War And Peace

‘Don’t you talk to me! Last winter she wormed her way in here and told the count so many rotten, terrible things about all of us, especially Sophie – I can’t repeat them – that it made the count ill, and for two weeks he refused to see us. I’m sure that was when he wrote that awful, dreadful document, but I thought it didn’t matter.’

‘There we have it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Instead of replying the princess said, ‘It’s in that inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow . . . I can see it all now. If I have one sin on my conscience, it is a big one – I loathe that vile woman!’ She was a different woman, virtually shrieking. ‘And why does she come crawling in here? I’ll give her a piece of my mind . . . My time will come!’

CHAPTER 19

While these conversations were taking place in the reception-room and in the princess’s room, a carriage was bringing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who had found it necessary to come along too) into the courtyard of Count Bezukhov’s house. As the carriage wheels crunched softly over the straw laid down beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna turned consolingly to her companion only to find him asleep in his corner of the carriage. She woke him up. Pierre roused himself and followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then turned his mind to the impending visit to his dying father. He noticed that they had not come to the main entrance, but had gone round to the back door. As he got down from the carriage, two men dressed like tradesmen scurried away from the doorway into the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, he could just make out several other similar figures standing in the shadows on both sides of the house. But Anna Mikhaylovna, the servant and the coachman, who must have seen these men, simply ignored them, so Pierre decided all was as it should be and followed her in. Anna Mikhaylovna hurried up the badly lit, narrow stone staircase, calling for Pierre not to lag behind. He couldn’t see why he had to visit the count at all, still less why they had to use the back stairs, but Anna Mikhaylovna’s confident manner and sense of urgency made him think it must be absolutely necessary. Half-way up the steps they were almost knocked off their feet by some men who came clomping down towards them in big boots, carrying buckets, but who squeezed back against the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass by, and didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see them there.

‘Is this the way to the princess’s apartments?’ Anna Mikhaylovna asked one of them.

‘Yes, madam,’ answered a footman in a loud, strong voice, as though anything were now permissible, ‘the door on the left.’

‘Perhaps the count didn’t really ask for me,’ said Pierre, as he reached the landing. ‘I think I ought to go to my own room.’

Anna Mikhaylovna waited for him to catch up. ‘Ah, my friend,’ she said, touching his arm just as she had touched her son’s arm that morning. ‘Believe me, I am suffering as much as you, but be a man.’

‘Really, hadn’t I better go?’ Pierre asked, peering amiably at her over his spectacles.

‘Ah, my friend, forget the wrongs that may have been done to you: keep thinking this is your father . . . and perhaps in his death agony,’ she sighed. ‘I took to you and I’ve loved you like a son. Trust me, Pierre. I shall not forgot your interests.’

Pierre couldn’t understand a word of this, but he sensed even more strongly that all was as it should be, so he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna, who was already opening a door into the back-stairs vestibule. In one corner sat one of the princess’s old manservants knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this part of the house, and hadn’t even suspected the existence of these rooms. A maid went past carrying a tray with a decanter on it, and Anna Mikhaylovna (calling her ‘my dear’ and ‘good girl’) inquired after the princesses’ health, and then took Pierre on down the stone-flagged corridor. The first door on the left led through to the princesses’ living quarters. The maid with the decanter was in such a hurry (everything in the house seemed to be done in a hurry just then) that she didn’t close the door behind her. Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna, in passing, happened to glance into the room where the eldest princess and Prince Vasily were in close conversation. Seeing them go by, Prince Vasily fell back in his chair with a gesture of irritation, but the princess leapt to her feet and in sheer desperation slammed the door with all her might and put the bolt on. This action was so out of character for the princess, with her perpetual serenity, and the shock on Prince Vasily’s face was so out of tune with his dignity, that Pierre stopped in his tracks and gave a bewildered look at his guide over his spectacles. But Anna Mikhaylovna, showing no surprise, gave a thin smile and sighed, as if to indicate that this was just what she had expected.