________________________________________________
_ As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several
perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,
though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the
others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house
was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special
reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the
others.
For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and
they all felt it to be so.
The servants- the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life- were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day
attend to the estate, and would would be in better spirits and temper,
and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the
holidays.
The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return
because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as
he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only
piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,
and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.
Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted
because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his
rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this
love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had
brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she
loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did
not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle
Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In
Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed
and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a
single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by
himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had
said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which
young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he
had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon
Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially
Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
remember- all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion
with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,
reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who
was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that
his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his
friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a
divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought
without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the
boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.
The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and
unite any company he was in.
The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more
smoothly and peacefully.
The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.
Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and
made haste to satisfy all their expectations.
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the
aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not
forgetting his mother- and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress
material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.
In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that
his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things
he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time
he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for
herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself
had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and
childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the
house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure
it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other
defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were
qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added
stinginess.
From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs- which had
been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts-
had begun to improve.
Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had
now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not
in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.
With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff
like a shopman.
Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on
her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the
things he showed her.
"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the
material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"
Pierre told her the price.
"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be
and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,
unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb
set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.
"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned
Pierre.
"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.
"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be
fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."
And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and
then to the old countess' rooms.
The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.
The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with
a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper
lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.
After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,
she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or
kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She
wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity
only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on
living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in
very young children and very old people was particularly evident in
her. Her life had no external aims- only a need to exercise her
various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,
sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,
merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a
liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people
in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they
strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She
talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and
lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be
cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim
was for her evidently merely a pretext.
Thus in the morning- especially if she had eaten anything rich the
day before- she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the
handiest pretext Belova's deafness.
She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other
end of the room.
"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.
And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"
Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or
too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability
her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible
symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the
countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so
she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
thinking- and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she
needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she
wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,
and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be
Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was
usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest
in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.
The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household
though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible
effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a
sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the
common understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole
self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to
yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being
formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be
pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and
the little children failed to understand this and avoided her. _
Read next: First Epilogue: 1813 - 20: Chapter 13
Read previous: First Epilogue: 1813 - 20: Chapter 11
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