War and Peace (209 page)

Just as it is difficult to explain why the ants hurry back to a scattered ant-hill, some dragging away from it bits of refuse, eggs, and corpses, while others run back again, and what is their object in crowding together, overtaking one another, fighting with each other, so it
would be hard to give the reasons that induced the Russians, after the departure of the French, to flock back to the place which had been known as Moscow. But just as looking at the ants hurrying about a ruined ant-heap, one can see by the tenacity, the energy, and the multitude of the busy insects that though all else is utterly destroyed, there is left something indestructible and immaterial that was the whole strength of the colony, so too Moscow in the month of October, though without its governing authorities, without its churches, without its holy things, without its wealth and its houses, was still the same Moscow as it had been in August. Everything was shattered except something immaterial, but mighty and indestructible.

The motives of the people, who rushed from all parts to Moscow after it was evacuated by the enemy, were of the most varied and personal kind, and at first mostly savage and brutal impulses. Only one impulse was common to all—the attraction to the place which had been called Moscow in order to set their energies to work there.

Within a week there were fifteen thousand persons in Moscow, within a fortnight twenty-five thousand; and so it went on. The number went on mounting and mounting till by the autumn of 1813 it had reached a figure exceeding the population of the city in 1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzengerode’s detachment, the peasants from the nearest villages and the residents who had fled from Moscow and concealed themselves in the environs. On entering the ruined city, and finding it pillaged, the Russians fell to pillaging it too. They continued the work begun by the French. Trains of peasants’ waggons drove into Moscow to carry away to the villages all that had been abandoned in the ruined Moscow houses and streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could to their tents; the householders collected all they could out of other houses, and removed it to their own under the pretence that it was their property.

But the first pillaging parties were followed by others; and every day as the numbers pillaging increased, the work of plunder became more difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French had found Moscow deserted but with all the forms of an organically normal town life still existent, with various branches of trades and crafts, of luxury, and political government and religion. These forms were lifeless but they still existed. There were markets, shops, stores, corn-exchanges, and bazaars—most of them stocked with goods. There were factories and trading establishments. There were
palaces and wealthy houses filled with articles of luxury. There were hospitals, prisons, courts, churches, and cathedrals. The longer the French remained, the more these forms of town life perished, and at the end all was lost in one indistinguishable, lifeless scene of pillage.

The longer the pillaging of the French lasted, the more complete was the destruction of the wealth of Moscow and of the forces of the pillagers. The longer the pillaging lasted that was carried on by the Russians on their first return to the capital, and the more there were taking part in it, the more rapidly was the wealth of Moscow and the normal life of the town re-established.

Apart from those who came for plunder, people of all sorts, drawn thither, some by curiosity, some by the duties of office, some by self-interests—householders, priests, officials, high and low, traders, artisans, and peasants—flowed back to Moscow from all sides, as the blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who had come with empty carts to carry off goods were detained by the authorities, and compelled to carry dead bodies out of the town. Other peasants, who had heard of their companions’ discomfiture, drove into the town with wheat, and oats, and hay, knocking down each others’ prices to a figure lower than it had been in former days. Gangs of carpenters, hoping for high wages, were arriving in Moscow every day; and on all sides there were new houses being built, or old half-burnt ones being repaired. Tradesmen carried on their business in booths. Cook-shops and taverns were opened in fire-blackened houses. The clergy held services in many churches that had escaped the fire. Church goods that had been plundered were restored as offerings. Government clerks set up their baize-covered tables and pigeon-holes of papers in little rooms. The higher authorities and the police organised a distribution of the goods left by the French. The owners of houses in which a great many of the goods plundered from other houses had been left complained of the injustice of all goods being taken to the Polygonal Palace. Others maintained that the French had collected all the things from different houses to one spot, and that it was therefore unfair to restore to the master of the house the things found in it. The police were abused and were bribed; estimates for government buildings that had been burnt were reckoned at ten times their value; and appeals for help were made. Count Rastoptchin wrote his posters again.

At the end of January Pierre arrived in Moscow and settled in the lodge of his mansion, as that had escaped the fire. He called on Count Rastoptchin and several acquaintances, and was intending in three days to set off to Petersburg. Every one was triumphant at victory; the ruined and reviving city was bubbling over with life. Every one was glad to see Pierre; everybody was eager to see him, and to ask him about all he had seen. Pierre had a particularly friendly feeling towards every one he met. But unconsciously he was a little on his guard with people to avoid fettering his freedom in any way. To all the questions put to him—important or trivial—whether they asked him where he meant to live, whether he were going to build, when he was starting for Petersburg, or whether he could take a parcel there for someone, he answered, “Yes, very possibly,” “I dare say I may,” and so on.

He heard that the Rostovs were in Kostroma, and the thought of Natasha rarely came to his mind, and when it did occur to him it was as a pleasant memory of time long past. He felt himself set free, not only from the cares of daily life, but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had voluntarily brought upon himself.

The third day after his arrival in Moscow he learnt from the Drubetskoys that Princess Marya was in Moscow. The death, the sufferings. and the last days of Prince Andrey had often engaged Pierre’s thoughts, and now recurred to him with fresh vividness. He heard at dinner that Princess Marya was in Moscow, and living in her own house in Vosdvizhenka, which had escaped the fire, and he went to call upon her the same evening.

On the way to Princess Marya’s Pierre’s mind was full of Prince Andrey, of his friendship for him, of the different occasions when they had met, and especially of their last interview at Borodino.

“Can he possibly have died in the bitter mood he was in then? Was not the meaning of life revealed to him before death?” Pierre wondered. He thought of Karataev, of his death, and unconsciously compared those two men, so different, and yet alike, in the love he had felt for both, and in that both had lived, and both were dead.

In the most serious frame of mind Pierre drove up to the old prince’s house. The house had remained entire. There were traces to be seen of the havoc wrought in it, but the character of the house was unchanged. The old footman met Pierre with a stern face, that seemed to wish to
make the guest feel that the absence of the old prince did make no difference in the severe routine of the household, and said that the princess had retired to her own apartments, and received on Sundays.

“Take my name to her, perhaps she will see me,” said Pierre.

“Yes, your excellency,” answered the footman; “kindly walk into the portrait-gallery.”

A few minutes later the footman returned accompanied by Dessalle. Dessalle brought a message from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre, and begged him, if he would excuse the lack of ceremony, to come upstairs to her apartment.

In a low-pitched room, lighted by a single candle, he found the princess, and some one with her in a black dress. Pierre recollected that the princess had always had lady-companions of some sort with her, but who those companions were, and what they were like, he did not remember. “That is one of her companions,” he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.

The princess rose swiftly to meet him, and held out her hand.

“Yes,” she said, scrutinising his altered face, after he had kissed her hand; “so this is how we meet again. He often talked of you at the last,” she said, turning her eyes from Pierre to the companion with a sort of bashfulness that struck him.

“I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the only piece of good news we had had for a long time.”

Again the princess glanced still more uneasily at the companion, and would have spoken; but Pierre interrupted her.

“Only imagine, I knew nothing about him,” he said. “I believed he had been killed. All I have heard has been through others, at third-hand. I only know that he fell in with the Rostovs.… What a strange stroke of destiny!”

Pierre talked rapidly, eagerly. He glanced once at the companion’s face, saw attentively friendly, inquiring eyes fixed upon him; and as often happens, while talking, he vaguely felt that this lady-companion in the black dress was a good, kind, friendly creature, who need be no hindrance to his talking freely to Princess Marya.

But as he uttered the last words about the Rostovs, the embarrassment in Princess Marya’s face became even more marked. Again her eyes shifted from Pierre’s face to the face of the lady in the black dress, and she said:

“You don’t recognise her?”

Pierre glanced once more at the pale, thin face of her companion, with its black eyes and strange mouth. Something very near to him, long forgotten, and more than sweet, gazed at him out of those intent eyes.

“But no, it cannot be,” he thought. “That stern, thin, pale face that looks so much older? It cannot be she. It is only a reminder of it.”

But at that moment Princess Marya said, “Natasha!”

And the face with the intent eyes—painfully, with effort, like a rusty door opening—smiled, and through that opened door there floated to Pierre a sudden, overwhelming rush of long-forgotten bliss, of which, especially now, he had no thought. It breathed upon him, overwhelmed him, and swallowed him up entirely. When she smiled, there could be no doubt. It was Natasha, and he loved her.

In that first minute Pierre unwittingly betrayed to her and to Princess Marya, and most of all to himself, the secret of which he had been himself unaware. He flushed joyfully, and with agonising distress. He tried to conceal his emotion. But the more he tried to conceal it, the more clearly—more clearly than if he had uttered the most definite words—he betrayed to himself, and to her, and to Princess Marya, that he loved her.

“No, it is nothing; it’s the sudden surprise,” Pierre thought. But as soon as he tried to go on with the conversation with Princess Marya, he glanced again at Natasha, and a still deeper flush spread over his face, and a still more violent wave of rapture and terror flooded his heart. He stammered in his speech, and stopped short in the middle of a sentence.

Pierre had not noticed Natasha because he had never expected to see her here; but he had not recognised her because the change that had taken place in her since he had seen her was immense. She had grown thin and pale. But it was not that that made her unrecognisable. No one could have recognised her at the moment when he entered, because when he first glanced at her there was no trace of a smile in the eyes that in old days had always beamed with a suppressed smile of the joy of life. They were intent, kindly eyes, full of mournful inquiry, and nothing more.

Pierre’s embarrassment was not reflected in a corresponding embarrassment in Natasha, but only in a look of pleasure, that faintly lighted up her whole face.

“She has come to stay with me,” said Princess Marya. “The count and the countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a terrible state. But Natasha herself had to see the doctors. They made her come away with me.”

“Yes. Is there a family without its own sorrow?” said Pierre, turning to Natasha. “You know it happened the very day we were rescued. I saw him. What a splendid boy he was!”

Natasha looked at him, and, in answer to his words, her eyes only opened wider and grew brighter.

“What can one say, or think, to give comfort?” said Pierre. “Nothing. Why had he to die, such a noble boy, so full of life?”

“Yes; in these days it would be hard to live without faith …” said Princess Marya.

“Yes, yes. That is true, indeed,” Pierre put in hurriedly.

“How so?” Natasha asked, looking intently into Pierre’s eyes.

“How so?” said Princess Marya. “Why, only the thought of what awaits …”

Natasha, not heeding Princess Marya’s words, looked again inquiringly at Pierre.

“And because,” Pierre went on, “only one who believes that there is a God guiding our lives can bear such a loss as hers, and … yours,” said Pierre.

Natasha opened her mouth, as though she would say something, but she suddenly stopped.

Pierre made haste to turn away from her, and to address Princess Marya again with a question about the last days of his friend’s life. Pierre’s embarrassment had by now almost disappeared, but at the same time he felt that all his former freedom had vanished too. He felt that there was now a judge criticising every word, every action of his; a judge whose verdict was of greater consequence to him than the verdict of all the people in the world. As he talked now he was considering the impression his words were making on Natasha as he uttered them. He did not intentionally say what might please her; but whatever he said, he looked at himself from her point of view.

With the unwillingness usual in such cases, Princess Marya began telling Pierre of the position in which she had found her brother. But Pierre’s questions, his eagerly restless glance, his face quivering with
emotion, gradually induced her to go into details which she shrank, for her own sake, from recalling to her imagination.