CHAPTER XXIX. FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD’S.
On his return to Moscow Nekhludoff went at once to the prison hospital to bring Maslova the sad news that the Senate had confirmed the decision of the Court, and that she must prepare to go to Siberia. He had little hope of the success of his petition to the Emperor, which the advocate had written for him, and which he now brought with him for Maslova to sign. And, strange to say, he did not at present even wish to succeed; he had got used to the thought of going to Siberia and living among the exiled and the convicts, and he could not easily picture to himself how his life and Maslova’s would shape if she were acquitted. He remembered the thought of the American writer, Thoreau, who at the time when slavery existed in America said that “under a government that imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Nekhludoff, especially after his visit to Petersburg and all he discovered there, thought in the same way.
“Yes, the only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the present time is a prison,” he thought, and even felt that this applied to him personally, when he drove up to the prison and entered its walls.
The doorkeeper recognised Nekhludoff, and told him at once that Maslova was no longer there.
“Where is she, then?”
“In the cell again.”
“Why has she been removed?” Nekhludoff asked.
“Oh, your excellency, what are such people?” said the doorkeeper, contemptuously. “She’s been carrying on with the medical assistant, so the head doctor ordered her back.”
Nekhludoff had had no idea how near Maslova and the state of her mind were to him. He was stunned by the news.
He felt as one feels at the news of a great and unforeseen misfortune, and his pain was very severe. His first feeling was one of shame. He, with his joyful idea of the change that he imagined was going on in her soul, now seemed ridiculous in his own eyes. He thought that all her pretence of not wishing to accept his sacrifice, all the reproaches and tears, were only the devices of a depraved woman, who wished to use him to the best advantage. He seemed to remember having seen signs of obduracy at his last interview with her. All this flashed through his mind as he instinctively put on his hat and left the hospital.
“What am I to do now? Am I still bound to her? Has this action of hers not set me free?” And as he put these questions to himself he knew at once that if he considered himself free, and threw her up, he would be punishing himself, and not her, which was what he wished to do, and he was seized with fear.
“No, what has happened cannot alter—it can only strengthen my resolve. Let her do what flows from the state her mind is in. If it is carrying on with the medical assistant, let her carry on with the medical assistant; that is her business. I must do what my conscience demands of me. And my conscience expects me to sacrifice my freedom. My resolution to marry her, if only in form, and to follow wherever she may be sent, remains unalterable.” Nekhludoff said all this to himself with vicious obstinacy as he left the hospital and walked with resolute steps towards the big gates of the prison. He asked the warder on duty at the gate to inform the inspector that he wished to see Maslova. The warder knew Nekhludoff, and told him of an important change that had taken place in the prison. The old inspector had been discharged, and a new, very severe official appointed in his place.
“They are so strict nowadays, it’s just awful,” said the jailer. “He is in here; they will let him know directly.”
The new inspector was in the prison and soon came to Nekhludoff. He was a tall, angular man, with high cheek bones, morose, and very slow in his movements.
“Interviews are allowed in the visiting room on the appointed days,” he said, without looking at Nekhludoff.
“But I have a petition to the Emperor, which I want signed.”
“You can give it to me.”
“I must see the prisoner myself. I was always allowed to before.”
“That was so, before,” said the inspector, with a furtive glance at Nekhludoff.
“I have a permission from the governor,” insisted Nekhludoff, and took out his pocket-book.
“Allow me,” said the inspector, taking the paper from Nekhludoff with his long, dry, white fingers, on the first of which was a gold ring, still without looking him in the eyes. He read the paper slowly. “Step into the office, please.”
This time the office was empty. The inspector sat down by the table and began sorting some papers that lay on it, evidently intending to be present at the interview.
When Nekhludoff asked whether he might see the political prisoner, Doukhova, the inspector answered, shortly, that he could not. “Interviews with political prisoners are not permitted,” he said, and again fixed his attention on his papers. With a letter to Doukhova in his pocket, Nekhludoff felt as if he had committed some offence, and his plans had been discovered and frustrated.
When Maslova entered the room the inspector raised his head, and, without looking at either her or Nekhludoff, remarked: “You may talk,” and went on sorting his papers. Maslova had again the white jacket, petticoat and kerchief on. When she came up to Nekhludoff and saw his cold, hard look, she blushed scarlet, and crumbling the hem of her jacket with her hand, she cast down her eyes. Her confusion, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, confirmed the hospital doorkeeper’s words.
Nekhludoff had meant to treat her in the same way as before, but could not bring himself to shake hands with her, so disgusting was she to him now.
“I have brought you bad news,” he said, in a monotonous voice, without looking at her or taking her hand. “The Senate has refused.”
“I knew it would,” she said, in a strange tone, as if she were gasping for breath.
Formerly Nekhludoff would have asked why she said she knew it would; now he only looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears. But this did not soften him; it roused his irritation against her even more.
The inspector rose and began pacing up and down the room.
In spite of the disgust Nekhludoff was feeling at the moment, he considered it right to express his regret at the Senate’s decision.
“You must not despair,” he said. “The petition to the Emperor may meet with success, and I hope—-”
“I’m not thinking of that,” she said, looking piteously at him with her wet, squinting eyes.
“What is it, then?”
“You have been to the hospital, and they have most likely told you about me—”
“What of that? That is your affair,” said Nekhludoff coldly, and frowned. The cruel feeling of wounded pride that had quieted down rose with renewed force when she mentioned the hospital.
“He, a man of the world, whom any girl of the best families would think it happiness to marry, offered himself as a husband to this woman, and she could not even wait, but began intriguing with the medical assistant,” thought he, with a look of hatred.
“Here, sign this petition,” he said, taking a large envelope from his pocket, and laying the paper on the table. She wiped the tears with a corner of her kerchief, and asked what to write and where.
He showed her, and she sat down and arranged the cuff of her right sleeve with her left hand; he stood behind her, and silently looked at her back, which shook with suppressed emotion, and evil and good feelings were fighting in his breast—feelings of wounded pride and of pity for her who was suffering—and the last feeling was victorious.
He could not remember which came first; did the pity for her first enter his heart, or did he first remember his own sins—his own repulsive actions, the very same for which he was condemning her? Anyhow, he both felt himself guilty and pitied her.
Having signed the petition and wiped her inky finger on her petticoat, she got up and looked at him.
“Whatever happens, whatever comes of it, my resolve remains unchanged,” said Nekhludoff. The thought that he had forgiven her heightened his feeling of pity and tenderness for her, and he wished to comfort her. “I will do what I have said; wherever they take you I shall be with you.”
“What’s the use?” she interrupted hurriedly, though her whole face lighted up.
“Think what you will want on the way—”
“I don’t know of anything in particular, thank you.”
The inspector came up, and without waiting for a remark from him Nekhludoff took leave, and went out with peace, joy, and love towards everybody in his heart such as he had never felt before. The certainty that no action of Maslova could change his love for her filled him with joy and raised him to a level which he had never before attained. Let her intrigue with the medical assistant; that was her business. He loved her not for his own but for her sake and for God’s.
And this intrigue, for which Maslova was turned out of the hospital, and of which Nekhludoff believed she was really guilty, consisted of the following:
Maslova was sent by the head nurse to get some herb tea from the dispensary at the end of the corridor, and there, all alone, she found the medical assistant, a tall man, with a blotchy face, who had for a long time been bothering her. In trying to get away from him Maslova gave him such a push that he knocked his head against a shelf, from which two bottles fell and broke. The head doctor, who was passing at that moment, heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw Maslova run out, quite red, and shouted to her:
“Ah, my good woman, if you start intriguing here, I’ll send you about your business. What is the meaning of it?” he went on, addressing the medical assistant, and looking at him over his spectacles.
The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor gave no heed to him, but, lifting his head so that he now looked through his spectacles, he entered the ward. He told the inspector the same day to send another more sedate assistant-nurse in Maslova’s place. And this was her “intrigue” with the medical assistant.
Being turned out for a love intrigue was particularly painful to Maslova, because the relations with men, which had long been repulsive to her, had become specially disgusting after meeting Nekhludoff. The thought that, judging her by her past and present position, every man, the blotchy assistant among them, considered he had a right to offend her, and was surprised at her refusal, hurt her deeply, and made her pity herself and brought tears to her eyes.
When she went out to Nekhludoff this time she wished to clear herself of the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her, and she was silent.
Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had never forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second interview, but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she did all he wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and entered the hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he reminded her of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and marry him, it was because she liked repeating the proud words she had once uttered, and because she knew that a marriage with her would be a misfortune for him.
She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that she still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had taken place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had done wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that her sentence was confirmed.
CHAPTER XXX. THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED CRIMINAL LAW.
Maslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore Nekhludoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always centred in one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to other people and not to Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting and attractive, and there was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff’s occupations always made him feel vexed and irritable; now they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at present occupying Nekhludoff could be divided under three headings. He himself, with his usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and accordingly kept the papers referring to it in three different portfolios. The first referred to Maslova, and was chiefly that of taking steps to get her petition to the Emperor attended to, and preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.
The second was about his estates. In Panovo he had given the land to the peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own communal use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed, and to make his will, in accordance with it. In Kousminski the state of things was still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive the rent; but the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money he would use to live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants’ use. As he did not know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he could not decide to lose this revenue altogether, though he reduced the income from it by half.
The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who applied more and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so many applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of them, and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which at last roused his interest even more than the three first. This new part of his business was finding an answer to the following questions: What was this astonishing institution called criminal law, of which the results were that in the prison, with some of the inmates of which he had lately become acquainted, and in all those other places of confinement, from the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petersburg to the island of Sakhalin, hundreds and thousands of victims were pining? What did this strange criminal law exist for? How had it originated?
From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by some of those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and the prison priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the convicts, the so-called criminals, could be divided into five classes. The first were quite innocent people, condemned by judicial blunder. Such were the Menshoffs, supposed to be incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There were not many of these; according to the priest’s words, only seven per cent., but their condition excited particular interest.
To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done under peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy, or drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them would surely have committed the same actions.
The third class consisted of people punished for having committed actions which, according to their understanding, were quite natural, and even good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws, considered to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without a license, smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates and in the forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and those unbelieving people who robbed churches.
To the fourth class belonged those who were imprisoned only because they stood morally higher than the average level of society. Such were the Sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians rebelling in order to regain their independence, the political prisoners, the Socialists, the strikers condemned for withstanding the authorities. There was, according to Nekhludoff’s observations, a very large percentage belonging to this class; among them some of the best of men.
The fifth class consisted of persons who had been far more sinned against by society than they had sinned against it. These were castaways, stupefied by continual oppression and temptation, such as the boy who had stolen the rugs, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff had seen in the prison and out of it. The conditions under which they lived seemed to lead on systematically to those actions which are termed crimes. A great many thieves and murderers with whom he had lately come in contact, according to Nekhludoff’s estimate, belonged to this class. To this class Nekhludoff also reckoned those depraved, demoralised creatures whom the new school of criminology classify as the criminal type, and the existence of which is considered to be the chief proof of the necessity of criminal law and punishment. This demoralised, depraved, abnormal type was, according to Nekhludoff, exactly the same as that against whom society had sinned, only here society had sinned not directly against them, but against their parents and forefathers.
Among this latter class Nekhludoff was specially struck by one Okhotin, an inveterate thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up in a doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with any one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had got into a band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an extraordinary sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very attractive. He asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making fun of himself, the lawyers, the prison, and laws human and divine.
Another was the handsome Fedoroff, who, with a band of robbers, of whom he was the chief, had robbed and murdered an old man, an official. Fedoroff was a peasant, whose father had been unlawfully deprived of his house, and who, later on, when serving as a soldier, had suffered much because he had fallen in love with an officer’s mistress. He had a fascinating, passionate nature, that longed for enjoyment at any cost. He had never met anybody who restrained himself for any cause whatever, and had never heard a word about any aim in life other than enjoyment.
Nekhludoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.
He had also met a tramp and a woman who had repelled him by their dulness and seeming cruelty, but even in them he could find no trace of the criminal type written about by the Italian school, but only saw in them people who were repulsive to him personally, just in the same way as some he had met outside the prison, in swallow-tail coats wearing epaulettes, or bedecked with lace. And so the investigation of the reasons why all these very different persons were put in prison, while others just like them were going about free and even judging them, formed a fourth task for Nekhludoff.
He hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and bought all that referred to it. He got the works of Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferry, List, Maudsley, Tard, and read them carefully. But as he read he became more and more disappointed. It happened to him as it always happens to those who turn to science not in order to play a part in it, nor to write, nor to dispute, nor to teach, but simply for an answer to an every-day question of life. Science answered thousands of different very subtle and ingenious questions touching criminal law, but not the one he was trying to solve. He asked a very simple question: “Why, and with what right, do some people lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill others, while they are themselves just like those whom they torment, flog, and kill?” And in answer he got deliberations as to whether human beings had free will or not. Whether signs of criminality could be detected by measuring the skulls or not. What part heredity played in crime. Whether immorality could be inherited. What madness is, what degeneration is, and what temperament is. How climate, food, ignorance, imitativeness, hypnotism, or passion act. What society is. What are its duties, etc., etc.
These disquisitions reminded him of the answer he once got from a little boy whom he met coming home from school. Nekhludoff asked him if he had learned his spelling.
“I have,” answered the boy.
“Well, then, tell me, how do you spell ‘leg’?”
“A dog’s leg, or what kind of leg?” the boy answered, with a sly look.
Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy’s, was all Nekhludoff got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever, learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an answer to the principal question: By what right some people punish others?
Not only did he not find any answer, but all the arguments were brought forward in order to explain and vindicate punishment, the necessity of which was taken as an axiom.
Nekhludoff read much, but only in snatches, and putting down his failure to this superficial way of reading, hoped to find the answer later on. He would not allow himself to believe in the truth of the answer which began, more and more often, to present itself to him.
CHAPTER XXXI. NEKHLUDOFF’S SISTER AND HER HUSBAND.
The gang of prisoners, with Maslova among them, was to start on the 5th July. Nekhludoff arranged to start on the same day.
The day before, Nekhludoff’s sister and her husband came to town to see him.
Nekhludoff’s sister, Nathalie Ivanovna Rogozhinsky, was 10 years older than her brother. She had been very fond of him when he was a boy, and later on, just before her marriage, they grew very close to each other, as if they were equals, she being a young woman of 25, he a lad of 15. At that time she was in love with his friend, Nikolenka Irtenieff, since dead. They both loved Nikolenka, and loved in him and in themselves that which is good, and which unites all men. Since then they had both been depraved, he by military service and a vicious life, she by marriage with a man whom she loved with a sensual love, who did not care for the things that had once been so dear and holy to her and to her brother, nor even understand the meaning of those aspirations towards moral perfection and the service of mankind, which once constituted her life, and put them down to ambition and the wish to show off; that being the only explanation comprehensible to him.
Nathalie’s husband had been a man without a name and without means, but cleverly steering towards Liberalism or Conservatism, according to which best suited his purpose, he managed to make a comparatively brilliant judicial career. Some peculiarity which made him attractive to women assisted him when he was no longer in his first youth. While travelling abroad he made Nekhludoff’s acquaintance, and managed to make Nathalie, who was also no longer a girl, fall in love with him, rather against her mother’s wishes who considered a marriage with him to be a misalliance for her daughter. Nekhludoff, though he tried to hide it from himself, though he fought against it, hated his brother-in-law.
Nekhludoff had a strong antipathy towards him because of the vulgarity of his feelings, his assurance and narrowness, but chiefly because of Nathalie, who managed to love him in spite of the narrowness of his nature, and loved him so selfishly, so sensually, and stifled for his sake all the good that had been in her.
It always hurt Nekhludoff to think of Nathalie as the wife of that hairy, self-assured man with the shiny, bald patch on his head. He could not even master a feeling of revulsion towards their children, and when he heard that she was again going to have a baby, he felt something like sorrow that she had once more been infected with something bad by this man who was so foreign to him. The Rogozhinskys had come to Moscow alone, having left their two children—a boy and a girl—at home, and stopped in the best rooms of the best hotel. Nathalie at once went to her mother’s old house, but hearing from Agraphena Petrovna that her brother had left, and was living in a lodging-house, she drove there. The dirty servant met her in the stuffy passage, dark but for a lamp which burnt there all day. He told her that the Prince was not in.
Nathalie asked to be shown into his rooms, as she wished to leave a note for him, and the man took her up.
Nathalie carefully examined her brother’s two little rooms. She noticed in everything the love of cleanliness and order she knew so well in him, and was struck by the novel simplicity of the surroundings. On his writing-table she saw the paper-weight with the bronze dog on the top which she remembered; the tidy way in which his different portfolios and writing utensils were placed on the table was also familiar, and so was the large, crooked ivory paper knife which marked the place in a French book by Tard, which lay with other volumes on punishment and a book in English by Henry George. She sat down at the table and wrote a note asking him to be sure to come that same day, and shaking her head in surprise at what she saw, she returned to her hotel.
Two questions regarding her brother now interested Nathalie: his marriage with Katusha, which she had heard spoken about in their town—for everybody was speaking about it—and his giving away the land to the peasants, which was also known, and struck many as something of a political nature, and dangerous. The marriage with Katusha pleased her in a way. She admired that resoluteness which was so like him and herself as they used to be in those happy times before her marriage. And yet she was horrified when she thought her brother was going to marry such a dreadful woman. The latter was the stronger feeling of the two, and she decided to use all her influence to prevent him from doing it, though she knew how difficult this would be.
The other matter, the giving up of the land to the peasants, did not touch her so nearly, but her husband was very indignant about it, and expected her to influence her brother against it.
Rogozhinsky said that such an action was the height of inconsistency, flightiness, and pride, the only possible explanation of which was the desire to appear original, to brag, to make one’s self talked about.
“What sense could there be in letting the land to the peasants, on condition that they pay the rent to themselves?” he said. “If he was resolved to do such a thing, why not sell the land to them through the Peasants’ Bank? There might have been some sense in that. In fact, this act verges on insanity.”
And Rogozhinsky began seriously thinking about putting Nekhludoff under guardianship, and demanded of his wife that she should speak seriously to her brother about his curious intention.
CHAPTER XXXII. NEKHLUDOFF’S ANARCHISM.
As soon as Nekhludoff returned that evening and saw his sister’s note on the table he started to go and see her. He found Nathalie alone, her husband having gone to take a rest in the next room. She wore a tightly-fitting black silk dress, with a red bow in front. Her black hair was crimped and arranged according to the latest fashion.
The pains she took to appear young, for the sake of her husband, whose equal she was in years, were very obvious.
When she saw her brother she jumped up and hurried towards him, with her silk dress rustling. They kissed, and looked smilingly at each other. There passed between them that mysterious exchange of looks, full of meaning, in which all was true, and which cannot be expressed in words. Then came words which were not true. They had not met since their mother’s death.
“You have grown stouter and younger,” he said, and her lips puckered up with pleasure.
“And you have grown thinner.”
“Well, and how is your husband?” Nekhludoff asked.
“He is taking a rest; he did not sleep all night.” There was much to say, but it was not said in words; only their looks expressed what their words failed to say.
“I went to see you.”
“Yes, I know. I moved because the house is too big for me. I was lonely there, and dull. I want nothing of all that is there, so that you had better take it all—the furniture, I mean, and things.”
“Yes, Agraphena Petrovna told me. I went there. Thanks, very much. But—”
At this moment the hotel waiter brought in a silver tea-set. While he set the table they were silent. Then Nathalie sat down at the table and made the tea, still in silence. Nekhludoff also said nothing.
At last Nathalie began resolutely. “Well, Dmitri, I know all about it.” And she looked at him.
“What of that? l am glad you know.”
“How can you hope to reform her after the life she has led?” she asked.
He sat quite straight on a small chair, and listened attentively, trying to understand her and to answer rightly. The state of mind called forth in him by his last interview with Maslova still filled his soul with quiet joy and good will to all men.
“It is not her but myself I wish to reform,” he replied.
Nathalie sighed.
“There are other means besides marriage to do that.”
“But I think it is the best. Besides, it leads me into that world in which I can be of use.”
“I cannot believe you will be happy,” said Nathalie.
“It’s not my happiness that is the point.”
“Of course, but if she has a heart she cannot be happy—cannot even wish it.”
“She does not wish it.”
“I understand; but life—”
“Yes—life?”
“Demands something different.”
“It demands nothing but that we should do what is right,” said Nekhludoff, looking into her face, still handsome, though slightly wrinkled round eyes and mouth.
“I do not understand,” she said, and sighed.
“Poor darling; how could she change so?” he thought, calling back to his mind Nathalie as she had been before her marriage, and feeling towards her a tenderness woven out of innumerable memories of childhood. At that moment Rogozhinsky entered the room, with head thrown back and expanded chest, and stepping lightly and softly in his usual manner, his spectacles, his bald patch, and his black beard all glistening.
“How do you do? How do you do?” he said, laying an unnatural and intentional stress on his words. (Though, soon after the marriage, they had tried to be more familiar with each other, they had never succeeded.)
They shook hands, and Rogozhinsky sank softly into an easy-chair.
“Am I not interrupting your conversation?”
“No, I do not wish to hide what I am saying or doing from any one.”
As soon as Nekhludoff saw the hairy hands, and heard the patronising, self-assured tones, his meekness left him in a moment.
“Yes, we were talking about his intentions,” said Nathalie. “Shall I give you a cup of tea?” she added, taking the teapot.
“Yes, please. What particular intentions do you mean?”
“That of going to Siberia with the gang of prisoners, among whom is the woman I consider myself to have wronged,” uttered Nekhludoff.
“I hear not only to accompany her, but more than that.”
“Yes, and to marry her if she wishes it.”
“Dear me! But if you do not object I should like to ask you to explain your motives. I do not understand them.”
“My motives are that this woman—that this woman’s first step on her way to degradation—” Nekhludoff got angry with himself, and was unable to find the right expression. “My motives are that I am the guilty one, and she gets the punishment.”
“If she is being punished she cannot be innocent, either.”
“She is quite innocent.” And Nekhludoff related the whole incident with unnecessary warmth.
“Yes, that was a case of carelessness on the part of the president, the result of which was a thoughtless answer on the part of the jury; but there is the Senate for cases like that.”
“The Senate has rejected the appeal.”
“Well, if the Senate has rejected it, there cannot have been sufficient reasons for an appeal,” said Rogozhinsky, evidently sharing the prevailing opinion that truth is the product of judicial decrees. “The Senate cannot enter into the question on its merits. If there is a real mistake, the Emperor should be petitioned.”
“That has been done, but there is no probability of success. They will apply to the Department of the Ministry, the Department will consult the Senate, the Senate will repeat its decision, and, as usual, the innocent will get punished.”
“In the first place, the Department of the Ministry won’t consult the Senate,” said Rogozhinsky, with a condescending smile; “it will give orders for the original deeds to be sent from the Law Court, and if it discovers a mistake it will decide accordingly. And, secondly, the innocent are never punished, or at least in very rare, exceptional cases. It is the guilty who are punished,” Rogozhinsky said deliberately, and smiled self-complacently.
“And I have become fully convinced that most of those condemned by law are innocent.”
“How’s that?”
“Innocent in the literal sense. Just as this woman is innocent of poisoning any one; as innocent as a peasant I have just come to know, of the murder he never committed; as a mother and son who were on the point of being condemned for incendiarism, which was committed by the owner of the house that was set on fire.”
“Well, of course there always have been and always will be judicial errors. Human institutions cannot be perfect.”
“And, besides, there are a great many people convicted who are innocent of doing anything considered wrong by the society they have grown up in.”
“Excuse me, this is not so; every thief knows that stealing is wrong, and that we should not steal; that it is immoral,” said Rogozhinsky, with his quiet, self-assured, slightly contemptuous smile, which specially irritated Nekhludoff.
“No, he does not know it; they say to him ‘don’t steal,’ and he knows that the master of the factory steals his labour by keeping back his wages; that the Government, with its officials, robs him continually by taxation.”
“Why, this is anarchism,” Rogozhinsky said, quietly defining his brother-in-law’s words.
“I don’t know what it is; I am only telling you the truth,” Nekhludoff continued. “He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail, and try to persuade him that he is a thief. Of course he knows that not he but those who robbed him of the land are thieves, and that to get any restitution of what has been robbed is his duty towards his family.”
“I don’t understand, or if I do I cannot agree with it. The land must be somebody’s property,” began Rogozhinsky quietly, and, convinced that Nekhludoff was a Socialist, and that Socialism demands that all the land should be divided equally, that such a division would be very foolish, and that he could easily prove it to be so, he said. “If you divided it equally to-day, it would to-morrow be again in the hands of the most industrious and clever.”
“Nobody is thinking of dividing the land equally. The land must not be anybody’s property; must not be a thing to be bought and sold or rented.”
“The rights of property are inborn in man; without them the cultivation of land would present no interest. Destroy the rights of property and we lapse into barbarism.” Rogozhinsky uttered this authoritatively, repeating the usual argument in favour of private ownership of land which is supposed to be irrefutable, based on the assumption that people’s desire to possess land proves that they need it.
“On the contrary, only when the land is nobody’s property will it cease to lie idle, as it does now, while the landlords, like dogs in the manger, unable themselves to put it to use, will not let those use it who are able.”
“But, Dmitri Ivanovitch, what you are saying is sheer madness. Is it possible to abolish property in land in our age? I know it is your old hobby. But allow me to tell you straight,” and Rogozhinsky grew pale, and his voice trembled. It was evident that this question touched him very nearly. “I should advise you to consider this question well before attempting to solve it practically.”
“Are you speaking of my personal affairs?”
“Yes, I hold that we who are placed in special circumstances should bear the responsibilities which spring from those circumstances, should uphold the conditions in which we were born, and which we have inherited from our predecessors, and which we ought to pass on to our descendants.”
“I consider it my duty—”
“Wait a bit,” said Rogozhinsky, not permitting the interruption. “I am not speaking for myself or my children. The position of my children is assured, and I earn enough for us to live comfortably, and I expect my children will live so too, so that my interest in your action—which, if you will allow me to say so, is not well considered—is not based on personal motives; it is on principle that I cannot agree with you. I should advise you to think it well over, to read—-?”
“Please allow me to settle my affairs, and to choose what to read and what not to read, myself,” said Nekhludoff, turning pale. Feeling his hands grow cold, and that he was no longer master of himself, he stopped, and began drinking his tea.
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE AIM OF THE LAW.
“Well, and how are the children?” Nekhludoff asked his sister when he was calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were staying with their grandmother (their father’s mother), and, pleased that his dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling him how her children played that they were travelling, just as he used to do with his three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he called the French lady.
“Can you really remember it all?” said Nekhludoff, smiling.
“Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way.”
The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband’s presence of what could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski’s mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky expressed disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a duel from the ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder from Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was fully explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in his mind, each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other. Rogozhinsky felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his activity, and he wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.
Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law’s interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his heart of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his heirs, had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded man persisted with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what Nekhludoff no longer doubted was folly and crime.
This man’s arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.
“What could the law do?” he asked.
“It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an ordinary murderer.”
Nekhludoff’s hands grew cold.
“Well, and what good would that be?” he asked, hotly.
“It would be just.”
“As if justice were the aim of the law,” said Nekhludoff.
“What else?”
“The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class.”
“This is a perfectly new view,” said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile; “the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim.”
“Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and wish to raise it—the so-called political prisoners, as well as those who are below the average—the so-called criminal types.”
“I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you consider below the average.”
“But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all the sectarians are moral, from—”
But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke, did not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time, thereby irritating him still more.
“Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the present state of things. The law aims at reforming—”
“A nice kind of reform, in a prison!” Nekhludoff put in.
“Or removing,” Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, “the perverted and brutalised persons that threaten society.”
“That’s just what it doesn’t do. Society has not the means of doing either the one thing or the other.”
“How is that? I don’t understand,” said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
“I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature gradually softens, come more and more into disuse,” said Nekhludoff.
“There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips.”
“Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a man’s head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk government, or from Koursk—”
“Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I would not be sitting here as we are.”
“The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so that the danger is increased.”
“You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved.”
“It cannot be improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that is being now spent on the people’s education, and would lay a still heavier burden on the people.”
“The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate the law itself,” Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his brother-in-law.
“There is no remedy for these shortcomings,” said Nekhludoff, raising his voice.
“What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain statesman proposed, go putting out people’s eyes?” Rogozhinsky remarked.
“Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and cruel a business as criminal law.”
“But I happen to take part in it,” said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.
“That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible.”
“I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you,” said Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.
“I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and put down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the whole business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions of that sort.”
“I should not serve if I thought so,” said Rogozhinsky, rising.
Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law’s spectacles. “Can it be tears?” he thought. And they were really tears of injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and wiped his eyes.
When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.
Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the next day.
He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.
“All I have said may be true—anyhow he did not reply. But it was not said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor Nathalie in such a way!” he thought.