|
Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend- my pink one is delicious;
her name is Dunyasha...."
But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw
that his hero and commander was following quite a different train
of thought.
Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode
off with rapid steps to the village.
"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!"
said he to himself.
Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run,
kept up with him with difficulty.
"What decision have you been pleased to come to?"
said he.
Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly
turned on Alpatych.
"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried
he. "What have you been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting,
and you can't manage them? You're a traitor youself! I know you.
I'll flay you all alive!..." And as if afraid of wasting
his store of anger, he left Alpatych and went rapidly forward.
Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with Rostov
at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said the
peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would
be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed force,
and would it not be better first to send for the military?
"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!"
uttered Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal
fury and the need to vent it.
Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously
with quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he
drew to it the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action
might produce good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly
impressed when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute,
frowning face.
After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone
to see the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen
among the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals
were Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being
detained. Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed
it Karp and others attacked their ex-Elder.
"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?"
Karp shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up
your pot of money and take it away with you.... What does it matter
to you whether our homes are ruined or not?"
"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to
leave their homes or take away a single grain, and that's all
about it!" cried another.
"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear!
You begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly
began attacking Dron- "and so they took my Vanka to be shaved
for a soldier! But we all have to die."
"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the
commune," said Dron.
"That's it- not against it! You've filled your belly...."
The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed
by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp,
thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked
to the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the
crowd drew closer together.
"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming
up to the crowd with quick steps.
"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked
Karp.
But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew
off and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.
"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful
voice. "Where's the Elder?" he cried furiously.
"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych,
you!" meek and flustered voices here and there were heard
calling and caps began to come off their heads.
"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared
Karp, and at that moment several voices began speaking together.
"It's as the old men have decided- there's too many of
you giving orders."
"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried
Rostov unmeaningly in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the
collar. "Bind him, bind him!" he shouted, though there
was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatych.
Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms
from behind.
"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?"
he called out.
Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by
name to come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the
crowd and began taking off their belts.
"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.
With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.
"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted
Rostov, as if that order, too, could not possibly meet with any
opposition.
And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took
off his own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.
"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants.
"Be off to your houses at once, and don't let one of your
voices be heard!"
"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of
foolishness. It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not
in order," voices were heard bickering with one another.
"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into
his own again. "It's wrong, lads!"
"All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers,
and the crowd began at once to disperse through the village.
The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The
two drunken peasants followed them.
"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to
Karp.
"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were
you thinking of, you fool?" added the other- "A real
fool!"
Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of
the Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out
the proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron,
liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had
been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men.
"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the
peasants, a man with a round smiling face, taking a casket from
a housemaid. "You know it has cost money! How can you chuck
it in like that or shove it under the cord where it'll get rubbed?
I don't like that way of doing things. Let it all be done properly,
according to rule. Look here, put it under the bast matting and
cover it with hay- that's the way!"
"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing
out Prince Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against
it! It's heavy, lads- solid books."
"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked
the tall, round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant
wink at the dictionaries that were on the top.
Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not
go back to the house but remained in the village awaiting her
departure. When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted
and accompanied her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the
road was occupied by our troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully
took leave of her, for the first time permitting himself to kiss
her hand.
"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to
Princess Mary's expressions of gratitude for her deliverance,
as she termed what had occurred. "Any police officer would
have done as much! If we had had only peasants to fight, we should
not have let the enemy come so far," said he with a sense
of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am only happy
to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-by,
Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to meet
you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make
me blush, please don't thank me!"
But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words,
thanked him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with
gratitude and tenderness. She could not believe that there was
nothing to thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain
that had he not been there she would have perished at the hands
of the mutineers and of the French, and that he had exposed himself
to terrible and obvious danger to save her, and even more certain
was it that he was a man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand
her position and her sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears
rising in them when she herself had begun to cry as she spoke
of her loss, did leave her memory.
When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly
felt her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time
the strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?
On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position
was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage,
more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window
and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and
sorrow.
"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess
Mary.
Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had
fallen in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she
comforted herself with the thought that no one would ever know
it and that she would not be to blame if, without ever speaking
of it to anyone, she continued to the end of her life to love
the man with whom she had fallen in love for the first and last
time in her life.
Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his
words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those
moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of
the carriage window.
"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and
at that very moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that
caused his sister to refuse my brother?" And in all this
Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.
The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable
one. To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades,
hearing of his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having
gone to look for hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest
heiresses in Russia, he grew angry. It made him angry just because
the idea of marrying the gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive
to him and had an enormous fortune, had against his will more
than once entered his head. For himself personally Nicholas could
not wish for a better wife: by marrying her he would make the
countess his mother happy, would be able to put his father's affairs
in order, and would even- he felt it- ensure Princess Mary's happiness.
But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew
angry when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.
|
