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“WELL, is she pretty? But, my boy, my pink girl's charming; her name
is Dunyasha.” … But glancing into Rostov's face, Ilyin paused. He saw
his hero and superior officer was absorbed in a very different train
of thought.
Rostov looked angrily at Ilyin, and without replying, strode off rapidly to
the village.
“I'll teach them; I'll pay them out; the scoundrels,” he muttered to
himself.
Alpatitch followed Rostov at a quick trot, which he could only just keep from
breaking into a run.
“What decision has your honour come to?” he said, overtaking him. Rostov
stopped short, and clenching his fists moved suddenly up to Alpatitch with a
menacing gesture.
“Decision? What decision, old shuffler?” he shouted. “What have you been
thinking about? Eh? The peasants are unruly and you don't know how to manage
them? You're a traitor yourself. I know you. I'll flog the skin off the lot of
you …” And, as though afraid of wasting the energy of his anger, he left
Alpatitch and went quickly ahead. Alpatitch, swallowing his wounded feelings,
hurried with a swaying step after Rostov, still giving him the benefit of his
reflections on the subject. He said that the peasants were in a very stubborn
state, that at the moment it was imprudent to oppositionise them, without
an armed force, and would it not be better first to send for armed force.
“I'll give them armed force. … I'll oppositionise them …” Nikolay muttered
meaninglessly, choking with irrational animal rage and desire to vent that rage
on some one. Without considering what he was going to do, unconsciously, he
moved with a rapid, resolute step up to the crowd. And the nearer he approached,
the more Alpatitch felt that his imprudent action might produce the happiest
results. The peasants in the crowd were feeling the same thing as they watched
his firm and rapid step and determined, frowning face.
After the hussars had entered the village and Rostov had gone in to see the
princess, a certain hesitation and division of opinion had become apparent in
the crowd. Some of the peasants began to say that the horsemen were Russians,
and it might be expected they would take it amiss that they had not let their
young lady go. Dron was of that opinion; but as soon as he expressed it, Karp
and others fell upon him.
“How many years have you been fattening on the village?” shouted Karp. “It's
all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of money and make off with it. What is it
to you if our homes are ruined or not?”
“We were told everything was to be in order and no one to leave their homes,
and not a thing to be moved away—and that's all about it!” shouted
another.
“It was your son's turn; but you spared your fat youngster,” a little old man
suddenly burst out, pouncing upon Dron, “and sent my Vanka to be shaved for a
soldier. Ugh, and yet we all have to die!”
“To be sure, we all have to die!”
“I'm not one to go against the mir,” said Dron.
“Not one to go against it, you have grown fat off it.” …
Two lanky peasants said their say. As soon as Rostov, accompanied by Ilyin,
Lavrushka, and Alpatitch approached the crowd, Karp, thrusting his fingers into
his sash, walked forward with a slight smile. Dron, on the contrary, retreated
to the back, and the crowd huddled closer together.
“Hey! who is elder among you here?” shouted Rostov, walking quickly up to the
crowd.
“The elder? What do you want him for? …” asked Karp. But he hardly had time
to get the words out when his hat sent flying off his head, and he was sent
reeling from a violent blow on the head.
“Caps off, traitors!” shouted Rostov's full-blooded voice. “Where is the
elder?” he roared furiously.
“The elder, the elder's wanted. Dron Zaharitch, he calls you,” voices were
heard saying, hurriedly subservient, and caps were taken off.
“We can't be said to be unruly; we're following the orders,” declared Karp.
And several voices at the back began at the same instant:
“It's as the elders settle; there are too many of you giving orders …”
“Talking? … Mutiny! … Scoundrels! Traitors!” Rostov shouted, without
thinking, in a voice unlike his own, as he seized Karp by the collar. “Bind him,
bind him!” he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and
Alpatitch.
Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized his arms from behind.
“Shall I call our fellows from below the hill, your honour?” he
shouted.
Alpatitch turned to the peasants, calling upon two of them by name to bind
Karp. The peasants obediently stepped out of the crowd and began undoing their
belts.
“Where's the village elder?” shouted Rostov.
Dron with a pale and frowning face, stepped out of the crowd.
“Are you the elder? Bind him, Lavrushka,” shouted Rostov, as though the order
could meet with no sort of opposition. And in fact two peasants did begin
binding Dron, who took off his sash, and gave it them as though to assist in the
operation.
“And all of you, listen to me,” Rostov turned to the peasants. “March
straight to your homes this minute, and don't let me hear your voices
again.”
“Why, we haven't done any harm. It was all, do you see, through foolishness.
Only a bit of nonsense … I always said that it wasn't the right thing,” said
voices, blaming one another.
“Didn't I tell you?” said Alpatitch, resuming his rightful position. “You've
done wrong, lads.”
“It was our foolishness, Yakov Alpatitch,” answered voices, and the crowd at
once began to break up and to disperse about the village.
The two peasants who were bound they took to the manor-house. The two drunken
peasants followed them.
“Ay, now look at you!” said one of them, addressing Karp.
“Do you suppose you can talk to the gentry like that? What were you thinking
about? You are a fool,” put in the other; “a regular fool.”
Within two hours the horses and carts required were standing in the courtyard
of the Bogutcharovo house. The peasants were eagerly hurrying out and packing in
the carts their owners' goods; and Dron, who had at Princess Marya's desire,
been released from the lumber-room, where they had shut him up, was standing in
the yard, giving directions to the men.
“Don't pack it so carelessly,” said one of the peasants, a tall man with a
round, smiling face, taking a casket out of a housemaid's hands. “It's worth
money too, you may be sure. Why, if you fling it down like that or put it under
the cord, it will get scratched. I don't like to see things done so. Let
everything be done honestly, according to rule, I say. There, like this, under
the matting, and cover it up with hay; there, that's first-rate.”
“Mercy on us, the books, the books,” said another peasant, bringing out
Prince Andrey's bookshelves. “Mind you don't stumble! Ay, but it's heavy, lads;
the books are stout and solid!”
“Yes, they must have worked hard to write them!” said a tall, round-faced
peasant pointing with a significant wink to a lexicon lying uppermost.
Rostov, not wishing to force his acquaintance on the princess, did not go
back to the house, but remained at the village waiting for her to drive out.
When Princess Marya's carriage drove out from the house, Rostov mounted his
horse and escorted her as far as the road occupied by our troops, twelve versts
from Bogutcharovo. At the inn at Yankovo he parted from her respectfully, for
the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.
“How can you speak of it!” he said, blushing in response to Princess Marya's
expression of gratitude to him for saving her, as she called it. “Any police
officer would have done as much. If we only had to wage war with peasants, we
would not have let the enemy advance so far,” he said, trying with a sort of
bashfulness to change the conversation. “I am only happy to have had the
opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-bye, princess. I trust you may
find happiness and consolation, and I hope I may meet you again in happier
circumstances. If you don't want to make me blush, please don't thank me.”
But if the princess thanked him no more in words, she thanked him with the
whole expression of her face, which was radiant with gratitude and warmth. She
could not believe that she had no cause to thank him. On the contrary, to her
mind it was an incontestable fact that had it not been for him, she must
inevitably have fallen a victim to the rebellious peasants or the French; that
he, to save her, had exposed himself to obvious and fearful danger; and
even more certain was the fact that he was a man of noble and lofty soul, able
to sympathise with her position and her grief. His kindly and honest eyes, with
tears starting to them at the moment when weeping herself she had spoken of her
loss, haunted her imagination. When she had said good-bye to him and was left
alone, Princess Marya suddenly felt tears in her eyes, and then—not for the
first time—the question occurred to her: “Was she in love with him?” On the rest
of the way to Moscow, though the princess's position was by no means a joyful
one, Dunyasha, who was in the carriage with her, noticed that her mistress's
face wore a vaguely happy and pensive smile, as she looked out of the
window.
“Well, what if I have fallen in love with him?” Though she was ashamed at
acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would
perhaps never care for her, she comforted herself with the reflection that no
one would ever know it, and she was not to blame, if she loved in secret for the
first and last time and for her whole life long.
Sometimes she recalled his looks, his sympathy, his words, and happiness
seemed to her not quite impossible. And then it was that Dunyasha noticed that
she looked out of the window smiling.
“And to think that he should come to Bogutcharovo and at that very moment!”
thought Princess Marya. “And that his sister should have refused Andrey!” And in
all that, Princess Marya saw the hand of Providence.
The impression made on Rostov by Princess Marya was a very agreeable one.
When he thought of her, he felt pleased. And when his comrades, hearing of his
adventure at Bogutcharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay, and
having picked up one of the greatest heiresses in Russia, it made him angry. He
was angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle, and, to his mind,
charming Princess Marya with her enormous fortune had more than once, against
his own will, occurred to his mind. As far as he personally was concerned,
Nikolay could have asked nothing better than to have Princess Marya for his
wife. To marry her would make the countess, his mother, happy, and would repair
his father's broken fortunes. And it would even—Nikolay felt it—make the
happiness of the princess herself.
But Sonya? And his promise? And that was why it made Rostov angry to be
rallied about the Princess Bolkonsky.
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