Pierre sprang up from the sofa and ran at her, staggering.
‘I’ll kill you!’ he yelled, and wrenching the marble top off a table with unprecedented strength he lurched towards her brandishing it.
Horror-stricken, Hélène screamed and jumped aside. Pierre was now his father’s son, on the rampage, out of control, and enjoying it. He hurled the marble slab away, shattering it to pieces, and went for Hélène with outstretched arms, yelling ‘Get out!’ in a voice so terrible it sent shock-waves through the house. Heaven knows what he might have done to her at that moment if Hélène hadn’t rushed out of the room.
Within a week Pierre had made over to his wife the title to all his estates in Great Russia, which constituted the larger part of his property, and had gone back to Petersburg alone.
CHAPTER 7
Two months had passed since news of the defeat at Austerlitz and Prince Andrey’s disappearance had reached Bald Hills. Despite any number of inquiries and letters through the Russian embassy his body had not been found, nor was he listed as a prisoner-of-war. What made it worse for his family was the lingering hope that he might have been picked up on the battlefield by local people and could even now be on a sick-bed somewhere, alone among strangers, recovering or dying, unable to send word. The old prince had first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz from the newspapers, but as always they had given only brief and vague accounts of how the Russians, after a series of brilliant victories, had been forced into a retreat which had been conducted in perfect order. The old prince read between the lines of this official account and knew our army had been defeated. The newspaper containing news of the defeat was followed a week later by a letter from Kutuzov, who described for the old prince’s benefit what had happened to his son.
‘I saw your son with my own eyes,’ wrote Kutuzov, ‘bearing the standard and leading his regiment, and he fell like a hero, a credit to his father and his country. To my own regret and that of the whole army it is still not known whether he is alive or not. I console myself and you with the hope that your son is still alive, since if he were not he would have been listed among the officers found on the battlefield whose names have been given to me under flag of truce.’
The old prince received the news late one evening alone in his study and said not a word to anyone. Next morning he went out for his usual walk, but he remained tight-lipped with the bailiff, the gardener and the architect, glaring at them but saying nothing. When Princess Marya went in to see him at the normal time he was working on the lathe and as usual he didn’t look round. ‘Ah, Princess Marya!’ he snapped in a strained voice, and put down his chisel. (The wheel continued to rotate under its own momentum and Princess Marya would long remember its fading whine for ever associated with what now followed.)
She went up to him, took one look at his face and felt something snap inside her. Her eyes misted over. It wasn’t that her father’s face seemed sad or crestfallen, but it looked vicious and extraordinarily agitated, and it told her she was about to be swamped by some terrible calamity that was hanging over them, the worst of all calamities, one that she had never known before, a calamity that would prove to be irrevocable and beyond all understanding – the death of a loved one.
‘What is it, father? Is it Andrey? . . .’ The gawky, graceless princess spoke with a selfless sorrow of such ineffable beauty that it proved too much for her father, who turned away sobbing.
‘I have some news . . . Not among the prisoners, not reported dead . . . It’s from Kutuzov,’ he shrieked at her as if hoping this would drive her away. ‘He’s dead!’
The princess did not collapse or faint away with sickness. When she heard these words her face, already pallid, was transformed, and a special glow came to her lovely luminous eyes. A kind of joy, a heavenly joy transcending all the joys and sorrows of the world, had drowned the sorrow within her. Forgetting any dread of her father, she went over and took him by the hand, drawing him into an embrace with one arm round his scraggy, sinewy neck.
‘Father,’ she said, ‘please don’t turn away from me. Let us weep for him together.’
‘Blackguards, scoundrels!’ screamed the old man, wrenching his face away. ‘Army destroyed, men destroyed! What for? . . . Go on, go and tell Liza.’
Princess Marya sank down helplessly into an armchair beside her father and burst into tears. She could see her brother just as he had been at the moment of parting from her and Liza, with that look on his face, a mixture of affection and aloofness. She could see him amused and affectionate as he put on the icon. ‘Was he a believer? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he up there now? There in the realm of eternal peace and happiness?’ she wondered.
‘Father, tell me what happened,’ she said through her tears.
