War And Peace: Book 5 - CHAPTER XIII

Description

IT WAS DARK by the time Prince Andrey and Pierre drove up to the principal

entrance of the house at Bleak Hills. While they were driving in, Prince Andrey

with a smile drew Pierre's attention to a commotion that was taking place at the

back entrance. A bent little old woman with a wallet on her back, and a short

man with long hair, in a black garment, ran back to the gate on seeing the

carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and all the four, looking

round at the carriage with scared faces, ran in at the back entrance.

“Those are Masha's God's folk,” said Prince Andrey. “They took us for my

father. It's the one matter in which she does not obey him. He orders them to

drive away these pilgrims, but she receives them.”

“But what are God's folk?” asked Pierre.

Prince Andrey had not time to answer him. The servants came out to meet them,

and he inquired where the old prince was and whether they expected him home

soon. The old prince was still in the town, and they were expecting him every

minute.

Prince Andrey led Pierre away to his own suite of rooms, which were always in

perfect readiness for him in his father's house, and went off himself to the

nursery.

“Let us go to my sister,” said Prince Andrey, coming back to Pierre; “I have

not seen her yet, she is in hiding now, sitting with her God's folk. Serve her

right; she will be put to shame, and you will see God's folk. It's curious, upon

my word.”

“What are ‘God's folk'?” asked Pierre.

“You shall see.”

Princess Marya certainly was disconcerted, and reddened in patches when they

went in. In her snug room, with lamps before the holy picture stand, there was

sitting, behind the samovar, on the sofa beside her, a young lad with a long

nose and long hair, wearing a monk's cassock. In a low chair near sat a

wrinkled, thin, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.

“Andrey, why did you not let me know?” she said with mild reproach, standing

before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.

“Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you,” she said to Pierre, as he

kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now his friendship with

Andrey, his unhappy marriage, and above all, his kindly, simple face, disposed

her favourably to him. She looked at him with her beautiful, luminous eyes, and

seemed to say to him: “I like you very much, but, please, don't laugh at my

friends.”

After the first phrases of greeting, they sat down

“Oh, and Ivanushka's here,” said Prince Andrey with a smile, indicating the

young pilgrim.

“Andryusha!” said Princess Marya imploringly.

“You must know, it is a woman,” said Andrey to Pierre in French.

“Andrey, for heaven's sake!” repeated Princess Marya.

It was plain that Prince Andrey's ironical tone to the pilgrims, and Princess

Marya's helpless championship of them, were their habitual, long-established

attitudes on the subject.

“Why, my dear girl,” said Prince Andrey, “you ought to be obliged to me, on

the contrary, for explaining your intimacy with this young man to Pierre.”

“Indeed?” said Pierre, looking with curiosity and seriousness (for which

Princess Marya felt particularly grateful to him) at the face of Ivanushka, who,

seeing that he was the subject under discussion, looked at all of them with his

crafty eyes.

Princess Marya had not the slightest need to feel embarrassment on her

friends' account. They were quite at their ease. The old woman cast down her

eyes, but stole sidelong glances at the new-comers, and turning her cup upside

down in the saucer, and laying a nibbled lump of sugar beside it, sat calmly

without stirring in her chair, waiting to be offered another cup. Ivanushka,

sipping out of the saucer, peeped from under his brows with his sly, feminine

eyes at the young men.

“Where have you been, in Kiev?” Prince Andrey asked the old woman.

“I have, good sir,” answered the old woman, who was conversationally

disposed; “just at the Holy Birth I was deemed worthy to be a partaker in holy,

heavenly mysteries from the saints. And now, good sir, from Kolyazin a great

blessing has been revealed.”

“And Ivanushka was with you?”

“I go alone by myself, benefactor,” said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a bass

voice. “It was only at Yuhnovo I joined Pelageyushka …”

Pelageyushka interrupted her companion; she was evidently anxious to tell of

what she had seen. “In Kolyazin, good sir, great is the blessing

revealed.”

“What, new relics?” asked Prince Andrey.

“Hush, Andrey,” said Princess Marya. “Don't tell us about it,

Pelageyushka.”

“Not … nay, ma'am, why not tell him? I like him. He's a good gentleman,

chosen of God, he's my benefactor; he gave me ten roubles, I remember. When I

was in Kiev, Kiryusha, the crazy pilgrim, tells me—verily a man of God, winter

and summer he goes barefoot—why are you not going to your right place, says he;

go to Kolyazin, there a wonder-working ikon, a holy Mother of God has been

revealed. On these words I said good-bye to the holy folk and off I went

…”

All were silent, only the pilgrim woman talked on in her measured voice,

drawing her breath regularly. “I came, good sir, and folks say to me: a great

blessing has been vouchsafed, drops of myrrh trickle from the cheeks of the Holy

Mother of God …”

“Come, that will do, that will do; you shall tell me later,” said Princess

Marya, flushing.

“Let me ask her a question,” said Pierre. “Did you see it yourself?” he

asked.

“To be sure, good sir, I myself was found worthy. Such a brightness

overspread the face, like the light of heaven, and from the Holy Mother's cheeks

drops like this and like this …”

“Why, but it must be a trick,” said Pierre na

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