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He
glanced at her with timid surprise.
"Where
is he?"
"He's
with the army, Father, at Smolensk."
He
closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in
answer
to
his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood and
remembered
everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.
"Yes,"
he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've
destroyed
her."
And
he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes. Princess
Mary
could
no longer restrain herself and wept while she gazed at his face.
Again
he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes, and
Tikhon,
understanding him, wiped away the tears.
Then
he again opened his eyes and said something none of them could
understand
for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and repeated
it.
Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in the mood in
which
he had just been speaking. She thought he was speaking of Russia,
or
Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or of his own death,
and
so
she could not guess his words.
"Put
on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.
Having
understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the doctor
taking
her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and trying to
persuade
her to prepare for her journey. When she had left the room the
prince
again began speaking about his son, about the war, and about the
Emperor,
angrily twitching his brows and raising his hoarse voice, and
then
he had a second and final stroke.
Princess
Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot and
sunny.
She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel nothing,
except
passionate love for her father, love such as she thought she had
never
felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing into the garden and as
far
as the pond, along the avenues of young lime trees Prince Andrew
had
planted.
"Yes...
I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
quicker....
I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me? What
use
will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary murmured,
pacing
the garden with hurried steps and pressing her hands to her bosom
which
heaved with convulsive sobs.
When
she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her again
to
the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne--who had remained at
Bogucharovo
and did not wish to leave it--coming toward her with a
stranger.
This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who had
come
personally to point out to the princess the necessity for her
prompt
departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding him; she
led
him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then,
excusing
herself, she went to the door of the old prince's room. The
doctor
came out with an agitated face and said she could not enter.
"Go
away, Princess! Go away... go away!"
She
returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot of
the
slope
by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know how
long
she
had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a woman's
footsteps
running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha her maid,
who
was evidently looking for her, and who stopped suddenly as if in
alarm
on seeing her mistress.
"Please
come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking
voice.
"Immediately,
I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess hurriedly,
not
giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and trying to
avoid
seeing the girl she ran toward the house.
"Princess,
it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything," said
the
Marshal, meeting her at the house door.
"Let
me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.
The
doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
father's
door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me?
I
don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she
thought.
She
opened the door and the bright daylight in that previously
darkened
room
startled her. In the room were her nurse and other women. They
all
drew
back from the bed, making way for her. He was still lying on the
bed
as before, but the stern expression of his quiet face made
Princess
Mary
stop short on the threshold.
"No,
he's not dead--it's impossible!" she told herself and approached
him,
and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed her lips
to
his
cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force of the
tenderness
she had been feeling for him vanished instantly and was
replaced
by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. "No, he is
no
more! He is not, but here where he was is something unfamiliar
and
hostile,
some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent mystery!" And hiding
her
face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into the arms of the
doctor,
who
held her up.
In
the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had
been
the
prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth
should
not
stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied together
the
legs
that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in
uniform
with
his decorations and placed his shriveled little body on a table.
Heaven
only knows who arranged all this and when, but it all got done as
if
of its own accord. Toward night candles were burning round his
coffin,
a pall was spread over it, the floor was strewn with sprays of
juniper,
a printed band was tucked in under his shriveled head, and in a
corner
of the room sat a chanter reading the psalms.
Just
as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
inmates
of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
the
coffin--the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women--and all
with
fixed
and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed the
old
prince's
cold and stiffened hand.
CHAPTER
IX
Until
Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always been
absentees,
and its peasants were of quite a different character from
those
of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress, and
disposition.
They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used to
approve
of them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald Hills
to
help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, but he
disliked
them
for their boorishness.
Prince
Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced hospitals
and
schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to pay, had not
softened
their disposition but had on the contrary strengthened in them
the
traits of character the old prince called boorishness. Various
obscure
rumors were always current among them: at one time a rumor that
they
would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at another of a new religion
to
which
they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the
Tsar's
and of an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which
it
was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the landowners
had
stopped
it), then of Peter Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven
years'
time, when everything would be made free and so "simple" that
there
would be no restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and
his
invasion
were connected in their minds with the same sort of vague
notions
of Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."
In
the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to the
crown
or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work where they
pleased.
There were very few resident landlords in the neighborhood and
also
very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the
peasantry
of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of the
Russian
people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to
contemporaries,
were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among
others.
One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was a
movement
among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown "warm rivers."
Hundreds
of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began
selling
their cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.
As
birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with
their
wives
and children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of
them
had ever been. They set off in caravans, bought their freedom one
by
one or ran away, and drove or walked toward the "warm rivers."
Many
of
them were punished, some sent to Siberia, many died of cold and
hunger
on the road, many returned of their own accord, and the movement
died
down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent reason.
But
such undercurrents still existed among the people and gathered
new
forces
ready to manifest themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and
at
the same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to
anyone
living
in close touch with these people it was apparent that these
undercurrents
were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.
Alpatych,
who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old prince's
death,
noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that contrary to
what
was happening in the Bald Hills district, where over a radius of
forty
miles all the peasants were moving away and leaving their
villages
to
be devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in the steppe region
round
Bogucharovo were, it was rumored, in touch with the French,
received
leaflets from them that passed from hand to hand, and did not
migrate.
He learned from domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant
Karp,
who possessed great influence in the village commune and had
recently
been away driving a government transport, had returned with
news
that the Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the
French
did not harm them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day
another
peasant had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which
was
occupied by the French, a proclamation by a French general that
no
harm
would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would
be
paid for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant
had
brought
from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
they
were false) paid to him in advance for hay.
More
important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the very
day
he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
princess'
luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting at
which
it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no
time
to
waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death, the
Marshal
had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was
becoming
dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he could
not
be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of the day
the
old
prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return next day
for
the
funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he received tidings
that
the
French had unexpectedly advanced, and had barely time to remove
his
own
family and valuables from his estate.
For
some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village
Elder,
Dron,
whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."
Dron
was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants who
grow
big
beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged till they
are
sixty
or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as
straight
and strong at sixty as at thirty.
Soon
after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken
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