War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [473]
And indeed, no carts had been rounded up by evening. In the village there was again a meeting by the pot-house, and at the meeting it was decided to drive the horses into the forest and not supply any carts. Saying nothing about it to the princess, Alpatych ordered his own baggage that he had brought from Bald Hills unloaded, and those horses prepared to be harnessed to the princess’s carriages, and he himself drove to the authorities.
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After her father’s funeral, Princess Marya locked herself up in her room and refused to see anyone. A maid came to the door to tell her that Alpatych had come to ask for orders about the departure. (This was before Alpatych’s conversation with Dron.) Princess Marya got up from the couch she was lying on and, through the closed door, said that she would never go anywhere and asked to be left in peace.
The windows of the room in which Princess Marya was lying gave on the west. She lay on the couch facing the wall and, fingering the buttons on the leather cushion, saw nothing but that cushion, and her vague thoughts were concentrated on one thing: she was thinking of the irrevocability of death and of her own inner loathsomeness, which she had not known about till then, and which had shown itself during her father’s illness. She wanted but did not dare to pray, did not dare to address herself to God in the state of soul she was in. She lay in that position for a long time.
The sun went down on the other side of the house, and its slanting evening rays shone through the open window into the room and onto part of the morocco cushion Princess Marya was looking at. The flow of her thoughts suddenly stopped. She unconsciously sat up, smoothed her hair, rose, and went to the window, involuntarily breathing in the coolness of the clear but breezy evening.
“Yes, it’s easy for you to admire the evening now! He’s gone, and nobody will hinder you,” she said to herself and, sinking onto a chair, let her head drop to the windowsill.
Someone called her name in a tender and soft voice from the garden side and kissed her on the head. She glanced up. It was Mlle Bourienne, in a black dress and weepers. She quietly approached Princess Marya, kissed her with a sigh, and at once began to cry. Princess Marya glanced around at her. She remembered all her former clashes with her, her jealousy of her; she remembered, too, how he had recently changed towards Mlle Bourienne, could not bear the sight of her, and, therefore, how unfair were the reproaches she had made to her in her heart. “And is it for me, who wished for his death, to judge anyone?” she thought.
Princess Marya vividly pictured the position of Mlle Bourienne, who had been distanced from her company recently, and who at the same time depended on her and lived in a house not her own. And she felt sorry for her. She gave her a meekly questioning look and held out her hand to her. Mlle Bourienne at once began to cry, kiss her hand, and speak of the grief that had befallen the princess, making herself a sharer in that grief. She said that her sole consolation in her grief was that the princess allowed her to share it with her. She said that all the old misunderstandings should be turned to naught before their great grief, that she felt herself pure before everyone, and that he could see her love and gratitude from there. The princess listened to her without understanding her words, but glancing at her from time to time and listening to the sounds of her voice.
“Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess,” said Mlle Bourienne after a brief pause. “I realize that you could not and cannot think about yourself; but my love for you obliges me to do so…Did Alpatych come to see you? Did he talk with you about leaving?” she asked.
Princess Marya did not reply. She did not understand who had to