CHAPTER 20
As usual on Sundays the Rostovs were having a few close friends in for dinner. Pierre arrived early in order to catch them alone.
During the past year Pierre had put on so much weight he would have looked grotesque but for his great height, big limbs and the solid strength that enabled him to carry his enormous bulk with evident ease.
He mounted the stairs, puffing and panting and muttering under his breath. His driver no longer bothered to ask whether to wait. He knew that when the count was at the Rostovs' he would be there till midnight. The Rostovs' footmen ran forward with a warm welcome, eager to help him off with his cloak, and take his stick and hat. Pierre always stuck to his club habit of leaving his stick and hat behind in the vestibule.
The first person he saw at the Rostovs' was Natasha. Before actually seeing her, while he was taking off his cloak he heard her. She was practising her scales in the hall. He knew she had given up singing during her illness, so he was surprised and delighted by the sound of her voice. He opened the door softly, and there was Natasha, in the lilac-coloured dress she had worn at the service, walking up and down the room singing.
She had her back turned to him as he opened the door, but when she made a sharp turn and saw the look of surprise on his chubby face she coloured up and walked quickly over to him.
'I want to start singing again,' she said. 'It's something to do, isn't it?' she added by way of an excuse.
'A splendid thing to do!'
'Oh, I'm so glad you've come! I'm feeling so happy today,' she said with the old enthusiasm that Pierre hadn't seen for many a long day. 'Did you know darling Nikolay has won the George Cross? I'm so proud of him.'
'Of course I do. I sent the announcement. Well, I mustn't stop you,' he added, and made as if to walk through into the drawing-room.
Natasha stopped him.
'Count, I shouldn't really be singing, should I?' she said, blushing, her eyes fixed quizzically on Pierre's face.
'Yes . . . Why not? You've got things the wrong way round. But why do you ask me?'
'I really don't know,' Natasha answered hastily. 'I just wouldn't want to do anything you wouldn't like. I trust you completely. You've no idea what you mean to me, how much you've done for me!' She was gabbling away and didn't notice Pierre colouring up at these words. 'I saw something else in that announcement - he, Bolkonsky,' - she blurted the word out in a rapid whisper - 'he's here in Russia, back in the army. What do you think,' she said hurriedly, obviously anxious to get it all out before her strength failed her, 'will he ever forgive me? Will he always think badly of me? What do you think? What do you think?'
'What I think is . . .' said Pierre. 'There's nothing for him to forgive . . . If I was him . . .' By association, Pierre was instantly transported back in memory to the time when he had comforted her and said that if he was somebody else, the best man in the world and free, he would be down on his knees asking for her hand, and the same feeling of compassion, tenderness and love came over him, and the same words rose to his lips. But she didn't give him enough time to say them.
'Yes, you, you,' she said, breathing out the word you with much enthusiasm, 'you're different. Anyone kinder, more generous, better than you I have never known - no one could be! If it hadn't been for you then, and even now . . . I don't know what would have become of me, because . . .' Suddenly her eyes were watering; she turned away, held her music up to her eyes, started singing and set off again to walk up and down the room.
At that moment Petya ran in from the drawing-room.
By now Petya was a handsome, rosy-cheeked boy of fifteen, with full red lips, very like Natasha. He was studying for university entry, but in recent days he and his comrade, Obolensky, had made up their minds to go into the hussars.
Petya rushed over to his namesake, Pierre, to talk business.
He had asked him to find out whether he would be accepted into the hussars.
Pierre was walking around the drawing-room, oblivious to Petya.
The boy plucked him by the sleeve to attract his attention.
'Hey, Pyotr Kirilych, talk to me about my plan, for heaven's sake! You're my only hope,' said Petya.
'Oh yes, your plan . . . Going into the hussars . . . I will mention it. Yes, I'll mention it today . . .'
'Well now, my dear fellow, did you get the manifesto?' asked the old count. 'My little countess has been to church at the Razumovskys'. She heard the new prayer. Very nice too, she says.'
'Yes, I did,' answered Pierre. 'The Tsar's coming here tomorrow . . . There's to be an extraordinary meeting of the nobility and a new levy - ten men per thousand, they say. Oh, by the way, my congratulations.'
'Yes, indeed, thank God. Well, any news from the army?'
'Our boys are in retreat again. They are just outside Smolensk, they say,' answered Pierre.
'Oh Lord! Oh Lord!' said the count. 'Where's the manifesto?'
'The Tsar's appeal? Oh yes!' Pierre went through his pockets looking for the papers, but he couldn't find them. Still patting his pockets, he kissed the countess's hand as she came in, and looked round anxiously, evidently expecting Natasha, who had stopped singing by now but hadn't come through into the drawing-room.
'Good heavens, I don't know what I've done with it,' he said.
'There you are, he's always losing things,' said the countess.
Natasha came in. Her face had softened but she still looked worried as she sat down, without a word, watching Pierre. The moment she had come into the room Pierre's face, a picture of gloom, had lit up, and although he went on scrabbling for the documents, he stole several glances at her.
'Oh, for goodness' sake, I'll go back home. That's where I must have left them. No doubt about it . . .'
'But you'll be late for dinner.'
'Oh dear! The driver's gone.'
But Sonya had gone back into the vestibule to look for the papers and found them in Pierre's hat, where he had studiously tucked them under the lining. Pierre set about reading them.
'No, no. After dinner,' said the old count, who was obviously looking forward to the reading as a great treat.
At dinner they drank champagne and toasted the new chevalier of St George, and Shinshin told them the latest city gossip - an old Georgian princess had fallen ill, Metivier had disappeared from Moscow, and some German had been dragged before Rostopchin by the people, who claimed he was a French spy. According to Count Rostopchin they were calling him a champignon, but he told them to let the champignon go, because he was nothing more than an old German toadstool.10
'There are so many arrests,' said the count. 'I keep telling the countess not to speak French so much. It's not the right time.'
'And have you heard the latest?' said Shinshin. 'Prince Golitsyn's hired a Russian teacher - he's learning Russian.'
'It's getting dangerous to speak French in the streets,' he added - in French.
'Well, Count Pyotr Kirilych, if there's a general call-up we'll have to get you on a horse, won't we?' said the old count to Pierre.
Pierre had been quiet and pensive throughout dinner. Faced with this question he just stared at the count as if he couldn't understand what he was saying.
'Yes, yes, everybody's off to the war,' he said. 'No! A fine soldier I'd make! And yet you know, it's all so strange, so strange! Well, I can't understand it. I don't know, I've no taste for the military life, but nowadays nobody can answer for himself.'
After dinner the count settled down in a comfortable chair, took on a serious air and asked Sonya, who was thought to be a very good reader, to read the Tsar's appeal.
'To Moscow, our foremost capital city.
'The enemy has crossed our frontiers with huge forces. He comes to lay waste our beloved country . . .'
Sonya's thin little voice rang out. She was reading with close concentration. The count was listening with his eyes closed, sighing heavily at certain passages.
Natasha, bolt upright, directed searching looks at her
father and Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and had to struggle to stop himself looking round. The countess looked angry and censorious, shaking her head at the manifesto's every solemn pronouncement. In all these words she could see only one thing: the danger menacing her son would not soon be over. Shinshin had twisted his lips into a sardonic smile and was obviously getting ready to make a joke when the first suitable opportunity came along - at the expense of Sonya's reading, the count's next comment, even the manifesto itself if no better chance came up.
After reading about the dangers threatening Russia, the hopes invested by the Tsar in Moscow, and especially its illustrious nobility, Sonya came to the concluding words and read them with a quavering voice due mainly to the close attention being paid by all the listeners:
'We shall appear without delay amidst our people in the capital, and in other parts of our dominion, for consultation and the supervision of all levies and recruitment, both those which are already barring the way to our enemy, and those newly formed to bring about his defeat wherever he appears. And may the ruin with which he threatens us rebound upon his own head, and may Europe, delivered from bondage, glorify the name of Russia!'
'Quite right!' cried the count, opening his moist eyes, choking and snuffling once or twice, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose. He went on, 'One word from the Tsar and we shall make every sacrifice, and spare nothing.'
Shinshin was prevented from saying something funny about the count's patriotism by Natasha, who leapt up from her seat and ran over to her father.
'Papa, you're such a darling!' she cried, kissing him, but she glanced round at Pierre again with the touch of flirtation that had returned with her new excitement.
'What a girl! Some patriot!' said Shinshin.
'No, I'm not, I'm just . . .' Natasha began, stung to the quick. 'You think everything's funny, but this is no joke . . .'
'Of course it's no joke,' repeated the count. 'Just let him say the word, and we'll be off . . . We're not a bunch of Germans!'
'Did you notice what he said?' said Pierre, ' "For consultation".'
'Yes, yes, for anything that turns up . . .'
Meanwhile Petya, who was being ignored, went over to his father, red in the face, and in a voice that wobbled between gruff bass and shrill treble he said, 'Now, listen, Papa, I'm telling you straight, and Mamma too, say what you will, I'm telling you straight, you must let me go into the army, because I can't . . . well, that's it . . .'
The countess turned her eyes to heaven in dismay, clasped her hands and turned on her husband in anger.
'Now look what you've done with all your clever talking!'
But the count was quick to reassert himself amidst all the excitement.
'Now listen,' he said. 'It's a bit early for you to be a soldier! Stop this silly nonsense. You've got some studying to do.'
'It isn't nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolensky's younger than me, and he's going. Anyway, I can't study now, when . . .' Petya came to a halt, beetroot-red and perspiring, though he managed to get out, '. . . when our country's in danger.'
'That'll do, that'll do. You're being silly . . .'
'But you said yourself we would make any sacrifice.'
'Petya! Shut up, I tell you!' cried the count, looking round at his wife, who was watching her younger son, white-faced and staring.
'No, I'm telling you . . . Listen to Count Bezukhov. He'll tell you . . .'
'Nonsense, I tell you! The milk's hardly dry on his lips and he wants to go into the army! That's enough, I tell you,' and the count collected the papers, probably to read them through again in the study before his nap, ready to walk out.
'Pyotr Kirilych, shall we have a smoke?'
Pierre was too embarrassed to know what to do. It was Natasha, with an unusually radiant and eager look in her eyes, as she stared at him with something more than affection, that had reduced him to this state.
'Er, no. I ought to be going home . . .'
'Going home? But you were going to spend the evening with us . . . You don't come very often as it is. And this little girl of mine,' said the count with great good humour and a sideways glance at Natasha, 'needs you to keep her happy . . .'
'Er, no. I've forgotten something. I really must be going home . . . Business . . .' Pierre blurted out.
'All right, I'll say goodbye then,' said the count, and he left the room.
'Why are you going home? Why are you so upset? What's it all about?' Natasha asked Pierre, with a new challenge in her eyes.
'Because I love you!' he wanted to say, but didn't. He blushed till the tears came, and looked down.
'Because I think I ought to come and see you a bit less often . . . Because . . . no, it's just er . . . a bit of business . . .'
'But why? Tell me, please,' Natasha was about to insist, but suddenly she stopped.
The two of them looked at each other in dismay and embarrassment. He tried to force a laugh, but it wouldn't come. There was agony in his smile as he kissed her hand and left without a word.
Pierre made up his mind to stop visiting the Rostovs.
CHAPTER 21
After receiving such a categorical refusal Petya went off to his room, locked himself in and wept bitter tears for some time. When he came down to tea, gloomy, unspeaking and tear-stained, the family pretended not to notice.
Next day, the Tsar arrived in Moscow. Several of the Rostovs' servants asked permission to go out and see the Tsar. That morning Petya took a lot of trouble with himself, combing his hair scrupulously and adjusting his collar like an adult. He screwed his eyes up in front of the mirror, gesticulated, shrugged, and then at last, without a word to anyone, pulled on his cap and left the house by the back steps to avoid being noticed. Petya had made up his mind to go down to where the Tsar was and have a straight talk with some gentleman-in-waiting (he thought the Tsar was always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting), making it clear that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth, wished to serve his country, and youth shouldn't be seen as an obstacle to devotion, and he was ready for . . . Petya had composed many a splendid phrase while he was getting ready and now he was off to communicate them to a gentleman-in-waiting.
Petya felt certain his presentation to the Tsar would succeed if only because he was still a child (he could just see them all, amazed at his youth), and yet with his nicely adjusted collar arrangement, his neat hair and a slow, sedate way of walking he was hoping to look like a grown-up man. But the further he walked, the more fascinated he became with the growing crowds advancing on the Kremlin, and he soon forgot about maintaining the adult slowness and sedateness. As he closed in on the Kremlin he had to stop himself being jostled out of the way, so he stuck both elbows out with grim determination. But determined or not, when he got to Trinity Gate the crowd, seemingly oblivious to his patriotic purpose in going to the Kremlin, shoved him up so close against a wall that he had to give in and stop walking while carriages trundled in through the archway. Near Petya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two tradesmen and a retired veteran soldier. After waiting for a while wedged in the gateway, Petya decided not to wait for all the carriages to go through and he tried to shove through and get ahead of all the others by flailing away with his elbows. The peasant woman next to him was the first to feel the force of them, and she yelled, 'Hey, who d'you think you're shoving, young sir? Can't you see we're all stuck? You'll never get through there.'
'We can all get through like that!' said the footman, also quick with his elbows, and he shoved Petya back into a stinking corner of the gateway.
Petya wiped his sweaty face with his hands, and straightened the damp collar arrangement he had taken so much trouble with at home to make it look like an adult's.
By now Petya was feeling far from presentable, and he was afraid that if he showed himself to the gentlemen-in-waiting in this state they would never let him in to see the Tsar. But the crush was so bad there was no possibility of straightening himself out or
moving somewhere else. One of the generals who came riding through was a friend of the Rostov family, but, although Petya would have dearly loved to ask him for help, he thought this wouldn't be a manly thing to do. When all the carriages had gone in, the crowd rushed forward and Petya was swept along with it into the square, which was already full of people. Not only the square, but the slopes and even the rooftops were covered with people. The moment Petya set foot on the square he heard the ringing of bells and the happy murmur of the crowd that thronged the whole Kremlin.
The crush eased off for a while, but then suddenly all heads were bared and the crowd surged forward again. Petya was squashed so tight he couldn't breathe, and then came the cheering: 'Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!'
Petya stood on tiptoe, shoving and squeezing, but he couldn't see anything beyond the surrounding crowd.
Deep emotion and great rapture were written on every face. A shopkeeper's wife standing near Petya was sobbing, and her face was streaming with tears.
'Father! Angel! Lord and Master!' she kept chanting, using her fingers to wipe away the tears.
'Hurrah!' rose from the crowd on every side.
For a minute the crowd stayed where it was, then there was another surge forward.
Petya was wild with excitement. With gritted teeth and a ferocious glare in his rolling eyes, he hurled himself forward, elbowing his way through and yelling 'Hurrah!' as if he was ready to die and kill everybody else, but faces no less ferocious than his, yelling just as loud, were hemming him in on both sides.
'So this is it. This is the Tsar!' thought Petya. 'No, I could never give him the petition myself. It would be outrageous!'
Nevertheless, he kept on forcing himself forward as desperately as ever, and over the backs of the people in front he caught a glimpse of an open space and a strip of red carpet, but then the crowd swayed back again. The police were forcing people back because they were encroaching too close on the procession. The Tsar was making his way from the palace to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Suddenly Petya got a terrible blow in the ribs and he was so badly crushed that his eyes misted over and he fainted. When he came round a clergyman in a shabby blue cassock, with shaggy grey hair down his back - probably a deacon - was propping him up with one arm and fending the crowd off with the other.