War and Peace (100 page)

“Oh, trying one’s fate in the bath-house, that’s awful!” was said at the supper-table by an old maiden lady who lived with the Melyukovs.

“Why so?” asked the eldest daughter of the Melyukovs.

“Well, you won’t go and try. It needs courage …”

“I’ll go,” said Sonya.

“Tell us what happened to the young lady,” said the second girl.

“Well, it was like this,” said the old maid. “The young lady went out; she took a cock, two knives and forks, and everything proper, and sat down. She sat a little while, and all of a sudden she hears some one coming—a sledge with bells driving up. She hears him coming. He walks in, precisely in the shape of a man, like an officer, and sat down beside her at the place laid for him.”

“Ah! ah!…” screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.

“But what did he do? Did he talk like a man?”

“Yes, like a man. Everything as it should be, and began to try and win her over, and she should have kept him in talk till the cock crew; but she got frightened,—simply took fright, and hid her face in her hands. And he caught her up. Luckily the maids ran in that minute …”

“Come, why are you scaring them?” said Pelagea Danilovna.

“Why, mamma, you tried your fate yourself …” said her daughter.

“And how do they try fate in a granary?” asked Sonya.

“Why, at a time like this they go to the granary and listen. And according to what you hear,—if there’s a knocking and a tapping, it’s bad; but if there’s a sound of sifting corn, it is good. But sometimes it happens …”

“Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the granary?”

Pelagea Danilovna smiled.

“Why, I have forgotten …” she said. “I know none of you will go.”

“No, I’ll go. Pelagea Danilovna, do let me, and I’ll go,” said Sonya.

“Oh, well, if you’re not afraid.”

“Luisa Ivanovna, may I?” asked Sonya.

Whether they were playing at the ring and string game, or the rouble game, or talking as now, Nikolay did not leave Sonya’s side, and looked at her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him as though to-day, for the first time, he had, thanks to that corked moustache, seen her fully as she was. Sonya certainly was that evening gay, lively, and pretty, as Natasha had never seen her before.

“So, this is what she is, and what a fool I have been!” he kept thinking, looking at her sparkling eyes, at the happy, ecstatic smile dimpling her cheeks under the moustache. He had never seen that smile before.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Sonya. “May I go at once?” She got
up. They told Sonya where the granary was; how she was to stand quite silent and listen, and they gave her a cloak. She threw it over her head and glanced at Nikolay.

“How exquisite that girl is!” he thought. “And what have I been thinking about all this time?”

Sonya went out into the corridor to go to the granary. Nikolay hastily went out to the front porch, saying he was too hot. It certainly was stuffy indoors from the crowd of people.

Outside there was the same still frost, the same moonlight, only even brighter than before. The light was so bright, and there were so many stars sparkling in the snow, that the sky did not attract the eye, and the real stars were hardly noticeable. The sky was all blackness and dreariness, the earth all brightness.

“I’m a fool; a fool! What have I been waiting for all this time?” thought Nikolay; and running out into the porch he went round the corner of the house along the path leading to the back door. He knew Sonya would come that way. Half-way there was a pile of logs of wood, seven feet long. It was covered with snow and cast a shadow. Across it and on one side of it there fell on the snow and the path a network of shadows from the bare old lime-trees. The wall and roof of the granary glittered in the moonlight, as though hewn out of some precious stone. There was the sound of the snapping of wood in the garden, and all was perfect stillness again. The lungs seemed breathing in, not air, but a sort of ever-youthful power and joy.

From the maid-servants’ entrance came the tap of feet on the steps; there was a ringing crunch on the last step where the snow was heaped, and the voice of the old maid said:

“Straight on, along this path, miss. Only don’t look round!”

“I’m not afraid,” answered Sonya’s voice, and Sonya’s little feet in their dancing-shoes came with a ringing, crunching sound along the path towards Nikolay.

Sonya was muffled up in the cloak. She was two paces away when she saw him. She saw him, too, not as she knew him, and as she was always a little afraid of him. He was in a woman’s dress, with towzled hair, and a blissful smile that was new to Sonya. She ran quickly to him.

“Quite different, and still the same,” thought Nikolay, looking at her face, all lighted up by the moon. He slipped his hands under the cloak that covered her head, embraced her, drew her to him, and kissed the lips that wore a moustache and smelt of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him
full on the lips, and putting out her little hands held them against his cheeks on both sides.

“Sonya!… Nikolenka!…” was all they said. They ran to the granary and went back to the house, each at their separate door.

When they were all driving back from Pelagea Danilovna’s, Natasha, who always saw and noticed everything, managed a change of places, so that Luisa Ivanovna and she got into the sledge with Dimmler, while Sonya was with Nikolay and the maids.

Nikolay drove smoothly along the way back, making no effort now to get in front. He kept gazing in the fantastic moonlight at Sonya, and seeking, in the continually shifting light behind those eyebrows and moustaches, his own Sonya, the old Sonya, and the Sonya of to-day, from whom he had resolved now never to be parted. He watched her intently, and when he recognised the old Sonya and the new Sonya, and recalled, as he smelt it, that smell of burnt cork that mingled with the thrill of the kiss, he drew in a deep breath of the frosty air, and as he saw the earth flying by them, and the sky shining above, he felt himself again in fairyland.

“Sonya, is it well with
thee
?” he asked her now and then.

“Yes,” answered Sonya. “And
thee
?”

Half-way home, Nikolay let the coachman hold the horses, ran for a moment to Natasha’s sledge, and stood on the edge of it.

“Natasha,” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind about Sonya?”

“Have you told her?” asked Natasha, beaming all over at once with pleasure.

“Ah, how strange you look with that moustache and those eyebrows, Natasha! Are you glad?”

“I’m so glad; so glad! I was beginning to get cross with you. I never told you so, but you have not been treating her nicely. Such a heart as she has, Nikolenka. I am so glad! I’m horrid sometimes; but I felt ashamed of being happy without Sonya,” Natasha went on. “Now, I’m so glad; there, run back to her.”

“No; wait a moment. Oh, how funny you look!” said Nikolay, still gazing intently at her; and in his sister, too, finding something new,
extraordinary, and tenderly bewitching that he had never seen in her before. “Natasha, isn’t it fairylike? Eh?”

“Yes,” she answered, “you have done quite rightly.”

“If I had seen her before as she is now,” Nikolay was thinking, “I should have asked her long ago what to do, and should have done anything she told me, and it would have been all right.”

“So you’re glad,” he said, “and I have done right?”

“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with mamma about it a little while ago. Mamma said she was trying to catch you. How could she say such a thing! I almost stormed at mamma. I will never let any one say or think any harm of her, for there’s nothing but good in her.”

“So it’s all right?” said Nikolay, once more gazing intently at his sister’s expression to find out whether that were the truth. Then he jumped off the sledge and ran, his boots crunching over the wet snow, to his sledge. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with a moustache and sparkling eyes, peeping from under the sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was for certain now his happy and loving future wife.

On reaching home, the young ladies told the countess how they had spent the time at the Melyukov’s, and then went to their room. They changed their dresses, but without washing off their moustaches, sat for a long while talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and they would be happy. Looking-glasses were standing on Natasha’s table, set there earlier in the evening by Dunyasha, and arranged in the traditional way for looking into the future.

“Only when will that be? I’m so afraid it never will be.… It would be too happy!” said Natasha, getting up and going to the looking-glasses.

“Sit down, Natasha, perhaps you will see him,” said Sonya.

Natasha lighted the candles and sat down. “I do see some one with a moustache,” said Natasha, seeing her own face.

“You mustn’t laugh, miss,” said Dunyasha.

With the assistance of Sonya and the maid, Natasha got the mirrors into the correct position. Her face took a serious expression, and she was silent. For a long while she went on sitting, watching the series of retreating candles reflected in the looking-glasses, and expecting (in accordance with the tales she had heard) at one minute to see a coffin, at the next to see
him
, Prince Andrey, in the furthest, dimmest, indistinct square. But ready as she was to accept the slightest blur as the form of a
man or of a coffin, she saw nothing. She began to blink, and moved away from the looking-glass.

“Why is it other people see things and I never see anything?” she said. “Come, you sit down, Sonya; to-day you really must. Only look for me … I feel so full of dread to-day!”

Sonya sat down to the looking-glass, got the correct position, and began looking.

“You will see, Sonya Alexandrovna will be sure to see something,” whispered Dunyasha, “you always laugh.”

Sonya heard these words, and heard Natasha say in a whisper: “Yes, I know she’ll see something; she saw something last year too.” For three minutes all were mute.

“Sure to!” whispered Natasha, and did not finish.… All at once Sonya drew back from the glass she was holding and put her hand over her eyes. “O Natasha!” she said. “Seen something? Seen something? What did you see?” cried Natasha, supporting the looking-glass. Sonya had seen nothing. She was just meaning to blink and to get up, when she heard Natasha’s voice say: “Sure to!” … She did not want to deceive either Dunyasha or Natasha, and was weary of sitting there. She did not know herself how and why that exclamation had broken from her as she covered her eyes.

“Did you see him?” asked Natasha, clutching her by the hand.

“Yes. Wait a bit.… I … did see him,” Sonya could not help saying, not yet sure whether by
him
Natasha meant Nikolay or Andrey. “Why not say I saw something? Other people see things! And who can tell whether I have or have not?” flashed through Sonya’s mind.

“Yes, I saw him,” she said.

“How was it? How? Standing or lying down?”

“No, I saw … At first there was nothing; then I saw him lying down.”

“Andrey lying down? Is he ill?” Natasha asked, fixing eyes of terror on her friend.

“No, on the contrary—on the contrary, his face was cheerful, and he turned to me”; and at the moment she was saying this, it seemed to herself that she really had seen what she described.

“Well, and then, Sonya?…”

“Then I could make out more; something blue and red.…”

“Sonya, when will he come back? When shall I see him? My God! I feel so frightened for him, and for me, and frightened for everything …” cried Natasha; and answering not a word to Sonya’s attempts to comfort her,
she got into bed, and long after the candle had been put out she lay with wide-open eyes motionless on the bed, staring into the frosty moonlight through the frozen window-panes.

Soon after the Christmas fêtes were over, Nikolay spoke to his mother of his love for Sonya, and his immovable resolution to marry her. The countess had long before observed what was passing between Sonya and Nikolay, and was expecting this announcement. She listened to his words without comment, and then told her son that he could marry whom he chose, but that neither she nor his father would give their blessing to such a marriage. For the first time in his life Nikolay felt that his mother was displeased with him, that in spite of all her love for him she would not give way to him. Coldly, without looking at her son, she sent for her husband; and when he came in, the countess would have briefly and coldly, in Nikolay’s presence, told him her son’s intention, but she could not control herself, burst into tears of anger, and went out of the room. The old count began irresolutely persuading and entreating Nikolay to give up his intention. Nikolay replied he could not be false to his word, and his father, sighing and visibly embarrassed, quickly cut short the conversation and went in to the countess. In all difficulties with his son, the old count could never lose his sense of guiltiness to him for having wasted their fortunes, and so he could not feel angry with his son for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing the portionless Sonya. He only felt more keenly that if their fortune had not been squandered, no better wife could have been desired for Nikolay than Sonya; and that he, with his Mitenka and his invincible bad habits, was alone to blame for their fortune having been squandered. The father and mother did not speak of the subject again with their son; but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya to her room, and with a cruelty that surprised them both, the countess upbraided her niece for alluring her son and for ingratitude. Sonya, with downcast eyes, listened in silence to the countess’s cruel words, and did not understand what was expected of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her benefactors. The idea of self-sacrifice was her favourite idea. But in this case she could not see whom and what she ought to sacrifice. She could not help loving the countess and all the Rostov family, but neither could she help loving Nikolay and knowing that
his happiness depended on that love. She was silent and dejected; she made no reply. Nikolay could not, so he fancied, endure this position any longer, and he went in to his mother to have it out with her. Nikolay first besought his mother to forgive him and Sonya and to agree to their marriage; then threatened his mother that if Sonya were persecuted he would at once marry her in secret. The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen before, replied that he was of full age, that Prince Andrey was marrying without his father’s consent, and that he could do the same, but that she would never receive that
intriguing creature
as her daughter.