"It is shameful and disgusting," Nekhludoff meditated, while returning
home on foot along the familiar streets. The oppressive feeling which
he had experienced while speaking to Missy clung to him. He understood
that nominally, if one may so express himself, he was in the right; he
had never said anything to bind himself to her; had made no offer, but
in reality he felt that he had bound himself to her, that he had
promised to be hers. Yet he felt in all his being that he could not
marry her.
"It is shameful and disgusting," he repeated, not only of his
relations to Missy, but of everything. "Everything is disgusting and
shameful," he repeated to himself, as he ascended the steps of his
house.
"I shall take no supper," he said to Kornei, who followed him into the
dining-room, where the table was set for his supper. "You may go."
"All right," said Kornei, but did not go, and began to clear the
table. Nekhludoff looked at Kornei and an ill feeling sprung up in his
heart toward him. He wished to be left in peace, and it seemed as if
everybody were spitefully worrying him. When Kornei had left,
Nekhludoff went over to the _samovar_, intending to make some tea,
but, hearing the footsteps of Agrippina Petrovna, he hastily walked
into the drawing-room, closing the door behind him. This was the room
in which, three months ago, his mother had died. Now, as he entered
this room, lighted by two lamps with reflectors--one near a portrait
of his father, the other near a portrait of his mother--he thought of
his relations toward his mother, and these relations seemed to him
unnatural and repulsive. These, too, were shameful and disgusting. He
remembered how, during her last sickness, he wished her to die. He
said to himself that he wished it so that she might be spared the
suffering, but in reality he wished to spare himself the sight of her
suffering.
Desiring to call forth pleasant recollections about her, he looked at
her portrait, painted by a famous artist for five thousand rubles. She
was represented in a black velvet dress with bared breast. The artist
had evidently drawn with particular care the breast and the beautiful
shoulders and neck. That was particularly shameful and disgusting.
There was something revolting and sacriligious to him in this
representation of his mother as a denuded beauty, the more so because
three months ago she lay in this very room shrunken like a mummy, and
filling the entire house with an oppressive odor. He thought he could
smell the odor now. He remembered how, on the day before she died, she
took his strong, white hand into her own emaciated, discolored one,
and, looking into his eyes, said: "Do not judge me, Mitia, if I have
not done as I should," and her faded eyes filled with tears.
"How disgusting!" he again repeated to himself, glancing at the
half-nude woman with splendid marble shoulders and arms and a
triumphant smile on her lips. The bared bosom of that portrait
reminded him of another young woman whom he had seen dressed in a
similar way a few days before. It was Missy, who had invited him to
the house under some pretext, in order to display before him her
ball-dress. He recalled with disgust her beautiful shoulders and arms;
and her coarse, brutal father, with his dark past, his cruelties, and
her mother with her doubtful reputation. All this was disgusting and
at the same time shameful.
"No, no; I must free myself from all these false relations with the
Korchagins, with Maria Vasilievna, with the inheritance and all the
rest," he thought. "Yes, to breathe freely; to go abroad--to Rome--and
continue to work on my picture." He remembered his doubts about his
talent. "Well, it is all the same; I will simply breathe freely.
First, I will go to Constantinople, then to Rome--away from this jury
duty. Yes, and to fix matters with the lawyer----"
And suddenly, before his imagination, appeared with uncommon vividness
the picture of the prisoner with the black, squinting eyes. And how
she wept when the last words of the prisoners were spoken! He hastily
crushed the cigarette he was smoking, lit another, and began pacing up
and down the room. One after another the scenes he had lived through
with her rose up in his mind. He recalled their last meeting, the
passion which seized him at the time, and the disappointment that
followed. He recalled the white dress with the blue ribbon; he
recalled the morning mass. "Why, I loved her with a pure love that
night; I loved her even before, and how I loved her when I first came
to my aunts and was writing my composition!" That freshness, youth,
fullness of life swept over him and he became painfully sad.
The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was great;
it was equally great, if not greater, than the difference between
Katiousha in the church and that girl whom they had tried this
morning. Then he was a courageous, free man, before whom opened
endless possibilities; now he felt himself caught in the tenets of a
stupid, idle, aimless, miserable life, from which there was no escape;
aye, from which, for the most part, he would not escape. He
remembered how he once had prided himself upon his rectitude; how he
always made it a rule to tell the truth, and was in reality truthful,
and how he was now steeped in falsehood--falsehood which was
recognized as truth by all those around him.
And there was no escape from this falsehood; at all events, he did not
see any escape. He had sunk in it, became accustomed to it, and
indulged himself in it.
The questions that absorbed him now were: How to break loose from
Maria Vasilievna and her husband, so that he might be able to look
them in the face? How, without falsehood, to disentangle his relations
with Missy? How to get out of the inconsistency of considering the
private holding of land unjust and keeping his inheritance? How to
blot out his sin against Katiousha? "I cannot abandon the woman whom I
have loved and content myself with paying money to the lawyer to save
her from penal servitude, which she does not even deserve." To blot
out the sin, as he did then, when he thought that he was atoning for
his wrong by giving her money! Impossible!
He vividly recalled the moment when he ran after her in the corridor,
thrust money in her bosom, and ran away from her. "Oh, that money!"
With the same horror and disgust he recalled that moment. "Oh, how
disgusting!" he said aloud, as he did then. "Only a scoundrel and
rascal could do it! And I am that scoundrel, that rascal!" he said
aloud. "It is possible that I--" and he stopped in the middle of the
room--"Is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? Who but I?" he
answered himself. "And is this the only thing?" he continued, still
censuring himself. "Are not my relations toward Maria Vasilievna base
and detestable? And my position with regard to property? Under the
plea that I inherited it from my mother I am using wealth, the
ownership of which I consider unlawful. And the whole of this idle,
abominable life? And to crown all, my conduct toward Katiousha?
Scoundrel! Villain! Let people judge me as they please--I can deceive
them, but I cannot deceive myself."
And he suddenly understood that the disgust which he had lately felt
toward everybody, and especially to-day toward the Prince and Maria
Vasilievna, and Missy, and Kornei, was disgust with himself. And in
this confession of his own baseness there was something painful, and
at the same time joyous and calming.
In the course of his life Nekhludoff often experienced what he called
a "cleansing of the soul." This happened when, after a long period of
retardation, or, perhaps, entire cessation of his inner life, he
suddenly became aware of it, and proceeded to cleanse his soul of all
the accumulated filth that caused this standstill.
After such awakenings Nekhludoff always laid down some rules for
himself which he intended to follow all the rest of his life; kept a
diary and began a new life, which he hoped he should never change
again--"turning a new leaf," he used to call it. But the temptations
of life entrapped him anew, after every awakening, and, without
knowing it, he sank again, often to a lower depth than he was in
before.
Thus he cleansed himself and revived several times. His first
cleansing happened when he visited his aunts. That was the brightest
and most enthusiastic awakening. And it lasted a long time. The next
happened when he left the civil service, and, desiring to sacrifice
his life, he entered, during the war, the military service. Here he
began to sink quickly. The next awakening occurred when he retired
from the military service, and, going abroad, gave himself up to
painting.
From that day to this there was a long period of uncleanliness, the
longest he had gone through yet, and, therefore, he had never sunk so
deep, and never before was there such discord between the demands of
his conscience and the life which he was leading. So, when he saw the
chasm which separated the two, he was horrified.
The discord was so great, the defilement so thorough, that at first he
despaired of the possibility of a complete cleansing. "Why, you have
tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul
whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only
one--all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual being which
alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, was already awake in
Nekhludoff. And he could not help believing it. However great the
difference between that which he was and that which he wished to be,
for the awakened spiritual being everything was possible.
"I shall break this lie that binds me at any cost. I will confess the
truth to everybody, and will act the truth," he said aloud,
resolutely. "I will tell Missy the truth--that I am a profligate and
cannot marry her; that I have trifled with her. I will tell Maria
Vasilevna (the wife of the marshal of nobility)--but no, what is the
good of telling her? I will tell her husband that I am a scoundrel,
that I have deceived him. I will dispose of my inheritance in
accordance with the demands of justice. I will tell her, Katiousha,
that I am a knave, that I have wronged her, and will do everything in
my power to alleviate her condition. Yes, I shall see her, and beg her
forgiveness--I will beg like a child."
He stopped.
"I will marry her, if necessary."
He crossed his hands on his breast, as he used to do when a child,
raised his eyes and said:
"Lord, help me, teach me; come and enter within me and purify me of
all this abomination."
He prayed, asked God to help him and purify him, while that which he
was praying for had already happened. Not only did he feel the
freedom, vigor and gladness of life, but he also felt the power of
good. He felt himself capable of doing the best that man can do.
There were tears in his eyes when he said these things--tears of
joy--on the awakening within him of that spiritual being, and tears of
emotion over his own virtue.
He felt warm and opened a window which looked into a garden. It was a
moonlit, fresh and quiet night. Past the street rattled some vehicle,
and then everything was quiet. Directly beneath the window a tall,
denuded poplar threw its shadow on the gravel of the landing-place,
distinctly showing all the ramifications of its bare branches. To the
left the roof of a shed seemed white under the bright light of the
moon; in front were the tangled branches of the trees, through which
was seen the dark shadow of the garden inclosure.
Nekhludoff looked at the moonlit garden and roof, the shadows of the
poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
"How delightful! My God, how delightful!" he said of that which was in
his soul.