War and Peace (11 page)

Pierre shook his hands and head, as though flies or bees were swarming upon him.

“Ah, how is it! I’ve mixed it all up. There are such a lot of relatives
in Moscow! You are Boris … yes. Well, now, we have got it clear. Tell me, what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? Things will go badly with the English, you know, if Napoleon gets across the Channel. I believe that the expedition is very possible. If only Villeneuve doesn’t make a mess of it!”

Boris knew nothing at all about the Boulogne expedition, and it was the first time he had heard of Villeneuve.

“Here in Moscow we are more interested in dinner parties and scandal than in politics,” he said in his self-possessed, sarcastic tone. “I know nothing and think nothing about it. Moscow’s more engrossed in scandal than anything,” he went on. “Just now they are all talking about you and about the count.”

Pierre smiled his kindly smile, as though afraid for his companion’s sake that he might say something he would regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly and drily, looking straight into Pierre’s face.

“There’s nothing else to do in Moscow but talk scandal,” he went on. “Every one’s absorbed in the question whom the count will leave his fortune to, though perhaps he will outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he may.”

“Yes, all that’s very horrid,” Pierre interposed, “very horrid.” Pierre was still afraid this officer would inadvertently drop into some remark disconcerting for himself.

“And it must seem to you,” said Boris, flushing slightly, but not changing his voice or attitude, “it must seem to you that every one’s thinking of nothing but getting something from him.”

“That’s just it,” thought Pierre.

“And that’s just what I want to say to you to prevent misunderstandings, that you are very much mistaken if you reckon me and my mother among those people. We are very poor, but I—at least I speak for myself—just because your father is rich, I don’t consider myself a relation of his, and neither I nor my mother would ever ask him for anything or take anything from him.”

It was a long while before Pierre understood, but, when he did understand, he jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris’s hand with his characteristic quickness and awkwardness, and blushing far more than Boris, began speaking with a mixed sensation of shame and annoyance.

“Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I … how you could think … I know very well …”

But Boris again interrupted him.

“I am glad I have told you everything frankly. Perhaps you dislike it: you must excuse me,” he said, trying to put Pierre at his ease instead of being put at his ease by him; “but I hope I have not offended you. I make it a rule to say everything quite plainly.… Then what message am I to take? You will come to dinner at the Rostovs’?” And Boris, with an evident sense of having discharged an onerous duty, having extricated himself from an awkward position, and put somebody else into one became perfectly pleasant again.

“No, let me tell you,” said Pierre, regaining his composure, “you are a wonderful person. What you have just said was very fine, very fine. Of course you don’t know me, it’s so long since we’ve seen each other … we were children.… You might suppose I should … I understand, I quite understand. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have had the courage, but it’s splendid. I’m very glad I have made your acquaintance. A queer idea,” he added, pausing and smiling, “you must have had of me.” He laughed. “But what of it? Let us know each other better, please!” He pressed Boris’s hand. “Do you know I’ve not once seen the count? He has not sent for me … I am sorry for him, as a man … But what can one do?”

“And so you think Napoleon will succeed in getting his army across?” Boris queried, smiling.

Pierre saw that Boris was trying to change the conversation, and so he began explaining the advantages and difficulties of the Boulogne expedition.

A footman came in to summon Boris to the princess. The princess was going. Pierre promised to come to dinner in order to see more of Boris, and pressed his hand warmly at parting, looking affectionately into his face over his spectacles.

When he had gone, Pierre walked for some time longer up and down his room, not thrusting at an unseen foe, but smiling at the recollection of that charming, intelligent, and resolute young man.

As so often happens with young people, especially if they are in a position of loneliness, he felt an unreasonable tenderness for this youth, and he firmly resolved to become friends with him.

Prince Vassily accompanied the princess to the hall. The princess was holding her handkerchief to her eyes, and her face was tearful.

“It is terrible, terrible!” she said; “but whatever it costs me, I will do my duty. I will come to stay the night. He can’t be left like this. Every
minute is precious. I can’t understand why his nieces put it off. Maybe God will help me to find a way to prepare him. Adieu, prince, may God support you …”

“Adieu, my kind friend,” answered Prince Vassily, turning away from her.

“Oh, he is in an awful position!” said the mother to her son, when they were sitting in the carriage again. “He scarcely knows any one.”

“I don’t understand, mamma, what his attitude is as regards Pierre.”

“The will will make all that plain, my dear; our fate, too, hangs upon it.…”

“But what makes you think he will leave us anything?”

“Oh, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor.”

“Well, that’s hardly a sufficient reason, mamma.”

“Oh, my God, how ill he is, how ill he is!” cried his mother.

When Anna Mihalovna had driven off with her son to Count Kirill Vladimirovitch Bezuhov’s, Countess Rostov sat a long while alone, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang the bell.

“What does it mean?” she said angrily to the maid, who had kept her waiting a few minutes; “don’t you care for my service, eh? I’ll find you another place, if so.”

The countess was distressed at the troubles and degrading poverty of her friend, and so out of humour, which always found expression in such remarks to her servants.

“I’m very sorry,” said the maid.

“Ask the count to come to me.”

The count came waddling in to see his wife, looking, as usual, rather guilty.

“Well, little countess! What a
sauté
of woodcocks and Madeira we’re to have,
ma chère
! I’ve tried it; I did well to give a thousand roubles for Taras. He’s worth it!”

He sat down by his wife, setting his elbow jauntily on his knee, and ruffling up his grey hair. “What are your commands, little countess?”

“It’s this, my dear—why, what is this mess on you here?” she said, pointing to his waistcoat. “It’s the
sauté
, most likely,” she added, smiling. “It’s this, my dear, I want some money.” Her face became gloomy.

“Ah, little countess!…” And the count fidgeted about, pulling out his pocket-book.

“I want a great deal, count. I want five hundred roubles.” And taking out her cambric handkerchief she wiped her husband’s waistcoat.

“This minute, this minute. Hey, who’s there?” he shouted, as men only shout who are certain that those they call will run headlong at their summons. “Send Mitenka to me!”

Mitenka, the young man of noble family who had been brought up in the count’s house, and now had charge of all his money affairs, walked softly into the room.

“Here, my dear boy,” said the count to the young man, who came up respectfully. “Bring me,” he thought a moment, “yes, seven hundred roubles, yes. And mind, don’t bring me such torn and dirty notes as last time; nice ones now, for the countess.”

“Yes, Mitenka, clean ones, please,” said the countess with a depressed sigh.

“Your excellency, when do you desire me to get the money?” said Mitenka. “Your honour ought to know … But don’t trouble,” he added, noticing that the count was beginning to breathe rapidly and heavily, which was always the sign of approaching anger. “I was forgetting … This minute do you desire me to bring them?”

“Yes, yes, just so, bring them. Give them to the countess. What a treasure that Mitenka is,” added the count, smiling, when the young man had gone out. “He doesn’t know the meaning of impossible. That’s a thing I can’t bear. Everything’s possible.”

“Ah, money, count, money, what a lot of sorrow it causes in the world!” said the countess. “This money I am in great need of.”

“You are a terrible spendthrift, little countess, we all know,” said the count, and kissing his wife’s hand he went away again to his own room.

When Anna Mihalovna came back from the Bezuhovs’, the money was already on the countess’s little table, all in new notes, under her pocket-handkerchief. Anna Mihalovna noticed that the countess was fluttered about something.

“Well, my dear?” queried the countess.

“Ah, he is in a terrible condition! One would not recognise him, he is so ill, so ill; I was there only a minute, and did not say two words.”

“Annette, for God’s sake don’t refuse me,” the countess said suddenly with a blush, which was strangely incongruous with her elderly, thin,
and dignified face, taking the money from under her handkerchief. Anna Mihalovna instantly grasped the situation, and was already bending over to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.

“This is for Boris, from me, for his equipment …”

Anna Mihalovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were soft-hearted, and that they, who had been friends in youth, should have to think of anything so base as money, and that their youth was over.… But the tears of both were sweet to them.…

Countess Rostov, with her daughters and the greater number of the guests, was sitting in the drawing-room. The count led the gentlemen of the party to his room, calling their attention to his connoisseur’s collection of Turkish pipes. Now and then he went out and inquired, had she come yet? They were waiting for Marya Dmitryevna Ahrosimov, known in society as
le terrible dragon
, a lady who owed her renown not to her wealth or her rank, but to her mental directness and her open, unconventional behaviour. Marya Dmitryevna was known to the imperial family; she was known to all Moscow and all Petersburg, and both cities, while they marvelled at her, laughed in their sleeves at her rudeness, and told good stories about her, nevertheless, all without exception respected and feared her.

In the count’s room, full of smoke, there was talk of the war, which had been declared in a manifesto, and of the levies of troops. The manifesto no one had yet read, but every one knew of its appearance. The count was sitting on an ottoman with a man smoking and talking on each side of him. The count himself was neither smoking nor talking, but, with his head cocked first on one side and then on the other, gazed with evident satisfaction at the smokers, and listened to the argument he had got up between his two neighbours.

One of these two was a civilian with a thin, wrinkled, bilious, close-shaven face, a man past middle age, though dressed like the most fashionable young man. He sat with his leg up on the ottoman, as though he were at home, and with the amber mouthpiece in the side of his mouth, he smoked spasmodically, puckering up his face. This was an old
bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess’s, famed in Moscow drawing-rooms for his biting wit. He seemed supercilious in his manner to his companion, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed and brushed and buttoned. He held his pipe in the middle of his mouth, and drawing in a little smoke, sent it coiling in rings out of his fine red lips. He was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenovsky regiment with whom Boris was to go away, and about whom Natasha had taunted Vera, calling Berg her suitor. The count sat between these two listening intently to them. The count’s favourite entertainment, next to playing boston, of which he was very fond, was that of listening to conversation, especially when he had succeeded in getting up a dispute between two talkative friends.

“Come, how is it,
mon très honorable
Alphonse Karlitch,” said Shinshin, chuckling, and using a combination of the most popular Russian colloquialisms and the most
recherchès
French expressions, which constituted the peculiarity of his phraseology. “You reckon you’ll get an income from the government, and you want to get a little something from your company too?”

“No, Pyotr Nikolaitch, I only want to show that in the cavalry the advantages are few as compared with the infantry. Consider my position now, for instance, Pyotr Nikolaitch.” Berg talked very precisely, serenely, and politely. All he said was always concerning himself. He always maintained a serene silence when any subject was discussed that had no direct bearing on himself. And he could be silent in that way for several hours at a time, neither experiencing nor causing in others the slightest embarrassment. But as soon as the conversation concerned him personally, he began to talk at length and with visible satisfaction.

“Consider my position, Pyotr Nikolaitch: if I were in the cavalry, I should get no more than two hundred roubles every four months, even at the rank of lieutenant, while as it is I get two hundred and thirty,” he explained with a beaming, friendly smile, looking at Shinshin and the count as though he had no doubt that his success would always be the chief goal of all other people’s wishes. “Besides that, Pyotr Nikolaitch, exchanging into the Guards, I’m so much nearer the front,” pursued Berg, “and vacancies occur so much more frequently in the infantry guards. Then you can fancy how well I can manage on two hundred and thirty roubles. Why, I’m putting by and sending some off to my father too,” he pursued, letting off a ring of smoke.

“There is a balance. A German will thrash wheat out of the head of an axe, as the Russian proverb has it,” said Shinshin, shifting his pipe to the other side of his mouth and winking to the count.

The count chuckled. The other visitors seeing that Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, without perceiving either their sneers or their lack of interest, proceeded to explain how by exchanging into the guards he had already gained a step in advance of his old comrades in the corps; how in war-time the commander of a company may so easily be killed, and he as next in command might very easily succeed him, and how every one in the regiment liked him, and how pleased his father was with him. Berg was unmistakably enjoying himself as he told all this, and seemed never to suspect that other people too might have their own interests. But all he said was so nice, so sedate, the naïveté of his youthful egoism was so undisguised, that he disarmed his listeners.