Kindness in an Empty House — War and Peace

The city itself was deserted. Gates and shops were closed. Only here and there a shout or a drunken song came from a tavern. Nobody drove through the streets. The Povarskaya lay still. In the huge courtyard of the Rostovs' house, wisps of hay and horse dung littered the ground, and not a soul was in sight. Inside the great drawing room, left with all it contained, two people remained: Ignat the yard porter, and Mishka, the page boy, Vasilich's grandson, who had stayed in Moscow with his grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming it with one finger. Ignat stood before the large mirror, arms akimbo, smiling at his own broadening grin. Then Mavra Kuzminichna came in silently and scolded their impudence. Ignat adjusted his belt and went out with downcast eyes. She sent the boy to boil the samovar for his grandfather, flicked the dust off the clavichord, locked the main door, and stood in the yard wondering whether to take tea with Vasilich or put the storeroom to rights.

Quick footsteps stopped at the gate. An officer of eighteen, with the round face of a Rostov, asked for Count Ilya Andreevich. They had gone yesterday at vespers, she said. He muttered that he should have come sooner. She looked at the familiar features, the tattered coat, and the trodden-down boots. He was a kinsman, he told her, and the count had been kind to him; he had no money and had meant to ask for help. She did not let him finish. She hurried to the servants' quarters and came back with a rolled check kerchief. From it she took a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and pressed it into his hand, abashed, saying that if his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of course have done more.

The officer did not decline. He thanked her quietly. She blessed him and saw him out. Swaying his head, smiling as if amused at himself, he ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets towards the Yauza bridge to overtake his regiment. Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate with moist eyes, feeling an unexpected flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.