War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [479]
“Many, many,” replied Rostov. “But why are you gathered here?” he added. “Is there a feast?”
“The old men got together on village business,” the muzhik replied, stepping away from him.
Just then two women and a man in a white hat appeared on the road from the manor house, walking towards the officers.
“The one in pink’s mine, no haggling!” said Ilyin, noticing Dunyasha resolutely heading towards him.
“Ours!” Lavrushka said to Ilyin with a wink.
“What do you want, my beauty?” said Ilyin, smiling.
“The princess asked me to find out your names and regiment.”
“This is Count Rostov, the squadron commander, and I am your obedient servant.”
“A ta-a-alky ta-a-alk!” the drunken muzhik sang away, smiling blissfully and looking at Ilyin talking with the maid. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych went up to Rostov, taking off his hat while still some distance away.
“I make so bold as to trouble you, Your Honor,” he said respectfully, but with relative scorn for the youth of this officer, and putting his hand behind his lapel. “My mistress, the daughter of General in Chief Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, who passed away on the fifteenth instant, being in difficulty on the occasion of the ignorance of these persons,” he pointed to the muzhiks, “asks you kindly…would you be so good,” Alpatych said with a sad smile, “as to ride off a little, for it is not so convenient in front of…” Alpatych pointed to the two muzhiks, who flitted about behind him like gadflies around a horse.
“Eh!…Alpatych…Eh? Yakov Alpatych!…A grand thing! Forgive us, for Christ’s sake! A grand thing! Eh?…” the muzhiks said, smiling joyfully at him. Rostov looked at the drunken old men and smiled.
“Or perhaps Your Excellency finds this amusing?” Yakov Alpatych said sedately, pointing to the old men with the hand not put behind his lapel.
“No, it’s not very amusing,” said Rostov, and he rode aside. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I make so bold as to report to Your Excellency that the coarse local people do not want to allow our mistress to quit the estate and threaten to unharness the horses, so that, though everything has been packed since morning, her excellency cannot leave.”
“It can’t be!” cried Rostov.
“I have the honor of reporting the real truth to you,” Alpatych confirmed.
Rostov got off his horse and, turning it over to the orderly, went to the house with Alpatych, questioning him about the details of the matter. Indeed, the princess’s offer of grain to the muzhiks the evening before, and her talk with Dron and to the gathering, had so spoiled things that Dron had definitively handed over the keys, joined the muzhiks, and refused to come when summoned by Alpatych, and in the morning, when the princess ordered them to harness up for leaving, the muzhiks came to the barn in a large crowd and sent to tell the princess that they would not let her out of the village, that there was an order not to leave, and that they would unhitch the horses. Alpatych went to them, trying to bring them to reason, but they answered him (Karp did most of the talking; Dron did not appear in the crowd) that it was impossible to let the princess go, that there was an order about it; but let the princess stay, and they would serve her as before and obey her in everything.
Just when Rostov and Ilyin came galloping down the road, Princess Marya, despite the attempts of Alpatych, the nanny, and the maids to dissuade her, had ordered the harnessing and wanted to leave; but, seeing the two cavalrymen gallop by, they took them for Frenchmen, the coachmen fled, and the women in the house began to weep.
“Dearest! My dearest! God has sent you!” deeply moved voices were saying as Rostov passed through the front hall.
Princess Marya, at a loss and strengthless, was sitting in the reception room when Rostov was brought to her. She did not understand who he was, or why he was there, or what would happen to her. Seeing his Russian face and recognizing him, by the way he walked in and by his first words, as a person of her own circle, she looked at him with her deep