“It was our foolishness, Yakov Alpatitch,” answered voices, and the crowd at once began to break up and to disperse about the village.
The two peasants who were bound they took to the manor-house. The two drunken peasants followed them.
“Ay, now look at you！” said one of them, addressing Karp.
“Do you suppose you can talk to the gentry like that？ What were you thinking about？ You are a fool,” put in the other; “a regular fool.”
Within two hours the horses and carts required were standing in the courtyard of the Bogutcharovo house. The peasants were eagerly hurrying out and packing in the carts their owners’ goods; and Dron, who had at Princess Marya’s desire, been released from the lumber-room, where they had shut him up, was standing in the yard, giving directions to the men.
“Don’t pack it so carelessly,” said one of the peasants, a tall man with a round, smiling face, taking a casket out of a housemaid’s hands. “It’s worth money too, you may be sure. Why, if you fling it down like that or put it under the cord, it will get scratched. I don’t like to see things done so. Let everything be done honestly, according to rule, I say. There, like this, under the matting, and cover it up with hay; there, that’s first-rate.”
“Mercy on us, the books, the books,” said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrey’s bookshelves. “Mind you don’t stumble！ Ay, but it’s heavy, lads; the books are stout and solid！”
“Yes, they must have worked hard to write them！” said a tall, round-faced peasant pointing with a significant wink to a lexicon lying uppermost.
Rostov, not wishing to force his acquaintance on the princess, did not go back to the house, but remained at the village waiting for her to drive out. When Princess Marya’s carriage drove out from the house, Rostov mounted his horse and escorted her as far as the road occupied by our troops, twelve versts from Bogutcharovo. At the inn at Yankovo he parted from her respectfully, for the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.
“How can you speak of it！” he said, blushing in response to Princess Marya’s expression of gratitude to him for saving her, as she called it. “Any police officer would have done as much. If we only had to wage war with peasants, we would not have let the enemy advance so far,” he said, trying with a sort of bashfulness to change the conversation. “I am only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-bye, princess. I trust you may find happiness and consolation, and I hope I may meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don’t want to make me blush, please don’t thank me.”
But if the princess thanked him no more in words, she thanked him with the whole expression of her face, which was radiant with gratitude and warmth. She could not believe that she had no cause to thank him. On the contrary, to her mind it was an incontestable fact that had it not been for him, she must inevitably have fallen a victim to the rebellious peasants or the French; that he, to save her, had exposed himself to obvious and fearful danger; and even more certain was the fact that he was a man of noble and lofty soul, able to sympathise with her position and her grief. His kindly and honest eyes, with tears starting to them at the moment when weeping herself she had spoken of her loss, haunted her imagination. When she had said good-bye to him and was left alone, Princess Marya suddenly felt tears in her eyes, and then—not for the first time—the question occurred to her： “Was she in love with him？” On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess’s position was by no means a joyful one, Dunyasha, who was in the carriage with her, noticed that her mistress’s face wore a vaguely happy and pensive smile, as she looked out of the window.
“Well, what if I have fallen in love with him？” Though she was ashamed at acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would perhaps never care for her, she comforted herself with the reflection that no one would ever know it, and she was not to blame, if she loved in secret for the first and last time and for her whole life long.
Sometimes she recalled his looks, his sympathy, his words, and happiness seemed to her not quite impossible. And then it was that Dunyasha noticed that she looked out of the window smiling.
“And to think that he should come to Bogutcharovo and at that very moment！” thought Princess Marya. “And that his sister should have refused Andrey！” And in all that, Princess Marya saw the hand of Providence.
The impression made on Rostov by Princess Marya was a very agreeable one. When he thought of her, he felt pleased. And when his comrades, hearing of his adventure at Bogutcharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay, and having picked up one of the greatest heiresses in Russia, it made him angry. He was angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle, and, to his mind, charming Princess Marya with her enormous fortune had more than once, against his own will, occurred to his mind. As far as he personally was concerned, Nikolay could have asked nothing better than to have Princess Marya for his wife. To marry her would make the countess, his mother, happy, and would repair his father’s broken fortunes. And it would even—Nikolay felt it—make the happiness of the princess herself.
But Sonya？ And his promise？ And that was why it made Rostov angry to be rallied about the Princess Bolkonsky.
