War and Peace (138 page)

Dron watched the princess intently all the while she was speaking.

“Discharge me, ma’am, for God’s sake, bid them take the keys from me,” said he. “I have served twenty-three years, and done no wrong; discharge me, for God’s sake.”

Princess Marya had no notion what he wanted of her and why he asked her to discharge him. She answered that she had never doubted his fidelity, and that she was ready to do everything for him and for the peasants.

An hour later Dunyasha came in to the princess with the news that Dron had come, and all the peasants by the princess’s orders were assembled at the granary and desirous of speaking with their mistress.

“But I did not send for them,” said Princess Marya. “I merely told Dronushka to give them the corn.”

“Only, for God’s sake, your excellency, order them to be sent away and don’t go to them. It’s all a plot,” said Dunyasha, “and Yakov Alpatitch will come and we will start … and pray …”

“How a plot?” asked the princess in surprise.

“Why, I know all about it, only do listen to me, for God’s sake. Ask old nurse too. They say they won’t agree to move away at your orders.”

“You are making some mistake. Why, I have never given them orders to go away …” said Princess Marya. “Call Dronushka.”

Dron on coming in confirmed Dunyasha’s words; the peasants had come by the princess’s instructions.

“But I have never sent for them,” said the princess. “You must have
given them my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the corn.”

Dron sighed without replying.

“If so you command, they will go away,” he said.

“No, no, I’ll go out to them,” said Princess Marya.

In spite of Dunyasha’s and the old nurse’s attempts to dissuade her, Princess Marya went out on to the steps. Dronushka, Dunyasha, the old nurse, and Mihail Ivanitch followed her.

“They probably imagine I am offering them the corn to keep them here while I go away myself, leaving them at the mercy of the French,” thought Princess Marya. “I will promise them monthly rations and lodgings on the Moscow estate. I am sure Andrey would do more for them in my place,” she thought, as she went out in the twilight towards the crowd, waiting on the pasture near the granary.

The crowd stirred, huddling closer, and rapidly took off their hats. Princess Marya came closer to them, her eyes cast down and her feet tripping over her gown. So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed upon her, there were so many different faces that Princess Marya did not see a single one of them, and feeling it necessary to address all at once, did not know how to set about it. But again the sense that she was the representative of her father and brother gave her strength, and she boldly began her speech.

“I am very glad you have come,” she began, not raising her eyes and feeling the rapid and violent beating of her heart. “Dronushka has told me that the war has ruined you. That is our common trouble, and I will grudge nothing to aid you. I am going away myself because it is dangerous here … and the enemy is near … because … I give you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our corn, that you may not suffer want. But if you have been told that I am giving you corn to keep you here, it is false. On the contrary, I beg you to move away with all your belongings to our Moscow estate, and there I undertake and promise you that you shall not be in want. You shall be given houses and bread.” The princess stopped. Nothing was to be heard from the crowd but sighs.

“I don’t do this on my own account,” the princess went on; “I do it in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and for my brother and his son.”

She paused again. No one broke the silence.

“We have trouble in common, and we will share it all equally. All
that is mine is yours,” she said, looking up at the faces before her. All the eyes were gazing at her with the same expression, the meaning of which she could not fathom. Whether it were curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or apprehension, and distrust, the expression on all the faces was alike.

“Very thankful for your kindness, only it’s not for us to take the master’s corn,” said a voice from the back.

“But why not?” said the princess. No one answered, and Princess Marya, looking up at the crowd, noticed that now all the eyes dropped at once on meeting hers.

“Why don’t you want to?” she asked again.

No one replied.

Princess Marya was oppressed by the silence; she tried to catch somebody’s eye.

“Why don’t you speak!” she said, addressing a very old man who was standing near her, his arms propped on his stick. “Tell me if you think something more is needed. I will do anything,” she said, catching his eye. But as though angered by her doing so, he bent his head, and said:

“Why should we agree? We don’t want your corn.”

“Why are we to give up everything? We’re not willing … Not willing. It’s not with our consent. We are sorry for you, but we are not willing. You go away by yourself, alone …” was protested from different parts of the crowd. And again all the faces in the crowd wore the same expression; and now it was unmistakably not an expression of curiosity and gratitude, but an expression of exasperated determination.

“But you misunderstand me,” said Princess Marya, with a melancholy smile. “Why don’t you want to move away? I promise to settle you, to provide for you. And here the enemy will plunder you …” But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.

“We’re not willing, let him plunder us! We won’t take your corn, we won’t agree!”

Princess Marya tried again to catch some one’s eye in the crowd, but no one was looking at her; their eyes unmistakably avoided hers. She felt strange and awkward.

“To be sure, she would school us,… a good dodge,… follow her into slavery. Pull down your house and go into bondage. I dare say! I’ll give you corn, says she!” voices were saying in the crowd.

Princess Marya moved out of the ring, and went to the house with a dejected countenance. Repeating her command to Dron that horses
were to be ready next day for her to start, she went away to her own room and remained alone with her own thoughts.

For a long while Princess Marya sat at the open window of her room listening to the sound of the peasants’ voices floating across from the village, but she was not thinking of them. She felt that she could not understand them however long she thought of them. She thought all the while of one thing—of her sorrow, which now, after the break made by anxiety about the present, already seemed to belong to the past. Now she could remember, could weep, and could pray. With the setting of the sun the wind sank. The night was still and fresh. At midnight the voices in the village began to die down; a cock crowed; the full moon rose from behind a lime-tree; there rose a fresh, white, dewy mist, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

One after another pictures of the immediate past—her father’s illness and last moments—rose before her imagination. And with mournful gladness she let her mind now rest on those images, only shunning with horror the one last scene which she felt she had not the strength to contemplate even in fancy at that still and mysterious hour of the night. And those images rose with such clearness and in such detail before her, that they seemed to her now in the actual present, now in the past, and now in the future.

She had a vivid picture of the moment when he was first stricken down and was being dragged in from the garden at Bleak Hills, and he had muttered something, twitching his grey eyebrows, and looking timidly and uneasily at her. “Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me on the day of his death,” she thought. “He always thought what he told me then.”

And then she recalled with every detail the night at Bleak Hills before his stroke, when, with a presentiment of trouble, she had remained with him against his will. She had not slept; and at night she had stolen down on tip-toe, and going to the door of the conservatory room where her father was spending that night, she had listened to his voice. He was talking in a weary, harassed voice to Tihon. He was saying something about the Crimea, about the warm nights, about the Empress. Evidently he wanted to talk to some one. “And why didn’t he send for me? Why
didn’t he let me be there in Tihon’s place?” Princess Marya had thought then and thought again now. “Now he will never tell any one all that was in his heart. Now the moment will never return when he might have told me all he longed to express, and I and not Tihon might have heard and understood. Why didn’t I go into his room then?” she thought. “Perhaps he would have said to me then what he said on the day of his death. Even then talking to Tihon he asked about me twice. He was longing to see me while I was standing there behind the door. He was sad and weary talking to Tihon, who did not understand him. I remember how he spoke to him of Liza as though she were living—he forgot that she was dead, and Tihon reminded him that she was no more, and he cried, ‘Fool!’ He was miserable. I heard from the door how he lay down groaning on the bed and cried out aloud, ‘My God!’ Why didn’t I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And, perhaps, then he would have been comforted, he would have said that word to me.” And Princess Marya uttered aloud that caressing word he had said to her on the day of his death. “Da-ar-ling!” Princess Marya repeated the word and broke into sobs that relieved her heart. She could see his face before her now. And not the face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen at a distance; but the weak and timid face she had seen on the last day when, bending to his lips to catch what he said, she had, for the first time, looked at it quite close with all its wrinkles.

“Darling,” she repeated.

“What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking now?” was the question that rose suddenly to her mind; and in answer to it she saw him with the expression she had seen on the face bound up with a white handkerchief in the coffin. And the horror that had overcome her at the moment when she had touched him, and felt that it was not he but something mysterious and horrible, came over her now. She tried to think of something else, tried to pray, and could do nothing. With wide eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows, every instant expecting to see his dead face, and feeling as though she were held spellbound in the stillness that reigned without and within the house.

“Dunyasha!” she whispered. “Dunyasha!” she shrieked wildly, and tearing herself out of the stillness, she ran towards the maids’ room, meeting the old nurse and the maids running out to meet her.

On the 17th of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka, who had just come back from being taken prisoner by the French, and an hussar on orderly duty, rode out from Yankovo, fifteen versts from Bogutcharovo. They meant to try a new horse that Ilyin had bought, and to find out whether there was hay to be had in the village.

Bogutcharovo had been for the last three days between the two hostile armies, so that the Russian rearguard could reach the village as easily as the French vanguard; and therefore Rostov, like a careful officer, was anxious to anticipate the French in securing any provisions that might be left there.

Rostov and Ilyin were in the liveliest spirits. On the way to Bogutcharovo, which they knew to be an estate belonging to a prince, with a manor-house, where they hoped to find a large household, and, perhaps, pretty servant-girls, they questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon, and laughed at his stories; then raced their horses to test Ilyin’s new purchase. Rostov had no notion that the village to which he was going was the property of the very Prince Bolkonsky who had been betrothed to his sister.

Rostov and Ilyin had just let their horses race till they were weary for the last time before Bogutcharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, was the first to gallop into the village street.

“You started in front,” said Ilyin, flushed.

“Yes, always in front, in the meadow and here too,” answered Rostov, patting his foaming Don horse.

“And on my Frenchy, your excellency,” said Lavrushka from behind, meaning the wretched cart-horse he was riding, “I could have overtaken you, only I didn’t want to put you to shame.”

They rode at a walking pace towards the granary, where there was a great crowd of peasants standing. Several of the peasants took off their caps, others stared at them without taking off their caps. Two old peasants, with wrinkled faces and scanty beards, came out of the tavern, reeling and singing a tuneless song, and advanced with smiles towards the officers. “They’re fine fellows!” said Rostov, laughing. “Well, have you any hay?”

“And so alike, somehow …” said Ilyin.

“Ma … a … aking mer … ry in my sum … sum … mer …” chanted the peasant, with a blissful smile.

A peasant came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.

“Which part will you be from?” asked the peasant.

“We’re French,” answered Ilyin, laughing. “And this is Napoleon himself,” he said, pointing to Lavrushka.

“I suppose you are Russians then?” the peasant inquired.

“And have you many troops here?” asked another short peasant, approaching.

“A great many,” answered Rostov. “But why are you all assembled here?” he added. “Is it a holiday or what?”

“The old men are met about the village business,” answered the peasant, moving away from him.

At that moment there came into sight two women and a man in a white hat running from the prince’s house towards the officers.

“The one in pink’s mine; hands off, beware!” said Ilyin, noticing Dunyasha running resolutely towards them.

“She’ll be the girl for us!” said Lavrushka, winking to Ilyin.

“What is it you want, my pretty?” said Ilyin, smiling.

“The princess sent me to ask of what regiment are you, and what is your name?”

“This is Count Rostov, the commander of the squadron, and I am your humble servant.”

“Mer … mer … mer … arbour!” chanted the drunken peasant, smiling blissfully, and gazing at Ilyin as he talked to the girl. Alpatitch followed Dunyasha, taking off his hat to Rostov as he approached.