War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [567]
“Ah, yes, at once, wait a moment…Or no…no, go and tell them I’ll come at once,” Pierre said to the butler.
But as soon as the butler left, Pierre took his hat, which was lying on the table, and left by the back door of his study. There was no one in the corridor. Pierre walked the whole length of the corridor to the stairway and, wincing and rubbing his forehead with both hands, went down to the first-floor landing. The porter was standing by the front door. From the landing where Pierre stood, another stairway led to the back door. Pierre went down it and walked out to the courtyard. No one had seen him. But in the street, as soon as he went out the gate, the coachmen who were standing by the carriages and the caretaker saw their master and took their hats off to him. Feeling their gazes directed at him, Pierre behaved like an ostrich, which hides its head in a bush so as not to be seen; he lowered his head and, quickening his pace, went down the street.
Of all the matters that faced Pierre that morning, to him the most important seemed to be sorting the books and papers of Iosif Alexeevich.
He took the first cab that came along and told the driver to take him to the Patriarch’s Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev’s house was.
Glancing constantly at the carts of those leaving Moscow, which were moving on all sides, and shifting his fat body so as not to slip off the old, rattling droshky, Pierre, experiencing a joyful feeling similar to that experienced by a boy who has run away from school, fell to talking with the cabby.
The cabby told him that weapons were being distributed that day in the Kremlin, and that the next day the people would all be driven out of the Three Hills gate and there would be a big battle.
Having reached the Patriarch’s Ponds, Pierre found Bazdeev’s house, where he had not been for a long time. He went to the gate. Gerasim, the same sallow, beardless little old man whom Pierre had seen five years before in Torzhok with Iosif Alexeevich, came out to his knocking.
“Is the lady at home?” asked Pierre.
“Owing to the present circumstances, Your Excellency, Sofya Danilovna has left with the children for the Torzhok estate.”
“I’ll come in anyway, I’ve got to sort the books,” said Pierre.
“Please do, you’re very welcome. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of the deceased—God rest his soul!—has stayed on here, but, as you are so good as to know, he’s given to a certain weakness,” said the old servant.
Makar Alexeevich was, as Pierre knew, the half-mad brother of Iosif Alexeevich, and given to heavy drinking.
“Yes, yes, I know. Let’s go, let’s go…” said Pierre, and he went into the house. A tall, bald old man in a dressing gown, with a red nose and galoshes on his bare feet, was standing in the front hall. Seeing Pierre, he angrily muttered something and went to the corridor.
“He was a great mind, but now, if you please, look how feeble he’s become,” said Gerasim. “Would you like to go to the study?” Pierre nodded. “The study has stayed the way it was when it was first sealed. Sofya Danilovna ordered that, if someone came from you, he was to be given the books.”
Pierre entered the same gloomy study he used to enter with such awe while his benefactor was alive. This study, dusty and untouched since Iosif Alexeevich’s demise, was gloomier still.
Gerasim opened one shutter and tiptoed out of the room. Pierre walked around the study, went to the bookcase in which the manuscripts lay, and took out what had once been one of the most important sacred objects of the order. These were the authentic Scottish charters, with his benefactor’s notes and commentaries. He sat down at the dusty writing table and placed the manuscripts before him, opened them, closed them, and, finally, moving them aside,