'Delighted to see you. I am so glad to see you,' she said to Pierre, as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now his friendship with Andrey, his unhappy marriage and most of all his kindly, simple face, won her over. She looked at him with her lovely, luminous eyes, which seemed to say. 'I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people.'
After the first exchanges of greeting, they sat down.
'I see Ivanushka's here,' said Prince Andrey with a smile, nodding towards the young pilgrim.
'Oh, Andrey, please!' said Princess Marya imploringly.
'I think you ought to know he's a woman,' Andrey informed Pierre in French.
'Andrey, for heaven's sake!' repeated Princess Marya.
It was clear that Prince Andrey's mockery of the pilgrims and Princess Marya's ineffectual way of standing up for them had become their normal way of carrying on with each other.
'Oh, my dear girl,' said Prince Andrey, 'it's the other way round - you ought to thank me for telling Pierre all about your close relations with this young person.'
'Indeed?' said Pierre, looking with curiosity and seriousness (for which Princess Marya felt especially grateful) at Ivanushka's face, while he, aware that he was the subject under discussion, watched them all with a crafty look in his eyes.
Princess Marya need not have felt any embarrassment on behalf of her people. They were not the slightest bit put out. The old woman had looked down, but now she kept stealing the odd sideways glance at the new arrivals, while she sat there unperturbed and quite still in her armchair, with her cup inverted on its saucer and a half-nibbled lump of sugar next to it, waiting to be offered another cup. Ivanushka, slurping his tea from the saucer, peeped about furtively with sly, feminine eyes and studied the two young men.
'Where have you been? In Kiev?' Prince Andrey asked the old woman.
'Oh yes, good sir,' answered the old woman, and once started she prattled on. ' 'Twas the very day of Christmas that I was deemed a worthy partaker in the holy, heavenly sacrament at the shrine of the saints. But now I comes from Kolyazin, good sir, where a great blessing has been revealed.'
'Did Ivanushka come with you?'
'No, I was travelling alone, benefactor,' said Ivanushka, putting on a deep voice. 'I joined up with Pelageyushka at Yukhnovo . . .'
Pelageyushka cut in on her companion, evidently eager to describe what she had seen. 'Yes, sir, it was in Kolyazin. A great blessing was revealed.'
'What was it - found some more relics?' asked Prince Andrey.
'Stop it, Andrey,' said Princess Marya. 'Pelageyushka, don't tell them.'
'Oh, why shouldn't I tell him, ma'am? I likes him. He's a good gentleman, God's chosen, he's my benefactor. Gave me ten roubles, he did, as I remember. When I was in Kiev, crazy Cyril, he says to me (now there's a man of God, barefoot he goes winter and summer), you're going the wrong way, he says, you go to Kolyazin, they got an icon there, a holy Mother of God, works miracles it does, it's all just been revealed. So I drops everything, I says goodbye to the good holy people, and I'm off . . .'
Nobody spoke. The only sounds came from the pilgrim woman as she sucked in her breath and droned on with her story. 'And when I gets there, good sir, folks says to me as how a great blessing has been revealed and drops of holy oil be trickling down the cheeks of the Holy Mother of God . . .'
'Yes, yes, that's very good. We can hear the rest later,' said Princess Marya, flushing.
'May I just ask her something?' said Pierre. 'Did you see it yourself?' he asked.
'Bless you, good sir, to be sure I was found worthy enough. Such a glow on the face, like the light of heaven, and all down the Holy Mother's cheeks comes little drops, more and more little drops . . .'
'Well, it must be a trick,' said Pierre naively, after listening closely to the old woman.
'Oh, sir, what are you saying?' said Pelageyushka, turning in horror to Princess Marya for support.
'They do play tricks on ordinary people,' he repeated.
'Lord Jesus Christ!' said the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. 'Oh, please don't talk like that, sir. There was a general once just like that, didn't believe, and one day he says, "The monks is cheating us," and the minute he says it, he was struck blind. And then the Holy Mother of the Kiev catacombs comes to him in a dream and says: "Believe in me and I shall make thee whole." And so he begged and prayed them, "Take me to her, take me to her." This is the holy truth I tell you, which I've seen with my own eyes. They carried him to her, blind as he was. He came before her, fell down on his knees and said, "Make me whole and I shall give thee," says he, "all that the Tsar has bestowed on me." I saw it myself, good sir - the icon with a star fixed in it. And lo! - his sight was restored! It's a sin to speak as you do. God will punish you,' she admonished Pierre.
'How did the star get into the icon?' asked Pierre.
'Did the Holy Mother get promotion? They could have made her a general,' said Prince Andrey with a smile.
Pelageyushka suddenly turned pale, wringing her hands.
'Sir, sir, it's a great sin to talk like that, and you with a son!' she said, her pallor changing suddenly to bright red. 'Sir, may God forgive what you have said.' She crossed herself. 'May the Lord forgive him. Lady, what have we come to?' She turned to Princess Marya, got to her feet on the verge of tears and began picking up her little bag. She was obviously shocked and saddened by Andrey's words, full of shame for having accepted charity in a house where such things could be said, and sorry that from now on she would have to do without the charity offered here.
'What was all that about?' said Princess Marya. 'Why did you come in here?'
'Oh, come on, it was only a joke, Pelageyushka,' said Pierre. 'Princess, honestly, I didn't mean to upset her. I just . . . Please forget it. It was a joke,' he said with a diffident smile, trying to smooth things over and ease his conscience.
Pelageyushka stood there full of misgivings, but there was such a look of genuine regret on Pierre's face, and Prince Andrey seemed so meek and solemn as he glanced from her to Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
CHAPTER 14
Reassured at last, the pilgrim woman was encouraged to talk, and she launched into some long stories, first about Father Amphilochus, whose life was so holy that his hands smelt of incense, and then about some monks she knew who had given her the keys to the catacombs on her recent pilgrimage to Kiev, and she had spent two days and nights in the catacombs among the saints with only a few crusts of bread. 'I says my prayers to one of them, I reads from the scriptures and then goes on to another one. I has a little nap, then I goes back to kiss the holy relics, and there's such peace, dearie, such blessedness, you never wants to come out into God's world again.'
Pierre listened with close and grave attention. Prince Andrey left the room. And then Princess Marya followed him out and took Pierre to the drawing-room, leaving the Servants of God to finish their tea.
'You're so kind,' she said to him.
'Oh, I really didn't mean to hurt her feelings. I know those feelings, and I value them highly.'
Princess Marya looked at him, saying nothing but smiling with affection.
'I've known you such a long time, haven't I? And I love you like a brother,' she said. 'How does Andrey strike you?' she followed on quickly, leaving him no time for a response to her warm words. 'He worries me. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his wound reopened, and the doctor told him to go away for proper treatment. And I worry about him in a moral sense. He doesn't have the kind of personality, like us women, to express his suffering and sorrow in tears. He bottles it all up. Today he is lively and cheerful. But that's your visit - it's already had an effect on him. He's not like this very often. If only you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs to be kept busy and this steady, quiet life is getting him down. Others don't notice it, but I can see it.'
It was nearly ten o'clock when the footmen rushed to the steps, hearing the old prince's carriage bells approach
ing. Prince Andrey went out on to the steps, and Pierre followed.
'Who's this?' asked the old prince, as he got out of the carriage and caught sight of Pierre.
'Ah! Pleased to see you! Kiss me!' he said when they told him who the young stranger was.
The old prince was in good spirits and he felt like being nice to Pierre.
Before supper, Prince Andrey returned to his father's study to find the old prince and Pierre having a heated discussion. Pierre was arguing that a time would come when there would be no more war. The old prince was enjoying a bit of good-humoured teasing.
'Drain all the blood out of men's veins and fill 'em up with water, then there'll be no more war. Women's talk. Women's talk,' he was saying, but he still gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder as he walked across to the table where Prince Andrey, happy enough to keep out of their conversation, was looking through some papers that the old prince had brought back from town. The old prince went over to him and began to talk business.
'That marshal, that Count Rostov, didn't send me half his contingent. Came to town and thought he'd invite me to dinner - I gave him dinner all right! . . . Anyway, look at this . . . Well, my boy,' said the old prince to his son, clapping Pierre on the shoulder, 'your friend is a good man. I like him! Gets me going. Some people talk sense and you can't bear to listen - he talks balderdash but he gets me going, an old man like me! Well go on, off you go,' he said. 'Maybe I'll come and sit with you while you have supper. We'll have another argument. Try to like my ignorant girl, Princess Marya!' he shouted after Pierre from the doorway.
It was only now on this visit to Bald Hills that Pierre felt the full value and charm of his close friendship with Prince Andrey. The charm went beyond his relations with Andrey himself to embrace all the family and all the staff. Despite hardly knowing them, Pierre felt immediately like an old friend when he was in the company of the harsh old prince and the gentle, diffident Princess Marya. Everybody liked him. It was not only Princess Marya, who had been won over by his gentle attitude to the pilgrims and now treated him to her most radiant gaze - even the tiny one-year-old Prince Nikolay, as the old prince called him, beamed at Pierre and came over to him to be picked up. And Mikhail Ivanych and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked on with smiling faces when he talked to the old prince.
When the old prince did emerge for supper that evening, it was obviously a gesture to Pierre. Throughout his two-day stay at Bald Hills he was extremely friendly towards him, and asked him to come and stay again.
When Pierre had left and all the family came together to talk about him, as people always do when a new guest has gone, everyone spoke well of him, and that is something people rarely do.
CHAPTER 15
It was on his return from leave on this occasion that Nikolay Rostov realized for the first time, and fully appreciated, the strong ties that bound him to Denisov and the regiment in general.
When Rostov was getting close to the regiment he began to experience the same kind of feeling that had come over him as he had approached his home in Moscow. When he saw his first hussar in his unbuttoned regimental uniform, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the tethered chestnut horses, when Lavrushka shouted gleefully to his master, 'The count's here!' and Denisov, who had been asleep on his bed, ran all dishevelled out of the mud-hut to embrace him, and the officers gathered round to welcome him, Rostov felt just as he had done when his mother had embraced him, and his father and his sisters, and the tears of joy welling up in his throat prevented him from speaking. The regiment was home too, a home as dependable, loving and precious as his parents' home.
After reporting to his colonel for reassignment to his squadron, doing a spell as orderly officer and going out on a foraging expedition, after resuming all the little regimental occupations and getting used to being deprived of liberty and pinned down within one narrow, set framework, Rostov had the same feeling of peace and moral support, the same sense of being at home, in the right place, that he had felt under his father's roof. There was none of the confusion of the outside world, where he could never find the right place to be and he kept getting things wrong. There was no Sonya to have things out with (or not, as the case may be). There was no possibility of deciding whether or not to go somewhere. There were no longer twenty-four hours in every day to be used up in so many different ways. There were no vast masses of people of medium significance, neither close nor remote. There were none of those obscure and uncertain money dealings with his father, and no reminders of that ghastly occasion when he had lost money to Dolokhov! Here in the regiment everything was straightforward and simple. The whole world could be divided into two unequal halves: our Pavlograd regiment and everything else. And everything else was no longer any concern of his. Here in the regiment everything was settled: you knew this man was a lieutenant and that one a captain, this man was a good fellow and that one was not, but, most importantly, everyone was your comrade. The manager of the field-canteen didn't mind giving credit, and your pay came through every four months. There was no need to think or choose for yourself; you just had to avoid doing anything that was wrong by Pavlograd standards, and when you were sent on any assignment, as long as you did what was clear and distinct, what you were told, all would be well.
Rostov was pleased and relieved to submit once again to the clear-cut conditions of regimental life; he felt like a weary man lying down to rest. During this campaign life in the regiment was all the more comforting to Rostov, because after his loss to Dolokhov (something for which he could never forgive himself despite his family's efforts to console him), he was determined to be a different soldier and to make amends by behaving well and by being a thoroughly good comrade, a good officer, in fact a good man - a hard task out in the world, but perfectly possible within the regiment.
Since his gambling loss Rostov had given himself five years to repay the debt to his parents. He was getting ten thousand a year from them, and he had made up his mind to spend no more than two thousand, putting the rest towards repayment.
After all the retreating, advancing and engaging with the enemy at Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, our army was now concentrated around Bartenstein awaiting the arrival of the Tsar and the start of a new campaign.
The Pavlograd regiment, as an army section which had taken part in the hostilities of 1805, had stayed behind in Russia to make up its numbers and did not arrive in time for action in the first skirmishes of the campaign. It took no part in the battles of Pultusk or Preussisch-Eylau, and when it did join the army in the field, in the second half of the campaign, it was attached to Platov's division.12
Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several times the Pavlograd hussars exchanged fire with the enemy, took prisoners and on one notable occasion captured Marshal Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograd hussars had spent weeks on end encamped near a ravaged and deserted German village, and never stirred from that spot.
It was thawing, muddy and cold, the ice had broken up on the river, the roads were impassable, and for some days there had been no provisions, nothing for the horses or the men. With transport out of the question, the soldiers had dispersed about the abandoned and empty villages in search of potatoes, but very few were to be had.
Everything had been eaten up, and every last inhabitant had fled; those that remained were worse than beggars, and there was nothing to be taken from them; in fact the soldiers, not normally the most compassionate of men, often gave them what they had left.
The Pavlograd regiment had lost only two soldiers wounded in action, but almost half its men had gone down with hunger and disease. In the hospitals death was so certain that soldiers who became feverish or bloated from their bad diet preferred to stay on duty and drag themselves up and down the front line rather than go to any hospital. As spring came on the soldiers began to find a plant that looked like asparagus coming up out of the ground. For some reason they called it Mary's sweet-wort, and they scoured the fields and me
adows in search of this Mary's sweet-wort (which was actually very bitter). They dug it up with their sabres and ate it, despite many warnings that it was dangerous and shouldn't be eaten. So that spring, when a new disease broke out among the soldiers, with swelling of the arms, legs and face, the doctors blamed it on this root. But no amount of warning could stop the soldiers of Denisov's squadron eating hardly anything but Mary's sweet-wort, because they had been eking out their last biscuits for a couple of weeks now, doled out at the rate of half a pound a man, and the last consignment of potatoes had arrived frozen and sprouting.
The horses, too, after two weeks feeding on nothing but thatch, looked shockingly thin and moth-eaten as their winter coats came away in tufts.
In spite of these appalling conditions, the soldiers and officers went on living just as usual, though their faces were pale and swollen and their uniforms were torn. They formed up on parade and numbered off, went out foraging, groomed their horses and cleaned their weapons, they fetched thatch for fodder and gathered round the cauldrons at dinner-time, only to walk away as empty as ever, joking about the awful food and going hungry again. Off duty the soldiers went on as before, lighting their fires, stripping off and steaming in front them, smoking, sorting out one or two sprouting, rotten potatoes for baking, and swapping Potyomkin or Suvorov stories or sometimes tales about folk heroes like Alyosha, prince of rogues, or Mikolka who worked for the priest.
The officers lived as usual two or three to a roofless ruin of a house. The senior ones spent their time trying to get hold of straw and potatoes to feed the men, while the younger ones did the usual things, playing cards for money (which was plentiful, though there was nothing to eat), or enjoying innocent games like quoits and skittles. Nobody had much to say about the general run of the campaign, partly because nothing very positive was known, partly because of a vague idea that things were not going too well.
Rostov was living with Denisov again, and the bond of friendship between them had become even closer since they had been on leave. Denisov never mentioned any member of Rostov's family, but the commander's warm friendship towards his junior officer gave Rostov the impression that the older hussar's unhappy passion for Natasha had something to do with the strengthening of their friendship. There was no doubt that Denisov was shielding Rostov, keeping him out of danger as much as possible, and after any action he welcomed him back safe and sound with undisguised delight. Fetching up in a deserted and ruined village on one of his foraging expeditions, Rostov came across an old Pole and his daughter with a tiny baby. They had no proper clothes or food, they had been too weak to walk away and unable to pay for a ride. Rostov brought them back to camp and set them up in his own quarters, where he supported them for several weeks until the old man recovered. One of Rostov's comrades started kidding him once when they were talking about women, saying he was the cleverest fellow around and it wouldn't do any harm for him to introduce his comrades to the pretty little Polish woman that he'd rescued. Rostov took offence at this and flared up, saying such awful things to the officer that Denisov was hard put to stave off a duel between them. When the officer had gone away, and Denisov, who knew nothing about Rostov's relationship with the Polish woman, began to tell him off for over-reacting, Rostov said, 'You can say what you like . . . She's like a sister to me, and I can't tell you how much it hurt . . . because . . . well, you know . . .'