tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or
pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.
The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself
and began to cry.
"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!" and
she covered her face with her hands.
Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and paced up
and down the room. He understood what she was weeping about, but could
not in his heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded
from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. "Is it just
sentimentality, old wives’ tales, or is she right?" he asked himself.
Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her face filled with
love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and that he
had long been sinning against himself.
"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen again;
I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy
asking for forgiveness.
The tears flowed faster still from the countess’ eyes. She took his hand
and kissed it.
"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the
subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of
Laocoön’s head.
"Today - it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don’t remind me of it!" and
again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan’t occur again,
and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the broken
ring.
After that, when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the
blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, Nicholas would
turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the
man who was making him angry. But he did forget himself once or twice
within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and confess to his wife, and
would again promise that this should really be the very last time.
"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."
"You should go, go away at once, if you don’t feel strong enough to
control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her husband.
Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not liked.
He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, and
consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The
whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work
on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same
business-like seriousness - leaving home for a month, or even two, with
his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his time
reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he
spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he said, a serious
library, and he made it a rule to read through all the books he bought.
He would sit in his study with a grave air, reading - a task he first
imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit
affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of
being occupied with serious matters. In winter, except for business
excursions, he spent most of his time at home making himself one with
his family and entering into all the details of his children’s relations
with their mother. The harmony between him and his wife grew closer and
closer and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.
From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before
that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and
Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to
be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he
had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her
wealth had influenced Nicholas’ choice. She could not find fault with
Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will
toward her which she could not overcome.
Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about her
own injustice toward her.
"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal - there
is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."
"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.
"‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be
taken away.’ You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don’t know.
Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don’t know, but from her is taken away, and
everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her.
Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had
a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile
flower, you know - like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for
her, and sometimes I think she doesn’t feel it as you or I would."
Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel must be
understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha’s
explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her position
trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a
whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the
home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children,
was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
gratitude.
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same
scale as under the old prince.
The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than
simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood,
plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with
very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own
serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole
families of the Rostovs’ and Bolkonskis’ relations sometimes came to
Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays
of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its
ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers,
provided out of the produce of the estate.
CHAPTER IX
It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha had
been staying at her brother’s with her husband and children since early
autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three
weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
expected back every minute.
Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General
Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this fifth of
December.
On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would come to
congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the elections
of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to spend the eve
of that day in his usual way. He examined the bailiff’s accounts of
the village in Ryazan which belonged to his wife’s nephew, wrote two
business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and
stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was a great saint’s
day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk
with his wife sat down at the long table laid for twenty persons, at
which the whole household had assembled. At that table were his mother,
his mother’s old lady companion Belova, his wife, their three children
with their governess and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his tutor, Sonya,
Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
Ivanovich, the late prince’s architect, who was living on in retirement
at Bald Hills.
Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband took
his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after taking
up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing
before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when
he came in to dinner straight from the farm - especially before the soup.
Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when she herself was in
a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had his soup and then
began to talk to him and make him admit that there was no cause for his
ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked
him where he had been. He replied. She again inquired whether
everything was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him wince
unpleasantly and he replied hastily.
"Then I’m not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross with
me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and wished
to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but
could not refrain from asking some more questions.
Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general and
lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the table
and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her
hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.
"You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even think of being
angry," he replied.
But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I won’t
tell you why."
Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya and the
old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree,
could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their
moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they
had been happiest together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement
and hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess Mary’s
pregnancies, and this was such a time.
"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with apparent
cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on purpose to
vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I
shall have to suffer, so today I’ll go and rest."
And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and
lay down on the sofa.
"That’s always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to everyone
except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, especially when I
am in this condition." She looked down at her expanded figure and in the
glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked
larger than ever.
And everything annoyed her - Denisov’s shouting and laughter, Natasha’s
talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.
Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
irritated.
Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of
what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.
The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.
"Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with him," she
said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother,
followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.
"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep - he was so tired," said Sonya, meeting
her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that she
crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."
Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that
Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with evident
difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made no reply, but
to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
to the door. Sonya went away by another door. From the room in which
Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his even breathing, every
slightest tone of which was familiar to his wife. As she listened to it
she saw before her his smooth handsome forehead, his mustache, and his
whole face, as she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night
when he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat. And at
that moment little Andrew shouted from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma’s
standing here!" Countess Mary turned pale with fright and made signs
to the boy. He grew silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to
Countess Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through
the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and
his voice said crossly:
"I can’t get a moment’s peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you bring
him here?"
"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me...."
Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father’s pet, having learned from
her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room, ran
to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little girl boldly
opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with energetic steps of
her sturdy little legs, and having examined the position of her father,
who was asleep with his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand
which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on his
face.
"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary’s frightened whisper from the
door. "Papa wants to sleep."
"No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep," said little Natasha with
conviction. "He’s laughing."
Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.
"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.
She went in and sat down by her husband.
"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just looked
in."
Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife and,
seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and kissed
her hair.
"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.
Natasha smiled bashfully.
"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the spot
where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
"I don’t know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying to the
question he knew was in his wife’s mind.
"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like
that. It always seems to me..."
"Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
said gaily.
"It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so plain... always...
and now... in this cond..."
"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that
makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind who are
loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don’t love her, but...
I don’t know how to put it. Without you, or when something comes between
us like this, I seem lost and can’t do anything. Now do I love my
finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it off!"
"I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re not angry with
me?"
"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing his hair
he began to pace the room.
"Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?" he began, immediately
thinking aloud in his wife’s presence now that they had made it up.
He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he told
her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.
Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and in
her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the children.
"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing to
little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here is our
logic. I say: ‘Papa wants to sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’
And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong hand,
lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the legs, and
paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree happiness
on the faces of both father and daughter.
"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one," his wife
whispered in French.
"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."
At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps in
the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.
"Somebody has come."
"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary and left
the room.
In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little daughter a
gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly
from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded
him of dancing, and looking at the child’s round happy little face he
thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had
danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering the room
a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You should have
seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long.
Well, come along now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were parted," she
added, looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.
Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy," she
whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time she
sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she
felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of happiness
unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily thought at that
instant.
CHAPTER X
Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had
three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was
now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult
to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natasha of
former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm, soft,
and serene expression. In her face there was none of the ever-glowing
animation that had formerly burned there and constituted its charm.
Now her face and body were often all that one saw, and her soul was
not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face now. That
happened only when, as was the case that day, her husband returned home,
or a sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess Mary spoke of
Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
was jealous of Prince Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when
something happened to induce her to sing, a practice she had quite
abandoned since her marriage. At the rare moments when the old fire
did kindle in her handsome, fully developed body she was even more
attractive than in former days.
Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is to
say, in Nicholas’ house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen
in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude - she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought
that she did not - but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the nursing
of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband’s life, she had
demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing society.
All who had known Natasha before her marriage wondered at the change
in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with her
maternal instinct had realized that all Natasha’s outbursts had been due
to her need of children and a husband - as she herself had once exclaimed
at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest - and her mother was now
surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never understood
Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that Natasha
would make an exemplary wife and mother.
"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."
Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself
go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be
even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and
should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her
husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery,
of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up
just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with
her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show
herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction
to all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of
her husband, to whom she had from the first moment given herself up
entirely - that is, with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden
from him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something
else - indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.
To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic
songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn
herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps
have been agreeable - she did not know - but she had no time at all for it.
The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress, or
to choosing her words was that she really had no time to spare for these
things.
We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in
a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so
trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire
attention is devoted to it.
The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha’s attention was her family:
that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong
entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear,
bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger
did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers
appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet
was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions about women’s
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights,
though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but
these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively
did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is,
only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which
lies in the family.
Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of
how to get the greatest gratification from one’s dinner, did not then
and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the
nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two
dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his
purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have
many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that
case will not have a family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the
family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more than one
can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are needed for
the family - that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed a husband. A
husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw no
need of any other or better husband, but as all the powers of her soul
were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not imagine
and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if things were
different.
Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
society of her relatives - Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother, and
Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could come striding
disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face
show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby’s napkin, and from whom
she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was much better.
To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she dressed
and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy - she was jealous
of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain - were
habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general opinion was
that Pierre was under his wife’s thumb, which was really true. From the
very first days of their married life Natasha had announced her demands.
Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife’s view, to him a perfectly
novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to her and to the
family. His wife’s demands astonished him, but they also flattered him,
and he submitted to them.
Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did
not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a
whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on
business - in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which
she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great
importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to
regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At
home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband,
and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupied - that is, was
reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality for
anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only to express a
wish and Natasha would jump up and run to fulfill it.
The entire household was governed according to Pierre’s supposed orders,
that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way of
life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natasha’s
occupations, the children’s upbringing, were all selected not merely
with regard to Pierre’s expressed wishes, but to what Natasha from the
thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she
deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once
arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to
change his mind she would fight him with his own weapons.
Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their
first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse
three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her
of Rousseau’s view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet
nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite
the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband
himself - who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself,
a thing then unheard of and considered injurious - she insisted on having
her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.
It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife
would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and
delight would find in his wife’s ideas and actions the very thought
against which she had argued, but divested of everything superfluous
that in the excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his
opinion.
After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw
himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself
inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really good in
him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected.
And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a direct and
mysterious reflection.
CHAPTER XI
Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostovs
he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come
to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being
discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal
founders.
On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) Natasha
herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel
his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all
her husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she did not
understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such
matters. To Pierre’s timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she
replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return.
He was given four weeks’ leave of absence.
Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight
before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
irritability.
Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with
the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He
looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a
person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about
the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.
Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her
tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.
"It’s all nonsense, all rubbish - those discussions which lead to nothing
and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very affairs
in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.
And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was
conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous, you would
like to pay him out, you are afraid - but here am I! And I am he..." and
that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and
he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just
what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her
husband more easily.
She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh was heard
at the front door, and the old nurse - knowing how to please her
mistress - entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming
face.
"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest
she should rouse the dozing baby.
"He’s come, ma’am," whispered the nurse.
The blood rushed to Natasha’s face and her feet involuntarily moved, but
she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his eyes and
looked at her. "You’re here?" he seemed to be saying, and again lazily
smacked his lips.
Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little, handed
him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. But at the
door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for having in
her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with
raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.
"Go, ma’am! Don’t worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the kind of
familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.
Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his
pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood of
brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.
"He’s come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he too
was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.
On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
unwinding his scarf. "It’s he! It’s really he! He has come!" she said
to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head to her
breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face,
covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and contented...."
Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
reproaches and angry words.
"Yes, it’s all very well for you. You are pleased, you’ve had a good
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown consideration
for the children. I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Petya was at
death’s door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..."
Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he
knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two;
above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted
to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous,
frightened face and bent down.
"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"
"All right now. Come along! I wonder you’re not ashamed! If only you
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"
"You are well?"
"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went to
their rooms.
When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the nursery
holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right palm and
dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby’s broad face
with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since over and there
was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha’s face as she gazed tenderly at
her husband and child.
"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
asked.
"Yes, capitally."
"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby’s head.) "But how he did
frighten me... You’ve seen the princess? Is it true she’s in love with
that..."
"Yes, just fancy..."
At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the baby
on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. But
in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby
with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his
attention.
"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby.
"Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can’t understand
how it is you don’t see the charm of these delicious marvels."
"I don’t and can’t," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. "A
lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"
"And yet he’s such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."
"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his hand is
just made for a baby’s seat. Just look!"
"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.
CHAPTER XII
As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several perfectly
distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, though each
retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every
event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house was important to all
these worlds, but each had its own special reasons to rejoice or grieve
over that occurrence independently of the others.
For instance, Pierre’s return was a joyful and important event and they
all felt it to be so.
The servants - the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life - were glad of Pierre’s return because they knew that
when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day to attend
to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper, and also
because they would all receive handsome presents for the holidays.
The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre’s return because
no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did.
He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only piece)
to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced, and they felt
sure he had brought presents for them all.
Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted because
Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his rapturous and
passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this love for Pierre
whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought him up
had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she loved him, and
little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him with just a shade of
contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did not want to be an hussar or
a Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be learned,
wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre’s presence his face always shone
with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to
him. He did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards,
with Dessalles or by himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of
everything Pierre had said. Pierre’s past life and his unhappiness prior
to 1812 (of which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from
some words he had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity,
Platon Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially Pierre’s
friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not remember - all this
made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion with
which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent
tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his friend. But the father
whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a divinity who could not
be pictured, and of whom he never thought without a swelling heart and
tears of sadness and rapture. So the boy also was happy that Pierre had
arrived.
The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and unite
any company he was in.
The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more smoothly
and peacefully.
The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.
Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made
haste to satisfy all their expectations.
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid
of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting
his mother - and brother-in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for
a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days
of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect
him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he
had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he
forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that
Natasha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others
only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an
unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred
Natasha’s censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive
things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which
to Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now
added stinginess.
From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs - which had been
in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife’s debts - had begun
to improve.
Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now
been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not in
his power, and so that way of life proved economical.
With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
shopman.
Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her
lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he
showed her.
"That’s for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the material.
"It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"
Pierre told her the price.
"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be and
Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added, unable to
suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls,
of a kind then just coming into fashion.
"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned Pierre.
"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. "When
I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again
by then. Well, let’s go now."
And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to
the old countess’ rooms.
The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.
The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a
frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip
had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.
After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she
felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept
awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death
could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young children
and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had
no external aims - only a need to exercise her various functions and
inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep,
work, give vent to her anger, and so on, merely because she had a
stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not
under any external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do,
when behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising their
functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she physically
needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
because her nose had to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their
full vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.
Thus in the morning - especially if she had eaten anything rich the day
before - she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest
pretext Belova’s deafness.
She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other end
of the room.
"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.
And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they’ve come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"
Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp
or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability her face
would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belova
would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess’ face yellow. Just
as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise
her still-existing faculty of thinking - and the pretext for that was a
game of patience. When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be
the pretext. When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health
would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the
pretext would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise,
which was usually toward seven o’clock when she had had an after-dinner
rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.
The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole household though no
one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy
her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile
between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common
understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self,
that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to
her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as
full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. "Memento
mori," said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the
little children failed to understand this and avoided her.
CHAPTER XIII
When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was in
one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion of
playing patience, and so - though by force of habit she greeted him with
the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting
for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with another
customary remark: "It’s not the gift that’s precious, my dear, but that
you give it to me, an old woman..." - yet it was evident that she was
not pleased by Pierre’s arrival at that moment when it diverted her
attention from the unfinished game.
She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents.
They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a
bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with
a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count’s portrait on the lid which
Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had
long wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention chiefly to
the box for cards.
"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back - for I never saw
anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we
to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn’t see
anything, doesn’t remember anything," she went on, repeating her usual
phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her companion, "see what
a box for cards my son has brought us!"
Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.
Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had much to
talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess - not
that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so
far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her
presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to
repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was
dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to
remember - yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from
habit, and Pierre answered the countess’ questions as to whether Prince
Vasili had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings
and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
to which she herself was indifferent.
Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the family
were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided beside
the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had had
tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all sat
in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small table
where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi bitch
(daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and large black
eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside
him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half
gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general’s tunic unbuttoned;
Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of what he
knew might interest the old lady and that she could understand. He
told her of external social events and of the people who had formed
the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a real, living, and
distinct group, but who were now for the most part scattered about the
world and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests they
had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those contemporaries
of hers seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natasha saw by
Pierre’s animation that his visit had been interesting and that he had
much to tell them but dare not say it before the old countess. Denisov,
not being a member of the family, did not understand Pierre’s caution
and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in
Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about what had happened in
the Semenovsk regiment, then about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible
Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began to speak of
these things, but Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the
health of Prince Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.
"Well, and all this idiocy - Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov asked. "Is
that weally still going on?"
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