Resurrection | Page 5

Isvostchiks [cabmen], tradespeople, cooks, workmen, and government
clerks, stopped and looked curiously at the prisoner; some shook their
heads and thought, "This is what evil conduct, conduct unlike ours,
leads to." The children stopped and gazed at the robber with frightened
looks; but the thought that the soldiers were preventing her from doing
more harm quieted their fears. A peasant, who had sold his charcoal,
and had had some tea in the town, came up, and, after crossing himself,
gave her a copeck. The prisoner blushed and muttered something; she
noticed that she was attracting everybody's attention, and that pleased
her. The comparatively fresh air also gladdened her, but it was painful
to step on the rough stones with the ill-made prison shoes on her feet,
which had become unused to walking. Passing by a corn-dealer's shop,
in front of which a few pigeons were strutting about, unmolested by

any one, the prisoner almost touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it
fluttered up and flew close to her car, fanning her with its wings. She
smiled, then sighed deeply as she remembered her present position.



CHAPTER II
.
MASLOVA'S EARLY LIFE.
The story of the prisoner Maslova's life was a very common one.
Maslova's mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman,
employed on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who
were landowners. This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and,
as often happens among the village people, each one of these undesired
babies, after it had been carefully baptised, was neglected by its mother,
whom it hindered at her work, and left to starve. Five children had died
in this way. They had all been baptised and then not sufficiently fed,
and just left to die. The sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp,
would have shared the same fate, had it not so happened that one of the
maiden ladies came into the farmyard to scold the dairymaids for
sending up cream that smelt of the cow. The young woman was lying
in the cowshed with a fine, healthy, new-born baby. The old maiden
lady scolded the maids again for allowing the woman (who had just
been confined) to lie in the cowshed, and was about to go away, but
seeing the baby her heart was touched, and she offered to stand
godmother to the little girl, and pity for her little god-daughter induced
her to give milk and a little money to the mother, so that she should
feed the baby; and the little girl lived. The old ladies spoke of her as
"the saved one." When the child was three years old, her mother fell ill
and died, and the maiden ladies took the child from her old
grandmother, to whom she was nothing but a burden.
The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so full of
spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.
The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood godmother

to the girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters; Maria Ivanovna, the
elder, was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna dressed the little girl in nice
clothes, and taught her to read and write, meaning to educate her like a
lady. Maria Ivanovna thought the child should be brought up to work,
and trained her to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished,
and, when in a bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under
these two different influences, the girl turned out half servant, half
young lady. They called her Katusha, which sounds less refined than
Katinka, but is not quite so common as Katka. She used to sew, tidy up
the rooms, polish the metal cases of the icons and do other light work,
and sometimes she sat and read to the ladies.
Though she had more than one offer, she would not marry. She felt that
life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting her
would be too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.
She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the
old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to stay
with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to
herself, fell in love with him.
Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his aunts
before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night before he left he
betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a 100-rouble note, went away.
Five months later she knew for certain that she was to be a mother.
After that everything seemed repugnant to her, her only thought being
how to escape from the shame that awaited her. She began not