THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
Nekhludoff went to visit his aunts because their estate lay near the
road he had to travel in order to join his regiment, which had gone
forward, because they had very warmly asked him to come, and especially
because he wanted to see Katusha. Perhaps in his heart he had already
formed those evil designs against Katusha which his now uncontrolled
animal self suggested to him, but he did not acknowledge this as his
intention, but only wished to go back to the spot where he had been so
happy, to see his rather funny, but dear, kind-hearted old aunts, who
always, without his noticing it, surrounded him with an atmosphere of
love and admiration, and to see sweet Katusha, of whom he had retained
so pleasant a memory.
He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set
in. It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and
was feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always
at that time. “Is she still with them?” he thought, as he drove into the
familiar, old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall, and
now filled with snow off the roofs.
He expected she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she
did not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had
evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was
not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his
apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch.
His aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk
dress on and a cap on her head. Both aunts had been to church and had
received communion.
“Well, this is nice of you to come,” said Sophia Ivanovna, kissing him.
“Mary is not well, got tired in church; we have been to communion.”
“I congratulate you, Aunt Sophia,” [it is usual in Russia to
congratulate those who have received communion] said Nekhludoff, kissing
Sophia Ivanovna’s hand. “Oh, I beg your pardon, I have made you wet.”
“Go to your room--why you are soaking wet. Dear me, you have got
moustaches! . . . Katusha! Katusha! Get him some coffee; be quick.”
“Directly,” came the sound of a well-known, pleasant voice from the
passage, and Nekhludoff’s heart cried out “She’s here!” and it was as if
the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
Nekhludoff, followed by Tikhon, went gaily to his old room to change his
things. He felt inclined to ask Tikhon about Katusha; how she was,
what she was doing, was she not going to be married? But Tikhon was so
respectful and at the same time so severe, insisted so firmly on pouring
the water out of the jug for him, that Nekhludoff could not make up
his mind to ask him about Katusha, but only inquired about Tikhon’s
grandsons, about the old so-called “brother’s” horse, and about the
dog Polkan. All were alive except Polkan, who had gone mad the summer
before.
When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress again,
Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at the door.
Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one but she walked and
knocked like that.
Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the door.
“Come in.” It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than before. The
slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the same old way. Now
as then, she had on a white apron. She brought him from his aunts
a piece of scented soap, with the wrapper just taken off, and two
towels--one a long Russian embroidered one, the other a bath towel. The
unused soap with the stamped inscription, the towels, and her own self,
all were equally clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible
smile of joy at the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as
of old.
“How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?” she uttered with difficulty, her
face suffused with a rosy blush.
“Good-morning! How do you do?” he said, also blushing. “Alive and well?”
“Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and
towels from your aunts,” she said, putting the soap on the table and
hanging the towels over the back of a chair.
“There is everything here,” said Tikhon, defending the visitor’s
independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff’s open dressing case filled
with brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles with silver lids
and all sorts of toilet appliances.
“Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here,” said Nekhludoff,
his heart filling with light and tenderness as of old.
She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The aunts, who
had always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time more warmly than
ever. Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded or killed,
and this touched the old aunts. Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a
day and night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to
stay over Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom
he was to have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his
aunts’ instead.
As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff’s old feelings toward her
awoke again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white apron without
getting excited; he could not listen to her steps, her voice, her laugh,
without a feeling of joy; he could not look at her eyes, black as sloes,
without a feeling of tenderness, especially when she smiled; and, above
all, he could not notice without agitation how she blushed when they
met. He felt he was in love, but not as before, when this love was a
kind of mystery to him and he would not own, even to himself, that he
loved, and when he was persuaded that one could love only once; now he
knew he was in love and was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love
consisted of and what it might lead to, though he sought to conceal
it even from himself. In Nekhludoff, as in every man, there were two
beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him
self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the
animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it
the happiness of the rest of the world. At this period of his mania of
self-love brought on by life in Petersburg and in the army, this animal
man ruled supreme and completely crushed the spiritual man in him.
But when he saw Katusha and experienced the same feelings as he had had
three years before, the spiritual man in him raised its head once more
and began to assert its rights. And up to Easter, during two whole days,
an unconscious, ceaseless inner struggle went on in him.
He knew in the depths of his soul that he ought to go away, that there
was no real reason for staying on with his aunts, knew that no good
could come of it; and yet it was so pleasant, so delightful, that he did
not honestly acknowledge the facts to himself and stayed on. On Easter
eve, the priest and the deacon who came to the house to say mass had had
(so they said) the greatest difficulty in getting over the three miles
that lay between the church and the old ladies’ house, coming across the
puddles and the bare earth in a sledge.
Nekhludoff attended the mass with his aunts and the servants, and kept
looking at Katusha, who was near the door and brought in the censers
for the priests. Then having given the priests and his aunts the Easter
kiss, though it was not midnight and therefore not Easter yet, he was
already going to bed when he heard the old servant Matrona Pavlovna
preparing to go to the church to get the koulitch and paski [Easter
cakes] blest after the midnight service. “I shall go too,” he thought.
The road to the church was impassable either in a sledge or on wheels,
so Nekhludoff, who behaved in his aunts’ house just as he did at home,
ordered the old horse, “the brother’s horse,” to be saddled, and instead
of going to bed he put on his gay uniform, a pair of tight-fitting
riding breeches and his overcoat, and got on the old over-fed and heavy
horse, which neighed continually all the way as he rode in the dark
through the puddles and snow to the church.