The office consisted of two rooms. In the first room, which had two
dirty windows and the plastering on the walls peeled off, a black
measuring rod, for determining the height of prisoners, stood in one
corner, while in another hung a picture of Christ. A few wardens stood
around in this room. In the second room, in groups and pairs, about
twenty men and women were sitting along the walls, talking in low
voices. A writing table stood near one of the windows.
The inspector seated himself at the writing table and offered
Nekhludoff a chair standing near by. Nekhludoff seated himself and
began to examine the people in the room.
His attention was first of all attracted by a young man with a
pleasant face, wearing a short jacket, who was standing before a man
prisoner and a girl, gesticulating and talking to them in a heated
manner. Beside them sat an old man in blue eye-glasses, immovably
holding the hand of a woman in prison garb and listening to her. A boy
in high-school uniform, with an expression of fright on his face,
stood gazing on the old man. Not far from them, in the corner, a pair
of lovers were sitting. She was a very young, pretty, stylishly-dressed
girl with short-cropped, flaxen hair and an energetic face; he was a
fine-featured, handsome youth, with wavy hair, and in a prison coat.
They occupied the corner, whispering to each other, apparently wrapped
in their love. Nearest of all to the table was a gray-haired woman in
black, evidently the mother of a consumptive young man in a rubber
jacket, who stood before her. Her eyes were fixed on him, and her
tears prevented her speaking, which she several times attempted to do,
but was forced to desist. The young man held a piece of paper in his
hand, and, evidently not knowing what to do, with an angry expression
on his face was folding and crumpling it. Sitting beside the weeping
mother, and patting her on the shoulder, was a stout, pretty girl with
red cheeks, in a gray dress and cape. Everything in this girl was
beautiful--the white hands, the wavy, short hair, the strong nose and
lips; but the principal charm of her face were her hazel, kindly,
truthful, sheep eyes. Her beautiful eyes turned on Nekhludoff at the
moment he entered, and met his. But she immediately turned them again
on her mother, and whispered to her something. Not far from the lovers
a dark man with gloomy face sat talking angrily to a clean-shaven
visitor resembling a Skopetz (a sect of castrates). At the very door
stood a young man in a rubber jacket, evidently more concerned about
the impression he was making on the visitors than what he was saying.
Nekhludoff sat down beside the inspector and looked around him with
intense curiosity. He was amused by a short-haired boy coming near him
and asking him in a shrill voice:
"And whom are you waiting for?"
The question surprised Nekhludoff, but, seeing the boy's serious,
intelligent face, with bright, attentive eyes, gravely answered that
he was awaiting a woman acquaintance.
"Well, is she your sister?" asked the boy.
"No, she is not my sister," Nekhludoff answered with surprise. "And
with whom are you?"
"I am with mamma. She is a political," said the boy.
"Maria Pavlovna, take away Kolia!" said the inspector, evidently
finding Nekhludoff's conversation with the boy contrary to the law.
Maria Pavlovna, the same beautiful woman who had attracted
Nekhludoff's attention, rose and with heavy, long strides approached
him.
"What is he asking you? Who you are?" she asked, slightly smiling with
her beautifully curved lips, and confidingly looking at him with her
prominent, kindly eyes, as though expecting Nekhludoff to know that
her relations to everybody always have been, are and ought to be
simple, affable, and brotherly. "He must know everything," she said,
and smiled into the face of the boy with such a kindly, charming smile
that both the boy and Nekhludoff involuntarily also smiled.
"Yes, he asked me whom I came to see."
"Maria Pavlovna, you know that it is not permitted to speak to
strangers," said the inspector.
"All right," she said, and, taking the little hand of the boy into her
own white hand, she returned to the consumptive's mother.
"Whose boy is that?" Nekhludoff asked the inspector.
"He is the son of a political prisoner, and was born in prison."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes, and now he is following his mother to Siberia."
"And that girl?"
"I cannot answer it," said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders.
"Ah, there is Bogodukhovskaia."