
“What prisoner did you go to see?”
“A peasant who is kept in prison, though innocent. I have put his case into the hands of a lawyer. But that is not the point.”
“Is it possible that people who have done no wrong are imprisoned only because their passports are overdue? And . . .”
“That’s the Procureur’s business,” Maslennikoff interrupted, angrily. “There, now, you see what it is you call a prompt and just form of trial. It is the business of the Public Prosecutor to visit the prison and to find out if the prisoners are kept there lawfully. But that set play cards; that’s all they do.”
“Am I to understand that you can do nothing?” Nekhludoff said, despondently, remembering that the advocate had foretold that the Governor would put the blame on the Procureur.
“Oh, yes, I can. I shall see about it at once.”
“So much the worse for her. C’est un souffre douleur,” came the voice of a woman, evidently indifferent to what she was saying, from the drawing-room.
“So much the better. I shall take it also,” a man’s voice was heard to say from the other side, followed by the playful laughter of a woman, who was apparently trying to prevent the man from taking something away from her.
“No, no; not on any account,” the woman’s voice said.
“All right, then. I shall do all this,” Maslennikoff repeated, and put out the cigarette he held in his white, turquoise-ringed hand. “And now let us join the ladies.”
“Wait a moment,” Nekhludoff said, stopping at the door of the drawing-room. “I was told that some men had received corporal punishment in the prison yesterday. Is this true?”
Maslennikoff blushed.
“Oh, that’s what you are after? No, mon cher, decidedly it won’t do to let you in there; you want to get at everything. Come, come; Anna is calling us,” he said, catching Nekhludoff by the arm, and again becoming as excited as after the attention paid him by the important person, only now his excitement was not joyful, but anxious.
Nekhludoff pulled his arm away, and without taking leave of any one and without saying a word, he passed through the drawing-room with a dejected look, went down into the hall, past the footman, who sprang towards him, and out at the street door.
“What is the matter with him? What have you done to him?” asked Anna of her husband.
“This is a la Francaise,” remarked some one.
“A la Francaise, indeed—it is a la Zoulou.”
“Oh, but he’s always been like that.”
Some one rose, some one came in, and the clatter went on its course. The company used this episode with Nekhludoff as a convenient topic of conversation for the rest of the “at-home.”
On the day following his visit to Maslennikoff, Nekhludoff received a letter from him, written in a fine, firm hand, on thick, glazed paper, with a coat-of-arms, and sealed with sealing-wax. Maslennikoff said that he had written to the doctor concerning Maslova’s removal to the hospital, and hoped Nekhludoff’s wish would receive attention. The letter was signed, “Your affectionate elder comrade,” and the signature ended with a large, firm, and artistic flourish. “Fool!” Nekhludoff could not refrain from saying, especially because in the word “comrade” he felt Maslennikoff’s condescension towards him, i.e., while Maslennikoff was filling this position, morally most dirty and shameful, he still thought himself a very important man, and wished, if not exactly to flatter Nekhludoff, at least to show that he was not too proud to call him comrade.
LIX
Nekhludoff’s third interview with Maslova in prison.
One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man, In some people these changes are very rapid, and Nekhludoff was such a man. These changes in him were due to physical and to spiritual causes. At this time he experienced such a change.
That feeling of triumph and joy at the renewal of life which he had experienced after the trial and after the first interview with Katusha, vanished completely, and after the last interview fear and revulsion took the place of that joy. He was determined not to leave her, and not to change his decision of marrying her, if she wished it; but it seemed very hard, and made him suffer.
On the day after his visit to Maslennikoff, he again went to the prison to see her.
The inspector allowed him to speak to her, only not in the advocate’s room nor in the office, but in the women’s visiting-room. In spite of his kindness, the inspector was more reserved with Nekhludoff than hitherto.
An order for greater caution had apparently been sent, as a result of his conversation with Meslennikoff.
“You may see her,” the inspector said; “but please remember what I said as regards money. And as to her removal to the hospital, that his excellency wrote to me about, it can be done; the doctor would agree. Only she herself does not wish it. She says, ‘Much need have I to carry out the slops for the scurvy beggars.’ You don’t know what these people are, Prince,” he added.
Nekhludoff did not reply, but asked to have the interview. The inspector called a jailer, whom Nekhludoff followed into the women’s visiting-room, where there was no one but Maslova waiting. She came from behind the grating, quiet and timid, close up to him, and said, without looking at him:
“Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovitch, I spoke hastily the day before yesterday.”
“It is not for me to forgive you,” Nekhludoff began.
“But all the same, you must leave me,” she interrupted, and in the terribly squinting eyes with which she looked at him Nekhludoff read the former strained, angry expression.
“Why should I leave you?”
“So.”
“But why so?”
She again looked up, as it seemed to him, with the same angry look.
“Well, then, thus it is,” she said. “You must leave me. It is true what I am saying. I cannot. You just give it up altogether.”
Her lips trembled and she was silent for a moment. “It is true. I’d rather hang myself.”
Nekhludoff felt that in this refusal there was hatred and unforgiving resentment, but there was also something besides, something good. This confirmation of the refusal in cold blood at once quenched all the doubts in Nekhludoff’s bosom, and brought back the serious, triumphant emotion he had felt in relation to Katusha.
“Katusha, what I have said I will again repeat,” he uttered, very seriously. “I ask you to marry me. If you do not wish it, and for as long as you do not wish it, I shall only continue to follow you, and shall go where you are taken.”
“That is your business. I shall not say anything more,” she answered, and her lips began to tremble again.
He, too, was silent, feeling unable to speak.
“I shall now go to the country, and then to Petersburg,” he said, when he was quieter again. “I shall do my utmost to get your—- our case, I mean, reconsidered, and by the help of God the sentence may be revoked.”