War and Peace (137 page)

“Now, Dronushka,” he said, “you listen to me! Don’t you talk nonsense to me. His excellency, Prince Andrey Nikolaevitch, himself gave me orders to move the folk away, and not leave them with the enemy, and the Tsar has issued a decree that it is to be so. Any one that stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do you hear?”

“I hear,” answered Dron, not raising his eyes.

Alpatitch was not satisfied with his reply.

“Ay, Dron, there’ll be trouble!” said Alpatitch, shaking his head.

“It’s for you to command!” said Dron dejectedly.

“Ay, Dron, drop it!” repeated Alpatitch, taking his hand out of the bosom of his coat, and pointing with a solemn gesture to the ground under Dron’s feet. “I can see right through you; and more than that, I can see three yards into the earth under you,” he said, looking at the ground under Dron’s feet.

Dron was disconcerted; he looked furtively at Alpatitch, and dropped his eyes again.

“You drop this nonsense, and tell the folks to pack up to leave their homes and go to Moscow, and to get ready carts to-morrow morning for the princess’s luggage; and don’t you go to the meeting. Do you hear?”

All at once Dron threw himself at his feet.

“Yakov Alpatitch, discharge me! Take the keys from me; discharge me, for Christ’s sake!”

“Stop that!” said Alpatitch sternly. “I can see through you three yards into the earth,” he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, his knowledge of the right day to sow the oats, and his success in pleasing the old prince for twenty years had long ago gained him the reputation of a wizard, and that the power of seeing for three yards under a man is ascribed to wizards.

Dron got up, and would have said something, but Alpatitch interrupted him.

“What’s this you’ve all got in your head? Eh?… What are you thinking about? Eh?”

“What am I to do with the people?” said Dron. “They’re all in a ferment. I do tell them …”

“Oh, I dare say you do,” said Alpatitch. “Are they drinking?” he asked briefly.

“They’re all in a ferment, Yakov Alpatitch; they have got hold of another barrel.”

“Then you listen to me. I’ll go to the police-captain and you tell them so, and tell them to drop all this and get the carts ready.”

“Certainly,” answered Dron.

Yakov Alpatitch did not insist further. He had much experience in managing the peasants, and knew that the chief means for securing obedience was not to show the slightest suspicion that they could do anything but obey. Having wrung from Dron a submissive “certainly,” Yakov Alpatitch rested content with it, though he had more than doubts—he had a conviction—that the carts would not be provided without the intervention of the military authorities.

And as a fact when evening came, the carts had not been provided. There had been again a village meeting at the tavern, and at the meeting it had been resolved to drive the horses out into the forest and not to provide the conveyances. Without saying a word of all this to the princess, Alpatitch ordered his own baggage to be unloaded from the waggons that had come from Bleak Hills and the horses to be taken from them for the princess’s carriage, while he rode off himself to the police authorities.

After her father’s funeral Princess Marya locked herself in her room and would not let any one come near her. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatitch had come to ask for instructions in regard to the journey. (This was before Alpatitch had talked to Dron.) Princess Marya got up from the sofa on which she was lying, and through the closed door replied that she was never going away, and begged to be left in peace.

The windows of the room in which Princess Marya lay looked to the west. She lay on the sofa facing the wall, and fingering the buttons on the leather bolster, she saw nothing but that bolster, and her thoughts were concentrated obscurely on one subject. She thought of the finality of death and of her spiritual baseness, of which she had had no idea till it showed itself during her father’s illness. She longed to pray, but dared not; dared not, in the spiritual state she was in, turn to God. For a long while she lay in that position.

The sun was setting, and the slanting rays lighted up the room through the open window, and threw a glow on part of the morocco cushion at which Princess Marya was looking. The current of her thoughts was suddenly arrested. She unconsciously sat up, smoothed
her hair, stood up, and walked to the window, involuntarily drawing a deep breath of the refreshing coolness of the clear, windy evening.

“Yes, now you can admire the sunset at your ease! He is not here, and there is no one to hinder you,” she said to herself, and sinking into a chair, she let her head fall on the window-sill.

Some one spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden and kissed her on the head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black dress and
pleureuses
. She softly approached Princess Marya, kissed her with a sigh, and promptly burst into tears. Princess Marya looked round at her. All her old conflicts with her, her jealousy of her, recurred to Princess Marya’s mind. She remembered too that
he
had changed of late to Mademoiselle Bourienne, could not bear the sight of her, and therefore how unjust had been the censure that she had in her heart passed upon her. “Yes, and is it for me, for me, after desiring his death, to pass judgment on any one?” she thought.

Princess Marya pictured vividly to herself Mademoiselle Bourienne’s position, estranged from her of late, though dependent on her, and living among strangers. And she felt sorry for her. She looked at her in gentle inquiry and held out her hand to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began kissing her hand with tears and talking of the princess’s sorrow, making herself a partner in that sorrow. She said that her only consolation in her sorrow was that the princess permitted her to share it with her. She said that all their former misunderstandings must sink into nothing before their great sorrow: that she felt herself guiltless in regard to every one, and that
he
from above saw her love and gratitude. The princess heard her without heeding her words, though she looked at her now and then and listened to the sound of her voice.

“Your position is doubly dreadful, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne. “I know you could not and cannot think of yourself; but with my love for you I am bound to do so.… Has Alpatitch been with you? Has he spoken to you of moving?” she asked.

Princess Marya did not answer. She did not understand who was to move and where. “Was it possible to undertake anything now, to think of anything? Could anything matter?” she wondered. She made no reply.

“Do you know,
chère Marie
,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “that we are in danger, that we are surrounded by the French; it is dangerous to move now. If we move, we are almost certain to be taken prisoner, and God knows …”

Princess Marya looked at her companion, with no notion what she was saying.

“Oh, if any one knew how little anything matters to me now,” she said. “Of course, I would not on any account move away from
him
 … Alpatitch said something about going away.… You talk to him … I can’t do anything, and I don’t want …”

“I have been talking to him. He hopes that we may manage to get away to-morrow; but I think it would be better now to remain here,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne. “Because you will agree,
chère Marie
, that to fall into the hands of the soldiers or of rioting peasants on the road would be awful.”

Mademoiselle Bourienne took out of her reticule a document, not on the usual Russian paper. It was the proclamation of General Rameau, announcing that protection would be given by the French commanders to all inhabitants who did not abandon their homes. She handed it to the princess.

“I imagine the best thing would be to appeal to this general,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne. “I am convinced that all proper respect would be shown you.”

Princess Marya read the document and her face worked with tearless sobs.

“Through whom did you get this?” she asked.

“They probably found out I was French from my name,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, flushing.

With the proclamation in her hand, Princess Marya got up from the window, and with a pale face walked out of the room into Prince Andrey’s former study.

“Dunyasha! send Alpatitch to me, Dronushka, or somebody!” said Princess Marya. “And tell Amalya Karlovna not to come to me,” she added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne’s voice. “To set off at once! as quick as possible!” said Princess Marya, appalled at the idea that she might be left in the power of the French.

“That Prince Andrey should know that she was in the power of the French! That she, the daughter of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky, should stoop to ask General Rameau to grant her his protection, and should take advantage of his good offices.” The idea appalled her, made her shudder and turn crimson. She felt a rush of vindictive wrath and pride of which she had had no conception. All the bitterness, and still more the humiliation of her position rose vividly to her imagination.
“They, the French, would take up their quarters in the house: M. le Général Rameau would occupy Prince Andrey’s study; would amuse himself by looking through and reading his letters and papers; Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honours of Bogutcharovo; I should be given a room as a favour; the soldiers would break open my father’s newly dug grave to take his crosses and decorations; they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, would affect hypocritical sympathy with my grief,…” thought Princess Marya, thinking not the thoughts natural to her, but feeling it a duty to think as her father and brother would have done. To her personally it did not matter where she stayed and what happened to her, but, at the same time, she felt herself the representative of her dead father and Prince Andrey. Unconsciously she thought their thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said, what they would have done now, she felt it incumbent upon her to do. She went into Prince Andrey’s study, and trying to enter completely into his ideas, thought over her situation.

The exigencies of life, which she had regarded as of no consequence since her father’s death, all at once rose up about Princess Marya with a force she had known nothing of before, and swept her away with them.

Flushed and excited she walked about the room, sending first for Alpatitch, then for Mihail Ivanitch, then for Tihon, then for Dron. Dunyasha, the old nurse, and the maids could not tell her how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statements had been correct. Alpatitch was not in the house; he had gone to the police authorities. Mihail Ivanitch, the architect, came with sleepy eyes on being sent for, but could tell Princess Marya nothing. With the same smile of acquiescence with which he had been accustomed during the course of fifteen years to meet the old prince’s remarks without committing himself, he now met the princess’s questions, so that there was no getting any definite answer out of him. The old valet, Tihon, whose wan and sunken face wore the stamp of inconsolable grief, answered “Yes, princess,” to all Princess Marya’s questions, and could scarcely restrain his sobs as he looked at her.

Lastly, the village elder, Dron, came into the room, and bowing low to the princess, took up his position near the doorway.

Princess Marya walked up and down the room and stood still facing him.

“Dronushka,” she said, seeing in him a staunch friend, the Dronushka who had every year brought back from the fair at Vyazma the same gingerbreads she connected with him, and had presented them to her with
the same smile, “Dronushka, now, after our misfortune,” … she began, and paused, unable to proceed.

“We are all in God’s hands,” he said, with a sigh.

They were silent.

“Dronushka, Alpatitch has gone off somewhere, I have no one to turn to. Is it true, as I’m told, that it is impossible for me to go away?”

“Why shouldn’t you go away, your excellency? You can go,” said Dron.

“I have been told there is danger from the enemy. My good friend, I can do nothing, I know nothing about it, I have nobody. I want to set off without fail to-night or to-morrow morning early.”

Dron did not speak. He looked up from under his brows at Princess Marya.

“There are no horses,” he said. “I have told Yakov Alpatitch so already.”

“How is that?” said the princess.

“It’s all the visitation of the Lord,” said Dron. “Some horses have been carried off for the troops, and some are dead; it’s a bad year, it is. If only we don’t die of hunger ourselves, let alone feeding the horses! Here they’ve been three days without a bit of bread. There’s nothing, they have been plundered to the last bit.”

Princess Marya listened attentively to what he said to her.

“The peasants have been plundered? They have no bread?” she asked.

“They are dying of hunger,” said Dron; “no use talking of horses and carts.”

“But why didn’t you say so, Dronushka? Can’t they be helped? I’ll do everything I can …” It was strange to Princess Marya to think that at such a moment, when her heart was overflowing with such a sorrow, there could be rich people and poor, and that the rich could possibly not help the poor. She vaguely knew that there was a store of “seignorial corn,” and that it was sometimes given to the peasants. She knew, too, that neither her brother nor her father would refuse the peasants in their need; she was only afraid of making some mistake in the wording of the order for this distribution. She was glad that she had an excuse for doing something in which she could, without scruple, forget her own grief. She began to question Dronushka about the peasants’ needs, and to ask whether there was a “seignorial store” at Bogutcharovo.

“I suppose we have a store of wheat of my brother’s?” she asked.

“The wheat is all untouched,” Dron declared with pride. “The prince gave me no orders about selling it.”

“Give it to the peasants, give them all they need; I give you leave in my brother’s name,” said Princess Marya.

Dron heaved a deep sigh and made no answer.

“You distribute the corn among them, if it will be enough for them. Distribute it all. I give you the order in my brother’s name; and tell them, what’s ours is theirs. We would grudge nothing for them. Tell them so.”