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A FEW INTIMATE FRIENDS were, as usual on Sundays, dining with the
Rostovs.
Pierre came early, hoping to find them alone.
Pierre had that year grown so stout, that he would have been grotesque, had
not he been so tall, so broad-shouldered, and so powerfully built that he
carried off his bulky proportions with evident ease.
Puffing, and muttering something to himself, he went up the stairs. His
coachman did not even ask whether he should wait. He knew that when the count
was at the Rostovs', it was till midnight. The Rostovs' footmen ran with eager
welcome to take off his cloak, and take his stick and hat. From the habit of the
club, Pierre always left his stick and hat in the vestibule.
The first person he saw at the Rostovs' was Natasha. Before he saw her, while
taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practising her solfa exercises in
the hall. He knew she had given up singing since her illness, and so he was
surprised and delighted at the sound of her voice. He opened the door softly,
and saw Natasha, in the lilac dress she had worn at the service, walking up and
down the room singing. She had her back turned to him as he opened the door; but
when she turned sharply round and saw his broad, surprised face, she flushed and
ran quickly up to him.
“I want to try and sing again,” she said. “It's something to do, any way,”
she added as though in excuse.
“Quite right too!”
“How glad I am you have come! I'm so happy to-day,” she said with the old
eagerness that Pierre had not seen for so long. “You know, Nikolenka has got the
St. George's Cross. I'm so proud of him.”
“Of course, I sent you the announcement. Well, I won't interrupt you,” he
added, and would have gone on to the drawing-room.
Natasha stopped him.
“Count, is it wrong of me to sing?” she said, blushing, but still keeping her
eyes fixed inquiringly on Pierre.
“No.… Why should it be? On the contrary.… But why do you ask me?”
“I don't know myself,” Natasha answered quickly; “but I shouldn't like to do
anything you wouldn't like. I trust you in everything. You don't know how much
you are to me, and what a great deal you have done for me!” …She spoke quickly,
and did not notice how Pierre flushed at these words. “I saw in that
announcement, he, Bolkonsky” (she uttered the word in a rapid whisper),
“he is in Russia, and in the army again. What do you think,” she said hurriedly,
evidently in haste to speak because she was afraid her strength would fail her,
“will he ever forgive me? Will he not always have an evil feeling for me? What
do you think? What do you think?”
“I think…” said Pierre. “He has nothing to forgive… If I were in his place…”
From association of ideas, Pierre was instantly carried back in imagination to
the time when he had comforted her by saying that if he were not himself, but
the best man in the world and free, he would beg on his knees for her hand, and
the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession of him, and the
same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him time to utter them.
“Yes, you—you,” she said, uttering that word you with enthusiasm,
“that's a different matter. Any one kinder, more generous than you, I have never
known—no one could be. If it had not been for you then, and now too… I don't
know what would have become of me, because…” Tears suddenly came into her eyes:
she turned away, held her music before her eyes, and began again singing and
walking up and down the room.
At that moment Petya ran in from the drawing-room.
Petya was by now a handsome, rosy lad of fifteen, with full red lips, very
like Natasha. He was being prepared for the university, but had lately resolved
in secret with his comrade, Obolensky, to go into the hussars.
Petya rushed up to his namesake, Pierre, to talk to him of this scheme.
He had begged him to find out whether he would be accepted in the
hussars.
Pierre walked about the drawing-room, not heeding Petya.
The boy pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
“Come, tell me about my plan, Pyotr Kirillitch, for mercy's sake! You're my
only hope,” said Petya.
“Oh yes, your plan. To be an hussar? I'll speak about it; to-day I'll tell
them all about it.”
“Well, my dear fellow, have you got the manifesto?” asked the old count. “My
little countess was at the service in the Razumovskys' chapel; she heard the new
prayer there. Very fine it was, she tells me.”
“Yes, I have got it,” answered Pierre. “The Tsar will be here tomorrow.…
There's to be an extraordinary meeting of the nobility and a levy they say of
ten per thousand. Oh, I congratulate you.”
“Yes, yes, thank God. Well, and what news from the army?”
“Our soldiers have retreated again. They are before Smolensk, they say,”
answered Pierre.
“Mercy on us, mercy on us!” said the count. “Where's the manifesto?”
“The Tsar's appeal? Ah, yes!” Pierre began looking for the papers in his
pockets, and could not find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the
countess's hand as she came in, and looked round uneasily, evidently expecting
Natasha, who had left off singing now, but had not come into the drawing-room.
“Good Heavens, I don't know where I have put it,” he said.
“To be sure, he always mislays everything,” said the countess.
Natasha came in with a softened and agitated face and sat down, looking
mutely at Pierre. As soon as she came into the room, Pierre's face, which had
been overcast, brightened, and while still seeking for the paper, he looked
several times intently at her.
“By God, I'll drive round, I must have forgotten them at home. Of
course…”
“Why, you will be late for dinner.”
“Oh! and the coachman has not waited.”
But Sonya had gone into the vestibule to look for the papers, and there found
them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully put them under the lining. Pierre
would have read them.
“No, after dinner,” said the old count, who was obviously looking forward to
the reading of them as a great treat.
At dinner they drank champagne to the health of the new cavalier of St.
George, and Shinshin told them of the news of the town, of the illness of the
old Georgian princess, and of the disappearance of Metivier from Moscow, and
described how a German had been brought before Rastoptchin by the people, who
declared (so Count Rastoptchin told the story) that he was a champignon,
and how Count Rastoptchin had bade them let the champignon go, as he was
really nothing but an old German mushroom.
“They keep on seizing people,” said the count. “I tell the countess she ought
not to speak French so much. Now's not the time to do it.”
“And did you hear,” said Shinshin, “Prince Galitzin has engaged a Russian
teacher—he's learning Russian. It begins to be dangerous to speak French in the
streets.”
“Well, Count Pyotr Kirillitch, now if they raise a general militia, you will
have to mount a horse too, ah?” said the old count addressing Pierre.
Pierre was dreamy and silent all dinner-time. He looked at the count as
though not understanding.
“Yes, yes, for the war,” he said. “No! A fine soldier I should make! And yet
everything's so strange; so strange! Why, I don't understand it myself. I don't
know, I am far from being military in my taste, but in these days no one can
answer for himself.”
After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in a low chair, and with a
serious face asked Sonya, who enjoyed the reputation of a good reader, to read
the Tsar's appeal.
“To our metropolitan capital Moscow. The enemy has entered our border with an
immense host and comes to lay waste our beloved country,” Sonya read
conscientiously in her thin voice. The count listened with closed eyes, heaving
abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natasha sat erect, looking inquisitively and directly from her father to
Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess shook
her head disapprovingly and wrathfully at every solemn expression in the
manifesto. In all these words she saw nothing but that the danger menacing her
son would not soon be over. Shinshin, pursing his lips up into a sarcastic
smile, was clearly preparing to make a joke at the first subject that presented
itself: at Sonya's reading, the count's next remark, or even the manifesto
itself, if no better pretext should be found.
After reading of the dangers threatening Russia, the hopes the Tsar rested
upon Moscow, and particularly on its illustrious nobility, Sonya, with a quiver
in her voice, due principally to the attention with which they were listening to
her, read the last words: “We shall without delay be in the midst of our people
in the capital, and in other parts of our empire, for deliberation, and for the
guidance of all our militia levies both those which are already barring the
progress of the foe, and those to be formed for conflict with him, wherever he
may appear. And may the ruin with which he threatens us recoil on his own head,
and may Europe, delivered from bondage, glorify the name of Russia!”
“That's right!” cried the count, opening his wet eyes, and several times
interrupted by a sniff, as though he had put a bottle of strong smelling-salts
to his nose. He went on, “Only let our sovereign say the word, we will sacrifice
everything without grudging.”
Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count's patriotism, Natasha had jumped up from her seat and run to her
father.
“What a darling this papa is!” she cried, kissing him, and she glanced again
at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had come back with her fresh
interest in life.
“Oh, what a patriot she is!” said Shinshin.
“Not a patriot at all, but simply…” Natasha began, nettled. “You think
everything funny, but this isn't at all a joke…”
“A joke,” repeated the count. “Only let him say the word, we will all go…
We're not a set of Germans!”
“Did you notice,” said Pierre, “the words, ‘for deliberation…' ”
“Yes, to be sure, for whatever might come…”
Meanwhile Petya, to whom no one was paying attention, went up to his father,
and very red, said in a voice that passed abruptly from gruffness to shrillness,
“Well, now, papa, I tell you positively—and mamma too, say what you will—I tell
you you must let me go into the army, because I cannot… and that's all about
it.”
The countess in dismay turned her eyes up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
said angrily to her husband:
“See, what your talk has brought us to!”
But the count recovered the same instant from the excitement.
“Come, come,” he said. “A fine warrior you'd make! Don't talk nonsense; you
have your studies to attend to.”
“It's not nonsense, papa. Fedya Obolensky's younger than I am, and he's going
too; and what's more, I can't anyhow study now, when…” Petya stopped, flushed
till his face was perspiring, yet stoutly went on … “when the country's in
danger.”
“Hush, hush, nonsense!…”
“Why, but you said yourself you would sacrifice everything.”
“Petya! I tell you be quiet,” cried the count, looking at his wife, who was
gazing with a white face and fixed eyes at her younger son.
“Let me say …Pyotr Kirillovitch here will tell you…”
“I tell you, it's nonsense; the milk's hardly dry on his lips, and he wants
to go into the army! Come, come, I tell you,” and the count, taking the papers
with him, was going out of the room, probably to read them once more in his
study before his nap.
“Pyotr Kirillovitch, let us have a smoke.…”
Pierre felt embarrassed and hesitating. Natasha's unusually brilliant and
eager eyes, continually turned upon him with more than cordiality in them, had
reduced him to this condition.
“No; I think I'll go home.…”
“Go home? But you meant to spend the evening with us.… You come rarely
enough, as it is. And this girl of mine,” said the count good-humouredly,
looking towards Natasha, “is never in spirits but when you are here.…”
“But I have forgotten something. I really must go home.… Business.…” Pierre
said hurriedly.
“Well, good-bye then,” said the count as he went out of the room.
“Why are you going away? Why are you so upset? What for?” Natasha asked
Pierre, looking with challenging eyes into his face.
“Because I love you!” he wanted to say, but he did not say it. He crimsoned
till the tears came, and dropped his eyes.
“Because it is better for me not to be so often with you.… Because …no,
simply I have business.…”
“What for? No, do tell me,” Natasha was beginning resolutely, and she
suddenly stopped. Both in dismay and embarrassment looked at one another. He
tried to laugh, but could not; his smile expressed suffering, and he kissed her
hand and went out without a word.
Pierre made up his mind not to visit the Rostovs again.
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