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TWO MONTHS had passed since the news of the defeat of Austerlitz and the loss
of Prince Andrey had reached Bleak Hills. In spite of all researches and letters
through the Russian embassy, his body had not been found, nor was he among the
prisoners. What made it worst of all for his father and sister was the fact that
there was still hope that he might have been picked up on the battlefield by the
people of the country, and might perhaps be lying, recovering, or dying
somewhere alone, among strangers, incapable of giving any account of himself.
The newspapers, from which the old prince had first heard of the defeat at
Austerlitz, had, as always, given very brief and vague accounts of how the
Russians had been obliged after brilliant victories to retreat and had made
their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince saw from this official account
that our army had been defeated. A week after the newspaper that had brought
news of the defeat of Austerlitz, came a letter from Kutuzov, who described to
the old prince the part taken in it by his son.
“Before my eyes,” wrote Kutuzov, “your son with the flag in his hands, at the
head of a regiment, fell like a hero, worthy of his father and his fatherland.
To my regret and the general regret of the whole army it has not been
ascertained up to now whether he is alive or dead. I comfort myself and you with
the hope that your son is living, as, otherwise, he would have been mentioned
among the officers found on the field of battle, a list of whom has been given
me under flag of truce.”
After receiving this letter, late in the evening when he was alone in his
study, the old prince went for this morning walk as usual next day. But he was
silent with the bailiff, the gardener, and the architect, and though he looked
wrathful, said nothing to them. When Princess Marya went in to him at the usual
hour, he was standing at the lathe and went on turning as usual, without looking
round at her. “Ah? Princess Marya!” he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, and
he let the lathe go. (The wheel swung round from the impetus. Long after,
Princess Marya remembered the dying creak of the wheel, which was associated for
her with what followed.)
Princess Marya went up to him; she caught sight of his face, and something
seemed suddenly to give way within her. Her eyes could not see clearly. From her
father's face—not sad nor crushed, but vindictive and full of unnatural
conflict—she saw that there was hanging over her, coming to crush her, a
terrible calamity, the worst in life, a calamity she had not known till then, a
calamity irrevocable, irremediable, the death of one beloved.
“Father! Andrey? …” said the ungainly, awkward princess with such unutterable
beauty of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father could not bear to meet
her eyes and turned away sobbing.
“I have had news. Not among the prisoners, not among the killed, Kutuzov
writes,” he screamed shrilly, as though he would drive his daughter away with
that shriek. “Killed!”
The princess did not swoon, she did not fall into a faint. She was pale, but
when she heard those words her face was transformed, and there was a radiance of
something in her beautiful, luminous eyes. Something like joy, an exalted joy,
apart from the sorrows and joys of this world, flooded the bitter grief she felt
within her. She forgot all her terror of her father, went up to him, took him by
the hand, drew him to her, and put her arm about his withered, sinewy
neck.
“Father,” she said, “do not turn away from me, let us weep for him
together.”
“Blackguards, scoundrels!” screamed the old man, turning his face away from
her. “Destroying the army, destroying men! What for? Go, go and tell
Liza.”
Princess Marya sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and burst
into tears. She could see her brother now at the moment when he parted from her
and from Liza with his tender and at the same time haughty expression. She saw
him at the moment when tenderly and ironically he had put the image on. “Did he
believe now? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he there now? There in the
realm of eternal peace and blessedness?” she wondered. “Father, tell me how it
was,” she asked through her tears.
“Go away, go,—killed in a defeat into which they led the best men of Russia
and the glory of Russia to ruin. Go away, Princess Marya. Go and tell Liza. I
will come.” When Princess Marya went back from her father, the little princess
was sitting at her work, and she looked up with that special inward look of
happy calm that is peculiar to women with child. It was clear that her eyes were
not seeing Princess Marya, but looking deep within herself, at some happy
mystery that was being accomplished within her.
“Marie,” she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and leaning back,
“give me your hand.” She took her sister-in-law's hand and laid it below her
waist. Her eyes smiled, expectant, her little dewy lip was lifted and stayed so
in childlike rapture. Princess Marya knelt down before her, and hid her face in
the folds of her sister-in-law's dress. “There—there—do you feel it? I feel so
strange. And do you know, Marie, I am going to love him very much,” said Liza,
looking at her sister-in-law with shining, happy eyes. Princess Marya could not
lift her head; she was crying.
“What's the matter with you, Marie?”
“Nothing … only I felt sad … sad about Andrey,” she said, brushing away the
tears on the folds of her sister-in-law's dress. Several times in the course of
the morning Princess Marya began trying to prepare her sister-in-law's mind, and
every time she began to weep. These tears, which the little princess could not
account for, agitated her, little as she was observant in general. She said
nothing, but looked about her uneasily, as though seeking for something. Before
dinner the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room, with a
particularly restless and malignant expression, and went out without uttering a
word. She looked at Princess Marya with that expression of attention
concentrated within herself that is only seen in women with child, and suddenly
she burst into tears.
“Have you heard news from Andrey?” she said.
“No; you know news could not come yet; but father is uneasy, and I feel
frightened.”
“Then you have heard nothing?”
“Nothing,” said Princess Marya, looking resolutely at her with her luminous
eyes. She had made up her mind not to tell her, and had persuaded her father to
conceal the dreadful news from her till her confinement, which was expected
before many days. Princess Marya and the old prince, in their different ways,
bore and hid their grief. The old prince refused to hope; he made up his mind
that Prince Andrey had been killed, and though he sent a clerk to Austria to
seek for traces of his son, he ordered a monument for him in Moscow and intended
to put it up in his garden, and he told every one that his son was dead. He
tried to keep up his old manner of life unchanged, but his strength was failing
him: he walked less, ate less, slept less, and every day he grew weaker.
Princess Marya went on hoping. She prayed for her brother, as living, and every
moment she expected news of his return.
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