Chapter 82

To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor, and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard vaguely that there was such a thing as “landlord’s corn” which was sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief. She began asking Dron about the peasants’ needs and what there was in Boguchárovo that belonged to the landlord.

“But we have grain belonging to my brother?” she said.

“The landlord’s grain is all safe,” replied Dron proudly. “Our prince did not order it to be sold.”

“Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you leave in my brother’s name,” said she.

Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.

“Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all. I give this order in my brother’s name; and tell them that what is ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so.”

Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.

“Discharge me, little mother, for God’s sake! Order the keys to be taken from me,” said he. “I have served twenty-three years and have done no wrong. Discharge me, for God’s sake!”

Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the peasants.

CHAPTER XI

An hour later Dunyásha came to tell the princess that Dron had come, and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess’ order and wished to have word with their mistress.

“But I never told them to come,” said Princess Mary. “I only told Dron to let them have the grain.”

“Only, for God’s sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and don’t go out to them. It’s all a trick,” said Dunyásha, “and when Yákov Alpátych returns let us get away... and please don’t...”

“What is a trick?” asked Princess Mary in surprise.

“I know it is, only listen to me for God’s sake! Ask nurse too. They say they don’t agree to leave Boguchárovo as you ordered.”

“You’re making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,” said Princess Mary. “Call Drónushka.”

Dron came and confirmed Dunyásha’s words; the peasants had come by the princess’ order.

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

Dron only sighed in reply.

“If you order it they will go away,” said he.

“No, no. I’ll go out to them,” said Princess Mary, and in spite of the nurse’s and Dunyásha’s protests she went out into the porch; Dron, Dunyásha, the nurse, and Michael Ivánovich following her.

“They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the French,” thought Princess Mary. “I will offer them monthly rations and housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in my place,” she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the crowd standing on the pasture by the barn.

The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she boldly began her speech.

“I am very glad you have come,” she said without raising her eyes, and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. “Drónushka tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune, and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here—that is not true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging.”

The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.

“I am not doing this on my own account,” she continued, “I do it in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my brother and his son.”

Again she paused. No one broke the silence.

“Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that is mine is yours,” she concluded, scanning the faces before her.

All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or apprehension and distrust—but the expression on all the faces was identical.

“We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won’t do for us to take the landlord’s grain,” said a voice at the back of the crowd.

“But why not?” asked the princess.

No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd, found that every eye she met now was immediately dropped.

“But why don’t you want to take it?” she asked again.

No one answered.

The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch someone’s eye.

“Why don’t you speak?” she inquired of a very old man who stood just in front of her leaning on his stick. “If you think something more is wanted, tell me! I will do anything,” said she, catching his eye.

But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:

“Why should we agree? We don’t want the grain.”

“Why should we give up everything? We don’t agree. Don’t agree.... We are sorry for you, but we’re not willing. Go away yourself, alone...” came from various sides of the crowd.

And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity or gratitude, but of angry resolve.

“But you can’t have understood me,” said Princess Mary with a sad smile. “Why don’t you want to go? I promise to house and feed you, while here the enemy would ruin you....”

But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.

“We’re not willing. Let them ruin us! We won’t take your grain. We don’t agree.”

Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone’s eye, but not a single eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying to avoid her look. She felt strange and awkward.

“Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your houses and go into bondage! I dare say! ‘I’ll give you grain, indeed!’ she says,” voices in the crowd were heard saying.

With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for her departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone with her own thoughts.

CHAPTER XII

For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of her room hearing the sound of the peasants’ voices that reached her from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt that she could not understand them however much she might think about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.

After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

Pictures of the near past—her father’s illness and last moments—rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future.

She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills, muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.

“Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,” she thought. “He had always thought what he said then.” And she recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something to Tíkhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. “And why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he let me be there instead of Tíkhon?” Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. “Now he will never tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not Tíkhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn’t I enter the room?” she thought. “Perhaps he would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While talking to Tíkhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful for him to talk to Tíkhon who did not understand him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were alive—he had forgotten she was dead—and Tíkhon reminded him that she was no more, and he shouted, ‘Fool!’ He was greatly depressed. From behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly exclaimed, ‘My God!’ Why didn’t I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have been comforted and would have said that word to me.” And Princess Mary uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of his death. “Dear-est!” she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.

“Dear-est!” she repeated again.

“What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking now?” This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief. And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within it held her fast.

“Dunyásha,” she whispered. “Dunyásha!” she screamed wildly, and tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants’ quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running toward her.

CHAPTER XIII

On the seventeenth of August Rostóv and Ilyín, accompanied by Lavrúshka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar orderly, left their quarters at Yankóvo, ten miles from Boguchárovo, and went for a ride—to try a new horse Ilyín had bought and to find out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.

For the last three days Boguchárovo had lain between the two hostile armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to it as for the French vanguard; Rostóv, as a careful squadron commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Boguchárovo before the French could get them.

Rostóv and Ilyín were in the merriest of moods. On the way to Boguchárovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they questioned Lavrúshka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one another to try Ilyín’s horse.

Rostóv had no idea that the village he was entering was the property of that very Bolkónski who had been engaged to his sister.

Rostóv and Ilyín gave rein to their horses for a last race along the incline before reaching Boguchárovo, and Rostóv, outstripping Ilyín, was the first to gallop into the village street.

“You’re first!” cried Ilyín, flushed.

“Yes, always first both on the grassland and here,” answered Rostóv, stroking his heated Donéts horse.

“And I’d have won on my Frenchy, your excellency,” said Lavrúshka from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, “only I didn’t wish to mortify you.”

They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants was standing.

Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling, staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the officers.

“Fine fellows!” said Rostóv laughing. “Is there any hay here?”

“And how like one another,” said Ilyín.

“A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!” sang one of the peasants with a blissful smile.

One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostóv.

“Who do you belong to?” he asked.

“The French,” replied Ilyín jestingly, “and here is Napoleon himself”—and he pointed to Lavrúshka.

“Then you are Russians?” the peasant asked again.

“And is there a large force of you here?” said another, a short man, coming up.

“Very large,” answered Rostóv. “But why have you collected here?” he added. “Is it a holiday?”

“The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,” replied the peasant, moving away.

At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.

“The one in pink is mine, so keep off!” said Ilyín on seeing Dunyásha running resolutely toward him.

“She’ll be ours!” said Lavrúshka to Ilyín, winking.

“What do you want, my pretty?” said Ilyín with a smile.

“The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name.”

“This is Count Rostóv, squadron commander, and I am your humble servant.”

“Co-o-om-pa-ny!” roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as he looked at Ilyín talking to the girl. Following Dunyásha, Alpátych advanced to Rostóv, having bared his head while still at a distance.

“May I make bold to trouble your honor?” said he respectfully, but with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with a hand thrust into his bosom. “My mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkónski who died on the fifteenth of this month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of these people”—he pointed to the peasants—“asks you to come up to the house.... Won’t you, please, ride on a little farther,” said Alpátych with a melancholy smile, “as it is not convenient in the presence of...?” He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to him as horseflies to a horse.

“Ah!... Alpátych... Ah, Yákov Alpátych... Grand! Forgive us for Christ’s sake, eh?” said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.

Rostóv looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.

“Or perhaps they amuse your honor?” remarked Alpátych with a staid air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.

“No, there’s not much to be amused at here,” said Rostóv, and rode on a little way. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here don’t wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up since morning, her excellency cannot get away.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Rostóv.

“I have the honor to report to you the actual truth,” said Alpátych.

Rostóv dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed Alpátych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs. It appeared that the princess’ offer of corn to the peasants the previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpátych sent for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the horses. Alpátych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her as before and obey her in everything.

At the moment when Rostóv and Ilyín were galloping along the road, Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpátych, her nurse, and the maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran away, and the women in the house began to wail.

“Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!” exclaimed deeply moved voices as Rostóv passed through the anteroom.

Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting room, when Rostóv was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostóv as a romantic event. “A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and expression!” thought he as he looked at her and listened to her timid story.

When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her father’s funeral, her voice trembled. She turned away, and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostóv’s eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.

“I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here and am able to show my readiness to serve you,” said Rostóv, rising. “Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort.” And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward the door.

Rostóv’s deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.

Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.

“I am very, very grateful to you,” she said in French, “but I hope it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it.” She suddenly began to cry.

“Excuse me!” she said.

Rostóv, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.

CHAPTER XIV

“Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend—my pink one is delicious; her name is Dunyásha....”

But on glancing at Rostóv’s face Ilyín stopped short. He saw that his hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.

Rostóv glanced angrily at Ilyín and without replying strode off with rapid steps to the village.

“I’ll show them; I’ll give it to them, the brigands!” said he to himself.

Alpátych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up with him with difficulty.

“What decision have you been pleased to come to?” said he.

Rostóv stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on Alpátych.

“Decision? What decision? Old dotard!...” cried he. “What have you been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can’t manage them? You’re a traitor yourself! I know you. I’ll flay you all alive!...” And as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpátych and went rapidly forward. Alpátych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with Rostóv at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be imprudent to “overresist” them without an armed force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?

“I’ll give them armed force... I’ll ‘overresist’ them!” uttered Rostóv meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the need to vent it.

Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it the more Alpátych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw Rostóv’s rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.

After the hussars had come to the village and Rostóv had gone to see the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked their ex-Elder.

“How many years have you been fattening on the commune?” Karp shouted at him. “It’s all one to you! You’ll dig up your pot of money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are ruined or not?”

“We’ve been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their homes or take away a single grain, and that’s all about it!” cried another.

“It was your son’s turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You begrudged your lump of a son,” a little old man suddenly began attacking Dron—“and so they took my Vánka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all have to die.”

“To be sure, we all have to die. I’m not against the commune,” said Dron.

“That’s it—not against it! You’ve filled your belly....”

The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostóv, followed by Ilyín, Lavrúshka, and Alpátych, came up to the crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer together.

“Who is your Elder here? Hey?” shouted Rostóv, coming up to the crowd with quick steps.

“The Elder? What do you want with him?...” asked Karp.

But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.

“Caps off, traitors!” shouted Rostóv in a wrathful voice. “Where’s the Elder?” he cried furiously.

“The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakhárych, you!” meek and flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to come off their heads.

“We don’t riot, we’re following the orders,” declared Karp, and at that moment several voices began speaking together.

“It’s as the old men have decided—there’s too many of you giving orders.”