War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [475]
Finally the headman Dron came to the room and, bowing low to the princess, stopped on the threshold.
Princess Marya walked across the room and stopped, facing him.
“Dronushka,” said Princess Marya, seeing in him an unquestionable friend, the same Dronushka who, from his annual trip to the fair in Vyazma, brought back each time a gingerbread he bought specially and handed it to her with a smile. “Dronushka, now, after our misfortune…” she began and fell silent, unable to speak further.
“We all walk under God,” he said with a sigh. They were both silent.
“Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere, I have no one to turn to. Is it true what they say to me, that it’s impossible for me to leave?”
“Why shouldn’t you leave, Your Excellency, it’s possible to leave,” said Dron.
“They tell me there’s danger from the enemy. Dear heart, I can do nothing, I understand nothing, I have nobody with me. I want to leave for certain during the night or early tomorrow morning.” Dron was silent. He glanced at Princess Marya from under his eyebrows.
“There’s no horses,” he said, “I told Yakov Alpatych so.”
“Why aren’t there?” asked the princess.
“It’s all from God’s punishment,” said Dron. “Whatever horses there were got taken for the army, and some dropped dead, it’s been such a year. Not just for feeding horses, but to keep from starving to death ourselves! As it is they sometimes go three days without food. There’s nothing, they’re completely devastated.”
Princess Marya listened attentively to what he said to her.
“The muzhiks are devastated? They have no bread?” she asked.
“Starving to death,” said Dron, “it’s not just carts…”
“But why didn’t you tell me, Dronushka? Can anything be done? I’ll do all I can…” It was strange for Princess Marya to think that now, at a moment when such grief filled her soul, there could be rich and poor people, and that the rich would not help the poor. She had vaguely known and heard that there was the master’s grain and that it could be given to the muzhiks. She also knew that neither her brother nor her father would have refused muzhiks in need; she was only afraid of somehow making a mistake in words concerning this distributing of grain to the muzhiks, which she wanted to order. She was glad that the pretext presented itself to her of a concern which made it not shameful for her to forget her own grief. She started asking Dronushka for details about the needs of the muzhiks and about what belonged to the masters of Bogucharovo.
“But we do have the master’s grain, my brother’s?” she asked.
“The master’s grain is all there,” Dron said proudly, “our prince told us not to sell it.”
“Give it to the muzhiks, give them as much as they need: I allow it in my brother’s name,” said Princess Marya.
Dron said nothing and sighed deeply.
“Distribute that grain among them, if it will be enough for them. Distribute all of it. I order it in my brother’s name, and tell them: what’s ours is also theirs. We don’t grudge them anything. Tell them that.”
Dron looked intently at the princess as she spoke.
“Release me, mistress, for God’s sake, have the keys taken from me,” he said. “I’ve served for twenty-three years, never did any wrong; release me, for God’s sake.”
Princess Marya did not understand what he wanted from her and what he was asking to be released from. She replied that she had never doubted his devotion and that she was ready to do everything for him and for the muzhiks.
XI
An hour later Dunyasha came to the princess with the news that Dron had come and that all the muzhiks, on the princess’s order, had assembled by the barn, wishing to talk with their mistress.
“But I never called them,” said Princess