'Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt's, but I hardly know her,' said Shoustova.
Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather belt, came in from the next room.
'How do you do? Thanks for coming,' she began as soon as she had taken the place next Shoustova's on the sofa.
'Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?'
'She does not complain,' said Nekhludoff. 'She says she feels perfectly happy.''
'Ah, that's like Vera. I know her,' said the aunt, smiling and shaking her head. 'One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for others; nothing for herself.'
'No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece was imprisoned for nothing.'
'Yes, that's true,' said the aunt. 'It is a dreadful business.
She suffered, in reality, because of me.'
'Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the same.'
'Allow me to know better,' said the aunt. 'You see,' she went on to Nekhludoff, 'it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should say from whom she had them.'
'But I never told them,' said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a lock that was not even out of place.
'I never said you did,' answered the aunt.
'If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me,' said
Shoustova, blushing, and looking round uneasily.
'Don't speak about it, Lydia dear,' said her mother.
'Why not? I should like to relate it,' said Shoustova, no longer smiling nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting redder.
'Don't forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it.'
'Not at all—-Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet. When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told him I would not answer.'
'Then this—Petrov—'
'Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard,' put in the aunt, to explain her niece's words to Nekhludoff.
'Then he began persuading,' continued Shoustova, excitedly and hurriedly. ''Anything you tell me,' he said, 'can harm no one; on the contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people whom we may be uselessly tormenting.' Well, I still said I would not tell. Then he said, 'All right, don't tell, but do not deny what I am going to say.' And he named Mitin.'
'Don't talk about it,' said the aunt.
'Oh, aunt, don't interrupt,' and she went on pulling the lock of hair and looking round. 'And then, only fancy, the next day I hear—they let me know by knocking at the wall—that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so—it tormented me so that I nearly went mad.'
'And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken up?'
'Yes, but I didn't know. I think, 'There, now, I have betrayed him.' I walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking. I think, 'I have betrayed him.' I lie down and cover myself up, and hear something whispering, 'Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!' I know it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to fall asleep, I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is terrible!' and as Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and twisted and untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.
'Lydia, dear, be calm,' the mother said, touching her shoulder.
But Shoustova could not stop herself.
'It is all the more terrible—' she began again, but did not finish, and jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.
Her mother turned to follow her.
'They ought to be hanged, the rascals!' said the schoolboy who was sitting on the window-sill.
'What's that?' said the mother.
'I only said—Oh, it's nothing,' the schoolboy answered, and taking a cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LYDIA'S AUNT.
'Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young,' said the aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.
'I should say for every one,' Nekhludoff replied.
'No, not for all,' answered the aunt. 'For the real revolutionists, I have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police lives in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and others, and for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is all over, and all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and rest. I have been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the young and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia), for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of freedom; and the bad food and bad air—all that is nothing. Three times as many privations would be easily borne if it were not for the moral shock when one is first taken.'
'Have you experienced it?'
'I? I was twice in prison,' she answered, with a sad, gentle smile. 'When I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22, had a child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and the parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a human creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my little daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack—I felt terribly depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the gendarme officer who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that people liked smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light; and that mothers love their children, and children their mothers. Then how could they tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and lock me up in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not be borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men, and believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it after all that. I have ceased to believe in humanity since then, and have grown embittered,' she finished, with a smile.
Shoustova's mother came in at the door through which her daughter had gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in again.
'And what has this young life been ruined for?' said the aunt. 'What is especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it.'
'She will recover in the country, with God's help,' said the mother. 'We shall send her to her father.'
'Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether,' said the aunt. 'Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova,' and she got the letter out of her pocket.
'The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to her, according to how far it coincides with
