by Leo Tolstoy
'I got what I expected,' she said to herself, summoning pride to her aid. 'He's no concern of mine. I just wanted to see the old lady. She's always been so kind to me, and I owe her a great deal.'
But thoughts like these were not enough to put her mind at rest. She was plagued with a feeling of something not far from remorse whenever she thought of her visit. Despite her firm resolve to forget the whole thing and make sure she didn't call on the Rostovs again, she couldn't get it out of her mind that her situation was not quite so clear cut. And when she wondered exactly what it was that was plaguing her, she was forced to admit that it was her relationship with Rostov. His frigid and formal attitude had nothing to do with any feelings he might have for her (this much she knew); it was all a cover for something else. This something else had to be brought out into the open, and she knew she wouldn't be able to rest until it was.
One day in mid-winter she was sitting in the classroom, keeping an eye on her nephew as he did his school-work, when the servant announced that Rostov had called to see her. Grimly determined not to let him guess her secret, and not to show any embarrassment, she summoned Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the two of them went into the drawing-room.
One glance at Nikolay's face told her this was no more than a courtesy call, and she decided to adopt whatever tone he adopted towards her.
They spoke about the countess's health, people they had in common, the latest news of the war, and when the statutory ten minutes were up Nikolay rose to say goodbye.
With Mademoiselle Bourienne's assistance Princess Marya had kept the conversation going quite well, but at the very last moment, just as he got to his feet, she became so weary with talking about things that didn't matter to her, and so absorbed in wondering why she should be the only one to have so little joy in her life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat there like a stone, staring ahead and ignoring the fact that he was getting up.
Nikolay looked down at her, pretended not to notice her absent-mindedness and said a few words to Mademoiselle Bourienne before glancing at the princess again. She was still sitting there like a stone, with a painful look on her gentle face. Suddenly he felt sorry for her, and he was vaguely aware that he might be the cause of the sadness he could read on her face. He felt an urge to help her, to say something nice, but he couldn't think of anything to say.
'Goodbye, Princess,' he said.
She started, blushed and gave a deep sigh.
'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said, as if she had just woken up. 'Are you going already, Count. Goodbye, then. Oh, what about that cushion for the countess?'
'Wait a minute. I'll go and get it,' said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she left the room.
Neither of them spoke. They exchanged a few glances.
'You know, Princess,' said Nikolay at last, with a lugubrious smile. 'It seems like yesterday, but a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the first time we met at Bogucharovo. We all seemed to be in so much trouble then, but I'd give a lot to go back to that time . . . but there's no going back.'
Princess Marya's luminous eyes were watching him closely as he spoke. It seemed as if she was trying to get at some secret meaning behind his words that would make his feelings clear.
'Yes, yes,' she said, 'but there's no need for you to regret the past, Count. From what I've heard about your present life you will always look back on it with pleasure, because of the sacrifices you are making . . .'
'I can't accept your praise,' he cut in hastily. 'It's the other way round. I'm always criticizing myself . . . but this is such a gloomy and boring topic of conversation.'
And once again his eyes took on that formal, frigid look. But by this time Princess Marya had seen in him the man she had known and loved, and this was the man she was speaking to now.
'I thought you wouldn't mind my saying that,' she said. 'I've been such a close friend of yours . . . and of your family, and I didn't think you would find my sympathy intrusive. But I was wrong,' she said. There was a sudden catch in her voice. 'I don't know why,' she went on, recovering her composure. 'You weren't like this before, and . . .'
'Why? There are thousands of reasons.' (He stressed the word why.) 'Thank you so much, Princess,' he added softly. 'Sometimes . . . it's hard . . .'
'Now you know why! Now you know why!' said an inner voice speaking to Princess Marya's heart. 'No, it wasn't just that happy, kind, open look of his, not just his handsome person that I loved. I had an intuition of his nobility and strength, his spirit of self-sacrifice,' she said to herself.
'Yes, he's a poor man now, and I am rich . . . And that's all there is to it . . . Yes, if it wasn't for this . . .' By recalling his earlier tenderness and looking into his kind, sad face she had suddenly seen the reason for his frigid attitude.
'Why, Count, why?' she suddenly cried, almost shouting and moving closer to him without being aware of it. 'Please tell me why. You really must.' He said nothing. 'I don't know about your why, Count,' she went on. 'But it's not easy for me . . . I don't mind admitting it. For some reason you want to deprive me of our old friendship. And that hurts me.' There were tears in her eyes and her voice. 'I've had so little happiness in my life that any loss is hard to bear . . . Do forgive me. Goodbye.'
She burst into tears, and set off out of the room.
'Princess! Wait a minute, for heaven's sake,' he cried, trying to stop her. 'Princess!'
She looked round. For a few seconds they gazed into each other's eyes. Nothing was said, but suddenly what had been remote and impossible became close, possible and inevitable . . .
CHAPTER 7
In the autumn of 1814 Nikolay married Princess Marya, and went to live at Bald Hills with his wife, his mother and Sonya.
It took him three years to pay off the rest of his debts without selling any of his wife's property, and when he was left a little something by a cousin he also managed to repay the money borrowed from Pierre.
In another three years, by 1820, Nikolay had managed his finances so efficiently he was able to purchase a modest estate adjoining Bald Hills, and had started negotiations to buy back his family estate at Otradnoye, which was his pet dream.
Although he had been forced into farming to begin with, he soon became so enthusiastic that it became his favourite occupation to the exclusion of almost everything else. Nikolay was a farmer of the old school; he didn't like new-fangled ideas, especially the English ones that were coming in at that time. He laughed at theoretical studies of estate management, and had little time for factory processing, expensive production methods, or seed that cost a fortune. And he refused to specialize in anything, preferring to keep an eye on the overall estate rather than any of its parts. And on the estate itself what mattered most to his mind was not the nitrogen or oxygen content of the soil or air, not a new kind of plough or manure, but the vital agencies that made the hydrogen, the oxygen, the plough and the manure work effectively, and that meant the peasants who did the work. When Nikolay took up farming, and began to investigate its different branches, it was the peasant that claimed most of his attention. He saw the peasant as something more than a useful tool; he was an end in himself and a source of good judgement. He began by closely observing the peasants in an attempt to understand what they wanted, and what they considered good and bad practice. He went through the motions of making arrangements and giving out orders, but what he was really doing was learning from the peasants by following their methods, their language and their notions of what was good and bad. And it was only when he came to understand the peasants' appetites and aspirations, when he had learnt their way of speaking and the hidden meaning behind their words, when he felt a kind of kinship with them, that he began to manage them with confidence, in other words to fulfil the obligation towards them that was demanded of him. And Nikolay's management produced the most brilliant results.
The first thing Nikolay did when he took over the estate was to make three faultless appointments that came to him in a flash of inspired in
sight; he chose a bailiff, a village elder and a peasant representative, all of whom would have been elected by the peasants themselves if the choice had been theirs, and these leading figures were never replaced. Before researching the chemical properties of manure, or 'dabbling in debits and credits' (his description of book-keeping), he found out how many cattle the peasants possessed and tried everything he could think of to get the numbers up. He kept the peasants together in large family groupings and wouldn't allow them to split up into separate households. He was equally hard on the lazy, the dissolute and the feckless, and tried to have them ejected from the community. When it came to sowing and reaping the hay and corn, he took as much care over the peasants' fields as he did over his own. And few landowners achieved what Nikolay did in terms of early sowing and reaping, and the overall yield.
He wouldn't have anything to do with the house serfs because he saw them as scroungers, and everybody said he spoilt them by neglect. When a decision had to be taken and a house serf was involved, especially if one of them had to be punished, he could never make his mind up and consulted the entire household, but whenever it was possible to send a house serf for conscription instead of a peasant he did that with no compunction. In all his dealings with the peasants he never experienced the slightest hesitation. Every order he gave would, to his certain knowledge, be approved by a massive majority.
He never allowed himself either to dole out extra work or punishment just because he felt like it or to let people off or give them rewards out of personal preference. He couldn't have said what his standards were when judging what to do and what not to do, but standards there were, firmly fixed in his heart and mind.
Whenever anything went wrong or someone made a mess of things he would complain long and hard about 'these Russian peasants of ours', and he himself thought he couldn't stand them, but actually he loved 'these Russian peasants of ours' and their way of life with every fibre of his being, and it was only by loving them that he found and adopted the only way of doing things on the estate that was guaranteed to produce good results.
Countess Marya was jealous of her husband's passion, and sorry she couldn't share it with him, but she couldn't begin to understand the delights and disappointments that came his way in this other world to which she had no access. She couldn't understand why he seemed so excited and exuberant when he came in for a drink of tea with her after hours of sowing, mowing or harvesting, having got up at the crack of dawn to spend all morning in the fields or on the threshing-floor. She couldn't understand why he was so enthusiastic when he went on and on about Matvey Yermishin, a successful peasant farmer who had been up all night with his family carting his sheaves, and got his harvest stacked before anyone else had started reaping. She couldn't understand why he was smiling under his moustache and winking at her as he walked out through the window on to the verandah to watch a mild drizzle descending on young oats that had been wilting from the dry weather, or why, when the wind blew an ominous cloud away from them while they were mowing or harvesting, he would come in from the barn flushed, sunburnt and covered in sweat, with his hair reeking of wormwood and gentian, rub his hands together and say with such glee, 'Give me one more day and it'll all be in, mine and theirs.'
Something else she could understand even less was how on earth he, with all his goodheartedness and eternal readiness to anticipate her wishes, almost went berserk when she presented him with petitions from peasants or their women who had come to her asking to be excused from work, and how he, her good, kind Nicolas, could refuse point blank and tell her quite sharply to keep her nose out of his business. She felt as if he lived in a much-loved separate world that was governed by laws she couldn't understand.
Sometimes in an effort to understand him she would talk about all the good he was doing in looking after the welfare of his subjects, but he would round on her and say, 'Oh no, not that. I never even think about it. I wouldn't go out of my way for their benefit. It's all airy-fairy nonsense, women's talk, all this doing good to your neighbour. I don't want our children to go short. I've got to build up our fortunes in my lifetime, and that's all there is to it. And to do that you have to have discipline. You have to be hard!' he would declare, clenching his fist with great passion. 'And of course you have to be fair as well,' he would add, 'because if the peasant is naked and starving and he's down to his last scraggy horse he's no good to man or beast.'
And it was probably because Nikolay would not entertain any idea that he was doing things for other people, or being virtuous, that everything he attempted bore fruit. His wealth increased by leaps and bounds, serfs from nearby estates came and asked him to buy them in, and long after he was dead and gone his rule was reverently preserved in folk memory. 'What a master 'e was . . . Put the peasants first and 'imself second, 'e did. Didn't stand no nonsense neither. Right good master 'e was!'
CHAPTER 8
The one thing that worried Nikolay in the management of his serfs was his quick temper along with an old habit, acquired in the hussars, of being too ready with his fists. At first he saw nothing wrong with this, but in the second year of his married life his views on this form of discipline underwent a sudden change.
One day during the summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, the man who had taken over when Dron died and now stood accused of various acts of fraud and negligence. Nikolay went out to the steps to meet him, and the first answers were barely out of the man's mouth when shouts and blows were heard in the hall. Later on, when he came back in for lunch, Nikolay went over to his wife, who was sitting with her head bent low over her embroidery frame, and started telling her in the usual way about everything he had been doing during the morning, including the business with the elder from Bogucharovo. Countess Marya sat there in the same position, tight-lipped, turning alternately red and pale and not responding.
'Insolent swine,' he said, flaring up at the mere recollection. 'Should have told me he was drunk and couldn't see properly . . . Hey, what's all this, Marie?' he asked suddenly.
Countess Marya looked up, started to say something but looked straight down again and tightened her lips.
'What is it? What's wrong, my love?' Tears always improved Countess Marya's rather plain looks. Pain and anger never made her cry, but sadness and pity always did. And when she cried her luminous eyes took on an irresistible loveliness.
The moment Nikolay took her by the hand she lost control and burst into tears.
'Nikolay, I saw you . . . He was in the wrong, but you . . . why did you do that? Nikolay!' and she buried her face in her hands.
Nikolay said nothing. He went bright red, walked away and started pacing up and down in silence. He knew what she was crying about, but deep down he couldn't bring himself just like that to acknowledge that something he had been used to since childhood, something he considered perfectly normal, could be wrong. 'Sentimental nonsense, women's thinking . . . Or could she be right?' he said to himself. Still uncertain, he glanced again at her loving face that was so full of pain, and suddenly it came to him: she was right - all this time he had been sinning against himself.
'Marie,' he said softly, going over to her, 'it won't happen again. I promise. Ever,' he repeated in a trembling voice, like a little boy wanting to be forgiven.
The tears flowed faster from the countess's eyes. She took her husband's hand and kissed it.
'Nikolay, when did you break your cameo ring?' she said, changing the subject as she looked at the finger that wore a ring with a cameo head of Laocoon.12
'Today. Same thing. Oh, Marie, don't remind me!' he burst out again. 'I swear it won't happen again. And let this always be a reminder to me,' he said, pointing to the broken ring.
And from then on, whenever he was having things out with his village elders and foremen, as soon as he felt a rush of blood to his face and began to clench his fists, Nikolay would twist the broken ring around his finger and look away from the man who had made him so angry. Even then a couple o
f times a year he would forget himself, and then he would go straight to his wife, make a full confession and promise once again that this really was the last time.
'Marie, you must despise me,' he said to her. 'It's what I deserve.'
'You must walk away, just walk away as fast as you can if you feel yourself losing control,' his wife said despondently, trying to pacify him.
Among the gentry of the province Nikolay was respected but not well liked. The gentry's interests were not his interests. This meant that some people saw him as arrogant and others thought he was stupid. He spent the whole of the summer, from spring sowing to harvest-time, farming. When autumn came he went off hunting with the same kind of businesslike attitude he applied to farming, disappearing with his hunt for weeks on end. In winter he went round their other properties, or did a lot of reading, mainly historical works, on which he spent a little money each year. He was putting together what he called a serious library, and he made it a matter of principle to read every book he bought. He would retire to his study looking very important and sit there engaged in his reading. The occupation that he had originally taken on as a duty soon became a habit, and it now gave him a special thrill of pleasure as he revelled in the sense of doing something that mattered. Apart from the trips away on business he spent all winter ensconced at home with his family, involving himself very closely in the day-to-day relations between his children and their mother. He felt closer and closer to his wife, discovering new spiritual treasures in her with each passing day.
From the time of Nikolay's marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before they were married Nikolay had told his wife everything that had happened between him and Sonya, blaming himself and praising her. He asked Princess Marya to be kind and affectionate to his cousin. His wife fully appreciated that he had treated Sonya badly, and she had too; she couldn't help thinking that her wealth had influenced Nikolay in his choice, she could find no fault in Sonya, and she wanted to like her. But she didn't, and to make matters worse she often found herself harbouring feelings of enmity towards her that she couldn't suppress.
