Kabanata Kabanata 52 · 第52章

Old Prince Nicholas Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli

in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him

a visit. “I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I

shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at

the same time, my honored benefactor,” wrote Prince Vasíli. “My son

Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will

allow him personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his

father, he feels for you.”

“It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are

coming to us of their own accord,” incautiously remarked the little

princess on hearing the news.

Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.

A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasíli’s servants came one

evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.

Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s

character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and

Alexander Prince Vasíli had risen to high position and honors. And now,

from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,

he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into

a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned

him. On the day of Prince Vasíli’s arrival, Prince Bolkónski was

particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad

temper because Prince Vasíli was coming, or whether his being in a bad

temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was

in a bad temper, and in the morning Tíkhon had already advised the

architect not to go to the prince with his report.

“Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, drawing the

architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps.

“Stepping flat on his heels—we know what that means....”

However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable

collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day

before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the

habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still

visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the

soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went

through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and the outbuildings,

frowning and silent.

“Can a sleigh pass?” he asked his overseer, a venerable man,

resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him

back to the house.

“The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor.”

The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. “God be

thanked,” thought the overseer, “the storm has blown over!”

“It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,” he added. “I

heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor.”

The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,

frowning.

“What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?” he said in

his shrill, harsh voice. “The road is not swept for the princess my

daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!”

“Your honor, I thought...”

“You thought!” shouted the prince, his words coming more and more

rapidly and indistinctly. “You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!...

I’ll teach you to think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and

would have hit Alpátych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively

avoided the blow. “Thought... Blackguards...” shouted the prince

rapidly.

But although Alpátych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the

stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before

him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued

to shout: “Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!” did not

lift his stick again but hurried into the house.

Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew

that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle

Bourienne with a radiant face that said: “I know nothing, I am the

same as usual,” and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast

eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions

she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not.

She thought: “If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not

sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will

say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.”

The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.

“Fool... or dummy!” he muttered.

“And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,” he

thought—referring to the little princess who was not in the dining

room.

“Where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?”

“She is not very well,” answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with

a bright smile, “so she won’t come down. It is natural in her

state.”

“Hm! Hm!” muttered the prince, sitting down.

His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he

flung it away. Tíkhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little

princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince

that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.

“I am afraid for the baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:

“Heaven knows what a fright might do.”

In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and

with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not

realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince

reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt

for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald

Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole

days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her

about the old prince and criticized him.

“So we are to have visitors, mon prince?” remarked Mademoiselle

Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. “His

Excellency Prince Vasíli Kurágin and his son, I understand?” she

said inquiringly.

“Hm!—his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the

service,” said the prince disdainfully. “Why his son is coming I

don’t understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know.

I don’t want him.” (He looked at his blushing daughter.) “Are you

unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot Alpátych

called him this morning?”

“No, mon père.”

Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice

of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the

conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and

after the soup the prince became more genial.

After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess

was sitting at a small table, chattering with Másha, her maid. She grew

pale on seeing her father-in-law.

She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks

had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.

“Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,” she said in reply to the

prince’s question as to how she felt.

“Do you want anything?”

“No, merci, mon père.”

“Well, all right, all right.”

He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych stood with

bowed head.

“Has the snow been shoveled back?”

“Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It was only

my stupidity.”

“All right, all right,” interrupted the prince, and laughing his

unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpátych to kiss, and then

proceeded to his study.

Prince Vasíli arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by

coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to

one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.

Prince Vasíli and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.

Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a

table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his

large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round

of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.

And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly

heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well

and amusingly. “And why not marry her if she really has so much money?

That never does any harm,” thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had

become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his

father’s room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to

him. Prince Vasíli’s two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked

round with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter

entered, as if to say: “Yes, that’s how I want you to look.”

“I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?” Anatole asked,

as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been

mentioned during the journey.

“Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious

with the old prince.”

“If he starts a row I’ll go away,” said Prince Anatole. “I

can’t bear those old men! Eh?”

“Remember, for you everything depends on this.”

In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that

the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had

been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,

vainly trying to master her agitation.

“Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never

happen!” she said, looking at herself in the glass. “How shall I

enter the drawing room? Even if I like him I can’t now be myself with

him.” The mere thought of her father’s look filled her with terror.

The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received

from Másha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how handsome the

minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with

what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son

had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received

this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose

chattering voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess

Mary’s room.

“You know they’ve come, Marie?” said the little princess, waddling

in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.

She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,

but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her

face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded

outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still

more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch

had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her

fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.

“What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?” she

began. “They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing

room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself

up at all!”

The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily

began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be

dressed. Princess Mary’s self-esteem was wounded by the fact that

the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both

her companions’ not having the least conception that it could be

otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them

would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to

dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her

beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took

on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she

submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women

quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so plain that

neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing

her with perfect sincerity, and with the naïve and firm conviction

women have that dress can make a face pretty.

“No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,” said Lise, looking

sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. “You have a maroon

dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may

be at stake. But this one is too light, it’s not becoming!”

It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary

that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little

princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed

in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on

the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that

the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, and that

however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it

would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to

which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged

on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her

looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the

little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold of the

dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking at her

with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.

“No, it will not do,” she said decidedly, clasping her hands. “No,

Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little

gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie,” she said

to the maid, “bring the princess her gray dress, and you’ll see,

Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it,” she added, smiling

with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.

But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained

sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the

mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst

into sobs.

“Come, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “just one more

little effort.”

The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess

Mary.

“Well, now we’ll arrange something quite simple and becoming,” she

said.

The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s, and Katie’s, who

was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping

of birds.

“No, leave me alone,” said Princess Mary.

Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds

was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful

eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at

them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.

“At least, change your coiffure,” said the little princess.

“Didn’t I tell you,” she went on, turning reproachfully to

Mademoiselle Bourienne, “Mary’s is a face which such a coiffure does

not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it.”

“Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to

me,” answered a voice struggling with tears.

Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves

that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,

but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they

both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess

Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they

knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to

be shaken in her determination.

“You will change it, won’t you?” said Lise. And as Princess Mary

gave no answer, she left the room.

Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise’s request,

she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her

glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and

pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive

being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different

happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own—such as she had

seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s daughter—at her

own breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the

child. “But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly,” she thought.

“Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,” came the

maid’s voice at the door.

She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and

before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her

eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a

lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful

doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a

man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary dreamed of

happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing

was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from

others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. “O God,” she

said, “how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil?

How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to

fulfill Thy will?” And scarcely had she put that question than God

gave her the answer in her own heart. “Desire nothing for thyself,

seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s future and thy own fate

must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for

anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage,

be ready to fulfill His will.” With this consoling thought (but

yet with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing)

Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking

neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what

she would say. What could all that matter in comparison with the will of

God, without Whose care not a hair of man’s head can fall?