After handing out various instructions right, left and centre, he was just about to go home to the countess for a rest when suddenly something else occurred to him, so he came back, summoning the chef and the bursar yet again and issuing further orders. Then in the doorway they heard the light tread and jingling spurs of a young man approaching, and in came Nikolay, looking all rosy and handsome, with his darkening moustache, visibly relaxed and healthier after his easy life in Moscow.
‘Hello, my boy! My head’s going round,’ said the old gentleman, with a chagrined smile at his son. ‘Come on, I need your help! We must get hold of some singers. We’ve got the band, but shouldn’t we have some gypsy singers too? You military men love that sort of thing.’
‘If you want my opinion, Papa, I think Prince Bagration made less fuss getting ready for Schöngrabern than you’re doing now,’ said his son with a smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
‘It’s easy to talk like that! You try!’ The count turned to the chef, and he eyed the pair of them closely and affectionately with a shrewd but respectful look on his face.
‘Ah, Feoktist, I don’t know about young people today,’ he said. ‘They like laughing at us old fogeys!’
‘I know, sir. They’re very good at eating a nice dinner, but arranging it all and serving it up, they don’t want to know about that!’
‘True, true!’ cried the count, and cheerfully grabbing his son by both hands, he shouted, ‘I’ve got you now! Take the sledge and pair this minute and get over to Bezukhov. Tell him Count Ilya Rostov has sent for some of his strawberries and fresh pineapples. You won’t find them anywhere else. If he’s not in, go and see the princesses and give them the same message. Then go on to the Gaiety – the coachman, Ipatka, he knows the way – and get hold of Ilyushka, that gypsy who danced at Count Orlov’s, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him here.’
‘And a few gypsy girls too?’ asked Nikolay, laughing.
‘Now, now! . . .’
At this moment Anna Mikhaylovna padded into the room with that air of busy practicality allied to Christian meekness that never left her face. Although Anna Mikhaylovna ran across the count in his dressing-gown every day of the week, he was always embarrassed when she did and invariably apologized for his attire. He did so now.
‘My dear count, don’t mention it,’ she said with a demure closing of the eyes. ‘I’ll go and see Bezukhov,’ she said. ‘Young Bezukhov has just come back, Count, and we’re sure to get everything we need from his conservatories. I had to see him anyway. He has forwarded a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now a staff-officer.’
The count was only too pleased to let Anna Mikhaylovna take over one of his responsibilities and he ordered the light carriage for her.
‘Tell Bezukhov he must come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with him?’ he asked.
Anna Mikhaylovna rolled her eyes up, and her face was suffused with profound sorrow.
‘Oh, my dear, he’s not a happy man,’ she said. ‘If it’s true what people say things are awful. Little did we think it would turn out like this when we were celebrating his good fortune! And he has such a noble, angelic nature, young Bezukhov! Yes, my heart goes out to him, and I shall do what I can to comfort him.’
‘Why, what’s it all about?’ asked both the Rostovs, young and old together.
Anna Mikhaylovna heaved a deep sigh.
‘It’s Dolokhov, Marya Ivanovna’s son,’ she said in a confiding whisper. ‘They say he has quite compromised her. The count looked after him, invited him into his house in Petersburg, and now it’s come to this! . . . She came down here, and that madcap has followed her,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna. Anxious to sympathize with Pierre, she unwittingly allowed her tone of voice and the ghost of a smile to imply equal sympathy for the man she was describing as a madcap. ‘They do say Pierre is desperately unhappy.’
‘Well, tell him to come to the club, anyway. It will all blow over. This is going to be some banquet!’
Just before two o’clock the next day, the 3rd of March, the two hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty of their guests were awaiting the arrival of their guest of honour, Prince Bagration, hero of the Austrian campaign.
