War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

of the country among fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were a few fir trees.

The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular façade still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly built lodge close to the pond. Antón, a man who had looked after Prince Andréy in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.

Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in Petersburg.

He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Antón ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.

“Well, what is it?” came a sharp, unpleasant voice.

“A visitor,” answered Antón.

“Ask him to wait,” and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed back.

Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to face with Prince Andréy, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek and looked at him closely.

“Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,” said Prince Andréy.

Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andréy had grown thinner, paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.

As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre’s journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend’s look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andréy would have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andréy’s presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.

“I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly know myself again.”

“Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,” said Prince Andréy.

“Well, and you? What are your plans?”

“Plans!” repeated Prince Andréy ironically. “My plans?” he said, as if astonished at the word. “Well, you see, I’m building. I mean to settle here altogether next year.⁠ ⁠…”

Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andréy’s face, which had grown much older.

“No, I meant to ask⁠ ⁠…” Pierre began, but Prince Andréy interrupted him.

“But why talk of me?⁠ ⁠… Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels and all you have been doing on your estates.”

Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been made. Prince Andréy several times prompted Pierre’s story of what he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre was telling him.

Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend’s company and at last became silent.

“I’ll tell you what, my dear fellow,” said Prince Andréy, who evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, “I am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know her already,” he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. “We will go after dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?”

They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other intimately. Prince Andréy spoke with some animation and interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted himself:

“However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then we’ll set off.”

At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre’s marriage.

“I was very much surprised