War and Peace (90 page)

A footman would have come in to clear away something in the room, but she would not let him come in. She shut the door after him, and continued her promenade about the room. She had come back that morning to her favourite mood of loving herself and being ecstatic over herself. “What a charming creature that Natasha is!” she said again of herself, speaking as some third person, a generic, masculine person.

“Pretty, a voice, young, and she’s in nobody’s way, only leave her in peace.” But, however much she might be left in peace, she could not now be at peace, and she felt that immediately.

In the vestibule the hall-door opened; someone was asking, “At home?” and steps were audible. Natasha was looking at herself in the glass, but she did not see herself. She heard sounds in the vestibule. When she saw herself, her face was pale. It was
he
. She knew it for certain, though she herself caught the sound of his voice at the opened door.

Natasha, pale and panic-stricken, flew into the drawing-room.

“Mamma, Bolkonsky has come,” she said. “Mamma, this is awful, unbearable!… I don’t want … to be tortured! What am I to do?”

The countess had not time to answer her before Prince Andrey with a troubled and serious face walked into the drawing-room. As soon as he saw Natasha his face beamed with delight. He kissed the countess’s hand and Natasha’s, and sat down beside the sofa.

“It’s a long while since we have had the pleasure …” the countess was beginning, but Prince Andrey cut her short, answering her implied question, and obviously in haste to say what he had to say.

“I have not been to see you all this time because I have been to see my father; I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only returned last night,” he said, glancing at Natasha. “I want to have a talk with you, countess,” he added after a moment’s silence.

The countess dropped her eyes, sighing heavily.

“I am at your disposal,” she brought out.

Natasha knew she ought to go, but she was unable to do so: something seemed gripping her throat, and, regardless of civility, she stared straight at Prince Andrey with wide-open eyes.

“At once?… This minute?… No, it cannot be!” she was thinking.

He glanced at her again, and that glance convinced her that she was not mistaken. Yes, at once, this very minute her fate was to be decided.

“Run away, Natasha; I will call you,” the countess whispered.

With frightened and imploring eyes Natasha glanced at Prince Andrey and at her mother, and went out.

“I have come, countess, to ask for your daughter’s hand,” said Prince Andrey.

The countess’s face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.

“Your offer …” the countess began at last, sedately. He sat silent, looking into her face. “Your offer” … (she hesitated in confusion) “is agreeable to us, and … I accept your offer. I am glad of it. And my husband … I hope … but it must rest with herself …”

“I will speak to her, when I have received your consent.… Do you give it me?” said Prince Andrey.

“Yes,” said the countess, and she held out her hand to him, and with mingled feelings of aversion and tenderness she pressed her lips to his forehead as he bent to kiss her hand. Her wish was to love him as a son; but she felt that he was a man alien to her, and that she was afraid of him.

“I am sure my husband will consent,” said the countess; “but your father …”

“My father, whom I have informed of my plans, has made it an express condition that the marriage should not take place for a year. That too, I meant to speak of to you,” said Prince Andrey.

“It is true that Natasha is very young, but—so long as that?”

“It could not be helped,” said Prince Andrey with a sigh.

“I will send her to you,” said the countess, and she went out of the room.

“Lord, have mercy upon us!” she kept repeating as she looked for her daughter.

Sonya told her that Natasha was in her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, with a pale face and dry eyes; she was gazing at the holy picture, and murmuring something to herself as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she leaped up and flew towards her.

“Well, mamma,… well?”

“Go, go to him. He asks your hand,” said the countess, coldly it seemed to Natasha.… “Yes … go …” the mother murmured mournfully and reproachfully with a deep sigh as her daughter ran off.

Natasha could not have said how she reached the drawing-room. As she entered the door and caught sight of him, she stopped short: “Is it possible that this stranger has now become
everything
to me?” she asked herself, and instantly answered: “Yes, everything: he alone is dearer to
me now than everything in the world.” Prince Andrey approached her with downcast eyes.

“I have loved you from the first minute I saw you. Can I hope?”

He glanced at her and was struck by the serious, impassioned look in her face. Her face seemed to say: “Why ask? Why doubt of what you cannot but know? Why talk when no words can express what one feels?”

She came nearer to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, yes,” said Natasha, almost angrily it seemed. She drew a deep sigh, and another, her breathing came more and more quickly, and she burst into sobs.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I am so happy,” she answered, smiling through her tears. She bent over closer to him, thought a second, as though wondering whether it were possible, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrey held her hands, looked into her eyes and could find no trace of his former love for her in his heart. Some sudden reaction seemed to have taken place in his soul; there was none of the poetic and mysterious charm of desire left in it; instead of that there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, terror at her devotion and trustfulness, an irksome, yet sweet, sense of duty, binding him to her for ever. The actual feeling, though not so joyous and poetical as the former feeling, was more serious and deeper.

“Did your mamma tell you that it cannot be for a year?” said Prince Andrey, still gazing into her eyes.

“Can this be I, the baby-girl (as every one used to call me)?” Natasha was thinking. “Can I really be from this minute a
wife
, on a level with this unknown, charming, intellectual man, who is looked up to even by my father? Can it be true? Can it be true that now there can be no more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that now a responsibility is laid upon me for every word and action? Oh, what did he ask me?”

“No,” she answered, but she had not understood his question.

“Forgive me,” said Prince Andrey, “but you are so young, and I have had so much experience of life. I am afraid for you. You don’t know yourself.”

Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying to take in the meaning of his words; but she did not understand them.

“Hard as that year will be to me, delaying my happiness,” continued
Prince Andrey, “in that time you will be sure of yourself. I beg you to make me happy in a year, but you are free; our engagement shall be kept a secret, and if you should find out that you do not love me, or if you should come to love …” said Prince Andrey with a forced smile.

“Why do you say that?” Natasha interrupted. “You know that from the very day when you first came to Otradnoe, I have loved you,” she said, firmly persuaded that she was speaking the truth.

“In a year you will learn to know yourself.…”

“A who-ole year!” cried Natasha suddenly, only now grasping that their marriage was to be deferred for a year. “But why a year?… Why a year?…”

Prince Andrey began to explain to her the reasons for this delay. Natasha did not hear him.

“And can’t it be helped?” she asked. Prince Andrey made no reply, but his face expressed the impossibility of altering this decision.

“That’s awful! Oh, it’s awful, awful!” Natasha cried suddenly, and she broke into sobs again. “I shall die if I have to wait a year; it’s impossible, it’s awful.” She glanced at her lover’s face and saw the look of sympathetic pain and perplexity on it.

“No, no, I’ll do anything,” she said, suddenly checking her tears; “I’m so happy!”

Her father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple their blessing. From that day Prince Andrey began to visit the Rostovs as Natasha’s affianced lover.

There was no formal betrothal and no announcement was made of the engagement of Bolkonsky and Natasha; Prince Andrey insisted upon that. He said that since he was responsible for the delay of their marriage, he ought to bear the whole burden of it. He said that he was bound for ever by his word, but he did not want to bind Natasha and would leave her perfect freedom. If in another six months she were to feel that she did not love him, she would have a perfect right to refuse him. It need hardly be said that neither Natasha nor her parents would hear of this possibility; but Prince Andrey insisted on having his own way. Prince Andrey came every day to the Rostovs’, but he did not
behave with Natasha as though he were engaged to her; he addressed her formally and kissed only her hand. From the day of his proposal Prince Andrey’s relations with Natasha had become quite different from what had existed between them before: their relations were simple and intimate. It seemed as though till then they had not known each other. Both loved to recall how they had regarded one another when they were nothing to each other. Now they both felt utterly different creatures—then affected, now simple and sincere. At first there had been a feeling of awkwardness in the family in regard to Prince Andrey. He seemed a man from another world, and Natasha used for a long while to try and make her people understand Prince Andrey, and declared to every one with pride that he only seemed to be so different, that he was really like every one else, and that she was not afraid of him and no one need be. After a few days, the rest of the family got accustomed to seeing him, and went on without constraint with their usual manner of life, in which he took part. He knew how to talk to the count about the management of his estates, to the countess and Natasha about dress, and to Sonya about her album and embroidery. Sometimes the Rostovs among themselves, and in Prince Andrey’s presence, expressed their wonder at the way it had all happened, and at the events that obviously betokened that it was to be: Prince Andrey’s coming to Otradnoe, and their coming to Petersburg, and the resemblance between Natasha and Prince Andrey, which the old nurse had remarked on Prince Andrey’s first visit, and the meeting in 1805 between Andrey and Nikolay, and many other incidents betokening that it was to be, were observed by the family.

The house was full of that poetic atmosphere of dullness and silence, which always accompanies the presence of an engaged couple. Often as they all sat together every one was silent. Sometimes the others got up and went away, and the engaged pair were still as mute when they were left alone. Rarely they spoke of their future life together. Prince Andrey felt frightened and ashamed to speak of it. Natasha shared the feeling, as she did all his feelings, which she never failed to divine. Once Natasha began questioning him about his son.

Prince Andrey blushed—a thing frequent with him at that time, which Natasha particularly liked to see—and said that his son would not live with them.

“Why not?” said Natasha, taking fright.

“I cannot take him from his grandfather and then …”

“How I should have loved him!” said Natasha, at once divining his
thought; “but I know you want to avoid any pretext for our being blamed.”

The old count sometimes came up to Prince Andrey, kissed him and asked his advice about some question relating to Petya’s education or Nikolay’s position. The old countess sighed as she looked at them. Sonya was afraid every instant of being in their way, and was always trying to find excuses for leaving them alone, even when they had no wish to be alone. When Prince Andrey talked—he described things very well—Natasha listened to him with pride. When she talked, she noticed with joy and dread that he watched her with an intent and scrutinising look. She asked herself in perplexity: “What is it he seeks in me? What is it he is probing for with that look? What if I haven’t in me what he is searching for in that look?” Sometimes she fell into the mood of wild gaiety characteristic of her, and then she particularly loved to see and hear how Prince Andrey laughed. He rarely laughed, but when he did laugh he abandoned himself utterly to his mirth, and she always felt herself drawn closer to him by this laughter. Natasha would have been perfectly happy if the thought of the separation before her, coming closer and closer, had not terrified her. He too turned pale and cold at the mere thought of it.

On the day before he was to leave Petersburg, Prince Andrey brought with him Pierre, who had not been at the Rostovs’ since the day of the ball. Pierre seemed absent-minded and embarrassed. He talked chiefly to the countess. Natasha was sitting at the chess-board with Sonya, and invited Prince Andrey to join them. He went to them.

“You have known Bezuhov a long while, haven’t you?” he asked. “Do you like him?”

“Yes; he’s very nice, but very absurd.”

And she began, as people always did when speaking of Pierre, to tell anecdotes of his absent-mindedness, anecdotes which were made up, indeed, about him.

“You know, I have confided our secret to him,” said Prince Andrey. “I have known him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,” he said, with sudden seriousness, “I am going away; God knows what may happen. You may change … Oh, I know I ought not to speak of that. Only one thing—if anything were to happen to you, while I am away …”

“What could happen?”

“If any trouble were to come,” pursued Prince Andrey. “I beg you, Mademoiselle Sophie, if anything were to happen, to go to him and no
one else for advice and help. He is a most absent-minded and eccentric person, but he has the truest heart.”

Neither her father nor her mother, neither Sonya nor Prince Andrey could have foreseen the effect of the parting on Natasha. She wandered about the house all that day, flushed, excited, and tearless, busying herself about the most trivial matters as though she had no notion of what was before her. She did not weep even at the moment when he kissed her hand for the last time.