The Awakening Part 63

Nekhludoff translated the Englishman's questions. While they were conversing they heard approaching footsteps, the door opened and the jailer entered, followed by Katiousha in her prison garb, with a scarf tied around her head.

Nekhludoff rose and made a few steps toward her. She said nothing, but her excited expression surprised him. Her face was lit up with a wonderful decision. He had never seen her look like that. Now the blood rushed to her face, and now she turned pale; now her fingers twisted convulsively the edges of her jacket, now she looked at him, and now she dropped her eyes.

"You know what I called you for?" asked Nekhludoff.

"Yes, he told me. But now I am decided. I will ask permission to go with Vladimir Ivanovitch." She said this quickly, as if she had made up her mind before what to say.

"How with Vladimir Ivanovitch?" asked Nekhludoff. But she interrupted him.

"But if he wants me to live with him?" Here she stopped in fear, and added, "I mean to stay with him. I could expect nothing better, and perhaps I may be useful to him and others. What difference does it make to me?"

One of the two things had happened--either she had fallen in love with Simonson and did not wish his sacrifice, which weighed so heavily on him, or she was still in love with Nekhludoff and renounced him for his own good, burning all bridges behind her, and throwing her fortunes in the same scale with those of Simonson. Nekhludoff understood it, and felt ashamed.

"If you are in love with him," he said.

"I never knew such people, you know. It is impossible not to love them. And Vladimir is entirely unlike any person I have ever known."

"Yes, certainly," said Nekhludoff. "He is an excellent man, and I think----"

Here she interrupted him, as if she were afraid that he would speak too much, or she would not say everything.

"You will forgive me for doing that which you did not wish. You, too, must love."

She said the very thing that he had just said to himself.

But now he was no longer thinking so, but felt altogether different.

He felt not only shame, but pity.

"Is it possible that all is at an end between us?" he said.

"Yes, it looks like it," she answered, with a strange smile.

"But nevertheless I would like to be useful to you."

"To us," she said, glancing at Nekhludoff. "We don't need anything. I am very much obliged to you. If it were not for you"--she wished to say something, but her voice began to tremble.

"I don't know which of us is under greater obligation to the other.

G.o.d will settle our accounts," said Nekhludoff.

"Yes, G.o.d will settle them," she whispered.

"Are you ready?" asked the Englishman.

"Directly," answered Nekhludoff, and then he inquired of her what she knew of Kryltzoff.

She quieted down and calmly told him:

"Kryltzoff became very weak on the road and was taken to the hospital.

Maria Pablovna wanted to become a nurse, but there is no answer yet."

"Well, may I go?" she asked, noticing the Englishman who was waiting for him.

"I am not yet taking leave of you," said Nekhludoff, holding out his hand to her.

"Pardon me," she said in a low tone.

Their eyes met, and in that strange, stern look, and in that pitiful smile, with which she said not "good-by," but "pardon me," Nekhludoff understood, that of the two suppositions concerning her decision the latter was the right one. She still loved him and thought she would mar his life by a union with him, and would free him by living with Simonson.

She pressed his hand, turned quickly, and left the room.

CHAPTER IX.

Pa.s.sing through the hall and the ill-smelling corridors, the superintendent pa.s.sed into the first building of the prison in which those condemned to hard labor were confined. Entering the first room in that building they found the prisoners stretched on their berths, which occupied the middle of the room. Hearing the visitors enter they all jumped down, and, clinking their chains, placed themselves beside their berths, while their half-shaven heads were distinctly set off against the gloom of the prison. Only two of the prisoners remained at their places. One of them was a young man whose face was evidently heated with fever; the other was an old man, who never left off groaning.

The Englishman asked whether the young man had been sick for a long time. The superintendent replied that he had been taken sick that very same morning, that the old man had had convulsions for a long time, and that they kept him in prison because there was no place for him in the hospital.

The Englishman shook his head discontentedly, said that he would like to say a few words to the prisoners, and asked Nekhludoff to translate his remarks. It turned out that, besides the aim of his journey, which was the description of the exile system--he had another one--the preaching of the gospel, of salvation through faith.

"Tell them that Christ pitied and loved them," he said to Nekhludoff, "and that He died for them. He who will believe in Him will be saved."

While he was saying this, all the prisoners were standing erect with their hands by their sides.

"Tell them," continued the Englishman, "that all I said will be found in this book. Are there any among them who can read?" It turned out that there were more than twenty who could.

The Englishman took out a few leather-bound Bibles from his traveling bag, and soon a number of muscular hands, terminating in long black nails, were stretched out toward him, pushing each other aside in order to reach the Testaments. He left two Testaments in this room, and went to the next one.

There the same thing occurred. There prevailed the same dampness and ill-smells. But in this room, between the windows, an image of the Virgin, before which a small lamp burned dimly, was hung up. To the left side of the door stood the large vat. Here the prisoners were stretched out on their berths, and in the same way they rose and placed themselves in a row. Three of them remained in their places.

Two of these three lifted themselves and sat up, but the third one remained stretched out, and did not even look at the visitors. These latter ones were sick. The Englishman addressed them in the same manner, and left two Testaments.

From the cells in which those condemned to hard labor were imprisoned, they pa.s.sed over to the cells of the exiles, and finally those in which the relatives who escorted the prisoners to Siberia were awaiting the day appointed to start hence.

Everywhere the same cold, hungry, idling, sickly, degraded, brutalized human beings could be seen.

The Englishman distributed his Bibles, and, being tired out, he walked through the rooms saying "All right" to whatever the superintendent told him concerning the prisons.

They went out into the corridor.

The Englishman, pointing to an open door, asked what that room was for.

"This is the prison morgue."

"Oh!" exclaimed the Englishman, and he expressed a desire to enter.

This room was an ordinary room. A small lamp, fastened to the wall, lit up the four bodies which were stretched on berths, with their heads toward the wall and the feet protruding toward the door. The first body, in a plain shirt, was that of a tall young man, with a small, pointed beard and half-shaven head. The corpse was already chilled, and its blue hands were folded over the breast. Beside him, in a white dress and jacket, lay a bare-footed old woman, with thin hair and wrinkled, yellowish face. Beside this old woman lay a corpse, attired in blue.

This color recalled something in Nekhludoff's memory.