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Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count,
and not waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off
for home.
It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey
he drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made
so strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the
harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six
weeks before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the
young firs dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general
beauty but, lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately
green with fluffy young shoots.
The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering,
but only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling
the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was
dark in the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet
and shiny and scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in
blossom, the nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated
now near, now far away.
"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed,"
thought Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered,
gazing at the left side of the road, and without recognizing it
he looked with admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak,
quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green
foliage, stood rapt and slightly trembling in the rays of the
evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts
and sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the hard
century-old bark, even where there were no twigs, leaves had sprouted
such as one could hardly believe the old veteran could have produced.
"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew,
and all at once he was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling
of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life suddenly
rose to his memory. Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's
dead reproachful face, Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled
by the beauty of the night, and that night itself and the moon,
and.... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.
"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew
suddenly decided finally and decisively. "It is not enough
for me to know what I have in me- everyone must know it: Pierre,
and that young girl who wanted to fly away into the sky, everyone
must know me, so that my life may not be lived for myself alone
while others live so apart from it, but so that it may be reflected
in them all, and they and I may live in harmony!"
On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg
that autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision.
A whole serics of sensible and logical considerations showing
it to be essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter
the service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand
how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an
active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood
how the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his
head. It now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life
must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of
work and again played an active part in life. He did not even
remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical
arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself
if he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself
to believe in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility
of happiness or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite.
After that journey to Ryazan he found the country dull; his former
pursuits no longer interested him, and often when sitting alone
in his study he got up, went to the mirror, and gazed a long time
at his own face. Then he would turn away to the portrait of his
dead Lise, who with hair curled a la grecque looked tenderly and
gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She did not now say those
former terrible words to him, but looked simply, merrily, and
inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his arms behind
him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, as he reflected
on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a crime,
which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with
fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's beauty
and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he
was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.
"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment
would say, "little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very
cold."
"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such
times very dryly to his sister, "he could go out in his smock,
but as it is cold he must wear warm clothes, which were designed
for that purpose. That is what follows from the fact that it is
cold; and not that a child who needs fresh air should remain at
home," he would add with extreme logic, as if punishing someone
for those secret illogical emotions that stirred within him.
At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual
work dries men up.
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