PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.
The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,
dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for
measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a
large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people.
In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty
persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices.
There was a writing table by the window.
The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair
beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face,
dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman
with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and
gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue
spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner’s clothes, who
was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on
his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of
lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked
energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair,
and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied
with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in
black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in
the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying
to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began
several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand,
and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it
with an angry look on his face.
Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent
eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping
mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful;
her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips,
but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes.
The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when
Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and
said something to the mother.
Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat
angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to
the Scoptsy sect.
At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more
concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about
what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector’s side, looked
round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair
came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
“And whom are you waiting for?”
Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and
seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed
on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his
acquaintance.
“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.
“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.
“I? With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.
“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently considering
Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.
Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s
attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps,
approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
“What is he asking you? Who you are?” she inquired with a slight smile,
and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind,
prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever
that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so
sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to
smile back.
“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”
“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know
it is,” said the inspector.
“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s
mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he
continued gazing up into her face.
“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,”
said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how
exceptional his establishment was.
“Is it possible?”
“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”
“And that young girl?”
“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his
shoulders. “Besides, here is Doukhova.”