VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.
Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait,
the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand. “Do you
remember me? Let us sit down.”
“I did not expect to see you like this.”
“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire
nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright
in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the
terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty
collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation.
Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as
propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections,
about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had
never heard of.
She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, “People’s
Freedom,” a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was
pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck,
her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these
strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied
her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault
of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the
confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself
a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could
hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would
lie.
The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was
the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their
“sub-group,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five
months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because
some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had
been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure
to blame for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had
connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set
this friend free.
Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for
another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the
Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some
scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised
to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.
As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course
of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the
Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary
movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations
and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an
important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all
concerned were arrested. “I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But
what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story
with a piteous smile.
Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent
eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a
general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was
arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme.
She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret
printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house,
the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and
began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police
forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally
wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that
it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her
hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now
condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
“An altruistic, fine character,” said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned
Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of
Maslova’s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take
steps to get her removed into the political prisoner’s ward, or into
the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at
that time, so that extra nurses were needed.
Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon
it.