War and Peace (56 page)

“Dearest … and me too.”

Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mihalovna, Vera, and the old count were all hugging him; and the servants and the maids flocked into the room with talk and outcries.

Petya hung on his legs.

“Me too!” he kept shouting.

Natasha, after pulling him down to her and kissing his face all over, skipped back from him and, keeping her hold of his jacket, pranced like a goat up and down in the same place uttering shrill shrieks of delight.

All round him were living eyes shining with tears of joy, all round were lips seeking kisses.

Sonya too, as red as crimson baize, clung to his arm and beamed all over, gazing blissfully at his eyes for which she had so long been waiting. Sonya was just sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at this moment of happy, eager excitement. She gazed at him, unable to take her eyes off him, smiling and holding her breath. He glanced gratefully at her; but still he was expectant and looking for some one, and the old countess had not come in yet. And now steps were heard at the door. The steps were so rapid that they could hardly be his mother’s footsteps.

But she it was in a new dress that he did not know, made during his absence. All of them let him go, and he ran to her. When they came together, she sank on his bosom, sobbing. She could not lift up her face, and only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket. Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by any one, stood still looking at them and rubbing his eyes.

“Vassily Denisov, your son’s friend,” he said, introducing himself to the count, who looked inquiringly at him.

“Very welcome. I know you, I know you,” said the count, kissing and embracing Denisov. “Nikolenka wrote to us … Natasha, Vera, here he is, Denisov.”

The same happy, ecstatic faces turned to the tousled figure of Denisov and surrounded him.

“Darling Denisov,” squealed Natasha, and, beside herself with delight she darted up to him, hugging and kissing him. Every one was disconcerted by Natasha’s behaviour. Denisov too reddened, but he smiled, took Natasha’s hand and kissed it.

Denisov was conducted to the room assigned him, while the Rostovs all gathered about Nikolenka in the divan-room.

The old countess sat beside him, keeping tight hold of his hand,
which she was every minute kissing. The others thronged round them, gloating over every movement, every glance, every word he uttered, and never taking their enthusiastic and loving eyes off him. His brother and sisters quarrelled and snatched from one another the place nearest him and disputed over which was to bring him tea, a handkerchief, a pipe.

Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him. But the first minute of meeting them had been so blissful that his happiness now seemed a little thing, and he kept expecting something more and more and more.

Next morning after his journey he slept on till ten o’clock.

The adjoining room was littered with swords, bags, sabretaches, open trunks, and dirty boots. Two pairs of cleaned boots with spurs had just been stood against the wall. The servants brought in wash-hand basins, hot water for shaving, and their clothes well brushed. The room was full of a masculine odour and reeked of tobacco.

“Hi, Grishka, a pipe!” shouted the husky voice of Vaska Denisov. “Rostov, get up!”

Rostov, rubbing his eyelids that seemed glued together, lifted his tousled head from the warm pillow.

“Why, is it late?”

“It is late, nearly ten,” answered Natasha’s voice, and in the next room they heard the rustle of starched skirts and girlish laughter. The door was opened a crack, and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair and merry faces. Natasha with Sonya and Petya had come to see if he were not getting up.

“Nikolenka, get up!” Natasha’s voice was heard again at the door.

“At once!” Meanwhile in the outer room Petya had caught sight of the swords and seized upon them with the rapture small boys feel at the sight of a soldier brother, and regardless of its not being the proper thing for his sisters to see the young men undressed, he opened the bedroom door.

“Is this your sword?” he shouted.

The girls skipped away. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the bedclothes, looking with a scared face to his comrade for assistance. The door admitted Petya and closed after him. A giggle was heard from outside.

“Nikolenka, come out in your dressing-gown,” cried Natasha’s voice.

“Is this your sword?” asked Petya, “or is it yours?” he turned with deferential respect to the swarthy, whiskered Denisov.

Rostov made haste to get on his shoes and stockings, put on his dressing-gown
and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting into the other. Sonya was “making cheeses,” and had just whirled her skirt into a balloon and was ducking down, when he came in. They were dressed alike in new blue frocks, both fresh, rosy, and good-humoured. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking her brother’s arm, led him into the divan-room, and a conversation began between them. They had not time to ask and answer all the questions about the thousand trifling matters which could only be of interest to them. Natasha laughed at every word he said and at every word she said, not because what they said was amusing, but because she was in high spirits and unable to contain her joy, which brimmed over in laughter.

“Ah, isn’t it nice, isn’t it splendid!” she kept saying every moment. Under the influence of the warm sunshine of love, Rostov felt that for the first time for a year and a half his soul and his face were expanding in that childish smile, he had not once smiled since he left home.

“No, I say,” she said, “you’re quite a man now, eh? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.” She touched his moustache. “I do want to know what sort of creatures you men are. Just like us? No.”

“Why did Sonya run away?” asked Rostov.

“Oh, there’s a lot to say about that! How are you going to speak to Sonya? Shall you call her ‘thou’ or ‘you’?”

“As it happens,” said Rostov.

“Call her ‘you,’ please; I’ll tell you why afterwards.”

“But why?”

“Well, I’ll tell you now. You know that Sonya’s my friend, such a friend that I burnt my arm for her sake. Here, look.” She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him on her long, thin, soft arm above the elbow near the shoulder (on the part which is covered even in a ball-dress) a red mark.

“I burnt that to show her my love. I simply heated a ruler in the fire and pressed it on it.”

Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms, and looking into Natasha’s wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for any one else but gave him some of the greatest pleasures in his life. And burning one’s arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not strike him as pointless; he understood it, and was not surprised at it.

“Well, is that all?” he asked.

“Well, we are such friends, such great friends! That’s nonsense—the
ruler; but we are friends for ever. If she once loves any one, it’s for ever; I don’t understand that, I forget so quickly.”

“Well, what then?”

“Yes, so she loves me and you.” Natasha suddenly flushed. “Well, you remember before you went away … She says you are to forget it all … She said, I shall always love him, but let him be free. That really is splendid, noble! Yes, yes; very noble? Yes?” Natasha asked with such seriousness and emotion that it was clear that what she was saying now she had talked of before with tears. Rostov thought a little.

“I never take back my word,” he said. “And besides, Sonya’s so charming that who would be such a fool as to renounce his own happiness?”

“No, no,” cried Natasha. “She and I have talked about that already. We knew that you’d say that. But that won’t do, because, don’t you see, if you say that—if you consider yourself bound by your word, then it makes it as though she had said that on purpose. It makes it as though you were, after all, obliged to marry her, and it makes it all wrong.”

Rostov saw that it had all been well thought over by them. On the previous day, Sonya had struck him by her beauty; in the glimpse he had caught of her to-day, she seemed even prettier. She was a charming girl of sixteen, obviously passionately in love with him (of that he could not doubt for an instant). “Why should he not love her now, even if he did not marry her,” mused Rostov, “but … just now he had so many other joys and interests!”

“Yes, that’s a very good conclusion on their part,” he thought; “I must remain free.”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” he said; “we’ll talk about it later on. Ah, how glad I am to be back with you!” he added. “Come, tell me, you’ve not been false to Boris?”

“That’s nonsense!” cried Natasha, laughing. “I never think of him nor of any one else, and don’t want to.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you! Then what do you want?”

“I?” Natasha queried, and her face beamed with a happy smile. “Have you seen Duport?”

“No.”

“Not seen Duport, the celebrated dancer? Oh, well then, you won’t understand. I—that’s what I am.” Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirt, as dancers do, ran back a few steps, whirled round, executed a pirouette, bringing her little feet together and standing on the very tips of her toes, moved a few steps forward.

“You see how I stand? there, like this,” she kept saying; but she could not keep on her toes. “So that’s what I’m going to be! I’m never going to be married to any one; I’m going to be a dancer. Only, don’t tell anybody.”

Rostov laughed so loudly and merrily that Denisov in his room felt envious, and Natasha could not help laughing with him.

“No, isn’t it all right?” she kept saying.

“Oh, quite. So you don’t want to marry Boris now?”

Natasha got hot.

“I don’t want to marry any one. I’ll tell him so myself when I see him.”

“Oh, will you?” said Rostov.

“But that’s all nonsense,” Natasha prattled on. “And, I say, is Denisov nice?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s nice.”

“Well, good-bye, go and dress. Is he a dreadful person—Denisov?”

“How, dreadful?” asked Nikolay. “No, Vaska’s jolly.”

“You call him Vaska?… that’s funny. Well, is he very nice?”

“Very nice.”

“Make haste and come to tea, then. We are all going to have it together.”

And Natasha rose on to her toes and stepped out of the room, as dancers do, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. Rostov reddened on meeting Sonya in the drawing-room. He did not know how to behave with her. Yesterday they had kissed in the first moment of joy at meeting, but to-day they felt that out of the question. He felt that every one, his mother and his sisters, were looking inquiringly at him, and wondering how he would behave with her. He kissed her hand, and called her
you
and
Sonya
. But their eyes when they met spoke more fondly and kissed tenderly. Her eyes asked his forgiveness for having dared, by Natasha’s mediation, to remind him of his promise, and thanked him for his love. His eyes thanked her for offering him his freedom, and told her that whether so, or otherwise, he should never cease to love her, because it was impossible not to love her.

“How queer it is, though,” said Vera, selecting a moment of general silence, “that Sonya and Nikolenka meet now and speak like strangers.”

Vera’s observation was true, as were all her observations; but like most of her observations it made every one uncomfortable—not Sonya, Nikolay, and Natasha only crimsoned; the countess, too, who was afraid
of her son’s love for Sonya as a possible obstacle to his making a brilliant marriage, blushed like a girl.

To Rostov’s surprise, Denisov in his new uniform, pomaded and perfumed, was quite as dashing a figure in a drawing-room as on the field of battle, and was polite to the ladies and gentlemen as Rostov had never expected to see him.

On his return to Moscow from the army, Nikolay Rostov was received by his family as a hero, as the best of sons, their idolised Nikolenka; by his relations, as a charming, agreeable, and polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in Moscow.

All Moscow was acquainted with the Rostovs; the old count had plenty of money that year, because all his estates had been mortgaged, and so Nikolenka, who kept his own racehorse, and wore the most fashionable riding-breeches of a special cut, unlike any yet seen in Moscow, and the most fashionable boots, with extremely pointed toes, and little silver spurs, was able to pass his time very agreeably. After the first brief interval of adapting himself to the old conditions of life, Rostov felt very happy at being home again. He felt that he had grown up and become a man. His despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from Gavrilo for his sledge-drivers, his stolen kisses with Sonya—all that he looked back upon as childishness from which he was now immeasurably remote. Now he was a lieutenant of hussars with a silver-braided jacket, and a soldier’s cross of St. George, he had a horse in training for a race, and kept company with well-known racing men, elderly and respected persons. He had struck up an acquaintance too, with a lady living in a boulevard, whom he used to visit in the evening. He led the mazurka at the Arharovs’ balls, talked to Field-Marshal Kamensky about the war, and used familiar forms of address to a colonel of forty, to whom he had been introduced by Denisov.

His passion for the Tsar flagged a little in Moscow, as he did not see him, and had no chance of seeing him all that time. But still he often used to talk about the Emperor and his love for him, always with a suggestion in his tone that he was not saying all that there was in his feeling for the Emperor, something that every one could not understand;
and with his whole heart he shared the general feeling in Moscow of adoration for the Emperor Alexander Pavlovitch, who was spoken of at that time in Moscow by the designation of the “angel incarnate.”

During this brief stay in Moscow, before his return to the army, Rostov did not come nearer to Sonya, but on the contrary drifted further away from her. She was very pretty and charming, and it was obvious that she was passionately in love with him. But he was at that stage of youth when there seems so much to do, that one has not time to pay attention to love, and a young man dreads being bound, and prizes his liberty, which he wants for so much else. When he thought about Sonya during this stay at Moscow, he said to himself: “Ah! there are many, many more like her to come, and there are many of them somewhere now, though I don’t know them yet. There’s plenty of time before me to think about love when I want to, but I have not the time now.” Moreover, it seemed to him that feminine society was somewhat beneath his manly dignity. He went to balls, and into ladies’ society with an affection of doing so against his will. Races, the English club, carousals with Denisov, and the nocturnal visits that followed—all that was different, all that was the correct thing for a dashing young hussar.