War and Peace (163 page)

“H’m?” said the count, pausing.

“I was passing by Yusupov’s house just now,” said Berg, laughing. “The steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I wouldn’t care to buy any of their things. I went in, you know, out of curiosity, and there is a little chiffonier and dressing-table. You know, just like what Verushka wanted, and we quarrelled about.” (Berg unconsciously passed into a tone expressive of his pleasure in his own excellent domestic arrangements.)
“And such a charming thing!—it moves forward, you know, with a secret English lock. And it’s just what Verushka wanted. So I want to make it a surprise for her. I see what a number of peasants you have in the yard. Please, spare me one of them. I’ll pay him well, and …”

The count frowned and sniffed.

“Ask the countess; I don’t give the orders.”

“If it’s troublesome, pray don’t,” said Berg. “Only I should have liked it on Vera’s account.”

“Ah, go to damnation all of you, damnation! damnation! damnation!” cried the old count. “My head’s going round.” And he went out of the room.

The countess began to cry.

“Yes, indeed, these are terrible times, mamma!” said Berg.

Natasha went out with her father, and as though unable to make up her mind on some difficult question, she followed him at first, then turned and ran downstairs.

Petya was standing at the entrance, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants, who were leaving Moscow. The loaded waggons were still standing in the yards. Two of them had been uncorded, and on to one of these the wounded officer was clambering with the assistance of his orderly.

“Do you know what it was about?” Petya asked Natasha. (Natasha knew that he meant, what their father and mother had been quarrelling about.) She did not answer.

“It was because papa wanted to give up all the waggons to the wounded,” said Petya. “Vassilitch told me. And what I think …”

“What I think,” Natasha suddenly almost screamed, turning a furious face on Petya, “what I think is, that it’s so vile, so loathsome … I don’t know. Are we a lot of low Germans?…” Her throat was quivering with sobs, but afraid of being weak, or wasting the force of her anger, she turned and flew headlong up the stairs.

Berg was sitting beside the countess, trying with filial respectfulness to reassure her. The count was walking about the room with a pipe in his hand, when, with a face distorted by passion, Natasha burst like a tempest into the room, and ran with rapid steps up to her mother.

“It’s vile! It’s loathsome!” she screamed. “It can’t be true that it’s your order.”

Berg and the countess gazed at her in alarm and bewilderment. The count stood still in the window listening.

“Mamma, it’s impossible; look what’s being done in the yard!” she cried; “they are being left …”

“What’s the matter? Who are they? What do you want?”

“The wounded! It’s impossible, mamma, it’s outrageous.… No, mamma, darling, it’s all wrong; forgive me, please, darling … Mamma, what is it to us what we take away; you only look out into the yard.… Mamma!… It can’t be done.…”

The count stood in the window, and listened to Natasha without turning his head. All at once he gave a sort of gulp, and put his face closer to the window.

The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her mother, saw her emotion, felt why her husband would not look at her now, and looked about her with a distracted air.

“Oh, do as you please. Am I doing anything to hinder any one?” she said, not giving way all at once.

“Mamma, darling, forgive me.”

But the countess pushed away her daughter, and went up to the count.

“My dear, you order what is right.… I don’t understand about it, you know,” she said, dropping her eyes with a guilty air.

“The eggs,… the eggs teaching the hen,…” the count murmured through tears of gladness, and he embraced his wife, who was glad to hide her ashamed face on his breast.

“Papa, mamma! may I give the order? May I?…” asked Natasha. “We’ll take all that’s quite necessary all the same,” she added.

The count nodded; and Natasha, with the same swiftness with which she used to run at “catch-catch,” flew across the hall into the vestibule, and down the steps into the yard.

The servants gathered round Natasha, and could hardly believe the strange order she gave them, till the count himself in his wife’s name confirmed the order that all the waggons were to be placed at the disposal of the wounded, and the boxes were to be taken down to the storerooms. When they understood, the servants gleefully and busily set to this new task. It no longer seemed strange to the servants, it seemed to them, indeed, that no other course was possible; just as a quarter of an hour before they had not thought it strange to leave the wounded behind and take the furniture; had accepted that too, in fact, as the only course possible.

All the household set to work getting the wounded men into the waggons
with the greatest zeal, as though to make up for not having espoused their cause earlier. The wounded soldiers came creeping out of their rooms, and crowded round the waggons, with pale, delighted faces. The news spread to the neighbouring houses, and wounded men began to come into the yard from other houses too. Many of the wounded soldiers begged them not to take out the boxes, but only to let them sit on the top of them. But when once the work of unloading had begun there was no stopping it; it seemed of little consequence whether all were left or half. The cases of china, of bronzes, of pictures and looking-glasses, which had been so carefully packed during the previous night lay in the yard, and still they sought and found possibilities of taking out more and more, and leaving more and more, for the wounded.

“We can take four more,” said the steward. “I’ll leave my luggage, or else what is to become of them?”

“Oh, let them have our wardrobe cart,” said the countess; “Dunyasha will go with me in the carriage.”

The waggon packed with the ladies’ wardrobe was unloaded, and sent to fetch wounded men from two doors off. All the family and the servants too were eager and merry. Natasha was in a state of ecstatic happiness, such as she had not known for a very long while.

“Where are we to fasten this on?” said the servant, trying to lay a trunk on the narrow footboard behind in the carriage. “We must keep just one cart for it.”

“What is it?” asked Natasha.

“The count’s books.”

“Leave it. Vassilitch will put it away. That’s not necessary.”

The covered gig was full of people; they were only in doubt where Pyotr Ilyitch was to sit.

“He’ll go on the box. You’ll go on the box, won’t you, Petya?” cried Natasha.

Sonya, too, worked with unflagging zeal; but the aim of her exertions was the opposite of Natasha’s. She saw to the storing away of all that was left behind, made a list of them at the countess’s desire, and tried to get as much as possible taken with them.

By two o’clock the Rostovs’ four carriages, packed and ready to start, stood in the approach. The waggon-loads of wounded were filing one after another out of the yard.

The coach in which Prince Andrey was being taken drove by the front door, and attracted the attention of Sonya, who was helping a maid to arrange the countess’s seat comfortably in her huge, high carriage.

“Whose carriage is that?” asked Sonya, popping her head out of the carriage window.

“Why, haven’t you heard, miss?” answered the maid. “The wounded prince; he stayed the night in the house, and is going on with us.”

“Oh, who is he? what’s his name?”

“Our betrothed that was … Prince Bolkonsky himself!” answered the maid, sighing. “They say he is dying.”

Sonya jumped out of the carriage and ran in to the countess. The countess, dressed for the journey, in her hat and shawl, was walking wearily about the drawing-room, waiting for the rest of the household to come in and sit down with closed doors, for the usual silent prayer before setting out. Natasha was not in the room.

“Mamma,” said Sonya. “Prince Andrey is here, wounded and dying; He is going with us.”

The countess opened her eyes in dismay, and clutching Sonya’s arm, looked about her.

“Natasha,” she said.

Both to Sonya and the countess this news had for the first moment but one significance. They knew their Natasha, and alarm at the thought of the effect the news might have on her outweighed all sympathy for the man, though they both liked him.

“Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us,” said Sonya.

“You say he is dying?”

Sonya nodded.

The countess embraced Sonya and burst into tears. “The ways of the Lord are past our finding out!” she thought, feeling that in all that was passing now the Hand of the Almighty, hitherto unseen, was beginning to be manifest.

“Well, mamma, it’s all ready. What is it?…” asked Natasha, running with her eager face into the room.

“Nothing,” said the countess. “If we’re ready, then do let us start.”
And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.

Natasha looked inquisitively at her.

“What is it? What has happened?”

“Nothing,… oh, no,…”

“Something very bad, concerning me?… What is it?” asked the keen-witted Natasha.

Sonya sighed, and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss, Mavra Kuzminishna, and Vassilitch came into the drawing-room; and closing the doors, they all sat down, and sat so in silence, without looking at each other for several seconds.

The count was the first to get up. With a loud sigh he crossed himself before the holy picture. All the others did the same. Then the count proceeded to embrace Mavra Kuzminishna and Vassilitch, who were to remain in Moscow; and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder, he patted them on the back with vaguely affectionate and reassuring phrases. The countess went off to the little chapel, and Sonya found her there on her knees before the holy pictures, that were still left here and there on the walls. All the holy pictures most precious through association with the traditions of the family were being taken with them.

In the porch and in the yard the servants who were going—all of whom had been armed with swords and daggers by Petya—with their trousers tucked in their boots, and their sashes or leather belts tightly braced, took leave of those who were left behind.

As is invariably the case at starting on a journey, a great many things were found to have been forgotten, or packed in the wrong place; and two grooms were kept a long while standing, one each side of the open carriage door, ready to help the countess up the carriage steps, while maids were flying with pillows and bags from the house to the carriages, the coach, and the covered gig, and back again.

“They will always forget everything as long as they live!” said the countess. “You know that I can’t sit like that.” And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth and an aggrieved look on her face, rushed to the carriage to arrange the cushions again without a word.

“Ah, those servants,” said the count, shaking his head.

The old coachman Efim, the only one whom the countess could trust to drive her, sat perched up on the box, and did not even look round at what was passing behind him. His thirty years’ experience had taught
him that it would be some time yet before they would say, “Now, in God’s name, start!” and that when they had said it, they would stop him at least twice again to send back for things that had been forgotten; and after that he would have to pull up once more for the countess herself to put her head out of window and beg him, for Christ’s sake, to drive carefully downhill. He knew this, and therefore awaited what was to come with more patience than his horses, especially the left one, the chestnut Falcon, who was continually pawing the ground and champing at the bit. At last all were seated; the carriage steps were pulled up, and the door slammed, and the forgotten travelling-case had been sent for and the countess had popped her head out and given the usual injunctions. Then Efim deliberately took his hat off and began crossing himself. The postillion and all the servants did the same.

“With God’s blessing!” said Efim, putting his hat on. “Off!” The postillion started his horse. The right-shaft horse began to pull, the high springs creaked, and the carriage swayed. The footman jumped up on the box while it was moving. The carriage jolted as it drove out of the yard on to the uneven pavement; the other vehicles jolted in the same way as they followed in a procession up the street. All the occupants of the carriages, the coach and the covered gig, crossed themselves on seeing the church opposite. The servants, who were staying in Moscow, walked along on both sides of the carriages to see them off.

Natasha had rarely felt such a joyful sensation as she experienced at that moment sitting in the carriage by the countess and watching, as they slowly moved by her, the walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Now and then she put her head out of the carriage window and looked back, and then in front of the long train of waggons full of wounded soldiers preceding them. Foremost of them all she could see Prince Andrey’s closed carriage. She did not know who was in it, and every time she took stock of the procession of waggons she looked out for that coach. She knew it would be the foremost. In Kudrino and from Nikitsky Street, from Pryesny, and from Podnovinsky several trains of vehicles, similar to the Rostovs’, came driving out, and by the time they reached Sadovoy Street the carriages and carts were two deep all along the road.

As they turned round Suharev Tower, Natasha, who was quickly and inquisitively scrutinising the crowd driving and walking by, uttered a cry of delight and surprise:

“Good Heavens! Mamma, Sonya, look; it’s he!”

“Who? who?”

“Look, do look! Bezuhov,” said Natasha, putting her head out of the carriage window and staring at a tall, stout man in a coachman’s long coat, obviously a gentleman disguised, from his carriage and gait. He was passing under the arch of the Suharev Tower beside a yellow-looking, beardless, little old man in a frieze cloak.

“Only fancy! Bezuhov in a coachman’s coat, with a queer sort of old-looking boy,” said Natasha. “Do look; do look!”