CHAPTER V
"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.
"All right,"
said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling of dread was in the
air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun could no longer be
averted but was taking its course independently of men's will.
Denisov
first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies have wefused a
weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at the word thwee
begin to advance.
"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped
aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and
nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They
had the right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier.
Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with
his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist's face. His mouth
wore its usual semblance of a smile.
"So I can fire when I like!" said
Pierre, and at the word "three," he went quickly forward, missing the trodden
path and stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at
arm's length, apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he
held carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it
and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed off
the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been shown,
fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the sound
and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The smoke,
rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an
instant, but there was no second report as he had expected. He only
heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his figure came in view through the
smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while the other clutched
his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostov ran toward him and
said something.
"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no,
it's not over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped it
on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was pallid
and quivered.
"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first
pronounce the word.
"Please," he uttered with an effort.
Pierre,
hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov and was about to
cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:
"To your
barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his saber. Only ten
paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily bit at
it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs and sat up,
seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his
lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and
exasperation as he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and
aimed.
"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated
Nesvitski.
"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his
adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and
legs helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly
facing Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and
Nesvitski closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report
and Dolokhov's angry cry.
"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay
helplessly, face downwards on the snow.
Pierre clutched his temples,
and turning round went into the forest, trampling through the deep snow, and
muttering incoherent words:
"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he
repeated, puckering his face.
Nesvitski stopped him and took him
home.
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
The
latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer a word to
the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he suddenly came to
and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostov, who was sitting beside
him, by the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly
rapturous and tender expression on Dolokhov's face.
"Well? How do you
feel?" he asked.
"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with
a gasping voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have
killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't
survive...."
"Who?" asked Rostov.
"My mother! My mother, my angel,
my adored angel mother," and Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into
tears.
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that
he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive
it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.
Rostov went on ahead
to do what was asked, and to his great surprise learned that Dolokhov the
brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old mother and a
hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and
brothers.
CHAPTER VI
Pierre had of late rarely seen
his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in Moscow their house was always full
of visitors. The night after the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he
often did, remained in his father's room, that huge room in which Count
Bezukhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and
forget all that had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of
feelings, thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not
fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace
the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days
of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look
on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dolokhov's
handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet,
and then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been
when he reeled and sank on the snow.
"What has happened?" he asked
himself. "I have killed her lover, yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was
it! And why? How did I come to do it?"--"Because you married her," answered
an inner voice.
"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her
without loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled
that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words he had
found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from that! Even
then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not so, that I had
no right to do it. And so it turns out."
He remembered his honeymoon
and blushed at the recollection. Particularly vivid, humiliating, and
shameful was the recollection of how one day soon after his marriage he came
out of the bedroom into his study a little before noon in his silk dressing
gown and found his head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into
his face and at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing
respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.
"But how often I
have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty and social tact,"
thought he; "been proud of my house, in which she received all Petersburg,
proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I
then thought that I did not understand her. How often when considering her
character I have told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her,
for not understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of all
interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that
she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all
has become clear.
"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and
used to kiss her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let
herself be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she
replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: 'Let
him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked her if
she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said
she was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going
to have any children by me."
Then he recalled the coarseness and
bluntness of her thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were
natural to her, though she had been brought up in the most aristocratic
circles.
"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
promener," * she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with young and
old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love
her.
* "You clear out of this."
"Yes, I never loved her," said
he to himself; "I knew she was a depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not
admit it to myself. And now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a
forced smile and perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced
bravado!"
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance
of what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles.
He digested his sufferings alone.
"It is all, all her fault," he said
to himself; "but what of that? Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say
'Je vous aime' * to her, which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty
and must endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's
nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor--that's all apart from
myself."
* I love you.
"Louis XVI was executed because they
said he was dishonorable and a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from
their point of view they were right, as were those too who canonized him and
died a martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a
despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are
alive--live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it
worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in
comparison with eternity?"
But at the moment when he imagined himself
calmed by such reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the
moments when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and
he felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about
and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell her that 'Je
vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it for
the tenth time, Moliere's words: "Mais que diable allait-il faire dans
cette galere?"* occurred to him, and he began to laugh at
himself.
* "But what the devil was he doing in that
galley?"
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go
to Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now.
He resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of
his intention to part from her forever.
Next morning when the valet
came into the room with his coffee, Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman
with an open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked round for a while
with a startled expression, unable to realize where he was.
"The
countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home," said the
valet.
But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the
countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and
with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head
like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With
her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till
the valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked
at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by
hounds who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before
her enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be
senseless and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit
down but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet
to go.
"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should
like to know?" she asked sternly.
"I? What have I...?" stammered
Pierre.
"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel
about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."
Pierre turned over
heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but could not reply.
"If
you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe everything
you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that Dolokhov was my lover,"
she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the word
amant as casually as any other word, "and you believed it! Well, what have
you proved? What does this duel prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un
sot, but everybody knew that. What will be the result? That I shall be the
laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not
knowing what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without
cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A man
who's a better man than you in every way..."
"Hm... Hm...!" growled
Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not moving a muscle.
"And
how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his company? If
you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer yours."
"Don't
speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.
"Why shouldn't I
speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you plainly that there are not many
wives with husbands such as you who would not have taken lovers (des amants),
but I have not done so," said she.
Pierre wished to say something, looked
at her with eyes whose strange expression she did not understand, and lay
down again. He was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on
his chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put
an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too
terrible.
"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken
voice.
"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said
Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"
Pierre leaped
up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
"I'll kill you!" he
shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table with a strength he had never
before felt, he made a step toward her brandishing the slab.
Helene's
face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His father's nature
showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and delight of frenzy. He
flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down on her with outstretched
hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a terrible voice that the whole house heard
it with horror. God knows what he would have done at that moment had Helene
not fled from the room.
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to
control all his estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his
property, and left for Petersburg alone.
CHAPTER
VII
Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz
and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of
the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body
had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst
of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a possibility
of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the
place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone
among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from
which the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as
usual very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the
Russians had had to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order.
The old prince understood from this official report that our army had
been defeated. A week after the gazette report of the battle of
Austerlitz came a letter from Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that
had befallen his son.
"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes,
a standard in his hand and at the head of a regiment--he fell as a hero,
worthy of his father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of
the whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise he would
have been mentioned among the officers found on the field of battle, a
list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."
After receiving
this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his study, the old prince
went for his walk as usual next morning, but he was silent with his steward,
the gardener, and the architect, and though he looked very grim he said
nothing to anyone.
When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he
was working at his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at
her.
"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus,
and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel,
which merged in her memory with what followed.)
She approached him,
saw his face, and something gave way within her. Her eyes grew dim. By the
expression of her father's face, not sad, not crushed, but angry and working
unnaturally, she saw that hanging over her and about to crush her was some
terrible misfortune, the worst in life, one she had not yet experienced,
irreparable and incomprehensible- -the death of one she
loved.
"Father! Andrew!"--said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her
father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
"Bad news!
He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed! Kutuzov writes..." and he
screamed as piercingly as if he wished to drive the princess away by that
scream... "Killed!"
The princess did not fall down or faint. She was
already pale, but on hearing these words her face changed and something
brightened in her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy--a supreme joy
apart from the joys and sorrows of this world--overflowed the great grief
within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand,
and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy
neck.
"Father," she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep
together."
"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his
face away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go, go
and tell Lise."
The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside
her father and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment
when he took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him
tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did he
believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the
realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.
"Father, tell
me how it happened," she asked through her tears.
"Go! Go! Killed in
battle, where the best of Russian men and Russia's glory were led to
destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell Lise. I will follow."
When
Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat working and
looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm peculiar to
pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see Princess Mary but
were looking within... into herself... at something joyful and mysterious
taking place within her.
"Mary," she said, moving away from the
embroidery frame and lying back, "give me your hand." She took her
sister-in-law's hand and held it below her waist.
Her eyes were
smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained lifted in childlike
happiness.
Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the
folds of her sister-in-law's dress.
"There, there! Do you feel it? I
feel so strange. And do you know, Mary, I am going to love him very much,"
said Lise, looking with bright and happy eyes at her
sister-in-law.
Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was
weeping.
"What is the matter, Mary?"
"Nothing... only I feel
sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping away her tears on her
sister-in-law's knee.
Several times in the course of the morning Princess
Mary began trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry.
Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she
did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily
as if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she
was always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and
malign expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked
at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression
of attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant
women, and suddenly began to cry.
"Has anything come from Andrew?" she
asked.
"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and
I feel afraid."
"So there's nothing?"
"Nothing," answered
Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant eyes at her
sister-in-law.
She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her
father to hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which
was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore
and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any
hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and though
he sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he ordered
a monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own garden to
his memory, and he told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried
not to change his former way of life, but his strength failed him. He
walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess
Mary hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting
news of his return.
CHAPTER VIII
"Dearest," said
the little princess after breakfast on the morning of the nineteenth March,
and her downy little lip rose from old habit, but as sorrow was manifest in
every smile, the sound of every word, and even every footstep in that house
since the terrible news had come, so now the smile of the little
princess--influenced by the general mood though without knowing its
cause--was such as to remind one still more of the general
sorrow.
"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique *--as Foka the
cook calls it--has disagreed with me."
* Fruhstuck:
breakfast.
"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh,
you are very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her
soft, ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
"Your excellency,
should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one of the maids who was
present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the neighboring town, who had
been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
"Oh yes," assented Princess
Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go. Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and
was about to leave the room.
"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the
physical suffering on the little princess' face, an expression of childish
fear of inevitable pain showed itself.
"No, it's only indigestion?...
Say it's only indigestion, say so, Mary! Say..." And the little princess
began to cry capriciously like a suffering child and to wring her little
hands even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch
Mary Bogdanovna.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the
room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,
plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
"Mary Bogdanovna, I
think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary looking at the midwife with
wide-open eyes of alarm.
"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary
Bogdanovna, not hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know
anything about it."
"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here
yet?" said the princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's
wishes they had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting
him at any moment.)
"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary
Bogdanovna. "We'll manage very well without a doctor."
Five minutes
later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy being carried by. She
looked out. The men servants were carrying the large leather sofa from Prince
Andrew's study into the bedroom. On their faces was a quiet and solemn
look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in
the house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and
watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet
steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She
did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now
sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now kneeling
before the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her
prayers did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and her
old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the
old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl
round her head.
"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the
nurse, "and here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before
his saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.
"Oh, nurse, I'm so
glad!"
"God is merciful, birdie."
The nurse lit the gilt candles
before the icons and sat down by the door with her knitting. Princess Mary
took a book and began reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did
they look at one another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse
encouraging. Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that
Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the
superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman in
travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it,
but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the
prince's household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and
a consciousness that something great and mysterious was being
accomplished at that moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in
the maids' large hall. In the men servants' hall all sat waiting, silently
and alert. In the outlying serfs' quarters torches and candles were burning
and no one slept. The old prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down
his study and sent Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.--"Say only that
'the prince told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."
"Inform
the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna, giving the messenger
a significant look.
Tikhon went and told the prince.
"Very good!"
said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon did not hear the
slightest sound from the study after that.
After a while he re-entered it
as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing the prince was lying on the sofa,
looked at him, noticed his perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to
him silently kissed him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing
the candles or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the
world continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of
suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not
lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights
when winter seems to wish to resume its sway and scatters its last snows and
storms with desperate fury. A relay of horses had been sent up the highroad
to meet the German doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men
on horseback with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the
country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of
water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent,
her luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of
which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under
the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
Nurse
Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely hearing or
understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of times before: how
the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary in Kishenev with only a
Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a midwife.
"God is
merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.
Suddenly a gust of wind
beat violently against the casement of the window, from which the double
frame had been removed (by order of the prince, one window frame was removed
in each room as soon as the larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely
closed latch, set the damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with
its chill, snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the
stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch
the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her
loose locks of gray hair.
"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving
up the avenue!" she said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With
lanterns. Most likely the doctor."
"Oh, my God! thank God!" said
Princess Mary. "I must go and meet him, he does not know
Russian."
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the
newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a
carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs.
On a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft.
On the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and
holding another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one
could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice
that seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
"Thank
God!" said the voice. "And Father?"
"Gone to bed," replied the voice of
Demyan the house steward, who was downstairs.
Then the voice said
something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in the felt boots approached
the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.
"It's Andrew!" thought
Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be too extraordinary," and at the
very moment she thought this, the face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur
cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow, appeared on the landing
where the footman stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a
changed and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came
up the stairs and embraced his sister.
"You did not get my letter?" he
asked, and not waiting for a reply-- which he would not have received, for
the princess was unable to speak-- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs
again with the doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the
last post station), and again embraced his sister.
"What a strange
fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak and felt boots, he went
to the little princess' apartment.
CHAPTER IX
The
little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her head (the
pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round her inflamed
and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its downy lip was open
and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered and paused facing her at
the foot of the sofa on which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with
childlike fear and excitement, rested on him without changing their
expression. "I love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I
suffer so? Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not
realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went
round the sofa and kissed her forehead.
"My darling!" he said--a word
he had never used to her before. "God is merciful...."
She looked at
him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
"I expected help from you
and I get none, none from you either!" said her eyes. She was not surprised
at his having come; she did not realize that he had come. His coming had
nothing to do with her sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again
and Mary Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
The
doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary, again
joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke off at every
moment. They waited and listened.
"Go, dear," said Princess
Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room
next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and
became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his
hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans
came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried
to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
"You can't come in! You
can't!" said a terrified voice from within.
He began pacing the room. The
screaming ceased, and a few more seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible
shriek--it could not be hers, she could not scream like that--came from the
bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the
wail of an infant.
"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought
Prince Andrew in the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby
there? Or is the baby born?"
Then suddenly he realized the joyful
significance of that wail; tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the
window sill be began to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The
doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a
trembling jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the
doctor gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman
rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He
went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had
seen her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor
of the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face
with its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
"I love you all, and
have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?"--said her
charming, pathetic, dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and
tiny gave a grunt and squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white
hands.
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his
father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to
the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a
vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob like a
child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew
went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell
kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes.
"Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince
Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a
sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old man
too came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed
one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed to
say: "Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And at the sight the old
man turned angrily away.
Another five days passed, and then the young
Prince Nicholas Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet
with her chin, while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's
little red and wrinkled soles and palms.
His grandfather, who was his
godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping him, carried the infant round the
battered tin font and handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince
Andrew sat in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned
in the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up
joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval
when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not sunk in the font
but had floated.
CHAPTER X
Rostov's share in
Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the efforts of the old count,
and instead of being degraded to the ranks as he expected he was appointed an
adjutant to the governor general of Moscow. As a result he could not go to
the country with the rest of the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by
his new duties. Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him
during his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved
him passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond
of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about
her son.
"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled
for our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was
it honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him
and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it together?
And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to bear the
whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It's true
he has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I think
there were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he.
And now--this duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him
to be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so straight! It's well
God had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn't have
intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see things he should
have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call
him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him money!
What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear
count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do
understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!"
Dolokhov himself
during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way no one would have expected
of him.
"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I
don't care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so
that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they
stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or
three friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care about them
in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are
harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I have met
loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women--countesses
or cooks--who were not venal. I have not yet met that divine purity
and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a one I'd give my life
for her! But those!..." and he made a gesture of contempt. "And believe
me, if I still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet such
a divine creature, who will regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But
you don't understand it."
"Oh, yes, I quite understand," answered
Rostov, who was under his new friend's influence.
In the autumn the
Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter Denisov also came back and
stayed with them. The first half of the winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov
spent in Moscow, was one of the happiest, merriest times for him and the
whole family. Nicholas brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was
a handsome girl of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an
opening flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
amusing, now girlishly enchanting. |
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