THE VICE-GOVERNOR SUSPICIOUS.
“Well? _Je suis a vous_. Will you smoke? But wait a bit; we must be
careful and not make a mess here,” said Maslennikoff, and brought an
ashpan. “Well?”
“There are two matters I wish to ask you about.”
“Dear me!”
An expression of gloom and dejection came over Maslennikoff’s
countenance, and every trace of the excitement, like that of the dog’s
whom its master has scratched behind the cars, vanished completely. The
sound of voices reached them from the drawing-room. A woman’s voice was
heard, saying, _“Jamais je ne croirais,”_ and a man’s voice from
the other side relating something in which the names of la Comtesse
Voronzoff and Victor Apraksine kept recurring. A hum of voices, mixed
with laughter, came from another side. Maslennikoff tried to listen to
what was going on in the drawing-room and to what Nekhludoff was saying
at the same time.
“I am again come about that same woman,” said Nekhludoff.
“Oh, yes; I know. The one innocently condemned.”
“I would like to ask that she should be appointed to serve in the prison
hospital. I have been told that this could be arranged.”
Maslennikoff compressed his lips and meditated. “That will be scarcely
possible,” he said. “However, I shall see what can be done, and shall
wire you an answer tomorrow.”
“I have been told that there were many sick, and help was needed.”
“All right, all right. I shall let you know in any case.”
“Please do,” said Nekhludoff.
The sound of a general and even a natural laugh came from the
drawing-room.
“That’s all that Victor. He is wonderfully sharp when he is in the right
vein,” said Maslennikoff.
“The next thing I wanted to tell you,” said Nekhludoff, “is that 130
persons are imprisoned only because their passports are overdue. They
have been kept here a month.”
And he related the circumstances of the case.
“How have you come to know of this?” said Maslennikoff, looking uneasy
and dissatisfied.
“I went to see a prisoner, and these men came and surrounded me in the
corridor, and asked . . .”
“What prisoner did you go to see?”
“A peasant who is kept in prison, though innocent. I have put his case
into the hands of a lawyer. But that is not the point.”
“Is it possible that people who have done no wrong are imprisoned only
because their passports are overdue? And . . .”
“That’s the Procureur’s business,” Maslennikoff interrupted, angrily.
“There, now, you see what it is you call a prompt and just form of
trial. It is the business of the Public Prosecutor to visit the prison
and to find out if the prisoners are kept there lawfully. But that set
play cards; that’s all they do.”
“Am I to understand that you can do nothing?” Nekhludoff said,
despondently, remembering that the advocate had foretold that the
Governor would put the blame on the Procureur.
“Oh, yes, I can. I shall see about it at once.”
“So much the worse for her. _C’est un souffre douleur_,” came the voice
of a woman, evidently indifferent to what she was saying, from the
drawing-room.
“So much the better. I shall take it also,” a man’s voice was heard to
say from the other side, followed by the playful laughter of a woman,
who was apparently trying to prevent the man from taking something away
from her.
“No, no; not on any account,” the woman’s voice said.
“All right, then. I shall do all this,” Maslennikoff repeated, and put
out the cigarette he held in his white, turquoise-ringed hand. “And now
let us join the ladies.”
“Wait a moment,” Nekhludoff said, stopping at the door of the
drawing-room. “I was told that some men had received corporal punishment
in the prison yesterday. Is this true?”
Maslennikoff blushed.
“Oh, that’s what you are after? No, mon cher, decidedly it won’t do to
let you in there; you want to get at everything. Come, come; Anna is
calling us,” he said, catching Nekhludoff by the arm, and again becoming
as excited as after the attention paid him by the important person, only
now his excitement was not joyful, but anxious.
Nekhludoff pulled his arm away, and without taking leave of any one
and without saying a word, he passed through the drawing-room with a
dejected look, went down into the hall, past the footman, who sprang
towards him, and out at the street door.
“What is the matter with him? What have you done to him?” asked Anna of
her husband.
“This is _a la Francaise_,” remarked some one.
“_A la Francaise_, indeed--it is _a la Zoulou_.”
“Oh, but he’s always been like that.”
Some one rose, some one came in, and the clatter went on its course.
The company used this episode with Nekhludoff as a convenient topic of
conversation for the rest of the “at-home.”
On the day following his visit to Maslennikoff, Nekhludoff received a
letter from him, written in a fine, firm hand, on thick, glazed paper,
with a coat-of-arms, and sealed with sealing-wax. Maslennikoff said
that he had written to the doctor concerning Maslova’s removal to the
hospital, and hoped Nekhludoff’s wish would receive attention. The
letter was signed, “Your affectionate elder comrade,” and the signature
ended with a large, firm, and artistic flourish. “Fool!” Nekhludoff
could not refrain from saying, especially because in the word
“comrade” he felt Maslennikoff’s condescension towards him, i.e., while
Maslennikoff was filling this position, morally most dirty and shameful,
he still thought himself a very important man, and wished, if not
exactly to flatter Nekhludoff, at least to show that he was not too
proud to call him comrade.