The Awakening Part 14

"What a remarkable coincidence! That this case should be tried during my term! That, without seeing her for ten years, I should meet her here in the prisoner's dock! And what will be the end? Ah, I wish it were over!"

He would not yield to the feeling of repentance which spoke within him. He considered it an incident which would soon pa.s.s away without disturbing his life. He felt himself in the position of a puppy who had misbehaved in his master's rooms, and whom his master, taking him by the neck, thrust into the dirt he had made. The puppy squeals, pulls back in his effort to escape the consequences of his deed, which he wishes to forget, but the inexorable master holds him fast. Thus Nekhludoff felt the foulness of his act, and he also felt the powerful hand of the master, but did not yet understand the significance of his act, did not recognize the master. He did not wish to believe that what he saw before him was the result of his own deed. But the inexorable, invisible hand held him fast, and he had a foreboding that he should not escape. He summoned up his courage, crossed his legs, as was his wont, and, negligently playing with his pince-nez, he sat with an air of self-confidence on the second chair of the front row.

Meanwhile he already felt in the depth of his soul all the cruelty, dastardliness and baseness not only of that act of his, but of his whole idle, dissolute, cruel and wayward life. And the terrible veil, which during these twelve years in such marvelous manner had hidden from him that crime and all his subsequent life, already began to stir, and now and then he caught a glimpse behind it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The justiciary finally finished his speech and handed the list of questions to the foreman. The jury rose from their seats, glad of an opportunity to leave the court-room, and, not knowing what to do with their hands, as if ashamed of something, they filed into the consultation-room. As soon as the door closed behind them a gendarme, with drawn sword resting on his shoulder, placed himself in front of it. The judges rose and went out. The prisoners also were led away.

On entering the consultation-room the jury immediately produced cigarettes and began to smoke. The sense of their unnatural and false position, of which they were to a greater or less degree cognizant, while sitting in the court-room, pa.s.sed away as soon as they entered their room and lighted their cigarettes, and, with a feeling of relief, they seated themselves and immediately started an animated conversation.

"The girl is not guilty, she was confused," said the kind-hearted merchant.

"That is what we are going to consider," retorted the foreman. "We must not yield to our personal impressions."

"The judge's summing up was good," said the colonel.

"Do you call it good? It nearly sent me to sleep."

"The important point is that the servants could not have known that there was money in the room if Maslova had no understanding with them," said the clerk with the Jewish face.

"So you think that she stole it?" asked one of the jury.

"I will never believe that," shouted the kind-hearted merchant. "It is all the work of that red-eyed wench."

"They are all alike," said the colonel.

"But she said that she did not go into the room."

"Do you believe her more than the other? I should never believe that worthless woman."

"That does not decide the question," said the clerk.

"She had the key."

"What if she had?" answered the merchant.

"And the ring?"

"She explained it," again shouted the merchant. "It is quite likely that being drunk he struck her. Well, and then he was sorry, of course. 'There, don't cry! Take this ring.' And what a big man! They said he weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, I believe."

"That is not the point," interrupted Peter Gerasimovich. "The question is, Was she the instigator, or were the servants?"

"The servants could not have done it without her. She had the key."

This incoherent conversation lasted for a long time.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said the foreman. "Let us sit down and consider the matter. Take your seats," he added, seating himself in the foreman's chair.

"These girls are rogues," said the clerk, and to sustain his opinion that Maslova was the chief culprit, he related how one of those girls once stole a watch from a friend of his.

As a case in point the colonel related the bolder theft of a silver _samovar_.

"Gentlemen, let us take up the questions," said the foreman, rapping on the table with a pencil.

They became silent. The questions submitted were:

1. Is the peasant of the village of Barkoff, district of Krapivensk, Simon Petroff Kartinkin, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having, with the design of taking the life of Smelkoff and robbing him, administered to him poison in a gla.s.s of brandy, which caused the death of Smelkoff, and of afterward robbing him of twenty-five hundred rubles and a diamond ring?

2. Is the burgess Euphemia Ivanovna Bochkova, forty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

3. Is the burgess Katherine Michaelovna Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

4. If the prisoner Euphemia Bochkova is not guilty of the crime set forth in the first question, is she not guilty of secretly stealing, while employed in the Hotel Mauritania, on the 17th day of January, 188-, twenty-five hundred rubles from the trunk of the merchant Smelkoff, to which end she opened the trunk in the hotel with a key brought and fitted by her?

The foreman read the first question.

"Well, gentlemen, what do you think?"

This question was quickly answered. They all agreed to answer "Guilty." The only one that dissented was an old laborer, whose answer to all questions was "Not guilty."

The foreman thought that he did not understand the questions and proceeded to explain that from all the facts it was evident that Kartinkin and Bochkova were guilty, but the laborer answered that he did understand them, and that he thought that they ought to be charitable. "We are not saints ourselves," he said, and did not change his opinion.

The second question, relating to Bochkova, after many arguments and elucidations, was answered "Not guilty," because there was no clear proof that she partic.i.p.ated in the poisoning--a fact on which her lawyer put much stress.

The merchant, desiring to acquit Maslova, insisted that Bochkova was the author of the conspiracy. Many of the jurymen agreed with him, but the foreman, desiring to conform strictly to the law, said that there was no foundation for the charge of poisoning against her. After a lengthy argument the foreman's opinion triumphed.

The fourth question, relating to Bochkova, was answered "Guilty," but at the insistence of the laborer, she was recommended to the mercy of the court.

The third question called forth fierce argument. The foreman insisted that she was guilty of both the poisoning and robbery; the merchant, colonel, clerk and laborer opposed this view, while the others hesitated, but the opinion of the foreman began to predominate, princ.i.p.ally because the jury were tired out, and they willingly joined the side which promised to prevail the sooner, and consequently release them quicker.

From all that occurred at the trial and his knowledge of Maslova, Nekhludoff was convinced that she was innocent, and at first was confident that the other jurors would so find her, but when he saw that because of the merchant's bungling defense of Maslova, evidently prompted by his undisguised liking for her, and the foreman's resistance which it caused, but chiefly because of the weariness of the jury, there was likely to be a verdict of guilty, he wished to make objection, but feared to speak in her favor lest his relations toward her should be disclosed. At the same time he felt that he could not let things go on without making his objections. He blushed and grew pale in turn, and was about to speak, when Peter Gerasimovich, heretofore silent, evidently exasperated by the authoritative manner of the foreman, suddenly began to make the very objections Nekhludoff intended to make.

"Permit me to say a few words," he began. "You say that she stole the money because she had the key; but the servants could have opened the trunk with a false key after she was gone."

"Of course, of course," the merchant came to his support.

"She could not have taken the money because she would have nowhere to hide it."

"That is what I said," the merchant encouraged him.

"It is more likely that her coming to the hotel for the money suggested to the servants the idea of stealing it; that they stole it and then threw it all upon her."

Peter Gerasimovich spoke provokingly, which communicated itself to the foreman. As a result the latter began to defend his position more persistently. But Peter Gerasimovich spoke so convincingly that he won over the majority, and it was finally decided that she was not guilty of the theft. When, however, they began to discuss the part she had taken in the poisoning, her warm supporter, the merchant, argued that this charge must also be dismissed, as she had no motive for poisoning him. The foreman insisted that she could not be declared innocent on that charge, because she herself confessed to giving him the powder.