War and Peace (97 page)

“Splendid, splendid, uncle! Again, again!” cried Natasha, as soon as he had finished. She jumped up from her place and kissed and hugged the uncle. “Nikolenka, Nikolenka!” she said, looking round at her brother as though to ask, “What do you say to it?”

Nikolay, too, was much pleased by the uncle’s playing. He played the song a second time. The smiling face of Anisya Fyodorovna appeared again in the doorway and other faces behind her.… “For the water from the well, a maiden calls to him to stay!” played the uncle. He made another dexterous flourish and broke off, twitching his shoulders.

“Oh, oh, uncle darling!” wailed Natasha, in a voice as imploring as though her life depended on it. The uncle got up, and there seemed to be two men in him at that moment—one smiled seriously at the antics of the merry player, while the merry player naïvely and carefully executed the steps preliminary to the dance.

“Come, little niece!” cried the uncle, waving to Natasha the hand that had struck the last chord.

Natasha flung off the shawl that had been wrapped round her, ran forward facing the uncle, and setting her arms akimbo, made the movements of her shoulder and waist.

Where, how, when had this young countess, educated by a French
émigrée
, sucked in with the Russian air she breathed the spirit of that dance? Where had she picked up these movements which the
pas de châle
would, one might have thought, long ago have eradicated? But the spirit, the motions were those inimitable, unteachable, Russian gestures the uncle had hoped for from her. As soon as she stood up, and smiled that triumphant, proud smile of sly gaiety, the dread that had come on Nikolay and all the spectators at the first moment, the dread that she would not dance it well, was at an end and they were already admiring her.

She danced the dance well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the
dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender, graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.

“Well done, little countess—forward, quick march!” cried the uncle, laughing gleefully as he finished the dance. “Ah, that’s a niece to be proud of! She only wants a fine fellow picked out now for her husband,—and then, forward, quick march!”

“One has been picked out already,” said Nikolay, smiling.

“Oh!” said the uncle in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha. Natasha nodded her head with a happy smile.

“And such an one!” she said. But as soon as she said it a different, new series of ideas and feelings rose up within her. “What was the meaning of Nikolay’s smile when he said: ‘One has been picked out already’? Was he glad of it, or not glad? He seemed to think my Bolkonsky would not approve, would not understand our gaiety now. No, he would quite understand it. Where is he now?” Natasha wondered, and her face became serious at once. But that lasted only one second. “I mustn’t think, I mustn’t dare to think about that,” she said to herself; and smiling, she sat down again near the uncle, begging him to play them something more.

The uncle played another song and waltz. Then, after a pause, he cleared his throat and began to sing his favourite hunting song:—

The uncle sang, as peasants sing, in full and naïve conviction that in a song the whole value rests in the words, that the tune comes of itself and that a tune apart is nothing, that the tune is only for the sake of the verse. And this gave the uncle’s unself-conscious singing a peculiar charm, like the song of birds. Natasha was in ecstasies over the uncle’s singing. She made up her mind not to learn the harp any longer, but to play only on the guitar. She asked the uncle for the guitar and at once struck the chords of the song.

At ten o’clock there arrived the wagonette, a trap, and three men on horseback, who had been sent to look for Natasha and Petya. The count and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, so said one of the men.

Petya was carried out and laid in the wagonette as though he had been a corpse. Natasha and Nikolay got into the trap. The uncle wrapped Natasha up, and said good-bye to her with quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge which they had to ride round, fording the stream, and bade his huntsmen ride in front with lanterns.

“Farewell, dear little niece!” they heard called in the darkness by his voice, not the one Natasha had been familiar with before, but the voice that had sung “When there fall at evening glow.”

There were red lights in the village they drove through and a cheerful smell of smoke.

“What a darling that uncle is!” said Natasha as they drove out into the highroad.

“Yes,” said Nikolay. “You’re not cold?”

“No, I’m very comfortable; very. I am so happy,” said Natasha, positively perplexed at her own well-being. They were silent for a long while.

The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but could only hear them splashing through the unseen mud.

What was passing in that childlike, responsive soul, that so eagerly caught and made its own all the varied impressions of life? How were they all stored away in her heart? But she was very happy. They were getting near home when she suddenly hummed the air of “When there fall at evening glow,” which she had been trying to get all the way, and had only just succeeded in catching.

“Have you caught it?” said Nikolay.

“What are you thinking of just now, Nikolay?” asked Natasha. They were fond of asking each other that question.

“I?” said Nikolay, trying to recall. “Well, you see, at first I was thinking that Rugay, the red dog, is like the uncle, and that if he were a man he would keep uncle always in the house with him, if not for racing, for music he’d keep him anyway. How jolly uncle is! Isn’t he? Well, and you?”

“I? Wait a minute; wait a minute! Oh, I was thinking at first that here we are driving and supposing that we are going home, but God knows where we are going in this darkness, and all of a sudden we shall arrive and see we are not at Otradnoe but in fairyland. And then I thought, too … no; nothing more.”

“I know, of course, you thought of
him
,” said Nikolay, smiling, as Natasha could tell by his voice.

“No,” Natasha answered, though she really had been thinking at the same time of Prince Andrey and how he would like the uncle. “And I keep repeating, too, all the way I keep repeating: how nicely Anisyushka walked; how nicely …” said Natasha. And Nikolay heard her musical, causeless, happy laugh.

“And do you know?” she said suddenly. “I know I shall never be as happy, as peaceful as I am now …”

“What nonsense, idiocy, rubbish!” said Nikolay, and he thought: “What a darling this Natasha of mine is! I have never had, and never shall have, another friend like her. Why should she be married? I could drive like this with her for ever!”

“What a darling this Nikolay of mine is!” Natasha was thinking.

“Ah! Still a light in the drawing-room,” she said, pointing to the windows of their house gleaming attractively in the wet, velvety darkness of the night.

Count Ilya Andreitch had given up being a marshal of nobility, because that position involved too heavy an expenditure. But his difficulties were not removed by that. Often Natasha and Nikolay knew of uneasy, private consultations between their parents, and heard talk of selling the sumptuous ancestral house of the Rostovs and the estate near Moscow. When the count was no longer marshal it was not necessary to entertain on such a large scale, and they led a quieter life at Otradnoe than in former years. But the immense house and the lodges were still full of people; more than twenty persons still sat down to table with them. These were all their own people, time-honoured inmates of their household, almost members of the family, or persons who must, it seemed, inevitably live in the count’s house. Such were Dimmler, the music-master, and his wife; Vogel the dancing-master, with his family; an old Madame Byelov, and many others besides; Petya’s tutors, the girls’ old governess, and persons who simply found it better or more profitable to live at the count’s than in a house of their own. They did not entertain so many guests as before, but they still lived in that manner, apart from which the count and countess could not have conceived of life at all. There was still the same hunting establishment, increased indeed by Nikolay. There were still the same fifty horses and fifteen
grooms in the stables; the same costly presents on name-days, and ceremonial dinners to the whole neighbourhood. There were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which, letting every one see his cards, he allowed himself to be plundered every day of hundreds by his neighbours, who looked upon the privilege of making up a rubber with Count Ilya Andreitch as a profitable investment.

The count went into his affairs as though walking into a huge net, trying not to believe that he was entangled, and at every step getting more and more entangled, and feeling too feeble either to tear the nets that held him fast, or with care and patience to set about disentangling them. The countess with her loving heart felt that her children were being ruined, that the count was not to blame, that he could not help being what he was, that he was distressed himself (though he tried to conceal it) at the consciousness of his own and his children’s ruin, and was seeking means to improve their position. To her feminine mind only one way of doing so occurred—that was, to marry Nikolay to a wealthy heiress. She felt that this was their last hope, and that if Nikolay were to refuse the match she had found for him she must bid farewell for ever to all chance of improving their position. This match was Julie Karagin, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, known to the Rostovs from childhood, and now left a wealthy heiress by the death of her last surviving brother.

The countess wrote directly to Madame Karagin in Moscow, suggesting to her the marriage of her daughter to her own son, and received a favourable reply from her. Madame Karagin replied that she was quite ready for her part to consent to the match, but everything must depend on her daughter’s inclinations. Madame Karagin invited Nikolay to come to Moscow. Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, had told her son that now that both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him married. She said that she could rest quietly in her grave if this were settled. Then she would say that she had an excellent girl in her eye, and would try and get from him his views on matrimony.

On other occasions she praised Julie and advised Nikolay to go to Moscow for the holidays to amuse himself a little. Nikolay guessed what his mother’s hints were aiming at, and on one such occasion he forced her to complete frankness. She told him plainly that all hope of improving their position rested now on his marrying Julie Karagin.

“What, if I loved a girl with no fortune would you really desire me, mamma, to sacrifice my feeling and my honour for the sake of money?”
he asked his mother, with no notion of the cruelty of his question, but simply wishing to show his noble sentiments.

“No; you misunderstand me,” said his mother, not knowing how to retrieve her mistake. “You misunderstand me, Nikolenka. It is your happiness I wish for,” she added, and she felt she was speaking falsely, that she was blundering. She burst into tears.

“Mamma, don’t cry, and only tell me that you wish it, and you know that I would give my whole life, everything for your peace of mind,” said Nikolay; “I will sacrifice everything for you, even my feelings.”

But the countess did not want the question put like that; she did not want to receive sacrifices from her son, she would have liked to sacrifice herself to him.

“No; you don’t understand me, don’t let us talk of it,” she said, wiping away her tears.

“Yes, perhaps I really do love a poor girl,” Nikolay said to himself; “what, am I to sacrifice my feeling and my honour for fortune? I wonder how mamma could say such a thing. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her,” he thought; “I must not respond to her faithful, devoted love. And it is certain I should be happier with her than with any doll of a Julie. To sacrifice my feelings for the welfare of my family I can always do,” he said to himself, “but I can’t control my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is more than anything and above anything for me.”

Nikolay did not go to Moscow, the countess did not renew her conversations with him about matrimony, and with grief, and sometimes with exasperation, saw symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and the portionless Sonya. She blamed herself for it, yet could not refrain from scolding and upbraiding Sonya, often reproving her without cause and addressing her as “my good girl.” What irritated the kind-hearted countess more than anything was that this poor, dark-eyed niece was so meek, so good, so devoutly grateful to her benefactors, and so truly, so constantly, and so unselfishly in love with Nikolay that it was impossible to find any fault with her.

Nikolay went on spending his term of leave with his parents. From Prince Andrey a fourth letter had been received from Rome. In it he wrote that he would long ago have been on his way back to Russia, but that in the warm climate his wound had suddenly re-opened, which would compel him to defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was as much in love with her betrothed, as untroubled in her love, and as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as ever. But
towards the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to suffer from fits of depression, against which she was unable to contend. She felt sorry for herself, sorry that all this time should be wasted and be of no use to any one, while she felt such capacity for loving and being loved.

Life was not gay in the Rostovs’ household.

Christmas came and except for the High Mass, the solemn and wearisome congratulations to neighbours and house-serfs, and the new gowns donned by every one, nothing special happened to mark the holidays, though the still weather with twenty degrees of frost, the dazzling sunshine by day and the bright, starlit sky at night seemed to call for some special celebration of the season.