War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [150]
“The devil brought them here!” he thought, as Tikhon slipped a nightgown over his dry old man’s body, the chest overgrown with gray hair. “I didn’t invite them. They’ve come to upset my life. And there’s not much left of it.”
“Devil take them!” he said, while the shirt still covered his head.
Tikhon knew the prince’s habit of sometimes expressing his thoughts aloud, and therefore with an unchanged face met the irately questioning gaze of the face that emerged from the shirt.
“Gone to bed?” asked the prince.
Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew his master’s train of thought. He guessed that he was being asked about Prince Vassily and his son.
“They’ve gone to bed and put out the lights, if you please, Your Excellency.”
“No need, no need…” the prince said quickly and, putting his feet into his slippers and his arms through the sleeves of his dressing gown, he went to the sofa on which he slept.
Though nothing had yet been said between Anatole and Mlle Bourienne, they understood each other perfectly in regard to the first part of the romance, before the appearance of the pauvre mère, understood that they had much to tell each other in secret, and therefore in the morning they both sought an occasion to see each other alone. When Princess Marya went at the usual hour to see her father, Mlle Bourienne met with Anatole in the winter garden.
Princess Marya came to her father’s door that day with particular trepidation. It seemed to her not only that everyone knew her fate was to be decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it. She read that expression on the face of Tikhon, and on the face of Prince Vassily’s valet, who met her in the corridor while carrying hot water and bowed low to her.
The old prince was extremely gentle and painstaking in dealing with his daughter that morning. Princess Marya knew this painstaking expression of her father’s very well. It was the expression he had on his face in the moments when his dry hands clenched into fists from vexation at Princess Marya’s not understanding a problem in arithmetic, and, getting up, he would step away from her and in a soft voice repeat the same words several times.
He got down to business straightaway and began the conversation in a formal tone.
“A proposal has been made to me concerning you, miss,” he said, smiling unnaturally. “You have guessed, I believe,” he went on, “that Prince Vassily came here and brought with him his pupil” (for some reason Prince Nikolai Andreich called Anatole a pupil), “not just for my good pleasure. A proposal was made to me yesterday concerning you. And since you know my rules, I am referring it to you.”
“How am I to understand you, mon père?” said the princess, turning pale, then red.
“How understand!” her father cried irately. “Prince Vassily finds you to his taste as his daughter-in-law and proposes to you on behalf of his pupil. That’s how! How understand?! And I am asking you.”
“I don’t know, mon père, how you…” the princess said in a whisper.
“I? I? What have I got to do with it? Leave me out of it. It’s not I who am getting married. What about you, miss? That’s what it’s desirable to know.”
The princess saw that her father looked unfavorably on this matter, but at the same moment it occurred to her that her fate in life would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see his gaze, under the influence of which she felt she could not think but only obey out of habit, and said:
“I desire only one thing—to do your will,” she said, “but if my desire must needs be expressed…”
She did not have time to finish. The prince interrupted her.
“Splendid!” he cried. “He’ll get you and your dowry and incidentally take along Mlle Bourienne. She’ll be his wife, and you…”
The prince stopped. He noticed the impression these words made on his daughter.