War and Peace
one had put but which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering,
how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in
them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is
always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both
for girls and boys.”
“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued the countess. “Till now I
have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full
confidence,” said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
imagine that their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall
always be my daughters’ first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he
will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men.”
“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in the count,
who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding
that everything was splendid. “Just fancy: wants to be an hussar.
What’s one to do, my dear?”
“What a charming creature your younger girl is,” said the visitor;
“a little volcano!”
“Yes, a regular volcano,” said the count. “Takes after me! And
what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth
when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
Italian to give her lessons.”
“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train
it at that age.”
“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied the count. “Why, our
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.”
“And she’s in love with Borís already. Just fancy!” said the
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Borís and went on, evidently
concerned with a thought that always occupied her: “Now you see if I
were to be severe with her and to forbid it ... goodness knows what they
might be up to on the sly” (she meant that they would be kissing),
“but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come running to
me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I
was stricter.”
“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the handsome
elder daughter, Countess Véra, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do;
on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
expression. Véra was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at
learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said
was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone—the visitors
and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering why she had
said it, and they all felt awkward.
“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to
make something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.
“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s
turned out splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said the countess,
when she had seen her guests out.
CHAPTER XIII
When Natásha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
in the drawing room, waiting for Borís to come out. She was already
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming
at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching
neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natásha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.
Borís paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little
dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined
his handsome face. Natásha, very still, peered out from her ambush,
waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natásha was about to
call him but changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she.
Hardly had Borís gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
angrily, came in at the other door. Natásha checked her first impulse
to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as
under an invisible cap—to see what went on in the world. She was
experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sónya, muttering to herself,
kept looking round toward the drawing room door. It opened and Nicholas
came in.
“Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running
up to her.
“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
“Ah, I know what it is.”
“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
for a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring
and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
“What will happen now?” thought she.
“Sónya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
everything!” said Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”
“I don’t like you to talk like that.”
“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sónya!” He drew her to him
and kissed her.
“Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had
gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
“Borís, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I
have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
Borís followed her, smiling.
“What is the something?” asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
“Kiss the doll,” said she.
Borís looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.
“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and
went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer,
closer!” she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
fear appeared on her flushed face.
“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
excitement.
Borís blushed.
“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so
that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing
back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs
and stood, hanging her head.
“Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
“You are in love with me?” Natásha broke in.
“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four
years ... then I will ask for your hand.”
Natásha considered.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender
little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
“Settled!” replied Borís.
“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
sitting room.
CHAPTER XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave
orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to
dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have
a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face,
drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There
are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your
friendship.”
Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her
friend’s hand.
“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are
not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”
The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied
as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting,
one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was
sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
first he had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window
and ceased talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at
Véra with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.
“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You
have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra.
“You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed
of you.”
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the
room with the inkstand in her hand.
“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and
Borís, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense,
speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.
“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer.
“We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be
anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are
behaving with Borís.”
“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I
have nothing to complain of.”
“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome,” said Natásha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
(She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue
among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why
does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra, “You’ll
never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no
heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname,
bestowed on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and
your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with
Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.
“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the
nursery.”
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Véra, “I said
none to anyone.”
“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices
through the door.
The handsome Véra, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf.
Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and
calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “my life is not all roses
either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means won’t
last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the