War and Peace (40 page)

But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said to him.

“I’m asking you, when you heard last from Bolkonsky,” Prince Vassily repeated a third time. “How absent-minded you are, my dear boy.” Prince Vassily smiled, and Pierre saw that every one, every one was smiling at him and at Ellen.

“Well, what of it, since you all know,” Pierre was saying to himself. “What of it? it’s the truth,” and he smiled himself his gentle, childlike smile, and Ellen smiled.

“When did you get a letter? From Olmütz?” repeated Prince Vassily, who wanted to know in order to settle some disputed question.

“How can people talk and think of such trifles?” thought Pierre.

“Yes, from Olmütz,” he answered with a sigh.

Pierre took his lady in behind the rest from supper to the drawing-room. The guests began to take leave, and several went away without saying good-bye to Ellen. As though unwilling to take her away from a serious occupation, several went up to her for an instant and made haste to retire again, refusing to let her accompany them out. The diplomat went out of the drawing-room in dumb dejection. He felt vividly all the vanity of his diplomatic career by comparison with Pierre’s happiness. The old general growled angrily at his wife when she inquired how his leg was. “The old fool,” he thought. “Look at Elena Vassilyevna; she’ll be beautiful at fifty.”

“I believe I may congratulate you,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to Princess Kuragin, as she kissed her warmly. “If I hadn’t a headache, I would stay on.” The princess made no answer; she was tormented by envy of her daughter’s happiness.

While the guests were taking leave, Pierre was left a long while alone with Ellen in the little drawing-room, where they were sitting. Often before, during the last six weeks, he had been left alone with Ellen, but he had never spoken of love to her. Now he felt that this was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to this final step. He felt ashamed; it seemed to him that here at Ellen’s side he was filling some other man’s place. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice said to him. “This happiness is for those who have not in them what you have within you.” But he had to say something, and he began to speak. He asked her whether she had enjoyed the evening. With her habitual directness in replying, she answered that this name-day had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.

A few of the nearest relations were still lingering on. They were sitting in the big drawing-room. Prince Vassily walked with languid steps towards Pierre. Pierre rose and observed that it was getting late. Prince Vassily levelled a look of stern inquiry upon him, as though what he had said was so strange that one could not believe one’s ears. But the expression of severity immediately passed away, and Prince Vassily taking Pierre’s hand drew him down into a seat and smiled affectionately.

“Well, Ellen?” he said at once, addressing his daughter in that careless tone of habitual tenderness which comes natural to parents who have petted their children from infancy, but in Prince Vassily’s case was only arrived at by imitation of other parents. And he turned to Pierre
again: “ ‘Sergey Kuzmitch on all sides,’ ” he repeated, unbuttoning the top button of his waistcoat.

Pierre smiled, but his smile betrayed that he understood that it was not the anecdote of Sergey Kuzmitch that interested Prince Vassily at that moment, and Prince Vassily knew that Pierre knew it. Prince Vassily all at once muttered something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that Prince Vassily was positively disconcerted. The sight of the discomfiture of this elderly man of the world touched Pierre; he looked round at Ellen—and she, he fancied, was disconcerted too, and her glance seemed to say: “Well, it’s your own fault.”

“I must inevitably cross the barrier, but I can’t, I can’t,” thought Pierre, and he began again speaking of extraneous subjects, of Sergey Kuzmitch, inquiring what was the point of the anecdote, as he had not caught it all. Ellen, with a smile, replied that she did not know it either.

When Prince Vassily went into the drawing-room, the princess was talking in subdued tones with an elderly lady about Pierre.

“Of course it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear …”

“Marriages are made in heaven,” responded the elderly lady.

Prince Vassily walked to the furthest corner and sat down on a sofa, as though he had not heard the ladies. He closed his eyes and seemed to doze. His head began to droop, and he roused himself.

“Aline,” he said to his wife, “go and see what they are doing.”

The princess went up to the door, walked by it with a countenance full of meaning and affected nonchalance, and glanced into the little drawing-room. Pierre and Ellen were sitting and talking as before.

“Just the same,” she said in answer to her husband. Prince Vassily frowned, twisting his mouth on one side, his cheeks twitched with the unpleasant, brutal expression peculiar to him at such moments. He shook himself, got up, flung his head back, and with resolute steps passed the ladies and crossed over to the little drawing-room. He walked quickly, joyfully up to Pierre. The prince’s face was so extraordinarily solemn that Pierre got up in alarm on seeing him.

“Thank God!” he said. “My wife has told me all about it.” He put one arm round Pierre, the other round his daughter. “My dear boy! Ellen! I am very, very glad.” His voice quavered. “I loved your father … and she will make you a good wife … God’s blessing on you!…” He embraced his daughter, then Pierre again, and kissed him with his elderly lips. Tears were actually moist on his cheeks. “Aline, come here,” he called.

The princess went in and wept too. The elderly lady also put her handkerchief to her eye. They kissed Pierre, and he several times kissed the hand of the lovely Ellen. A little later they were again left alone.

“All this had to be so and could not have been otherwise,” thought Pierre, “so that it’s no use to inquire whether it was a good thing or not. It’s a good thing because it’s definite, and there’s none of the agonising suspense there was before.” Pierre held his betrothed’s hand in silence, and gazed at the heaving and falling of her lovely bosom.

“Ellen!” he said aloud, and stopped. “There’s something special is said on these occasions,” he thought; but he could not recollect precisely what it was that was said on these occasions. He glanced into her face. She bent forward closer to him. Her face flushed rosy red.

“Ah, take off those … those …” she pointed to his spectacles.

Pierre took off his spectacles, and there was in his eyes besides the strange look people’s eyes always have when they remove spectacles, a look of dismay and inquiry. He would have bent over her hand and have kissed it. But with an almost brutal movement of her head, she caught at his lips and pressed them to her own. Pierre was struck by the transformed, the unpleasantly confused expression of her face.

“Now it’s too late, it’s all over, and besides I love her,” thought Pierre.

“I love you!” he said, remembering what had to be said on these occasions. But the words sounded so poor that he felt ashamed of himself.

Six weeks later he was married, and the lucky possessor of a lovely wife and millions of money, as people said; he took up his abode in the great, newly decorated Petersburg mansion of the Counts Bezuhov.

In the December of 1805, the old Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky received a letter from Prince Vassily, announcing that he intended to visit him with his son. (“I am going on an inspection tour, and of course a hundred versts is only a step out of the way for me to visit you, my deeply-honoured benefactor,” he wrote. “My Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, and I hope you will permit him to express to you in person the profound veneration that, following his father’s example, he entertains for you.”)

“Well, there’s no need to bring Marie out, it seems; suitors come to
us of themselves,” the little princess said heedlessly on hearing of this. Prince Nikolay Andreitch scowled and said nothing.

A fortnight after receiving the letter, Prince Vassily’s servants arrived one evening in advance of him, and the following day he came himself with his son.

Old Bolkonsky had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vassily’s character, and this opinion had grown stronger of late since Prince Vassily had, under the new reigns of Paul and Alexander, advanced to high rank and honours. Now from the letter and the little princess’s hints, he saw what the object of the visit was, and his poor opinion of Prince Vassily passed into a feeling of ill-will and contempt in the old prince’s heart. He snorted indignantly whenever he spoke of him. On the day of Prince Vassily’s arrival, the old prince was particularly discontented and out of humour. Whether he was out of humour because Prince Vassily was coming, or whether he was particularly displeased at Prince Vassily’s coming because he was out of humour, no one can say. But he was out of humour, and early in the morning Tihon had dissuaded the architect from going to the prince with his report.

“Listen how he’s walking,” said Tihon, calling the attention of the architect to the sound of the prince’s footsteps. “Stepping flat on his heels … then we know …”

At nine o’clock, however, the old prince went out for a walk, as usual, wearing his short, velvet, fur-lined cloak with a sable collar and a sable cap. There had been a fall of snow on the previous evening. The path along which Prince Nikolay Andreitch walked to the conservatory had been cleared; there were marks of a broom in the swept snow, and a spade had been left sticking in the crisp bank of snow that bordered the path on both sides. The prince walked through the conservatories, the servants’ quarters, and the out-buildings, frowning and silent.

“Could a sledge drive up?” he asked the respectful steward, who was escorting him to the house, with a countenance and manners like his own.

“The snow is deep, your excellency. I gave orders for the avenue to be swept too.”

The prince nodded, and was approaching the steps. “Glory to Thee, O Lord!” thought the steward, “the storm has passed over!”

“It would have been hard to drive up, your excellency,” added the steward. “So I hear, your excellency, there’s a minister coming to visit your excellency?” The prince turned to the steward and stared with scowling eyes at him.

“Eh? A minister? What minister? Who gave you orders?” he began in his shrill, cruel voice. “For the princess my daughter, you do not clear the way, but for the minister you do! For me there are no ministers!”

“Your excellency, I supposed …”

“You supposed,” shouted the prince, articulating with greater and greater haste and incoherence. “You supposed … Brigands! blackguards!… I’ll teach you to suppose,” and raising his stick he waved it at Alpatitch, and would have hit him, had not the steward instinctively shrunk back and escaped the blow. “You supposed … Blackguards!…” he still cried hurriedly. But although Alpatitch, shocked at his own insolence in dodging the blow, went closer to the prince, with his bald head bent humbly before him, or perhaps just because of this, the prince did not lift the stick again, and still shouting, “Blackguards!… fill up the road …” he ran to his room.

Princess Marya and Mademoiselle Bourienne stood, waiting for the old prince before dinner, well aware that he was out of temper. Mademoiselle Bourienne’s beaming countenance seemed to say, “I know nothing about it, I am just the same as usual,” while Princess Marya stood pale and terrified with downcast eyes. What made it harder for Princess Marya was that she knew that she ought to act like Mademoiselle Bourienne at such times, but she could not do it. She felt, “If I behave as if I did not notice it, he’ll think I have no sympathy with him. If I behave as if I were depressed and out of humour myself, he’ll say (as indeed often happened) that I’m sulky …” and so on.

The prince glanced at his daughter’s scared face and snorted.

“Stuff!” or perhaps “stupid!” he muttered. “And the other is not here! they’ve been telling tales to her already,” he thought, noticing that the little princess was not in the dining-room.

“Where’s Princess Liza?” he asked. “In hiding?”

“She’s not quite well,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright smile; “she is not coming down. In her condition it is only to be expected.”

“H’m! h’m! kh! kh!” growled the prince, and he sat down to the table. He thought his plate was not clean: he pointed to a mark on it and threw it away. Tihon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little princess was quite well, but she was in such overwhelming terror of the prince, that on hearing he was in a bad temper, she had decided not to come in.

“I am afraid for my baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne; “God knows what might not be the result of a fright.”

The little princess, in fact, lived at Bleak Hills in a state of continual terror of the old prince, and had an aversion for him, of which she was herself unconscious, so completely did terror overbear every other feeling. There was the same aversion on the prince’s side, too; but in his case it was swallowed up in contempt. As she went on staying at Bleak Hills, the little princess became particularly fond of Mademoiselle Bourienne; she spent her days with her, begged her to sleep in her room, and often talked of her father-in-law, and criticised him to her.

“We have company coming, prince,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, her rosy fingers unfolding her dinner-napkin. “His excellency Prince Kuragin with his son, as I have heard say?” she said in a tone of inquiry.

“H’m! . .
his excellence
is an upstart. I got him his place in the college,” the old prince said huffily. “And what his son’s coming for, I can’t make out. Princess Lizaveta Karlovna and Princess Marya can tell us, maybe; I don’t know what he’s bringing his son here for. I don’t want him.” And he looked at his daughter, who turned crimson.

“Unwell, eh? Scared of the minister, as that blockhead Alpatitch called him to-day?”

“Non, mon père.”

Unsuccessful as Mademoiselle Bourienne had been in the subject she had started, she did not desist, but went on prattling away about the conservatories, the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and after the soup the prince subsided.