《War And Peace》 Book6 CHAPTER XXII
by Leo Tolstoy
NEXT DAY Prince Andrey went to dine at the Rostovs', as Count Ilya Andreitch
had invited him, and spent the whole day with them.
Every one in the house perceived on whose account Prince Andrey came, and he
openly tried to be all day long with Natasha.
Not only in the soul of Natasha—scared, but happy and enthusiastic—in the
whole household, too, there was a feeling of awe, of something of GREat gravity
being bound to happen. With sorrowful and sternly serious eyes the countess
looked at Prince Andrey as he talked to Natasha, and shyly and self-consciously
tried to begin some insignificant talk with him as soon as he looked round at
her. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha, and afraid of being in their way if she
stayed with them. Natasha turned pale in a panic of expectation every time she
was left for a moment alone with him. Prince Andrey's timidity impressed her.
She felt that he wanted to tell her something, but could not bring himself up to
the point.
When Prince Andrey had gone away in the evening, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered:
“Well?”
“Mamma, for God's sake, don't ask me anything just now. This one can't talk
of,” said Natasha.
But in spite of this answer, Natasha lay a long while in her mother's bed
that night, her eyes fixed before her, excited and scared by turns. She told her
how he had praised her, how he had said he was going abroad, how he had asked
where they were going to spend the summer, and how he had asked her about
Boris.
“But anything like this, like this … I have never felt before!” she said.
“Only I'm afraid with him, I'm always afraid with him. What does that mean? Does
it mean that it's the real thing? Mamma, are you asleep?”
“No, my darling. I'm afraid of him myself,” answered her mother. “Go to
bed.”
“Anyhow, I shouldn't go to sleep. How stupid sleep is! Mamma, mamma, nothing
like this have I ever felt before,” she said, with wonder and terror at the
feeling she recognised in herself. “And could we ever have dreamed! …”
It seemed to Natasha that she had fallen in love with Prince Andrey the first
time she saw him at Otradnoe. She was as it were terrified at this strange,
unexpected happiness that the man she had chosen even then (she was firmly
convinced that she had done so)—that very man should meet them again now and be
apparently not indifferent to her.
“And it seems as though it all happened on purpose—his coming to Petersburg
just while we are here. And our meeting at that ball. It was all fate. It's
clear that it is fate, that it has all led up to this. Even then, as soon as I
saw him, I felt something quite different.”
“What has he said to you? What are those verses? Read them …” said the mother
thoughtfully, referring to the verses Prince Andrey had written in Natasha's
album.
“Mamma, does it matter his being a widower?”
“Hush, Natasha. Pray to God. Marriages are made in heaven,” she said, quoting
the French proverb.
“Mamma, darling, how I love you! how happy I am!” cried Natasha, shedding
tears of excitement and happiness and hugging her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrey was telling Pierre of his love for Natasha
and of his fixed determination to marry her.
That evening the Countess Elena Vassilyevna gave a reception; the French
ambassador was there, and a royal prince who had become a very frequent visitor
at the countess's of late and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen. Pierre came
down to it, wandered through the rooms and impressed all the guests by his look
of concentrated preoccupation and gloom.
Pierre had been feeling one of his attacks of nervous depression coming upon
him ever since the day of the ball and had been making desperate efforts to
struggle against it. Since his wife's intrigue with the royal prince, Pierre had
been to his surprise appointed a kammerherr, and ever since he had felt a sense
of weariness and shame in court society, and his old ideas of the vanity of all
things human began to come back oftener and oftener. The feeling he had lately
noticed between his protégée Natasha and Prince Andrey had aggravated his gloom
by the contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally to
avoid thinking of his wife and also of Natasha and Prince Andrey. Again
everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the
question rose before him: “What for?” And for days and nights together he forced
himself to work at masonic labours, hoping to keep off the evil spirit. Pierre
had come out of the countess's apartments at midnight, and was sitting in a
shabby dressing-gown at the table in his own low-pitched, smoke-blackened room
upstairs, copying out long transactions of the Scottish freemasons, when some
one came into his room. It was Prince Andrey.
“Oh, it's you,” said Pierre, with a preoccupied and dissatisfied air. “I'm at
work, you see,” he added, pointing to the manuscript book with that look of
escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their
work.
Prince Andrey stood before Pierre with a radiant, ecstatic face, full of new
life, and with the egoism of happiness smiled at him without noticing his gloomy
face.
“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I wanted to tell you yesterday, and I have
come to do so to-day. I have never felt anything like it. I am in love.”
Pierre suddenly heaved a heavy sigh, and dumped down his heavy person on the
sofa beside Prince Andrey.
“With Natasha Rostov, yes?” he said “Yes, yes, who else could it be? I would
never have believed it, but the feeling is too strong for me. Yesterday I was in
torment, in agony, but I would not exchange that agony even for anything in the
world. I have never lived till now, but I cannot live without her. But can she
love me? … I'm too old for her.…Why don't you speak? …”
“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre, suddenly getting up and walking
about the room. “I always thought so.…That girl is a treasure.…She's a very rare
sort of girl.…My dear fellow, don't, I entreat you, be too wise, don't doubt,
marry, marry, marry! … And I am sure no man was ever happier than you will
be.”
“But she?”
“She loves you.”
“Don't talk nonsense …” said Prince Andrey, smiling and looking into Pierre's
face.
“She loves you, I know it,” Pierre cried angrily.
“No; do listen,” said Prince Andrey, taking hold of him by the arm and
stopping him. “Do you know the state I am in? I must talk about it to some
one.”
“Well, well, talk away, I'm very glad,” said Pierre, and his face did really
change, the line of care in his brow was smoothed away, and he listened gladly
to Prince Andrey. His friend seemed, and was indeed, an utterly different, new
man. What had become of his ennui, his contempt of life, his disillusionment?
Pierre was the only person to whom he could have brought himself to speak quite
openly; but to him he did reveal all that was in his heart. Readily and boldly
he made plans reaching far into the future; said he could not sacrifice his own
happiness to the caprices of his father; declared that he would force his father
to aGREe to the marriage and like her, or dispense with his consent altogether;
then he marvelled at the feeling which had taken possession of him, as something
strange, and apart, independent of himself.
“I should never have believed it, if any one had told me I could love like
this,” said Prince Andrey. “It is utterly different from the feeling I once had.
The whole world is split into two halves for me: one—she, and there all is
happiness, hope, and light; the other half—all where she is not, there all is
dejection and darkness.…”
“Darkness and gloom,” repeated Pierre; “yes, yes, I understand that.”
name=Marker35>“I can't help loving the light; that's not my fault; and I am very happy. Do
you understand me? I know you are glad for me.”
“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with eyes full of
tenderness and sadness. The brighter the picture of Prince Andrey's fate before
his mind, the darker seemed his own.
