War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER XXII

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THE TOWN ITSELF meanwhile was deserted. There was scarcely a creature in the

streets. The gates and the shops were all closed; here and there near pot-houses

could be heard solitary shouts or drunken singing. No one was driving in the

streets, and footsteps were rarely heard. Povarsky Street was perfectly still

and deserted. In the immense courtyard of the Rostovs' house a few wisps of

straw were lying about, litter out of the waggons that had gone away, and not a

man was to be seen. In the Rostovs' house—abandoned with all its wealth—there

were two persons in the great drawing-room. These were the porter, Ignat, and

the little page, Mishka, the grandson of Vassilitch, who had remained in Moscow

with his grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord, and was strumming with

one finger. The porter, with his arms akimbo and a gleeful smile on his face,

was standing before the great looking-glass.

“That's fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?” said the boy, beginning to bang with both

hands at once on the keys.

“Ay, ay!” answered Ignat, admiring the broadening grin on his visage in the

glass.

“Shameless fellows! Shameless, upon my word!” they heard behind them the

voice of Mavra Kuzminishna, who had softly entered. “The fat-faced fellow

grinning at himself! So this is what you are at! It's not all cleared away down

there, and Vassilitch fairly knocked up. You wait a bit!”

Ignat, setting his belt straight, left off smiling, and with eyes

submissively downcast, walked out of the room.

“Auntie, I was only just touching …” said the boy.

“I'll teach you only just to touch. Little rascal!” cried Mavra Kuzminishna,

waving her hand at him. “Go and set the samovar for your granddad.”

Brushing the dust off, she closed the clavichord, and sighing heavily went

out of the drawing-room and closed the door. Going out into the yard Mavra

Kuzminishna mused where she would go next: whether to drink tea in the lodge

with Vassilitch, or to the storeroom to put away what still remained to be

stored away.

There was a sound of rapid footsteps in the still street. The steps paused at

the gate, the latch rattled as some hand tried to open it.

Mavra Kuzminishna went up to the little gate.

“Whom do you want?”

“The count, Count Ilya Andreitch Rostov.”

“But who are you?”

“I am an officer. I want to see him,” said a genial voice, the voice of a

Russian gentleman.

Mavra Kuzminishna opened the gate. And there walked into the courtyard a

round-faced officer, a lad of eighteen, whose type of face strikingly resembled

the Rostovs'.

“They have gone away, sir. Yesterday, in the evening, their honours set off,”

said Mavra Kuzminishna cordially. The young officer standing in the gateway, as

though hesitating whether to go in or not, gave a click with his tongue

expressive of disappointment.

“Ah, how annoying!” he said. “Yesterday I ought to … Ah, what a pity …”

Meanwhile Mavra Kuzminishna was intently and sympathetically scrutinising the

familiar features of the Rostov family in the young man's face, and the tattered

cloak and trodden-down boots he was wearing. “What was it you wanted to see the

count for?” she asked.

“Well … what am I to do now!” the officer cried, with vexation in his voice,

and he took hold of the gate as though intending to go away. He stopped short

again in uncertainty.

“You see,” he said all at once, “I am a kinsman of the count's, and he has

always been very kind to me. So do you see” (he looked with a merry and

good-humoured smile at his cloak and boots) “I am in rags, and haven't a

farthing; so I had meant to ask the count …”

Mavra Kuzminishna did not let him finish.

“Would you wait just a minute, sir? Only one minute,” she said. And as soon

as the officer let go of the gate, Mavra Kuzminishna turned, and with her rapid,

elderly step hurried into the back court to her lodge.

While she was running to her room, the officer, with downcast head and a

faint smile, was pacing up and down the yard, gazing at his tattered

boots.

“What a pity I have missed uncle! What a nice old body! Where has she run off

to? And how am I to find out the nearest way for me to overtake the regiment,

which must be at Rogozhsky by now?” the young officer was musing meanwhile.

Mavra Kuzminishna came round the corner with a frightened and, at the same time,

resolute face, carrying in her hands a knotted check handkerchief. A few steps

from him, she untied the handkerchief, took out of it a white twenty-five rouble

note, and gave it hurriedly to the officer.

“Had his excellency been at home, to be sure, he would have done a kinsman's

part, but as it is … see, may be …” Mavra Kuzminishna was overcome with shyness

and confusion. But the officer, with no haste nor reluctance, took the note, and

thanked Mavra Kuzminishna. “If only the count had been at home,” murmured Mavra

Kuzminishna, as it were apologetically. “Christ be with you, sir. God keep you

safe,” she said, bowing and showing him out. The officer, smiling and shaking

his head, as though laughing at himself, ran almost at a trot along the empty

streets to overtake his regiment at Yauzsky bridge.

But for some time Mavra Kuzminishna remained standing with wet eyes before

the closed gate, pensively shaking her head, and feeling a sudden rush of

motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown boy-officer.

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