CHAPTER LVI.
NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.
Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said
that the time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must
part. Nekhludoff took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the
door, where he stopped to watch what was going on.
The inspector's order called forth only heightened animation
among the prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of
going. Some rose and continued to talk standing, some went on
talking without rising. A few began crying and taking leave of
each other. The mother and her consumptive son seemed especially
pathetic. The young fellow kept twisting his bit of paper and his
face seemed angry, so great were his efforts not to be infected
by his mother's emotion. The mother, hearing that it was time to
part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and sniffed aloud.
The girl with the prominent eyes--Nekhludoff could not help
watching her--was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was
saying something to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the
blue spectacles stood holding his daughter's hand and nodding in
answer to what she said. The young lovers rose, and, holding each
other's hands, looked silently into one another's eyes.
"These are the only two who are merry," said a young man with a
short coat who stood by Nekhludoff's side, also looking at those
who were about to part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling
Nekhludoff's and the young man's eyes fixed on them, the lovers--
the young man with the rubber coat and the pretty girl--stretched
out their arms, and with their hands clasped in each other's,
danced round and round again. "To-night they are going to be
married here in prison, and she will follow him to Siberia," said
the young man.
"What is he?"
"A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least
have a little joy, or else it is too painful," the young man
added, listening to the sobs of the consumptive lad's mother.
"Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have
recourse to severe measures," the inspector said, repeating the
same words several times over. "Do, please," he went on in a
weak, hesitating manner. "It is high time. What do you mean by
it? This sort of thing is quite impossible. I am now asking you
for the last time," he repeated wearily, now putting out his
cigarette and then lighting another.
It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices
enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for
it, the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of
those who were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested
itself in this room. And it was apparent that this troubled him
sorely. At length the prisoners and their visitors began to
go--the first out of the inner, the latter out of the outer door.
The man with the rubber jacket passed out among them, and the
consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary Pavlovna went out
with the boy born in prison.
The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles,
stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.
"Yes, a strange state of things this," said the talkative young
man, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he
descended the stairs side by side with Nekhludoff. "Yet we have
reason to be grateful to the inspector who does not keep strictly
to the rules, kind-hearted fellow. If they can get a talk it does
relieve their hearts a bit, after all!"
While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as
Medinzeff, Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came
up to them with weary step.
"If you wish to see Maslova," he said, apparently desiring to be
polite to Nekhludoff, "please come to-morrow."
"Very well," answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing
more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always
felt on entering the prison.
The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed
terrible, and not so much his physical suffering as the
perplexity, the distrust in the good and in God which he must
feel, seeing the cruelty of the people who tormented him without
any reason.
Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds
of guiltless people simply because something was not written on
paper as it should have been. Terrible were the brutalised
jailers, whose occupation is to torment their brothers, and who
were certain that they were fulfilling an important and useful
duty; but most terrible of all seemed this sickly, elderly,
kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part mother and son,
father and daughter, who were just the same sort of people as he
and his own children.
"What is it all for?" Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not
find an answer.
