War and Peace (64 page)

Rostov flushing hotly drew Dolohov away into the other room.

“I can’t pay it all at once, you must take an I.O.U.,” said he.

“Listen, Rostov,” said Dolohov, smiling brightly, and looking straight into Nikolay’s eyes, “you know the saying: ‘Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is in love with you. I know it.”

“Oh! this is awful to feel oneself in this man’s power like this,” thought Rostov. He knew the shock the news of this loss would be to his father and mother; he knew what happiness it would be to be free of it
all, and felt that Dolohov knew that he could set him free from this shame and grief, and wanted now to play cat and mouse with him.

“Your cousin …” Dolohov would have said, but Nikolay cut him short.

“My cousin has nothing to do with the matter, and there is no need to mention her!” he cried, with fury.

“Then, when am I to receive it?” asked Dolohov.

“To-morrow,” said Rostov, and went out of the room.

To say “to-morrow,” and maintain the right tone was not difficult, but to arrive home alone, to see his sisters and brother, his mother and father, to confess and beg for money to which he had no right after giving his word of honour, was terrible.

At home they had not yet gone to bed. The younger members of the family after coming home from the theatre had had supper, and were now in a group about the clavichord. As soon as Nikolay entered the hall, he felt himself enfolded in the poetic atmosphere of love which dominated their household that winter; and now, since Dolohov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker about Sonya and Natasha, like the air before a storm. Sonya and Natasha, wearing the light blue dresses they had put on for the theatre, stood at the clavichord, pretty and conscious of being so, happy and smiling. Vera was playing draughts with Shinshin in the drawing-room. The old countess, waiting for her son and her husband to come in, was playing patience with an old gentlewoman, who was one of their household. Denisov, with shining eyes and ruffled hair, was sitting with one leg behind him at the clavichord. He was striking chords with his short fingers, and rolling his eyes, as he sang in his small, husky, but true voice a poem of his own composition, “The Enchantress,” to which he was trying to fit music.

he sang in his passionate voice, his black, agate eyes gleaming at the frightened and delighted Natasha.

“Splendid, capital!” Natasha cried. “Another couplet,” she said, not noticing Nikolay.

“Everything’s just the same with them,” thought Nikolay, peeping into the drawing-room, where he saw Vera and his mother and the old lady playing patience with her.

“Ah, and here’s Nikolenka.” Natasha ran up to him. “Is papa at home?” he asked.

“How glad I am that you have come,” said Natasha, not answering his question, “we are having such fun. Vassily Dmitritch is staying a day longer for me, do you know?”

“No, papa has not come in yet,” answered Sonya.

“Kolya, you there? Come to me, darling,” said the voice of the countess from the drawing-room. Nikolay went up to his mother, kissed her hand, and sitting down by her table, began silently watching her hands as they dealt the cards. From the hall he kept hearing the sound of laughter and merry voices, persuading Natasha to do something.

“Oh, very well, very well!” Denisov cried; “now it’s no use crying off, it’s your turn to sing the barcarolle, I entreat you.”

The countess looked round at her silent son.

“What’s the matter?” his mother asked Nikolay.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, as though sick of being continually asked the same question: “Will papa soon be in?”

“I expect so.”

“Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing about it. What am I to do with myself?” thought Nikolay, and he went back to the hall, where the clavichord was.

Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude of the barcarolle that Denisov particularly liked. Natasha was preparing to sing. Denisov was watching her with impassioned eyes.

Nikolay began walking to and fro in the room.

“What can induce her to want to sing? What can she sing? And there’s nothing to be so happy about in it,” thought Nikolay.

Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude. “My God, I’m ruined, I’m a dishonoured man. Bullet through my head, that’s the only thing left for me, and not singing,” he thought. “Go away? But where? It makes no difference, let them sing.”

Still walking about the room, Nikolay glanced gloomily at Denisov and the girls, avoiding their eyes.

“Nikolenka, what’s the matter?” Sonya’s eyes asked, looking intently at him. She saw at once that something had happened to him.

Nikolay turned away from her. Natasha, too, with her quick instinct instantly detected her brother’s state of mind. She noticed him, but she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, she was so far from sorrow, from sadness, from reproaches, that purposely she deceived herself (as young people so often do). “No, I’m too happy just now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with any one’s sorrow,” she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I’m most likely mistaken, he must be happy, just as I am.”

“Come, Sonya,” she said, walking into the very middle of the room, where to her mind the resonance was best of all. Holding her head up, letting her arms hang lifelessly as dancers do, Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still.

“Behold me, here I am!” she seemed to say, in response to the enthusiastic gaze with which Denisov followed her. “And what can she find to be so pleased at!” Nikolay wondered, looking at his sister. “How is it she isn’t feeling dull and ashamed!” Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that any one can produce at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times they leave us cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.

Natasha had for the first time begun that winter to take singing seriously, especially since Denisov had been so enthusiastic over her singing. She did not now sing like a child; there was not now in her singing that comical childish effort which used to be perceptible in it. But she did not yet sing well, said the musical connoisseurs who heard her. “Not trained: a fine voice, it must be trained,” every one said. But this was usually said a good while after her voice was hushed. While that untrained voice, with its irregular breathing and its strained transitions sounded, even connoisseurs said nothing, and simply enjoyed that untrained voice, and simply longed to hear it again. Her voice had a virginal purity, an ignorance of its capacities, and an unlaboured velvety softness, so closely connected with its lack of art in singing, that it seemed as though nothing could be changed in that voice without spoiling it.

“How is it?” thought Nikolay, hearing her voice and opening his eyes wide; “what has happened to her? How she is singing to-day!” he
thought. And all at once the whole world was for him concentrated into anticipations of the next note, the next bar, and everything in the world seemed divided up into three motives:
“Oh, mio crudele affetto
 … One, two, three … one … 
Oh, mio crudele affetto
 … One, two, three … one. Ugh, this senseless life of ours!” thought Nikolay. “All that, this calamity, and money, and Dolohov, and anger, and honour—it’s all nonsense … and this is what’s the real thing … Now, Natasha! now, darling! now, my girl!… how will she take that
si
? taken it! thank God!” and without being conscious that he was singing, he himself sung a second to support her high note. “My God! how fine! Can I have taken that note? how glorious!” he thought.

Oh, how that note had thrilled, and how something better that was in Rostov’s soul began thrilling too. And that something was apart from everything in the world, and above everything in the world. What were losses, and Dolohovs, and honour beside it!… All nonsense! One might murder, and steal, and yet be happy.…

It was long since Rostov had derived such enjoyment from music as on that day. But as soon as Natasha had finished her barcarolle, the reality forced itself upon his mind again. Saying nothing, he went out, and went down stairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later, the old prince came in, good-humoured and satisfied from his club. Nikolay heard him come in, and went in to him.

“Well, had a good time?” said Ilya Andreivitch, smiling proudly and joyfully to his son. Nikolay tried to say “Yes,” but could not; he was on the point of sobbing. The count was lighting his pipe, and did not notice his son’s condition.

“Ugh, it’s inevitable!” thought Nikolay, for the first and last time. And all at once, as though he were asking for the carriage to drive into town, he said to his father in the most casual tone, that made him feel vile to himself:

“Papa, I have come to you on a matter of business I was almost forgetting. I want some money.”

“You don’t say so?” said his father, who happened to be in particularly good spirits. “I told you that we shouldn’t be having any. Do you want a large sum?”

“Very large,” said Nikolay, flushing and smiling a stupid, careless smile, for which long after he could not forgive himself. “I have lost a little at cards, that is, a good deal, really, a great deal, forty-three thousand.”

“What! To whom?… You’re joking!” cried the count, flushing, as old people flush, an apoplectic red over his neck and the back of his head.

“I have promised to pay it to-morrow,” said Nikolay.

“Oh!” … said the count, flinging up his arms; and he dropped helplessly on the sofa.

“It can’t be helped! It happens to every one,” said his son in a free and easy tone, while in his heart he was feeling himself a low scoundrel, whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He would have liked to kiss his father’s hands, to beg his forgiveness on his knees, while carelessly, rudely even, he was telling him that it happened to every one.

Count Ilya Andreivitch dropped his eyes when he heard those words from his son, and began moving hurriedly, as though looking for something.

“Yes, yes,” he brought out, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to raise … happens to every one! yes, it happens to every one …” And the count cast a fleeting glance at his son’s face and walked out of the room.… Nikolay had been prepared to face resistance, but he had not expected this.

“Papa! pa … pa!” he cried after him, sobbing; “forgive me!” And clutching at his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.

While the father and son were having this interview, another, hardly less important, was taking place between the mother and daughter. Natasha, in great excitement, had run in to her mother.

“Mamma!… Mamma!… he has made me …”

“Made you what?”

“He’s made, made an offer. Mamma! Mamma!” she kept crying.

The countess could not believe her ears. Denisov had made an offer … to whom?… To this chit of a girl Natasha, who had only just given up playing with dolls, and was still having lessons.

“Natasha, enough of this silliness!” she said, hoping it was a joke.

“Silliness indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natasha angrily. “I have come to ask you what to do, and you talk to me of ‘silliness’ …”

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

“If it is true that Monsieur Denisov has made you an offer, then tell him he is a fool, that’s all.”

“No, he’s not a fool,” said Natasha, resentfully and seriously.

“Well, what would you have, then? You are all in love, it seems, nowadays. Oh, well, if you’re in love with him, better marry him,” said the countess, laughing angrily, “and God bless you.”

“No, mamma, I’m not in love with him. I suppose I’m not in love with him.”

“Well, then, tell him so.”

“Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, darling; it’s not my fault, is it?”

“No, but upon my word, my dear, if you like, I will go and tell him so,” said the countess, smiling.

“No, I’ll do it myself; only tell me how to say it. Everything comes easy to you,” she added, responding to her smile. “And if you could have seen how he said it to me! I know he did not mean to say it, but said it by accident.”

“Well, any way you must refuse him.”

“No, I mustn’t. I feel so sorry for him! He’s so nice.”

“Oh, well, accept his proposal, then. High time you were married, I suppose,” said her mother angrily and ironically.

“No, mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how to say it.”

“Well, there’s no need for you to say anything. I’ll speak to him myself,” said the countess, indignant that any one should have dared to treat this little Natasha as grown up.

“No, not on any account; I’ll go myself, and you listen at the door,”—and Natasha ran across the drawing-room to the hall, where Denisov, his face in his hands, was still sitting in the same chair at the clavichord. He jumped up at the sound of her light footsteps.

“Natalie,” he said, moving with rapid steps towards her, “decide my fate. It is in your hands!”

“Vassily Dmitritch, I’m so sorry for you!… No, but you are so nice … but it won’t do … that … but I shall always love you as I do now.”

Denisov bent over her, and she heard strange sounds that she did not understand. She kissed his tangled curly black head. At that moment they heard the hurried rustle of the countess’s skirts. She came up to them.

“Vassily Dmitritch, I thank you for the honour you do us,” said the
countess, in an embarrassed voice, which sounded severe to Denisov, “but my daughter is so young, and I should have thought that as my son’s friend you would have come first to me. In that case you would not have forced me to make this refusal.”

“Countess!…” said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face; he tried to say more, and stammered.