The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents)

by Leo Tolstoy

  This was that Schonbock who had been in the house of Nekhludoff's aunts that day, and whom Nekhludoff had quite lost out of sight, but about whom he had heard that in spite of his debts he had somehow managed to remain in the cavalry, and by some means or other still kept his place among the rich. His gay, contented appearance corroborated this report.

  "What a good thing that I have caught you. There is no one in town. Ah, old fellow; you have grown old," he said, getting out of the trap and moving his shoulders about. "I only knew you by your walk. Look here, we must dine together. Is there any place where they feed one decently?"

  "I don't think I can spare the time," Nekhludoff answered, thinking only of how he could best get rid of his companion without hurting him.

  "And what has brought you here?" he asked.

  "Business, old fellow. Guardianship business. I am a guardian now. I am managing Samanoff's affairs--the millionaire, you know. He has softening of the brain, and he's got fifty-four thousand desiatins of land," he said, with peculiar pride, as if he had himself made all these desiatins. "The affairs were terribly neglected. All the land was let to the peasants. They did not pay anything. There were more than eighty thousand roubles debts. I changed it all in one year, and have got 70 per cent. more out of it. What do you think of that?" he asked proudly.

  Nekhludoff remembered having heard that this Schonbock, just because, he had spent all he had, had attained by some special influence the post of guardian to a rich old man who was squandering his property--and was now evidently living by this guardianship.

  "How am I to get rid of him without offending him?" thought Nekhludoff, looking at this full, shiny face with the stiffened moustache and listening to his friendly, good-humoured chatter about where one gets fed best, and his bragging about his doings as a guardian.

  "Well, then, where do we dine?"

  "Really, I have no time to spare," said Nekhludoff, glancing at his watch.

  "Then, look here. To-night, at the races--will you be there?"

  "No, I shall not be there."

  "Do come. I have none of my own now, but I back Grisha's horses. You remember; he has a fine stud. You'll come, won't you? And we'll have some supper together."

  "No, I cannot have supper with you either," said Nekhludoff with a smile.

  "Well, that's too bad! And where are you off to now? Shall I give you a lift?"

  "I am going to see an advocate, close to here round the corner."

  "Oh, yes, of course. You have got something to do with the prisons--have turned into a prisoners' mediator, I hear," said Schonbock, laughing. "The Korchagins told me. They have left town already. What does it all mean? Tell me."

  "Yes, yes, it is quite true," Nekhludoff answered; "but I cannot tell you about it in the street."

  "Of course; you always were a crank. But you will come to the races?"

  "No. I neither can nor wish to come. Please do not be angry with me."

  "Angry? Dear me, no. Where do you live?" And suddenly his face became serious, his eyes fixed, and he drew up his brows. He seemed to be trying to remember something, and Nekhludoff noticed the same dull expression as that of the man with the raised brows and pouting lips whom he had seen at the window of the eating-house.

  "How cold it is! Is it not? Have you got the parcels?" said Schonbock, turning to the isvostchik.

  "All right. Good-bye. I am very glad indeed to have met you," and warmly pressing Nekhludoff's hand, he jumped into the trap and waved his white-gloved hand in front of his shiny face, with his usual smile, showing his exceptionally white teeth.

  "Can I have also been like that?" Nekhludoff thought, as he continued his way to the advocate's. "Yes, I wished to be like that, though I was not quite like it. And I thought of living my life in that way."

  CHAPTER XI

  .

  AN ADVOCATE'S VIEWS ON JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS.

  Nekhludoff was admitted by the advocate before his turn. The advocate at once commenced to talk about the Menshoffs' case, which he had read with indignation at the inconsistency of the accusation.

  "This case is perfectly revolting," he said; "it is very likely that the owner himself set fire to the building in order to get the insurance money, and the chief thing is that there is no evidence to prove the Menshoffs' guilt. There are no proofs whatever. It is all owing to the special zeal of the examining magistrate and the carelessness of the prosecutor. If they are tried here, and not in a provincial court, I guarantee that they will be acquitted, and I shall charge nothing. Now then, the next case, that of Theodosia Birukoff. The appeal to the Emperor is written. If you go to Petersburg, you'd better take it with you, and hand it in yourself, with a request of your own, or else they will only make a few inquiries, and nothing will come of it. You must try and get at some of the influential members of the Appeal Committee."

  "Well, is this all?"

  "No; here I have a letter . . . I see you have turned into a pipe--a spout through which all the complaints of the prison are poured," said the advocate, with a smile. "It is too much; you'll not be able to manage it."

  "No, but this is a striking case," said Nekhludoff, and gave a brief outline of the case of a peasant who began to read the Gospels to the peasants in the village, and to discuss them with his friends. The priests regarded this as a crime and informed the authorities. The magistrate examined him and the public prosecutor drew up an act of indictment, and the law courts committed him for trial.

  "This is really too terrible," Nekhludoff said. "Can it be true?"

  "What are you surprised at?"

  "Why, everything. I can understand the police-officer, who simply obeys orders, but the prosecutor drawing up an act of that kind. An educated man . . ."

  "That is where the mistake lies, that we are in the habit of considering that the prosecutors and the judges in general are some kind of liberal persons. There was a time when they were such, but now it is quite different. They are just officials, only troubled about pay-day. They receive their salaries and want them increased, and there their principles end. They will accuse, judge, and sentence any one you like."

  "Yes; but do laws really exist that can condemn a man to Siberia for reading the Bible with his friends?"

  "Not only to be exiled to the less remote parts of Siberia, but even to the mines, if you can only prove that reading the Bible they took the liberty of explaining it to others not according to orders, and in this way condemned the explanations given by the Church. Blaming the Greek orthodox religion in the presence of the common people means, according to Statute . . . the mines."

  "Impossible!"

  "I assure you it is so. I always tell these gentlemen, the judges," the advocate continued, "that I cannot look at them without gratitude, because if I am not in prison, and you, and all of us, it is only owing to their kindness. To deprive us of our privileges, and send us all to the less remote parts of Siberia, would be an easy thing for them."

  "Well, if it is so, and if everything depends on the Procureur and others who can, at will, either enforce the laws or not, what are the trials for?"

  The advocate burst into a merry laugh. "You do put strange questions. My dear sir, that is philosophy. Well, we might have a talk about that, too. Could you come on Saturday? You will meet men of science, literary men, and artists at my house, and then we might discuss these general questions," said the advocate, pronouncing the words "general questions" with ironical pathos. "You have met my wife? Do come."

  "Thank you; I will try to," said Nekhludoff, and felt that he was saying an untruth, and knew that if he tried to do anything it would be to keep away froth the advocate's literary evening, and the circle of the men of science, art, and literature.

  The laugh with which the advocate met Nekhludoff's remark that trials could have no meaning if the judges might enforce the laws or not, according to their notion, and the tone with which he pronounced the words "philosophy" and "general questions" proved to Nekhludoff how very
differently he and the advocate and, probably, the advocate's friends, looked at things; and he felt that in spite of the distance that now existed between himself and his former companions, Schonbock, etc., the difference between himself and the circle of the advocate and his friends was still greater.

  CHAPTER XII

  .

  WHY THE PEASANTS FLOCK TO TOWN.

  The prison was a long way off and it was getting late, so Nekhludoff took an isvostchik. The isvostchik, a middle-aged man with an intelligent and kind face, turned round towards Nekhludoff as they were driving along one of the streets and pointed to a huge house that was being built there.

  "Just see what a tremendous house they have begun to build," he said, as if he was partly responsible for the building of the house and proud of it. The house was really immense and was being built in a very original style. The strong pine beams of the scaffolding were firmly fixed together with iron bands and a plank wall separated the building from the street.

  On the boards of the scaffolding workmen, all bespattered with plaster, moved hither and thither like ants. Some were laying bricks, some hewing stones, some carrying up the heavy hods and pails and bringing them down empty. A fat and finely-dressed gentleman--probably the architect--stood by the scaffolding, pointing upward and explaining something to a contractor, a peasant from the Vladimir Government, who was respectfully listening to him. Empty carts were coming out of the gate by which the architect and the contractor were standing, and loaded ones were going in. "And how sure they all are--those that do the work as well as those that make them do it--that it ought to be; that while their wives at home, who are with child, are labouring beyond their strength, and their children with the patchwork caps, doomed soon to the cold grave, smile with suffering and contort their little legs, they must be building this stupid and useless palace for some stupid and useless person--one of those who spoil and rob them," Nekhludoff thought, while looking at the house.

  "Yes, it is a stupid house," he said, uttering his thought out aloud.

  "Why stupid?" replied the isvostchik, in an offended tone. "Thanks to it, the people get work; it's not stupid."

  "But the work is useless."

  "It can't be useless, or why should it be done?" said the isvostchik. "The people get bread by it."

  Nekhludoff was silent, and it would have been difficult to talk because of the clatter the wheels made.

  When they came nearer the prison, and the isvostchik turned off the paved on to the macadamised road, it became easier to talk, and he again turned to Nekhludoff.

  "And what a lot of these people are flocking to the town nowadays; it's awful," he said, turning round on the box and pointing to a party of peasant workmen who were coming towards them, carrying saws, axes, sheepskins, coats, and bags strapped to their shoulders.

  "More than in other years?" Nekhludoff asked.

  "By far. This year every place is crowded, so that it's just terrible. The employers just fling the workmen about like chaff. Not a job to be got."

  "Why is that?"

  "They've increased. There's no room for them."

  "Well, what if they have increased? Why do not they stay in the village?"

  "There's nothing for them to do in the village--no land to be had."

  Nekhludoff felt as one does when touching a sore place. It feels as if the bruised part was always being hit; yet it is only because the place is sore that the touch is felt.

  "Is it possible that the same thing is happening everywhere?" he thought, and began questioning the isvostchik about the quantity of land in his village, how much land the man himself had, and why he had left the country.

  "We have a desiatin per man, sir," he said. "Our family have three men's shares of the land. My father and a brother are at home, and manage the land, and another brother is serving in the army. But there's nothing to manage. My brother has had thoughts of coming to Moscow, too."

  "And cannot land be rented?"

  "How's one to rent it nowadays? The gentry, such as they were, have squandered all theirs. Men of business have got it all into their own hands. One can't rent it from them. They farm it themselves. We have a Frenchman ruling in our place; he bought the estate from our former landlord, and won't let it--and there's an end of it."

  "Who's that Frenchman?"

  "Dufour is the Frenchman's name. Perhaps you've heard of him. He makes wigs for the actors in the big theatre; it is a good business, so he's prospering. He bought it from our lady, the whole of the estate, and now he has us in his power; he just rides on us as he pleases. The Lord be thanked, he is a good man himself; only his wife, a Russian, is such a brute that--God have mercy on us. She robs the people. It's awful. Well, here's the prison. Am I to drive you to the entrance? I'm afraid they'll not let us do it, though."

  CHAPTER XIII

  .

  NURSE MASLOVA.

  When he rang the bell at the front entrance Nekhludoff's heart stood still with horror as he thought of the state he might find Maslova in to-day, and at the mystery that he felt to be in her and in the people that were collected in the prison. He asked the jailer who opened the door for Maslova. After making the necessary inquiry the jailer informed him that she was in the hospital. Nekhludoff went there. A kindly old man, the hospital doorkeeper, let him in at once and, after asking Nekhludoff whom he wanted, directed him to the children's ward. A young doctor saturated with carbolic acid met Nekhludoff in the passage and asked him severely what he wanted. This doctor was always making all sorts of concessions to the prisoners, and was therefore continually coming into conflict with the prison authorities and even with the head doctor. Fearing lest Nekhludoff should demand something unlawful, and wishing to show that he made no exceptions for any one, he pretended to be cross. "There are no women here; it is the children's ward," he said.

  "Yes, I know; but a prisoner has been removed here to be an assistant nurse."

  "Yes, there are two such here. Then whom do you want?"

  "I am closely connected with one of them, named Maslova," Nekhludoff answered, "and should like to speak to her. I am going to Petersburg to hand in an appeal to the Senate about her case and should like to give her this. It is only a photo," Nekhludoff said, taking an envelope out of his pocket.

  "All right, you may do that," said the doctor, relenting, and turning to an old woman with a white apron, he told her to call the prisoner--Nurse Maslova.

  "Will you take a seat, or go into the waiting-room?"

  "Thanks," said Nekhludoff, and profiting by the favourable change in the manner of the doctor towards him asked how they were satisfied with Maslova in the hospital.

  "Oh, she is all right. She works fairly well, if you the conditions of her former life into account. But here she is."

  The old nurse came in at one of the doors, followed by Maslova, who wore a blue striped dress, a white apron, a kerchief that quite covered her hair. When she saw Nekhludoff her face flushed, and she stopped as if hesitating, then frowned, and with downcast eyes went quickly towards him along the strip of carpet in the middle of the passage. When she came up to Nekhludoff she did not wish to give him her hand, and then gave it, growing redder still. Nekhludoff had not seen her since the day when she begged forgiveness for having been in a passion, and he expected to find her the same as she was then. But to-day she quite different. There was something new in the expression of her face, reserve and shyness, and, as it seemed to him, animosity towards him. He told her what he had already said to the doctor, i.e., that he was going to Petersburg, and he handed her the envelope with the photograph which he had brought from Panovo.

  "I found this in Panovo--it's an old photo; perhaps you would like it. Take it."

  Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her squinting eyes, as if asking, "What is this for?" took the photo silently and put it in the bib of her apron.

  "I saw your aunt there," said Nekhludoff.

  "Did you?" she said, indifferent
ly.

  "Are you all right here?" Nekhludoff asked.

  "Oh, yes, it's all right," she said.

  "Not too difficult?"

  "Oh, no. But I am not used to it yet."

  "I am glad, for your sake. Anyhow, it is better than there."

  "Than where--there?" she asked, her face flushing again.

  "There--in the prison," Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.

  "Why better?" she asked.

  "I think the people are better. Here are none such as there must be there."

  "There are many good ones there," she said.

  "I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be liberated," said Nekhludoff.