BOOK TEN: 1812
5. CHAPTER V
(continued)
He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on
the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and
spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to
be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it
with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul
about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and
half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He
rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of
the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow
on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the
English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass
panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and
others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied.
Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,
he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the
plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom
Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was
sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.
He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting
on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him
strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a
magnolia.
Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old
garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were
wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters
were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf
boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent
his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors
reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had
come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,
and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing
Prince Andrew's knee.
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