War and Peace (139 page)

“I make bold to trouble your honour,” he said, putting one hand in his bosom, and speaking with a respectfulness in which there was a shade of contempt for the officer’s youth. “My mistress, the daughter of general-in-chief Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky, who died on the 15th of this month, being in difficulties owing to the coarse ignorance of those people”—he pointed to the peasants—“begs you to come … Would you not be pleased,” said Alpatitch, with a melancholy smile, “to move a little away, as it is not so convenient before …” Alpatitch indicated two peasants, who were hovering about him, like gadflies about a horse.

“Ay!… Alpatitch!… Ay! Yakov Alpatitch! first-rate job! Eh?… for Christ’s sake, forgive us. First-rate! ay?” cried the peasants, smiling gleefully at him.

Rostov looked at the drunken peasants, and smiled.

“Or possibly this entertains your excellency?” said Yakov Alpatitch, with a sober air, pointing with his other hand to the old peasants.

“No, there’s nothing very entertaining in that,” said Rostov, and he moved away. “What is the matter?” he inquired.

“I make bold to submit to your excellency that the rude peasants here will not let their lady leave the estate, and threaten to take the horses out of her carriage, so that everything has been packed since morning, yet her excellency cannot get away.”

“Impossible!” cried Rostov.

“I have the honour of submitting to you the simple truth,” said Alpatitch.

Rostov got off his horse, and giving it to the orderly, walked with Alpatitch to the house, questioning him further about the state of affairs.

The princess’s offer of corn, and her interview with Dron and with the peasants, had, in fact, made the position so much worse that Dron had finally given up the keys of office, joined the peasants and refused to appear when Alpatitch sent for him. In the morning when the princess ordered the horses to be put in for her to set off, the peasants had come out in a great crowd to the granary, and had sent to say that they would not let the princess go out of the village; that there was an edict that people were not to leave their houses, and that they would unharness the horses. Alpatitch went out to lecture them; in reply they told him (a certain Karp was the principal speaker, Dron kept in the background in the crowd) that the princess could not be allowed to go, that there was an edict forbidding it, but that only let her stay, and they would serve her and obey her in everything as before.

At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the village street, regardless of the efforts of Alpatitch, the old nurse, and the maid to dissuade her, Princess Marya had just ordered the horses to be put in, and was intending to start. But seeing the horsemen galloping up, the coachmen took them for the French, and ran away, and a great lamentation arose among the women of the household.

“Kind sir! protector! God has sent thee,” cried voices, with much feeling, as Rostov crossed the vestibule. Princess Marya was sitting helpless and distraught in the hall, when Rostov was shown in to see her. She did not know who he was, or what brought him there, or what was happening to her. Seeing his Russian face, and recognising him at his first words and gait for a man of her own rank, she looked at him, with her deep, luminous gaze, and began speaking in a voice, broken and trembling with emotion. Rostov at once conceived a romance in this meeting. “A defenceless girl, crushed by sorrow, alone, abandoned to the
mercy of coarse, rebellious peasants! And what strange destiny has brought me here!” thought Rostov, as he listened to her and looked at her. “And what mildness, what nobility in her features and expression!” he thought, as he 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 as though afraid Rostov might ascribe her words to a desire to work on his feelings, she glanced at him with a look of apprehensive inquiry. There were tears in Rostov’s eyes. Princess Marya noticed it, and looked at him with the luminous eyes that made one forget the plainness of her face.

“I cannot express how glad I am, princess, that I happened to come this way, and am able to serve you in anything,” said Rostov, rising. “I trust you will start at once, and I answer for it on my honour, no person shall dare to cause you annoyance, if you will only permit me to escort you,” and making a deep bow, such as are made to ladies of the royal family, he turned to the door.

By the respectfulness of his tone, Rostov tried to show that though he would consider it a happiness to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to take advantage of her misfortune to force an acquaintanceship upon her.

Princess Marya felt and appreciated this tone.

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

“Excuse me,” she said.

Rostov, knitting his brows, bowed low once more, and went out of the room.

“Well, is she pretty? But, my boy, my pink girl’s charming; her name is Dunyasha.” … But glancing into Rostov’s face, Ilyin paused. He saw his hero and superior officer was absorbed in a very different train of thought.

Rostov looked angrily at Ilyin, and without replying, strode off rapidly to the village.

“I’ll teach them; I’ll pay them out; the scoundrels,” he muttered to himself.

Alpatitch followed Rostov at a quick trot, which he could only just keep from breaking into a run.

“What decision has your honour come to?” he said, overtaking him. Rostov stopped short, and clenching his fists moved suddenly up to Alpatitch with a menacing gesture.

“Decision? What decision, old shuffler?” he shouted. “What have you been thinking about? Eh? The peasants are unruly and you don’t know how to manage them? You’re a traitor yourself. I know you. I’ll flog the skin off the lot of you …” And, as though afraid of wasting the energy of his anger, he left Alpatitch and went quickly ahead. Alpatitch, swallowing his wounded feelings, hurried with a swaying step after Rostov, still giving him the benefit of his reflections on the subject. He said that the peasants were in a very stubborn state, that at the moment it was imprudent to
oppositionise
them, without an armed force, and would it not be better first to send for armed force.

“I’ll give them armed force.… I’ll oppositionise them …” Nikolay muttered meaninglessly, choking with irrational animal rage and desire to vent that rage on some one. Without considering what he was going to do, unconsciously, he moved with a rapid, resolute step up to the crowd. And the nearer he approached, the more Alpatitch felt that his imprudent action might produce the happiest results. The peasants in the crowd were feeling the same thing as they watched his firm and rapid step and determined, frowning face.

After the hussars had entered the village and Rostov had gone in to see the princess, a certain hesitation and division of opinion had become apparent in the crowd. Some of the peasants began to say that the horsemen were Russians, and it might be expected they would take it amiss that they had not let their young lady go. Dron was of that opinion; but as soon as he expressed it, Karp and others fell upon him.

“How many years have you been fattening on the village?” shouted Karp. “It’s all one to you! You’ll dig up your pot of money and make off with it. What is it to you if our homes are ruined or not?”

“We were told everything was to be in order and no one to leave their homes, and not a thing to be moved away—and that’s all about it!” shouted another.

“It was your son’s turn; but you spared your fat youngster,” a little old man suddenly burst out, pouncing upon Dron, “and sent my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier. Ugh, and yet we all have to die!”

“To be sure, we all have to die!”

“I’m not one to go against the mir,” said Dron.

“Not one to go against it, you have grown fat off it.” …

Two lanky peasants said their say. As soon as Rostov, accompanied by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatitch approached the crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into his sash, walked forward with a slight smile. Dron, on the contrary, retreated to the back, and the crowd huddled closer together.

“Hey! who is elder among you here?” shouted Rostov, walking quickly up to the crowd.

“The elder? What do you want him for?…” asked Karp. But he hardly had time to get the words out when his hat sent flying off his head, and he was sent reeling from a violent blow on the head.

“Caps off, traitors!” shouted Rostov’s full-blooded voice. “Where is the elder?” he roared furiously.

“The elder, the elder’s wanted. Dron Zaharitch, he calls you,” voices were heard saying, hurriedly subservient, and caps were taken off.

“We can’t be said to be unruly; we’re following the orders,” declared Karp. And several voices at the back began at the same instant:

“It’s as the elders settle; there are too many of you giving orders …”

“Talking?… Mutiny!… Scoundrels! Traitors!” Rostov shouted, without thinking, in a voice unlike his own, as he seized Karp by the collar. “Bind him, bind him!” he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatitch.

Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized his arms from behind.

“Shall I call our fellows from below the hill, your honour?” he shouted.

Alpatitch turned to the peasants, calling upon two of them by name to bind Karp. The peasants obediently stepped out of the crowd and began undoing their belts.

“Where’s the village elder?” shouted Rostov.

Dron with a pale and frowning face, stepped out of the crowd.

“Are you the elder? Bind him, Lavrushka,” shouted Rostov, as though the order could meet with no sort of opposition. And in fact two peasants did begin binding Dron, who took off his sash, and gave it them as though to assist in the operation.

“And all of you, listen to me,” Rostov turned to the peasants. “March straight to your homes this minute, and don’t let me hear your voices again.”

“Why, we haven’t done any harm. It was all, do you see, through
foolishness. Only a bit of nonsense … I always said that it wasn’t the right thing,” said voices, blaming one another.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Alpatitch, resuming his rightful position. “You’ve done wrong, lads.”

“It was our foolishness, Yakov Alpatitch,” answered voices, and the crowd at once began to break up and to disperse about the village.

The two peasants who were bound they took to the manor-house. The two drunken peasants followed them.

“Ay, now look at you!” said one of them, addressing Karp.

“Do you suppose you can talk to the gentry like that? What were you thinking about? You are a fool,” put in the other; “a regular fool.”

Within two hours the horses and carts required were standing in the courtyard of the Bogutcharovo house. The peasants were eagerly hurrying out and packing in the carts their owners’ goods; and Dron, who had at Princess Marya’s desire, been released from the lumber-room, where they had shut him up, was standing in the yard, giving directions to the men.

“Don’t pack it so carelessly,” said one of the peasants, a tall man with a round, smiling face, taking a casket out of a housemaid’s hands. “It’s worth money too, you may be sure. Why, if you fling it down like that or put it under the cord, it will get scratched. I don’t like to see things done so. Let everything be done honestly, according to rule, I say. There, like this, under the matting, and cover it up with hay; there, that’s first-rate.”

“Mercy on us, the books, the books,” said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrey’s bookshelves. “Mind you don’t stumble! Ay, but it’s heavy, lads; the books are stout and solid!”

“Yes, they must have worked hard to write them!” said a tall, round-faced peasant pointing with a significant wink to a lexicon lying uppermost.

Rostov, not wishing to force his acquaintance on the princess, did not go back to the house, but remained at the village waiting for her to drive out. When Princess Marya’s carriage drove out from the house, Rostov mounted his horse and escorted her as far as the road occupied by our troops, twelve versts from Bogutcharovo. At the inn at Yankovo he parted from her respectfully, for the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.

“How can you speak of it!” he said, blushing in response to Princess
Marya’s expression of gratitude to him for saving her, as she called it. “Any police officer would have done as much. If we only had to wage war with peasants, we would not have let the enemy advance so far,” he said, trying with a sort of bashfulness to change the conversation. “I am only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-bye, princess. I trust you may find happiness and consolation, and I hope I may meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don’t want to make me blush, please don’t thank me.”

But if the princess thanked him no more in words, she thanked him with the whole expression of her face, which was radiant with gratitude and warmth. She could not believe that she had no cause to thank him. On the contrary, to her mind it was an incontestable fact that had it not been for him, she must inevitably have fallen a victim to the rebellious peasants or the French; that
he
, to save her, had exposed himself to obvious and fearful danger; and even more certain was the fact that he was a man of noble and lofty soul, able to sympathise with her position and her grief. His kindly and honest eyes, with tears starting to them at the moment when weeping herself she had spoken of her loss, haunted her imagination. When she had said good-bye to him and was left alone, Princess Marya suddenly felt tears in her eyes, and then—not for the first time—the question occurred to her: “Was she in love with him?” On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess’s position was by no means a joyful one, Dunyasha, who was in the carriage with her, noticed that her mistress’s face wore a vaguely happy and pensive smile, as she looked out of the window.

“Well, what if I have fallen in love with him?” Though she was ashamed at acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would perhaps never care for her, she comforted herself with the reflection that no one would ever know it, and she was not to blame, if she loved in secret for the first and last time and for her whole life long.