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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.”
Dron watched the princess intently all the while she was speaking.
“Discharge me, ma'am, for God's sake, bid them take the keys from me,” said
he. “I have served twenty-three years, and done no wrong; discharge me, for
God's sake.”
Princess Marya had no notion what he wanted of her and why he asked her to
discharge him. She answered that she had never doubted his fidelity, and that
she was ready to do everything for him and for the peasants.
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