War and Peace
difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said something,
repeating the same words several times. She could not understand them,
but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words
he uttered.
“Mmm...ar...ate...ate...” he repeated several times.
It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor thought
he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: “Mary, are you afraid?”
The prince shook his head, again repeated the same sounds.
“My mind, my mind aches?” questioned Princess Mary.
He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to find
the right place for it.
“Always thoughts... about you... thoughts...” he then uttered much
more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
understood.
Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide her sobs
and tears.
He moved his hand over her hair.
“I have been calling you all night...” he brought out.
“If only I had known...” she said through her tears. “I was afraid to
come in.”
He pressed her hand.
“Weren’t you asleep?”
“No, I did not sleep,” said Princess Mary, shaking her head.
Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself as
he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed to move
with difficulty.
“Dear one... Dearest...” Princess Mary could not quite make out what he
had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a tender
caressing word such as he had never used to her before. “Why didn’t you
come in?”
“And I was wishing for his death!” thought Princess Mary.
He was silent awhile.
“Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!... thank
you!... forgive!... thank you!...” and tears began to flow from his
eyes. “Call Andrew!” he said suddenly, and a childish, timid expression
of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.
He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least it
seemed to Princess Mary.
“I have a letter from him,” she replied.
He glanced at her with timid surprise.
“Where is he?”
“He’s with the army, Father, at Smolénsk.”
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
Tíkhon, 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 Tíkhon 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 Boguchárovo 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 Dunyásha 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 Dunyásha in a breaking
voice.
“Immediately, I’m coming, I’m coming!” replied the princess hurriedly,
not giving Dunyásha 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 Tíkhon 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 Boguchárovo 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 Boguchárovo, 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 Fëdorovich’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 Boguchárovo 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 Boguchárovo 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.
Alpátych, who had reached Boguchárovo 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 Boguchárovo 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