War and Peace (58 page)

Bells rang; the stewards rushed forward; the guests, scattered about the different rooms, gathered together in one mass, like rye shaken together in a shovel, and waited at the door of the great drawing-room.

At the door of the ante-room appeared the figure of Bagration, without his hat or sword, which, in accordance with the club custom, he had left with the hall porter. He was not wearing an Astrachan cap, and had not a riding-whip over his shoulder, as Rostov had seen him on the night before the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign orders and the star of St. George on the left side of his chest. He had, obviously with a view to the banquet, just had his hair cut and his whiskers clipped, which changed his appearance for the worse. He had a sort of naïvely festive air, which, in conjunction with his determined, manly features, gave an expression positively rather comic to his face. Bekleshov and Fyodor Petrovitch Uvarov, who had come with him, stood still in the doorway trying to make him, as the guest of most importance, precede them. Bagration was embarrassed, and unwilling to avail himself of their courtesy; there was a hitch in the proceedings at the door, but finally Bagration did, after all, enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet of the reception-room, not knowing what to do with his hands. He would have been more at home and at his ease walking over a ploughed field under fire, as he had walked at the head of the Kursk regiment at Schöngraben. The stewards met him at the first door, and saying a few words of their pleasure at seeing such an honoured guest, they surrounded him without waiting for an
answer, and, as it were, taking possession of him, led him off to the drawing-room. There was no possibility of getting in at the drawing-room door from the crowds of members and guests, who were crushing one another in their efforts to get a look over each other’s shoulders at Bagration, as if he were some rare sort of beast. Count Ilya Andreitch laughed more vigorously than any one, and continually repeating, “Make way for him, my dear boy, make way, make way,” shoved the crowd aside, led the guests into the drawing-room, and seated them on the sofa in the middle of it. The great men, and the more honoured members of the club, surrounded the newly arrived guests. Count Ilya Andreitch, shoving his way again through the crowd, went out of the drawing-room, and reappeared a minute later with another steward carrying a great silver dish, which he held out to Prince Bagration. On the dish lay a poem, composed and printed in the hero’s honour. Bagration, on seeing the dish, looked about him in dismay, as though seeking assistance. But in all eyes he saw the expectation that he would submit. Feeling himself in their power, Bagration resolutely took the dish in both hands, and looked angrily and reproachfully at the count, who had brought it. Some one officiously took the dish from Bagration (or he would, it seemed, have held it so till nightfall, and have carried it with him to the table), and drew his attention to the poem. “Well, I’ll read it then,” Bagration seemed to say, and fixing his weary eyes on the paper, he began reading it with a serious and concentrated expression. The author of the verses took them, and began to read them aloud himself. Prince Bagration bowed his head and listened.

But he had not finished the poem, when the butler boomed out sonorously: “Dinner is ready!” The door opened, from the dining-room thundered the strains of the Polonaise: “Raise the shout of victory, valiant Russian, festive sing,” and Count Ilya Andreitch, looking angrily at the author, who still went on reading his verses, bowed to Bagration as a signal to go in. All the company rose, feeling the dinner of more importance than the poem, and Bagration, again preceding all the rest,
went in to dinner. In the place of honour between two Alexanders—Bekleshov and Naryshkin—(this, too, was intentional, in allusion to the name of the Tsar) they put Bagration: three hundred persons were ranged about the tables according to their rank and importance, those of greater consequence, nearer to the distinguished guest—as naturally as water flows to find its own level.

Just before dinner, Count Ilya Andreitch presented his son to the prince. Bagration recognised him, and uttered a few words, awkward and incoherent, as were indeed all he spoke that day. Count Ilya Andreitch looked about at every one in gleeful pride while Bagration was speaking to his son.

Nikolay Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance Dolohov, sat together almost in the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre with Prince Nesvitsky. Count Ilya Andreitch was sitting with the other stewards facing Bagration, and, the very impersonation of Moscow hospitality, did his utmost to regale the prince.

His labours had not been in vain. All the banquet—the meat dishes and the Lenten fare alike—was sumptuous, but still he could not be perfectly at ease till the end of dinner. He made signs to the carver, gave whispered directions to the footmen, and not without emotion awaited the arrival of each anticipated dish. Everything was capital. At the second course, with the gigantic sturgeon (at the sight of which Ilya Andreitch flushed with shamefaced delight), the footman began popping corks and pouring out champagne. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, Count Ilya Andreitch exchanged glances with the other stewards. “There will be a great many toasts, it’s time to begin!” he whispered, and, glass in hand, he got up. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.

“To the health of our sovereign, the Emperor!” he shouted, and at the moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of pleasure and enthusiasm. At that instant they began playing: “Raise the shout of victory!” All rose from their seats and shouted “Hurrah!” And Bagration shouted “Hurrah!” in the same voice in which he had shouted it in the field at Schöngraben. The enthusiastic voice of young Rostov could be heard above the three hundred other voices. He was on the very point of tears. “The health of our sovereign, the Emperor,” he roared, “hurrah!” Emptying his glass at one gulp, he flung it on the floor. Many followed his example. And the loud shouts lasted for a long while. When the uproar subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass, and
all began settling themselves again; and smiling at the noise they had made, began talking. Count Ilya Andreitch rose once more, glanced at a note that lay beside his plate, and proposed a toast to the health of the hero of our last campaign, Prince Pyotr Ivanovitch Bagration, and again the count’s blue eyes were dimmed with tears. “Hurrah!” was shouted again by the three hundred voices of the guests, and instead of music this time a chorus of singers began to sing a cantata composed by Pavel Ivanovitch Kutuzov:

As soon as the singers had finished, more and more toasts followed, at which Count Ilya Andreitch became more and more moved, and more glass was broken and even more uproar was made. They drank to the health of Bekleshov, of Naryshkin, of Uvarov, of Dolgorukov, of Apraxin, of Valuev, to the health of the stewards, to the health of the committee, to the health of all the club members, to the health of all the guests of the club, and finally and separately to the health of the organiser of the banquet, Count Ilya Andreitch. At that toast the count took out his handkerchief and, hiding his face in it, fairly broke down.

Pierre was sitting opposite Dolohov and Nikolay Rostov. He ate greedily and drank heavily, as he always did. But those who knew him slightly could see that some great change was taking place in him that day. He was silent all through dinner, and blinking and screwing up his eyes, looked about him, or letting his eyes rest on something with an air of complete absent-mindedness, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his finger. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed not to be seeing or hearing what was passing about him and to be thinking of some one thing, something painful and unsettled.

This unsettled question that worried him was due to the hints dropped by the princess, his cousin, at Moscow in regard to Dolohov’s close intimacy with his wife, and to an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which, with the vile jocoseness peculiar to all anonymous
letters, had said that he didn’t seem to see clearly through his spectacles, and that his wife’s connection with Dolohov was a secret from no one but himself. Pierre did not absolutely believe either the princess’s hints, or the anonymous letter, but he was afraid now to look at Dolohov, who sat opposite him. Every time his glance casually met Dolohov’s handsome, insolent eyes, Pierre felt as though something awful, hideous was rising up in his soul, and he made haste to turn away. Involuntarily recalling all his wife’s past and her attitude to Dolohov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might well be true, might at least appear to be the truth, if only it had not related to
his wife
. Pierre could not help recalling how Dolohov, who had been completely reinstated, had returned to Petersburg and come to see him. Dolohov had taken advantage of his friendly relations with Pierre in their old rowdy days, had come straight to his house, and Pierre had established him in it and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Ellen, smiling, had expressed her dissatisfaction at Dolohov’s staying in their house, and how cynically Dolohov had praised his wife’s beauty to him, and how he had never since left them up to the time of their coming to Moscow.

“Yes, he is very handsome,” thought Pierre, “and I know him. There would be a particular charm for him in disgracing my name and turning me into ridicule, just because I have exerted myself in his behalf, have befriended him and helped him. I know, I understand what zest that would be sure to give to his betrayal of me, if it were true. Yes, if it were true, but I don’t believe it. I have no right to and I can’t believe it.” He recalled the expression on Dolohov’s face in his moments of cruelty, such as when he was tying the police officer on to the bear and dropping him into the water, or when he had utterly without provocation challenged a man to a duel or killed a sledge-driver’s horse with a shot from his pistol. That expression often came into Dolohov’s face when he was looking at him. “Yes, he’s a duelling bully,” thought Pierre; “to him it means nothing to kill a man, it must seem to him that every one’s afraid of him. He must like it. He must think I am afraid of him. And, in fact, I really am afraid of him,” Pierre mused; and again at these thoughts he felt as though something terrible and hideous were rising up in his soul. Dolohov, Denisov, and Rostov were sitting facing Pierre and seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves. Rostov talked away merrily to his two friends, of whom one was a dashing hussar, the other a notorious duellist and scapegrace, and now and then cast ironical glances at Pierre, whose appearance at the dinner was a striking one, with his preoccupied,
absent-minded, massive figure. Rostov looked with disfavour upon Pierre. In the first place, because Pierre, in the eyes of the smart hussar, was a rich civilian, and husband of a beauty, was altogether, in fact, an old woman. And secondly, because Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognised Rostov and had failed to respond to his bow. When they got up to drink the health of the Tsar, Pierre, plunged in thought, did not rise nor take up his glass.

“What are you about?” Rostov shouted to him, looking at him with enthusiastic and exasperated eyes. “Don’t you hear: the health of our sovereign the Emperor!”

Pierre with a sigh obeyed, got up, emptied his glass, and waiting till all were seated again, he turned with his kindly smile to Rostov. “Why, I didn’t recognise you,” he said. But Rostov had no thoughts for him, he was shouting “Hurrah!”

“Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?” said Dolohov to Rostov.

“Oh, bother him, he’s a fool,” said Rostov.

“One has to be sweet to the husbands of pretty women,” said Denisov. Pierre did not hear what they were saying, but he knew they were talking of him. He flushed and turned away. “Well, now to the health of pretty women,” said Dolohov, and with a serious expression, though a smile lurked in the corners of his mouth, he turned to Pierre.

“To the health of pretty women, Petrusha, and their lovers too,” he said.

Pierre, with downcast eyes, sipped his glass, without looking at Dolohov or answering him. The footman, distributing copies of Kutuzov’s cantata, laid a copy by Pierre, as one of the more honoured guests. He would have taken it, but Dolohov bent forward, snatched the paper out of his hands and began reading it. Pierre glanced at Dolohov, and his eyes dropped; something terrible and hideous, that had been torturing him all through the dinner, rose up and took possession of him. He bent the whole of his ungainly person across the table. “Don’t you dare to take it!” he shouted.

Hearing that shout and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitsky and his neighbour on the right side turned in haste and alarm to Bezuhov.

“Hush, hush, what are you about?” whispered panic-stricken voices. Dolohov looked at Pierre with his clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, still with the same smile, as though he were saying: “Come now, this is what I like.”

“I won’t give it up,” he said distinctly.

Pale and with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.

“You … you … blackguard!… I challenge you,” he said, and moving back his chair, he got up from the table. At the second Pierre did this and uttered these words he felt that the question of his wife’s guilt, that had been torturing him for the last four and twenty hours, was finally and incontestably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and was severed from her for ever. In spite of Denisov’s entreaties that Rostov would have nothing to do with the affair, Rostov agreed to be Dolohov’s second, and after dinner he discussed with Nesvitsky, Bezuhov’s second, the arrangements for the duel. Pierre had gone home, but Rostov with Dolohov and Denisov stayed on at the club listening to the gypsies and the singers till late in the evening.