At a time of departure and change thinking people usually find themselves in a serious frame of mind. At such a time you tend to review the past and make plans for the future. Prince Andrey’s face was gentle and very thoughtful. He paced briskly up and down the room from one corner to another with his arms behind his back, staring ahead and pensively shaking his head. Whether he was worried about going off to war or sad at leaving his wife – or perhaps a little of both – he evidently didn’t want to be caught like that; at the sudden sound of approaching footsteps he quickly unclasped his hands and stood by a table, pretending to be fastening the lid of the case, and he resumed his normally calm and inscrutable expression. He had heard the heavy tread of Princess Marya.
‘They told me you were having the horses harnessed,’ she said, all out of breath (she must have been running), ‘and I did want to have one more little talk with you on our own. Heaven knows how long we shall be apart this time. I hope you’re not angry that I’ve come? Andryusha, you really have changed, you know,’ she added, as if that justified her question.
She smiled as she called him ‘Andryusha’. She could hardly imagine that this forbiddingly handsome man was the same Andryusha as that wiry, mischievous little boy who had been the companion of her childhood.
‘Where’s Lise?’ he asked, and a smile was his only answer.
‘She was so tired she fell asleep on the sofa in my room. Oh, Andrey, what a treasure of a wife you have,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa facing her brother. ‘She’s just a perfect child, such a sweet, happy child. I’ve really taken to her.’ Prince Andrey said nothing, but the princess watched as a look of irony and scorn came over his face.
‘But you have to put up with little weaknesses. We all have them, Andrey. Don’t forget she’s been brought up and educated in high society. And besides, her present position is not all that rosy. We must try to put ourselves in other people’s places. When you understand everything you can forgive everything. Just think what it must be like for her, poor girl, after the life she’s been used to, to part from her husband and then be left alone in the country, and in her condition too. It’s very hard on her.’
Prince Andrey looked at his sister and smiled the kind of smile we reserve for people we think we can see through.
‘You live in the country and you don’t find it too awful,’ he said.
‘It’s not the same thing. Don’t bring me into it. I don’t wish for any other kind of life, and I couldn’t if I wanted to, because I don’t know any other kind of life. But just think, Andrey, what it means for a young woman who is used to living in society to bury herself away in the country for the best years of her life and all on her own – because Papa is always busy, and I . . . well, you know me . . . I’m poor company for a society woman. There’s only Mademoiselle Bourienne . . .’
‘I don’t like her, that Bourienne woman,’ said Prince Andrey.
‘Oh, you mustn’t say that! She’s so kind, and so sweet, and – well, you have to be sorry for her too. She has nobody, nobody at all. If you want to know the truth, she’s no use to me, in fact I find her oppressive. You know I’ve always been unsociable, and now I’m worse than ever. I like to be on my own . . . Father’s very fond of her. She and Mikhail Ivanovich are the only two people he gets on with and keeps his temper with, because they are both beholden to him. As Laurence Sterne says: “We love people not so much for the good they have done to us as for the good we have done to them.” Father picked her up off the streets as an orphan, and she’s very good-hearted. And father likes the way she reads. She reads to him in the evenings. She does it very well.’
‘But be honest, Marie, I can only think sometimes it must be hard for you living with Father. You know the way he is,’ Prince Andrey suggested suddenly. Princess Marya was taken aback, then shocked by this question.
‘Me? . . . me? . . . Hard for me!’ she said.
‘He’s always been on the stern side, but now I think he’s getting quite difficult,’ said Prince Andrey, disparaging their father so easily that he must surely have meant to tease his sister – or test her.
‘You’re a good man, Andrey, but there is a kind of intellectual pride about you,’ said the princess, apparently following her own train of thought rather than the thread of the conversation, ‘and this is a great sin. How can we pass judgement on our own father? And even if we could, what feeling but the deepest admiration could a man like Father evoke? I am so pleased and happy to be with him. I just wish all of you were as happy as I am.’
Her brother shook his head in some doubt.
