'll show them a thing or two. Let me get at them, the swine,' he muttered to himself. Alpatych trotted on behind, gliding along just short of running pace and struggling to keep up with Rostov.
'What have you decided to do, your Honour?' he said, coming alongside.
Rostov stopped, clenched his fists and turned on Alpatych, bristling.
'Do? What am I going to do, you stupid old fool?' he shouted. 'Where have you been all this time. Eh? The peasants are up in arms and you're in a blue funk! You're a traitor yourself. I know you lot. I'll flay every man jack of you . . .' And then, as if this was a waste of good fire and fury, he turned away from Alpatych and stormed off. Alpatych swallowed his wounded pride and came gliding on behind, still with plenty to say. He told Rostov the peasants were in a very awkward mood just now, and it might be a good idea not to put their backs up without military assistance, and wouldn't it be best to send for help?
'I'll give them military assistance . . . I'll put their damned backs up . . .' Nikolay was burbling, out of his mind and choking with savage fury and the need to vent it. With no idea of what he would do when he got there, he strode out, impelled by instinct, bearing down on the crowd. And the nearer he got to them the more Alpatych began to feel that this hot-headed approach might just pay off. The peasants in the crowd seemed to think the same thing as they watched him stride resolutely in their direction with a dark scowl on his face.
Once the hussars had ridden into the village and Rostov had gone up to see the princess the crowd had lost its certainty and solidarity. Some peasants started complaining that the men who had ridden in were Russians, and they might not take too kindly to the idea that they were refusing to let their young lady go. Dron was of that opinion, but the moment he voiced it Karp and others rounded on their former village elder.
'How many years have you fattened your belly on this village?' shouted Karp. 'You don't care! You'll dig up your crock of gold and scram. You're not bothered whether our homes are burnt down or not!'
'Everythin' under control, they says, no one leaves, nothin' moves out - and 'ere she is flittin' with all 'er stuff!' shouted someone else.
'Your son should've been called up, but you saw 'im all right, didn't you?' put in a little old man, suddenly turning on Dron, 'and 'twas my Vanka got took and 'ad 'is head shaved. Oh, I don't know . . . we've all got to die!'
'Oh yes, we've all got to die!'
'I'm not one to go against the commune,' said Dron.
'Go against it? You've fattened your belly on it!'
Two lanky peasants said their piece. When Rostov accompanied by Ilyin, Lavrushka and Alpatych were almost up to the crowd Karp stuck his thumbs into his belt and stepped forward with the suggestion of a smile on his face. Dron did the opposite; he skulked off to the back, and the crowd closed round him.
'Hey there! Who's your village elder?' snapped Rostov, striding quickly up to the crowd.
'Elder? What do you . . . ?' asked Karp. But before he could finish his cap was sent spinning and his head jerked back from a hard punch.
'Caps off, traitors!' roared Rostov in a voice that told them his blood was up. 'Where's the elder?' he yelled furiously.
'The elder! 'E wants the elder. Mr Dron, 'tis you 'e wants,' came various voices from peasants quick to knuckle under, while caps were being doffed.
'No rioting here. We'm keeping good order,' declared Karp. And several other voices called out at the same time from the back:
'It's like what the old 'uns says . . . too many be givin' out orders.'
'Don't you argue with me! Mutiny! You thieving swine! Traitors!' Rostov's voice was unrecognizable, a mindless screech, as he grabbed Karp by the collar. 'Tie this man up!' he shouted, though there was no one but Lavrushka and Alpatych to do the tying up.
Lavrushka, however, ran over to Karp and grabbed him by the arms from behind.
'Shall I call our boys up, your Honour?' he shouted.
Alpatych turned to the peasants and called two of them out by name to come and tie Karp's hands. The peasants were quick to obey, stepping out of the crowd and undoing their belts as they came.
'Where's the village elder?' shouted Rostov.
Dron, frowning and pallid, stepped out too.
'Are you the elder? Tie him up, Lavrushka,' shouted Rostov in a voice that brooked no opposition. And sure enough, two more peasants set about tying Dron's hands, and he obligingly took off his belt and handed it over.
'Now listen to me, all of you,' Rostov turned to the peasants. 'Quick march! Go back to your homes this instant. I don't want to hear another word from you.'
'Hey, we 'aven't done nothin' wrong. We bin a bit daft. Just a bit o' nonsense, though . . . Told you things was gettin' out o' hand,' came various incriminatory voices.
'Didn't I tell you?' said Alpatych, coming into his own. 'It was wrong, boys.'
'We bin a bit daft, Yakov Alpatych,' came other voices, and the crowd began to break up and scatter about the village.
The two tied-up peasants were taken up to the manor house. The two drunken peasants followed on behind.
'Hey, look at 'e now!' said one of them, addressing Karp.
'Thinks you can talk like that to your betters? What d'ye think you was doing? You're a fool,' put in the other man, 'a right fool.'
Within two hours the horses and wagons were standing in the courtyard of the Bogucharovo house. The peasants were scurrying in and out, stowing the family things in the carts, and Dron, released at Princess Marya's behest from the lumber-room where they had locked him up, was out in the yard directing the men.
'Hey, watch what you're doing,' said one of the peasants, a tall man with a round, beaming face, taking a casket from a housemaid's hands. 'That's worth a bit, that is. If you just chuck it in like that or shove it under the rope it'll get scratched. I don't like that sort of thing. Everything should be done properly. Do it by the book. Look, like this, place it under the matting and cover it up with hay. There you are. Splendid job!'
'Lord have mercy on us, look at all these books,' said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrey's book-cases. 'Hey, mind you don't slip! They weighs a ton, boys. Nice books these!'
'All them pages, took 'em ages!' said a tall, round-faced peasant nodding with a knowing wink in the direction of some big fat dictionaries sitting on top.
Rostov had no desire to force himself on the princess, so he didn't go back to see her, preferring to stay down in the village and wait for her to drive out. Eventually Princess Marya's carriages drove away from the house, whereupon Rostov got on his horse and rode alongside as far as the road occupied by our troops, seven or eight miles from Bogucharovo. At the inn at Yankovo he parted from her with a show of courtesy and allowed himself to kiss her hand for the first time.
'Please don't mention it!' he said, colouring up in response to Princess Marya's protestation of gratitude for her salvation, which is what she called it. 'Any old policeman would have done the same thing. If all we had to do was wage war against the peasants, we wouldn't have let the enemy come as far as he has,' he said, inexplicably embarrassed and eager to change the subject. 'I'm only too happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Goodbye, Princess. I wish you good luck and you have my sympathy, and I hope we shall meet again under happier circumstances. Please, spare my blushes - not a word of thanks.'
But if the princess had now stopped thanking him in words, she went on thanking him with the look on her face, which glowed with gratitude and affection. She could not believe she had nothing to thank him for. Quite the reverse, she saw it as beyond doubt that but for him she would surely have been lost, a prey to the rebellious peasants and the French, and that in saving her he had exposed himself to obvious and terrible danger. Even more certain was the fact that he was a man of noble and lofty soul who had proved immediately sensitive to her situation and distress. His kindly, innocent eyes, watering with sympathy when she had spoken tearfully about her loss, haunted her imagination. When she was on her own with the goodbyes behind them, Princess Marya suddenly felt her eyes brimming with tears again, and she began to wonder, not for the first time, whether she might have fallen in love with him. On the way to Moscow, even though the princess's situation could hardly be described as a happy one, Dunyasha, who was travelling with her in the carriage, noticed several times that her mistress's face as she bent forward to look through the window wore a secret smile of pleasant wistfulness.
'Oh dear, what if I have fallen in love with him?' Princess Marya was thinking.
It was awkward for her to admit even secretly to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would possibly never love her in return, but she consoled herself with the thought that no one would ever know, and she would bear no blame for this love, as long as it remained unspoken, even if it was her first and last love, and it went on for a lifetime.
Sometimes she remembered the way he had looked at her, the sympathy he had shown, what he had said, and then happiness seemed not beyond the bounds of possibility. And it was then that Dunyasha caught her looking through the window with a real smile.
'And to think he should have come to Bogucharovo, and just at that time!' thought Princess Marya. 'And to think it was his sister who refused Andrey!' In all of this Princess Marya saw the workings of Providence.
Princess Marya had made a very favourable impression on Rostov. Whenever he brought her to mind he felt happy. And when his pals heard about his adventures in Bogucharovo and poked fun at him for having gone out to look for hay and ended up hooking one of the richest heiresses in Russia, it made him angry. It made him angry for the simple reason that the idea of marrying the gentle, and, as he recalled, delightful Princess Marya with her huge fortune had occurred to him spontaneously on more than one occasion. For him personally Princess Marya as a wife left nothing to be desired. Marrying her would make the countess, his mother, so happy and would mend his father's fortunes. And it would even - Nikolay could feel it in his bones - make the princess herself very happy.
But what about Sonya? What about his promise? This was why it made him angry when they poked fun at him about Princess Bolkonsky.
CHAPTER 15
After his appointment as army commander-in-chief Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrey and asked him to report to headquarters.
Prince Andrey reached Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at the very time when Kutuzov was making his first inspection of the troops. Prince Andrey stopped in the village at the priest's house, where the commander-in-chief's carriage was waiting outside, and he sat down on a bench by the gate to await 'his Serene Highness', as everyone now called Kutuzov. Floating across the fields beyond the village came the music of a regimental band, and the roar of a huge crowd shouting 'Hurrah!' to the new commander-in-chief. By the gate a dozen paces away from Prince Andrey stood two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, enjoying the fine weather while their masters were away. A swarthy little lieutenant-colonel of hussars with prodigious whiskers and sideboards rode up to the gate, glanced at Prince Andrey and asked whether his Serene Highness was staying here and whether he would be back soon.
Prince Andrey told him he was not on his Highness's staff, and he too had only just arrived. The lieutenant-colonel of hussars turned to an immaculate orderly, the orderly of the commander-in-chief himself, who spoke to him with that special kind of aloofness with comes naturally to a commander-in-chief's orderly when speaking to officers:
'His Highness? Yes, he should be back soon. What is it you want?'
The officer grinned through his whiskers at the orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a servant, and walked over to Bolkonsky with a slight bow.
Bolkonsky made room for him on the bench. The hussar sat down beside him.
'You, too? Waiting for the commander-in-chief?' he began. 'They say he's weady to weceive evewybody, thank God! Not like those widiculous kwauts! No wonder Yermolov talked about being pwomoted to the wank of German. Now p'whaps the Wussians will get a word in. God knows what they think they've been up to. Just one wetweat after another. Have you seen any action?' he asked.
'I have had the pleasure,' said Prince Andrey, 'not only of taking part in the retreat, but also of losing everything I held dear during that retreat - not to speak of my property, the house where I was born . . . and my father - he died of grief. I'm from near Smolensk.'
'Oh, you must be Pwince Bolkonsky! Delighted to meet you. Lieutenant-Colonel Denisov, better known as Vaska,' said Denisov, shaking hands with Prince Andrey and looking him in the face with warm friendliness. 'Yes, I heard about that,' he said with some sympathy, and after a brief pause he went on, 'Yes, we're fighting like the Scythians. It's all vewy well, except for those who bear the bwunt of it. So you're Pwince Andwey Bolkonsky!' He shook his head. 'Yes, I'm vewy, vewy pleased to meet you,' he added, shaking his hand with a wistful smile.
Prince Andrey knew about Denisov from Natasha's stories of when she was first wooed. The bitter-sweet memory brought back the heartache he hadn't even thought about in recent days, though it still lay buried in his soul. In recent days so many different things had happened, some of them vitally important, like the abandonment of Smolensk, his visit to Bald Hills and the news of his father's recent death, and he had gone through so many trials that these particular memories had left him alone for long periods, and when they did come to mind they didn't hurt with anything like the old intensity. And as far as Denisov was concerned, the associations evoked by the name of Bolkonsky belonged to a romantic time in the distant past, when one evening after supper, much affected by Natasha's singing, he had proposed to a little fifteen-year-old girl without really knowing what he was doing. He smiled at the thought of those days and his love for Natasha, and then went straight on to the one thing that had become an outright obsession with him. This was a plan of action that had come to him while he had been on duty at the outposts during the retreat. He had laid the plan before Barclay de Tolly, and now he had every intention of laying it before Kutuzov. It was based on the fact that the French operations line was over-extended, and his idea was that, instead a frontal attack blocking the French advance (or maybe along with an attack of that kind), they ought to concentrate on their communications. He began explaining his plan to Prince Andrey.
'They can't defend the whole of that line. It's not possible. I guawantee I could bweak thwough it. Give me five hundwed men and I'll cut their communications, for sure I will! There's only one system that'll work - guewilla warfare.'
Denisov got to his feet and began to elaborate for Bolkonsky's benefit, with much waving of the arms. He was in mid-flow when suddenly they heard the soldiers shouting again, ragged sounds this time that blended with music and song over a wide area near the parade-ground. Hoofbeats and cheering soon could be heard in the nearby village.
'He's coming! He's coming!' shouted the Cossack from the gate.
Bolkonsky and Denisov walked over to the gate, where a little group of soldiers formed a guard of honour, and there was Kutuzov coming down the street on a little bay horse. An immense suite of generals followed on. Barclay was riding almost level with him, and a great crowd of officers was scurrying about behind them and on every side with loud cries of 'Hurrah!'
His adjutants were first into the yard. Kutuzov dug his heels into his horse, which was ambling along so slowly under his weight, and all the time he kept nodding right and left and raising a hand to his white horseguard's cap with its red band and no peak. When he got to the guard of honour, to be saluted by a set of elite grenadiers, most of them sporting decorations, he paused for a moment in silence and looked at them very closely with the steady gaze of a true commander before turning to the group of generals and other officers standing round him. There was a subtle change in his expression, and he shrugged with an air of bemusement.
'What, with men like these nothing but retreat after retreat?' he said. 'Well, goodbye, General,' he added, and urged his horse in through the gateway right past Prince Andrey and Denisov.
'Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!' went the roaring voices behind him.
Since the last time Prince Andrey had seen him Kutuzov had put on even more weight and now he looked really flabby, bloated with fat. But some things about him had not changed - the familiar scar, the wall-eye and the overall impression of weariness in face and figure. As well as the white horse guard's cap he was wearing a military greatcoat with a whip on a narrow strap slung across his shoulder. He sat on his game little horse very badly, a ponderous, wobbly load.
'Ugh! . . . ugh! . . . ugh!' he wheezed, though the sound was barely audible, as he rode into the courtyard. His face shone with the relief of a man looking forward to a nice rest after being a long time in the limelight. He withdrew his left foot from the stirrup with a lurch of his big body and scowled with exertion as he brought it up on to the saddle, used his knee to steady himself and flopped down with a groan into the supporting arms of his Cossacks and aides.
He pulled himself together, looked round with his eyes half-closed, glanced at Prince Andrey, seemed not to recognize him, and shambled off tubbily in the direction of the steps.
'Ugh! . . . ugh! . . . ugh!' he wheezed, and turned to take another look at Prince Andrey. As often happens with old men, the impression of Prince Andrey's face had taken some seconds to trigger a memory of his personality. 'Oh, hello there, my dear fellow, hello there. Do come along . . .' he said wearily, lumbering up the steps that creaked under his weight. He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.
'Well then, how's your father keeping?'
'News of his death reached me yesterday,' said Prince Andrey tersely.
Kutuzov looked at him wide-eyed with dismay, then he took his cap off and crossed himself. 'God rest his soul! And may God's will be done with all of us!' He heaved the deepest of sighs and paused. 'I loved him deeply and had great respect for him, and you have my heartfelt sympathy.' He put both arms round Prince Andrey, hugged him to his fat chest and held on for quite some time. When he released him, Prince Andrey could see Kutuzov's thick lips quivering, and there were