Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 44

The grey-haired valet was dozing in his chair, listening to the count snoring in the huge study. From behind closed doors at the far side of the house, came the sounds of difficult passages, repeated for the twentieth time, in a sonata by Dussek.

At this moment a carriage and a britzka drove up to the porch and Prince Andrei got out of the carriage, helping his little wife out politely but coldly, as always, and letting her go ahead of him. Grey-haired Tikhon, wearing a wig, stuck his head out of the door of the footman’s room, announced in a whisper that the prince was resting and hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the arrival of the son of the house nor any other unusual events could be allowed to disrupt the daily routine. Prince Andrei clearly knew this quite as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch, as if to check whether his father’s habits had changed since the last time he had seen him and, having ascertained that they had not, he addressed his wife.

“He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go through to Princess Marya,” he said.

The little princess had changed in the time that had elapsed. The bulge of her waist had become significantly larger, she bent further backwards now and had become extremely fat, but her eyes were still bright and her short, smiling lip with the faint moustache lifted just as merrily and endearingly when she spoke.

“But this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around with the expression worn by people offering praise to the host at a ball.

“Let’s go, come on, come on.”

Looking around, she smiled at Tikhon and her husband and the footman showing them the way.

“Is that Marie playing? Quiet, let us take her by surprise.”

Prince Andrei followed her with a courteous, sad expression.

“You have grown old, Tikhon,” he said as he walked past the old man, who kissed his hand, which he wiped with a fine lawn handkerchief.

Just before the room from which they could hear the sound of the clavichord, a pretty blonde Frenchwoman skipped out of a side door. Mademoiselle Bourienne seemed quite beside herself with delight.

“Ah, what a joy for the princess,” she said to them. “At last, I must let her know.”

“No, no, please … You are Mademoiselle Bourienne; I am already acquainted with you from the friendship that my sister-in-law feels for you,” said the little princess, kissing the Frenchwoman. “She is not expecting us.”

They approached the door of the divan room, from behind which they could hear the same passage being repeated over and over again. Prince Andrei stopped and frowned, as though in anticipation of something unpleasant.

Princess Lise went in. The passage broke off in the middle, there was a cry, Princess Marya’s heavy footsteps and the sounds of kissing and muffled voices. When Prince Andrei went in, his wife and his sister, who had only seen each other once for a short time during Prince Andrei’s wedding, were clasped tightly in each other’s arms, still pressing their lips to the same spots which they had found in that first moment. Mademoiselle Bourienne was standing beside them, pressing her hands to her heart and smiling devoutly, obviously equally prepared either to burst into tears or burst out laughing. Prince Andrei shrugged and frowned, in the way that lovers of music frown when they hear a false note. The two women released each other and then once again, as though afraid of missing their chance, they grabbed each other by the hands, began kissing each other’s hands and pulling their own away, and then again began kissing each other on the face and then, to Prince Andrei’s absolute astonishment, they both burst into tears and started hugging and kissing each other again. Mademoiselle Bourienne burst into tears too. Prince Andrei obviously felt awkward and embarrassed, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should be crying, they seemed never to have imagined that this meeting could have taken place in any other way.

“Ah, my dear! Ah, Marie.” Both women suddenly started talking at once and burst into laughter. “I had a dream …” – “So you were not expecting us? Ah, Marie, you have grown so thin …” – “And you have put on so much weight …”

“I recognised the princess immediately,” interjected Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“And I never even suspected,” exclaimed Princess Marya. “Ah, Andrei, I didn’t even see you there.”

Prince Andrei and his sister kissed, hand in hand, and he told her that she was the same old cry-baby that she always used to be. Through her tears, Princess Marya turned on her brother the warm, loving, gentle gaze of her large, radiant eyes, so lovely at that moment that his sister, always so plain, seemed beautiful to him. But that very instant she turned back to her sister-in-law and began squeezing her hand without speaking. Princess Lise spoke incessantly. Every now and then her short upper lip with the light moustache flew down for an instant, touched the right spot on the rosy-pink lower lip and then once again her smile was revealed in a bright gleam of teeth and eyes. She related an incident that had happened to them on Mtsensk Mountain, which could have proved dangerous in her condition, and then immediately announced that she had left all her dresses behind in St. Petersburg and God only knew what she would wear here, and that Andrei had changed completely, and that Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a perfectly serious suitor for Princess Marya, but they would talk about that later. Princess Marya was still staring silently at her brother’s wife and her lovely eyes were filled with both love and sadness, as if she pitied this young woman but could not express to her the reason for her pity. She was clearly caught up in her own train of thought now, independently of what her sister-in-law was saying. In the middle of Lise’s account of the latest festivities in St. Petersburg, Princess Marya turned to her brother.

“And are you definitely going to the war, Andrei?” she said with a sigh.

Lise sighed too.

“Tomorrow, in fact,” Marya’s brother replied.

“He is abandoning me here, and God only knows why, when he could have had a promotion …” Princess Marya did not hear her out and, still following the thread of her own thought, she indicated her sister-in-law’s belly with an affectionate glance and asked: “Will it be soon now?”

The little princess’s face changed. She sighed.

“Two months,” she said.

“And you are not afraid?” asked Princess Marya, kissing her again. Prince Andrei winced at this question. Lise’s lip moved down. She moved her face close to her sister-in-law’s and suddenly burst into tears again.

“She needs to rest,” said Prince Andrei. “Don’t you, Lise? Take her to your room, and I shall go to father. How is he, still the same?”

“The same, the very same, I do not know how you will find him,” the princess replied happily.

“The same routine, and the walks along the avenues? The lathe?” asked Prince Andrei with a barely perceptible smile, indicating that, much as he loved and respected his father, he understood his weaknesses.

“The same routine, and the lathe, and still mathematics and my geometry lessons,” Princess Marya replied happily, as though her lessons in geometry were one of the most joyful memories of her life.