'But I never asked them to come,' said the princess. 'You must have given them the wrong message. I just told you to give them the grain.'
Dron gave a sigh, but said nothing.
'If you give the word, they'll go away,' he said.
'No, no, I'll go and see them,' said Princess Marya.
Despite the best efforts of Dunyasha and the old nurse, who wanted to dissuade her, Princess Marya walked out on to the steps. Dronushka, Dunyasha, the old nurse, and Mikhail Ivanych followed on behind.
'They probably think I'm offering them grain to keep them here while I go away and leave them at the mercy of the French,' thought Princess Marya. 'I'll promise them monthly provisions and somewhere to live on the Moscow estate. I'm sure Andrey would have done even more if he'd been here,' she thought as she walked forward in the gathering dusk towards the crowd waiting in the paddock near the barn.
The crowd huddled together and a stir went through them as they rapidly doffed their hats. Princess Marya came closer, looking down at her feet as they kept catching in her gown. With so many different eyes, old and young, glued on her, and a sea of so many different faces, Princess Marya could not see them as individuals; she would have to address them all at once, and she didn't know how to get going. But once again the sense that she was representing her father and brother came to her aid, and she launched forth with full confidence.
'I'm very glad you have come,' she began with a racing, thumping heart, and not yet looking up. 'Dronushka has told me that you've been ruined by the war. We are all in the same boat, and I shall spare no effort to help you. I'm going away, because it's too dangerous here . . . and the enemy's not far away . . . because . . . Well, I'm giving you all we have, my friends, and I want you to take everything, all our grain, so that you don't go hungry. But if you've been told that I'm giving you grain to keep you here, that is not true. It's the other way round - I'm asking you to move out with all your things and go to our Moscow estate, and there I shall take full responsibility for you, and I promise you won't go hungry. You will have somewhere to live and something to eat.'
The princess stopped. No comment came from the crowd, only sighs.
'I'm not doing this on my own,' the princess went on. 'I do it in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and my brother and his son.'
She paused again. No one broke the silence.
'We are all in the same boat, and we shall share our troubles equally. All that is mine is yours,' she said, looking round at the faces before her. All eyes were on her and all faces held the same inscrutable expression. Whether it was curiosity, loyalty, gratitude, or fear and mistrust, the expression on every face was the same.
'Thank ye kindly, only we'm not for taking the master's grain,' said a voice at the back of the crowd.
'Why not?' said the princess. There was no reply, and Princess Marya scanned the crowd, noticing that every eye that met hers soon looked away.
'Why won't you take it?' she asked again.
There was no reply.
Princess Marya found the silence increasingly oppressive; she struggled to catch somebody's eye.
'Why don't you say something?' she said to a very old man standing right in front of her, leaning on his stick. 'Tell me if you think you need more than this. I'll do anything,' she said, catching his eye. But he seemed to be stung by her approach and he bent his head right down, mumbling, 'Why should we do what you say? We don't want your grain.'
'Why should we cut and run? We're not going to . . . We're not, you know . . . We're not having it. Sorry about you, but we're not having it. Go on. You go. Go away on your own . . .' The voices came from all parts of the crowd. And again every face in the throng wore the same expression, only now it was clearly not one of curiosity and gratitude - it was an expression of bloody-minded truculence.
'I don't think you quite understand,' said Princess Marya with a despondent smile.
'Why won't you move out? I promise I'll get you settled and provide for you. If you stay here the enemy will ravage you . . .' But her voice was lost in the shouting of the crowd.
'We're not having it! Let 'em ravage us! We're not taking your grain! We're not having it!'
Princess Marya tried again to catch someone's eye in the crowd, but no one's eyes were on her; all were averted. She felt awkward and embarrassed.
'That's a good 'un, that is! . . . Follow her - and give up your freedom! Burn your house down and go and be a slave. Nice idea, that! "Have some grain," she says!' came voices from the crowd.
With downcast eyes Princess Marya left the group and went back into the house. For Dron's benefit she repeated her order for the horses to be ready for an early start in the morning, then she went off to her room and stayed there, alone with her thoughts.
CHAPTER 12
Well into the night Princess Marya sat by the open window of her room listening to the sound of peasants' voices floating across from the village, but she wasn't thinking about them. She felt she would never understand them however much thought she gave to them. There was only one thing on her mind - her grief, which, after the break forced upon her by having to worry about the present, now seemed part of the past. Now at last she could remember, and weep, and pray. After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was cool and still. Towards midnight the voices in the village were beginning to die down, somewhere a cock crowed, the full moon rose slowly behind the linden-trees, a cool, white, dewy mist came up from the ground, and stillness reigned over village and house.
One after another images from the recent past - her father's illness and his last moments - rose up in her imagination. And with the taste of sweet melancholy she lingered over those images, suppressing with a feeling of horror only the final death scene, which she could not bear to contemplate even in her imagination at that quiet and mysterious hour of the night. And those images rose before her with such clarity and detail that they seemed to blur in and out between reality, the past and the future.
She had a vivid recollection of the moment when he had had his first stroke and was being brought back in from the garden at Bald Hills, supported under the arms, and with his grey eyebrows twitching away he had given her a shy, uneasy glance and muttered something. 'Even then he was trying to tell me what he did tell me the day he died,' she thought. 'What he told me then, he had always thought.'
And then she remembered every detail of the night at Bald Hills before his stroke, when she had had a premonition of disaster, and had insisted on staying put. She hadn't slept, and during the night she had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, gone to the door of the conservatory where her father was spending that night and listened to his voice. He was saying something to Tikhon in a weary, worried voice. He clearly wanted to talk. 'Why didn't he send for me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?' The thought had occurred to Princess Marya then, and it did so again now. 'Now he'll never be able to tell anyone the full story, all that was in his heart. Neither of us can ever return to that moment when he could have told me all that was on his mind, and with me listening instead of Tikhon it might have been heard and understood. Why didn't I go in?' she wondered. 'He might have said it to me then - the things he said the day he died. Even then he asked about me twice while he was talking to Tikhon. He was longing to see me, and I just stood there, outside the door. He felt sad and weary talking to Tikhon - Tikhon could not understand him. I remember him talking about Lise as if she was still alive - he'd forgotten she was dead - and Tikhon reminded him she had passed away, and he shouted out, "You fool!" He was so miserable. Through the door I could hear him groaning as he lay back on the bed and shouted out, "Oh God!" Why didn't I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? Maybe he would have calmed down. Maybe he would have said it then.' And Princess Marya repeated the affectionate word he had said to her the day he died. 'Darling!' As she said it Princess Marya broke down in sobs and tears that were balm to her soul. She could see his face now. Not the fa
ce she had known for as long as she could remember and had always seen from a distance, but the other one, the feeble, timid face she had seen on the last day when she had bent down near to his lips to catch what he was saying and had, for the first time, examined it close to, with all its wrinkles and little features.
'Darling,' she repeated.
'What was he thinking when he said that word? What is he thinking now?' The question just came to her, and in response to it she caught a quick image of him with the same expression she had seen on his face in the coffin, tied round with a white cloth. And the same horror that had overcome her the moment she had touched him, and felt that this wasn't him, that it was something mysterious and repulsive, came over her now. She tried to think about something else, tried to pray, but she could not do anything. She stared wide-eyed across at the moonlight and into the shadows, half-expecting at any moment to see his dead face, and she could feel herself falling under the spell of the stillness that reigned in and around that house.
'Dunyasha!' she whispered. 'Dunyasha!' she screamed like a wild thing, and tearing herself out of the stillness, she ran towards the maids' room straight into the arms of the old nurse and the maids who had come rushing out to meet her.
CHAPTER 13
On the 17th of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka, just back from imprisonment by the French, and a hussar orderly left Yankovo, ten miles or so from Bogucharovo, and went out for a ride to put Ilyin's newly acquired horse through its paces and find out whether there was any hay to be had in the local villages.
For the last three days Bogucharovo had found itself in between the two hostile armies, and it was equally likely that the Russian rearguard or the French vanguard might arrive in the village, so Rostov, scrupulous squadron commander that he was, wanted to steal a march on the French in acquiring any provisions that might still be there.
Rostov and Ilyin were in the best of moods. On the way to Bogucharovo, which they knew only as an estate belonging to some prince, with a manor house where they hoped to find a lot of staff including, perhaps, one or two pretty servant-girls, they asked Lavrushka all about Napoleon and laughed at what he told them, or else they raced each other to put Ilyin's new horse under pressure. Rostov was completely unaware that the village they were riding towards belonged to the very Prince Bolkonsky who had been engaged to his sister.
Rostov and Ilyin raced their horses flat out one last time along the uplands outside Bogucharovo and Rostov was the winner, the first to gallop down the village street.
'You win,' said Ilyin, all red in the face.
'Yes, I usually do, flat fields, here, anywhere,' answered Rostov, stroking and patting his foaming Don horse.
'I could have won on my Frenchy, your Excellency,' Lavrushka called from well back, referring to his own miserable nag, more suited to hauling carriages, 'but I didn't want to embarrass you.'
They slowed to a walking pace and made their way towards a big crowd of peasants standing in front of a barn. Some of them doffed their caps; others, who didn't, just stared as they rode up. Two spindly old peasants with wrinkled faces and thin beards emerged from the tavern with grins all over their faces, staggering about and singing out of tune, and they came over towards the officers. 'Good boys, these!' said Rostov with a laugh. 'Hey there, have you got any hay?'
'Two peas in a pod,' said Ilyin.
'Verree merree-ee-ee . . . !' they intoned, beaming beatifically.
One peasant detached himself from the crowd and came across to Rostov.
'Oose side be you on?' asked the peasant.
'The French,' answered Ilyin with a laugh. 'And this here is Napoleon,' he said, pointing to Lavrushka.
'So, you be Russians then?' the peasant inquired.
'You got many men 'ere?' asked another stocky peasant, making his way over.
'Yes, plenty,' answered Rostov. 'But what are you all doing here?' he added. 'Some kind of holiday?'
' 'Tis the old 'uns. Village business,' answered the peasant, edging away.
At that moment two women appeared with a man in a white hat, walking down from the prince's house towards the officers.
'The pink one's mine. Hands off!' said Ilyin, with an eye on Dunyasha, who was striding purposefully in their direction.
'Do for us!' said Lavrushka, winking at Ilyin.
'What can I do for you, gorgeous?' said Ilyin with a grin.
'The princess has sent me. Her Excellency wishes to know what regiment you are from, and who you are.'
'This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am - your humble servant.'
'Merree bee-ee-ee!' warbled the drunken peasant with the blissful grin, staring across at Ilyin as he chatted to the girl. Just behind Dunyasha Alpatych doffed his hat to Rostov as he drew near.
'Begging your pardon, your Honour,' he said, putting one hand in his coat-front and speaking with deference tinged with contempt for the officer's youthfulness. 'My mistress, the daughter of General-in-Chief Prince Nikolay Andreich Bolkonsky, who died on the 15th of this month, finding herself in some difficulty through the stupid ignorance of these persons' - he nodded towards the peasants - 'invites you into the house . . . If you wouldn't mind coming this way, sir,' said Alpatych with a sad smile. 'It's not far, and out here things are not quite, er . . .' Alpatych nodded to the two peasants, who were hovering at his back like gadflies round a horse.
'Garn, Alpatych! . . . Hey, Yakov Alpatych! You all right then? Oops, for Jesus Christ's sake, sorry old boy. You all right?' cried the peasants beaming at him with sublime delight.
Rostov looked at the drunken peasants and gave a smile.
'Unless your Excellency finds this amusing?' said Yakov Alpatych with grave sobriety, pointing to the old peasants with his free hand.
'No, it's not very amusing,' said Rostov, and he moved his horse along. 'What's wrong exactly?' he inquired.
'Begging your pardon, sir, these peasant brutes here won't let their mistress off the estate. They keep threatening to unharness the horses. Everything has been packed since early morning, but her Excellency can't get away.'
'Impossible!' cried Rostov.
'I'm telling you the absolute truth, sir, and it's an honour to do so,' said Alpatych.
Rostov dismounted, handed his horse to the orderly and walked up to the house with Alpatych, asking for further deatils.
In point of fact, the princess's offer of grain and her confrontation with Dron and the deputation of peasants had brought things to such a pitch that Dron had finally handed in his keys and gone over to the peasants, refusing to turn up when Alpatych sent for him, and that morning when the princess had ordered the horses so they could get on the road, the peasants had held a big meeting outside the barn and sent word that they were not going to let the princess out of the village, and there was an edict that people were not to move out, so they would have to unharness the horses. Alpatych went to have things out with them; they responded (Karp being the principal speaker, with Dron skulking at the back of the crowd) by stating that the princess would not be allowed through, there was an edict forbidding it, so she should stay on and they would serve and obey in all things as they always had done.
At the very time when Rostov and IIyin were galloping into the village, Princess Marya was defying the best efforts of Alpatych, the old nurse and the maid to dissuade her from ordering the horses. She was ready to start. But one look at the cavalrymen bearing down on them at a good gallop and the coachmen scattered, assuming them to be Frenchmen, and left the women bewailing their lot inside the house.
'Kind sir! Father to us all! God has sent thee!' The voices rang with emotion as Rostov walked in through the entrance hall. Princess Marya was sitting in the big hall, helpless and at her wits' end, when Rostov was shown in to see her. She had no idea who he was, why he was here or what would become of her. One look at his Russian face and his general demeanour, together with the very sound of his opening words, told her she was dealing with someone o
f her own station; she glanced at him with her deep, radiant eyes, and spoke, though her voice shook with emotion. Rostov's romantic imagination immediately dramatized the situation. 'A defenceless grief-stricken young woman, all alone and left to the mercy of brutal peasants up in arms! Ah, what quirk of fate has landed me here?' thought Rostov as he listened and watched her. 'And oh, the gentle poise, the nobility of her features and her eyes!' he mused as she told her diffident story.
When she started to say that this had all happened the day after her father's funeral, her voice shook. She turned away, worried that Rostov might think she was trying to play on his feelings, then gave him a quick, quizzical look full of apprehension. There were tears in his eyes. Princess Marya noticed them and looked at him with a radiance in her eyes that took away the plainness of her face.
'I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am, Princess, that I happened along and can now place myself at your disposal,' said Rostov, getting to his feet. 'If you would care to start your journey now, I pledge my honour that no man shall dare do you a discourtesy if only you will allow me to escort you,' and, after performing the kind of deep bow normally reserved for royalty, he made for the door.
Rostov's deferential manner seemed calculated to suggest that although he would consider it a great pleasure to make her acquaintance he did not wish to take advantage of her plight to force his attentions upon her.
Princess Marya sensed this with real appreciation.
'I really am most grateful to you,' she said to him in French, 'but I do hope it was all a mistake and no one is really to blame.' And she burst into tears.
'Please forgive me,' she said.
Rostov was frowning as he gave another deep bow and left the room.
CHAPTER 14
'Nice, isn't she? Oh yes, my little pink girl's a beauty. Her name's Dunyasha . . .' But then, with one glance at Rostov's face, Ilyin stopped short. He could see that his revered commanding officer was in a very different frame of mind.
Rostov took one dark look at Ilyin, made no reply and strode off rapidly towards the village.