The Awakening Part 24

"Excuse me, but I fail to see what this has to do with my request,"

fuming, Nekhludoff answered with rancor.

"Nothing, of course," the prosecutor said, with a faint smile on his face, and not in the least disturbed. "But your request is so unusual and beside all customary forms----"

"Well, can I get the permission?"

"Permission? Why, yes. I will give you a pa.s.s immediately. Please be seated."

He went to the table, sat down and began to write.

"Please be seated."

Nekhludoff stood still.

When he had made out the pa.s.s the prosecutor handed it to Nekhludoff and eyed him with curiosity.

"I must also tell you," said Nekhludoff, "that I cannot continue to serve as juror."

"As you know, satisfactory reasons must be given to the court in such cases."

"The reasons are that I consider all courts useless and immoral."

"I see," said the prosecutor, with the same faint smile which seemed to indicate that such statements were familiar to him, and belonged to an amusing cla.s.s of people well known to him. "I see, but you understand that, as public prosecutor, I cannot agree with you. I therefore advise you to state so to the court, which will either find your reasons satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and in the latter case will impose a fine on you. Apply to the court."

"I have already stated my reasons, and I will not go there,"

Nekhludoff said angrily.

"I have the honor to salute you," said the prosecutor, bowing, evidently desiring to rid himself of the strange visitor.

"Who was the man that just left your room?" asked one of the judges who entered the prosecutor's cabinet after Nekhludoff had left.

"Nekhludoff. You know, the one who made such strange suggestions in the Krasnopersk town council. Just imagine, he is on the jury, and among the prisoners there was a woman, or girl, who was sentenced to penal servitude, and who, he says, was deceived by him. And now he wishes to marry her."

"It is impossible!"

"That is what he told me. And how strangely excited he was!"

"There is something wrong with our young men."

"He is not so very young."

"What a bore your famous Ivasheukoff is, my dear! He wins his cases by tiring us out--there is no end to his talking."

"They must be curbed, or they become real obstructionists."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

From the public prosecutor Nekhludoff went straight to the detention-house. But no one by the name of Maslova was there. The inspector told him that she might be found in the old temporary prison. Nekhludoff went there and found that Katherine Moslova was one of the inmates.

The distance between the detention-house and the old prison was great, and Nekhludoff did not arrive there until toward evening. He was about to open the door of the huge, gloomy building, when the guard stopped him and rang the bell. The warden responded to the bell. Nekhludoff showed the pa.s.s, but the warden told him that he could not be admitted without authority from the inspector. While climbing the stairs to the inspector's dwelling, Nekhludoff heard the sounds of an intricate bravura played on the piano. And when the servant, with a handkerchief tied around one eye, opened the door, a flood of music dazed his senses. It was a tiresome rhapsody by Lizst, well played, but only to a certain place. When that place was reached, the melody repeated itself. Nekhludoff asked the servant if the inspector was in.

The servant said that he was not.

"Will he be in soon?"

The rhapsody again ceased, and with a noisy flourish again repeated itself.

"I will go and inquire." And the servant went away.

The rhapsody again went on at full speed, when suddenly, reaching a certain point, it came to a stand-still and a voice from within was heard.

"Tell him that he is not home, and will not come to-day. He is visiting--why do they bother us?" a woman's voice was heard to say, and the rhapsody continued, then ceased, and the sound of a chair moved back was heard. The angry pianist herself evidently wished to reprimand the importunate visitor who came at such a late hour.

"Papa is not home," angrily said a pale, wretched looking girl with puffed-up hair and blue spots under her eyes, who came to the door.

Seeing a young man in a good overcoat, she became calm. "Walk in, please. What do you wish to see him for?"

"I would like to see a prisoner. I hold a pa.s.s from the prosecutor."

"Well, I don't know; papa is not in. Why, walk in, please," she again called from the entrance hall. "Or apply to his a.s.sistant, who is now in the office. You may talk to him. And what is your name?"

"Thank you," said Nekhludoff, without answering the question, and went away.

Scarcely had the door closed when the same vigorous, merry sound, so inappropriate to the place and so persistently rehea.r.s.ed by the wretched girl, was heard. In the court-yard Nekhludoff met a young officer with a stiff, dyed mustache, of whom he inquired for the a.s.sistant. He himself was the a.s.sistant. He took the pa.s.s, looked at it, and said that he could not admit any one to the prison on a pa.s.s for the detention-house. Besides, it was late.

"At ten o'clock to-morrow the prison is open to all visitors, and the inspector will be here. You could then see her in the common reception-room, or, if the inspector permits it, in the office."

So, without gaining an interview, Nekhludoff returned home. Agitated by the expectation of seeing her, he walked along the streets, thinking not of the court, but of his conversations with the prosecutor and the inspectors. That he was seeking an interview with her, and told the prosecutor of his intention, and visited two prisons preparing for the ordeal, had so excited him that he could not calm down. On returning home he immediately brought forth his unused diary, read some parts and made the following entry: "For two years I have kept no diary, and thought that I should never again return to this childishness. But it was no childishness, but a discourse with myself, with that true, divine _I_ which lives in every man. All this time this _I_ was slumbering and I had no one to discourse with. It was awakened by the extraordinary event of the 28th of April, in court, where I sat as jurymen. I saw her, Katiousha, whom I had deceived, on the prisoners' bench, in a prison coat. Through a strange misunderstanding and my mistake, she was sentenced to penal servitude.

I have just returned from the prosecutor and the prison. I was not permitted to see her, but I am determined to do anything to see her, acknowledge my guilt and make reparation even by marrying her. Lord, help me! My soul is rejoicing."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

For a long time that night Maslova lay awake with open eyes, and, looking at the door, mused.

She was thinking that under no circ.u.mstances would she marry a convict on the island of Saghalin, but would settle down some other way--with some inspector, or clerk, or even the warden, or an a.s.sistant. They are all eager for such a thing. "Only I must not get thin. Otherwise I am done for." And she recalled how she was looked at by her lawyer, the justiciary--in fact, everybody in the court-room. She recalled how Bertha, who visited her in prison, told her that the student, whom she loved while she was an inmate at Kitaeva's, inquired about her and expressed his regrets when told of her condition. She recalled the fight with the red-haired woman, and pitied her. She called to mind the baker who sent her an extra lunch roll, and many others, but not Nekhludoff. Of her childhood and youth, and especially of her love for Nekhludoff, she never thought. That was too painful. These recollections were hidden deeply in her soul. She never saw Nekhludoff even in a dream. She failed to recognize him in court, not so much because when she last saw him he was an army officer, beardless, with small mustache and thick, short hair, while now he was no longer young in appearance, and wore a beard, but more because she never thought of him. She had buried all recollections of her past relations with him in that terrible dark night when, on his return from the army, he visited his aunts.

Up to that night, while she hoped for his return, the child which she bore under her heart was not irksome to her. But from that night forward everything changed, and the coming child was only a hindrance.

The aunts had asked Nekhludoff to stop off at their station and call on them, but he wired that he would not be able to do it, as he had to reach St. Petersburg in time. When Katiousha learned this, she decided to go to the railroad station to see him. The train was to pa.s.s at two o'clock in the morning. Katiousha helped the ladies to bed, and, having induced the cook's girl, Mashka, to accompany her, she put on an old pair of shoes, threw a shawl over her head, gathered up her skirts and ran to the station.

It was a dark, rainy, windy, autumn night. The rain now poured down in large, warm drops, now ceased. The road could not be distinguished in the field, and it was pitch dark in the woods. Although Katiousha was familiar with the road she lost her way in the woods, and reached a sub-station, where the train only stopped for three minutes. Running on the platform, she espied Nekhludoff through the window of a first-cla.s.s car. The car was brightly illuminated. Two officers sat on plush seats playing cards. On the table near the window two thick candles were burning. Nekhludoff sat on the arm of the seat, his elbow resting on the back, laughing. As soon as she recognized him she tapped on the window with her cold hand. But at that moment the third bell rang, and the train began to move, the cars jostling each other forward. One of the players rose with the cards in his hands and began to look through the window. She tapped again, and pressed her face against the window-pane. At that moment the car beside which she stood was tugged forward, and it moved along. She ran alongside, looking in the window. The officer tried to lower the window, but could not.

Nekhludoff rose, and, pus.h.i.+ng the officer aside, began lowering it.