War and Peace
“Ah, there are still lights in the drawing room!” she said, pointing
to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
darkness of the night.
CHAPTER VIII
Count Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs
did not improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents
conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of
selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was
not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal,
and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the
enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty
sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had
settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons
who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were
Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his
family, Belóva, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many
others such as Pétya’s tutors, the girls’ former governess, and
other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to
live in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many visitors
as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and
countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was
still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the
same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there
were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which—spreading
out his cards so that everybody could see them—he let himself be
plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked
upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostóv as a most
profitable source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count’s fault
for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to
hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and
his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the
position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one
solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to
be their last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found
for him, she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters
right. This match was with Julie Karágina, the daughter of excellent
and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostóvs had known from childhood, and
who had now become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of
her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting
a marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer
from her. Karágina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
everything depend on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas
to come to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother’s remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope
of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karágina.
“But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would
you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
money?” he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
“No, you have not understood me,” said his mother, not knowing how
to justify herself. “You have not understood me, Nikólenka. It is
your happiness I wish for,” she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
“Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease,” said Nicholas. “I
would sacrifice anything for you—even my feelings.”
But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
for him.
“No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about it,” she
replied, wiping away her tears.
“Maybe I do love a poor girl,” said Nicholas to himself. “Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sónya is poor I must not love her,” he
thought, “must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,” he said to
himself, “but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sónya, that
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else.”
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could
not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sónya, often pulling her up
without reason, addressing her stiffly as “my dear,” and using the
formal “you” instead of the intimate “thou” in speaking to her.
The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sónya because that
poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly
grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and
unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for
finding fault with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
the beginning of the new year. Natásha was still as much in love with
her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to
anyone—while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostóvs’ home.
CHAPTER IX
Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the
new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
the calm frost of twenty degrees Réaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,
and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some special
celebration of the season.
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time
of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning,
was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his
study. Sónya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a
design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastásya
Ivánovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old
ladies. Natásha came into the room, went up to Sónya, glanced at
what she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without
speaking.
“Why are you wandering about like an outcast?” asked her mother.
“What do you want?”
“Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!” said Natásha,
with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
“Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry directly.”
“Sit down with me a little,” said the countess.
“Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?”
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to
hide them and left the room.
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then
went into the maids’ room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at
a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from
the serfs’ quarters.
“Stop playing—there’s a time for everything,” said the old
woman.
“Let her alone, Kondrátevna,” said Natásha. “Go, Mavrúshka,
go.”
Having released Mavrúshka, Natásha crossed the dancing hall and went
to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.
“What can I do with them?” thought Natásha.
“Oh, Nikíta, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the
yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some
oats.”
“Just a few oats?” said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
“Go, go quickly,” the old man urged him.
“And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.”
On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set a samovar,
though it was not at all the time for tea.
Fóka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
Natásha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and
asked whether the samovar was really wanted.
“Oh dear, what a young lady!” said Fóka, pretending to frown at
Natásha.
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
Natásha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send
them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would
get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders
so readily as they did hers. “What can I do, where can I go?”
thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
“Nastásya Ivánovna, what sort of children shall I have?” she asked
the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman’s jacket.
“Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,” answered the buffoon.
“O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What
am I to do with myself?” And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing
whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natásha sat down,
listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got
up again.
“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she
repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to
Madame Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the
room.
Her brother Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him
he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
“Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”
Pétya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
“No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off
his back she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made
sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull,