‘Please don’t mention it!’ he said, colouring up in response to Princess Marya’s protestation of gratitude for her salvation, which is what she called it. ‘Any old policeman would have done the same thing. If all we had to do was wage war against the peasants, we wouldn’t have let the enemy come as far as he has,’ he said, inexplicably embarrassed and eager to change the subject. ‘I’m only too happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Goodbye, Princess. I wish you good luck and you have my sympathy, and I hope we shall meet again under happier circumstances. Please, spare my blushes – not a word of thanks.’
But if the princess had now stopped thanking him in words, she went on thanking him with the look on her face, which glowed with gratitude and affection. She could not believe she had nothing to thank him for. Quite the reverse, she saw it as beyond doubt that but for him she would surely have been lost, a prey to the rebellious peasants and the French, and that in saving her
‘Oh dear, what if I have fallen in love with him?’ Princess Marya was thinking.
It was awkward for her to admit even secretly to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would possibly never love her in return, but she consoled herself with the thought that no one would ever know, and she would bear no blame for this love, as long as it remained unspoken, even if it was her first and last love, and it went on for a lifetime.
Sometimes she remembered the way he had looked at her, the sympathy he had shown, what he had said, and then happiness seemed not beyond the bounds of possibility. And it was then that Dunyasha caught her looking through the window with a real smile.
‘And to think he should have come to Bogucharovo, and just at that time!’ thought Princess Marya. ‘And to think it was his sister who refused Andrey!’ In all of this Princess Marya saw the workings of Providence.
Princess Marya had made a very favourable impression on Rostov. Whenever he brought her to mind he felt happy. And when his pals heard about his adventures in Bogucharovo and poked fun at him for having gone out to look for hay and ended up hooking one of the richest heiresses in Russia, it made him angry. It made him angry for the simple reason that the idea of marrying the gentle, and, as he recalled, delightful Princess Marya with her huge fortune had occurred to him spontaneously on more than one occasion. For him personally Princess Marya as a wife left nothing to be desired. Marrying her would make the countess, his mother, so happy and would mend his father’s fortunes. And it would even – Nikolay could feel it in his bones – make the princess herself very happy.
But what about Sonya? What about his promise? This was why it made him angry when they poked fun at him about Princess Bolkonsky.
CHAPTER 15
After his appointment as army commander-in-chief Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrey and asked him to report to headquarters.
Prince Andrey reached Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at the very time when Kutuzov was making his first inspection of the troops. Prince Andrey stopped in the village at the priest’s house, where the commander-in-chief’s carriage was waiting outside, and he sat down on a bench by the gate to await ‘his Serene Highness’, as everyone now called Kutuzov. Floating across the fields beyond the village came the music of a regimental band, and the roar of a huge crowd shouting ‘Hurrah!’ to the new commander-in-chief. By the gate a dozen paces away from Prince Andrey stood two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, enjoying the fine weather while their masters were away. A swarthy little lieutenant-colonel of hussars with prodigious whiskers and sideboards rode up to the gate, glanced at Prince Andrey and asked whether his Serene Highness was staying here and whether he would be back soon.
