War and Peace
forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his
son happy.” Princess Mary went on to ask Natásha to fix a time when
she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natásha sat down at the writing table
to answer it. “Dear Princess,” she wrote in French quickly and
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all that
had happened the evening before? “Yes, yes! All that has happened, and
now all is changed,” she thought as she sat with the letter she had
begun before her. “Must I break off with him? Must I really? That’s
awful...” and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to
Sónya and began sorting patterns with her.
After dinner Natásha went to her room and again took up Princess
Mary’s letter. “Can it be that it is all over?” she thought.
“Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all
that went before?” She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kurágin. She
vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the scenes of
happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
yesterday’s interview with Anatole.
“Why could that not be as well?” she sometimes asked herself in
complete bewilderment. “Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
have to choose, and I can’t be happy without either of them. Only,”
she thought, “to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide
it from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew’s
love, in which I have lived so long?”
“Please, Miss!” whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. “A man told me to give you this—” and she handed Natásha a
letter.
“Only, for Christ’s sake...” the girl went on, as Natásha,
without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter
from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
that it was a letter from him—from the man she loved. Yes, she loved
him, or else how could that have happened which had happened? And how
could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natásha held that passionate love letter which
Dólokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it
an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
“Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
or to die. There is no other way for me,” the letter began. Then he
went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him—for
this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her—but that if
she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
carry her off to the ends of the earth.
“Yes, yes! I love him!” thought Natásha, reading the letter for the
twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
it.
That evening Márya Dmítrievna was going to the Akhárovs’ and
proposed to take the girls with her. Natásha, pleading a headache,
remained at home.
CHAPTER XV
On returning late in the evening Sónya went to Natásha’s room, and
to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on
the table, beside her lay Anatole’s letter. Sónya picked it up and
read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natásha, trying to find in her
face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
from choking, Sónya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
down in an armchair and burst into tears.
“How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have
left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kurágin go to
such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that’s plain! What will
Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today,” thought Sónya. “But it can’t be
that she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who
it was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
thing!”
Sónya wiped away her tears and went up to Natásha, again scanning her
face.
“Natásha!” she said, just audibly.
Natásha awoke and saw Sónya.
“Ah, you’re back?”
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sónya’s look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
“Sónya, you’ve read that letter?” she demanded.
“Yes,” answered Sónya softly.
Natásha smiled rapturously.
“No, Sónya, I can’t any longer!” she said. “I can’t hide it
from you any longer. You know, we love one another! Sónya, darling, he
writes... Sónya...”
Sónya stared open-eyed at Natásha, unable to believe her ears.
“And Bolkónski?” she asked.
“Ah, Sónya, if you only knew how happy I am!” cried Natásha.
“You don’t know what love is....”
“But, Natásha, can that be all over?”
Natásha looked at Sónya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
the question.
“Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?” said Sónya.
“Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just
listen!” said Natásha, with momentary vexation.
“But I can’t believe it,” insisted Sónya. “I don’t
understand. How is it you have loved a man for a whole year and
suddenly... Why, you have only seen him three times! Natásha, I don’t
believe you, you’re joking! In three days to forget everything and
so...”
“Three days?” said Natásha. “It seems to me I’ve loved him a
hundred years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You
can’t understand it.... Sónya, wait a bit, sit here,” and Natásha
embraced and kissed her.
“I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
too, but it’s only now that I feel such love. It’s not the same as
before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave,
and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders
I shall do. You don’t understand that. What can I do? What can I do,
Sónya?” cried Natásha with a happy yet frightened expression.
“But think what you are doing,” cried Sónya. “I can’t leave
it like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
far?” she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
“I told you that I have no will,” Natásha replied. “Why can’t
you understand? I love him!”
“Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!” cried Sónya,
bursting into tears.
“What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you are my
enemy!” declared Natásha. “You want me to be miserable, you want us
to be separated....”
When she saw Natásha’s fright, Sónya shed tears of shame and pity
for her friend.
“But what has happened between you?” she asked. “What has he said
to you? Why doesn’t he come to the house?”
Natásha did not answer her questions.
“For God’s sake, Sónya, don’t tell anyone, don’t torture
me,” Natásha entreated. “Remember no one ought to interfere in such
matters! I have confided in you....”
“But why this secrecy? Why doesn’t he come to the house?” asked
Sónya. “Why doesn’t he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince
Andrew gave you complete freedom—if it is really so; but I don’t
believe it! Natásha, have you considered what these secret reasons can
be?”
Natásha looked at Sónya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know how
to answer it.
“I don’t know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!”
Sónya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
“If there were reasons...” she began.
But Natásha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
“Sónya, one can’t doubt him! One can’t, one can’t! Don’t you
understand?” she cried.
“Does he love you?”
“Does he love me?” Natásha repeated with a smile of pity at her
friend’s lack of comprehension. “Why, you have read his letter and
you have seen him.”
“But if he is dishonorable?”
“He! dishonorable? If you only knew!” exclaimed Natásha.
“If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or
cease seeing you; and if you won’t do this, I will. I will write to
him, and I will tell Papa!” said Sónya resolutely.
“But I can’t live without him!” cried Natásha.
“Natásha, I don’t understand you. And what are you saying! Think of
your father and of Nicholas.”
“I don’t want anyone, I don’t love anyone but him. How dare you
say he is dishonorable? Don’t you know that I love him?” screamed
Natásha. “Go away, Sónya! I don’t want to quarrel with you, but
go, for God’s sake go! You see how I am suffering!” Natásha cried
angrily, in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sónya burst
into sobs and ran from the room.
Natásha went to the table and without a moment’s reflection wrote
that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her
if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his
wife. At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to
Natásha.
On Friday the Rostóvs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday
the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.
On the day the count left, Sónya and Natásha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karágins’, and Márya Dmítrievna took them
there. At that party Natásha again met Anatole, and Sónya noticed
that she spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through
dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natásha was
the first to begin the explanation Sónya expected.
“There, Sónya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,”
Natásha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be
praised. “We have had an explanation today.”
“Well, what happened? What did he say? Natásha, how glad I am
you’re not angry with me! Tell me everything—the whole truth. What
did he say?”
Natásha became thoughtful.
“Oh, Sónya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I
had promised Bolkónski. He was glad I was free to refuse him.”
Sónya sighed sorrowfully.
“But you haven’t refused Bolkónski?” said she.
“Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkónski. Why do
you think so badly of me?”
“I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this...”
“Wait a bit, Sónya, you’ll understand everything. You’ll see what
a man he is! Now don’t think badly of me or of him. I don’t think
badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?”
Sónya did not succumb to the tender tone Natásha used toward her.
The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natásha’s face
became, the more serious and stern grew Sónya’s.
“Natásha,” said she, “you asked me not to speak to you, and I
haven’t spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don’t trust him,
Natásha. Why this secrecy?”
“Again, again!” interrupted Natásha.
“Natásha, I am afraid for you!”
“Afraid of what?”
“I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,” said Sónya resolutely,
and was herself horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natásha’s face.
“And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s not
your business! It won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer. Leave me
alone, leave me alone! I hate you!”
“Natásha!” moaned Sónya, aghast.