War and Peace
That’s the way he was brought up, and everybody does it. But what a
kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at me.”
Pierre went to Princess Mary’s to dinner.
As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The picturesqueness
of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters
of the town, stretching out and concealing one another, reminded him of
the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he met and their passengers,
the carpenters cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women
hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with cheerful beaming
eyes that seemed to say: “Ah, there he is! Let’s see what will come of
it!”
At the entrance to Princess Mary’s house Pierre felt doubtful whether
he had really been there the night before and really seen Natásha and
talked to her. “Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find
no one there.” But he had hardly entered the room before he felt her
presence with his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She
was in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done the
same way as the day before, yet she was quite different. Had she been
like this when he entered the day before he could not for a moment have
failed to recognize her.
She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew’s fiancée. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.
Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but
Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.
Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though
Princess Mary and Natásha were evidently glad to see their visitor and
though all Pierre’s interest was now centered in that house, by the
evening they had talked over everything and the conversation passed from
one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long
that Princess Mary and Natásha exchanged glances, evidently wondering
when he would go. Pierre noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy
and embarrassed, but sat on because he simply could not get up and take
his leave.
Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and complaining of
a headache began to say good night.
“So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?” she asked.
“No, I am not going,” Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone and as
though offended. “Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow—but I won’t say
good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any commissions for me,”
said he, standing before Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking
his departure.
Natásha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other hand
instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and
intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she
had plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.
When Natásha left the room Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.
“Yes, I wanted to tell you,” said he, answering her look as if she had
spoken. “Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my
dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of her, I
know it’s impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to
her. No, not that, I don’t, I can’t...”
He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
“Well,” he went on with an evident effort at self-control and coherence.
“I don’t know when I began to love her, but I have loved her and her
alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without
her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the thought that
perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be missing that
possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I hope?
Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!” he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.
“I am thinking of what you have told me,” answered Princess Mary.
“This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love at
present...”
Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love was
impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden change
in Natásha two days before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre
spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
“To speak to her now wouldn’t do,” said the princess all the same.
“But what am I to do?”
“Leave it to me,” said Princess Mary. “I know...”
Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.
“Well?... Well?...” he said.
“I know that she loves... will love you,” Princess Mary corrected
herself.
Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a frightened
expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
“What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Princess Mary with a smile. “Write to her
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it to
happen and my heart tells me it will.”
“No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be.... How happy I am!
No, it can’t be!” Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess Mary’s hands.
“Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,” she
said.
“To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?”
Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natásha was less animated than
she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her Pierre
sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor she
existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. “Is it possible?
No, it can’t be,” he told himself at every look, gesture, and word that
filled his soul with joy.
When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could not help
holding it a little longer in his own.
“Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this treasure
of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one
day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that’s
impossible!...”
“Good-by, Count,” she said aloud. “I shall look forward very much to
your return,” she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. “‘I shall
look forward very much to your return....’ Yes, yes, how did she say it?
Yes, ‘I shall look forward very much to your return.’ Oh, how happy I
am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!” said Pierre to himself.
CHAPTER XIX
There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what had troubled it
during his courtship of Hélène.
He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words
he had spoken, or say: “Oh, why did I not say that?” and, “Whatever made
me say ‘Je vous aime’?” On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
every word that he or Natásha had spoken and pictured every detail of
her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but
only to repeat it again and again. There was now not a shadow of doubt
in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind: “Wasn’t it all
a dream? Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
self-confident? I believe all this—and suddenly Princess Mary will tell
her, and she will be sure to smile and say: ‘How strange! He must be
deluding himself. Doesn’t he know that he is a man, just a man, while
I...? I am something altogether different and higher.’”
That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only
he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended
with that.
A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
possessed him. The whole meaning of life—not for him alone but for the
whole world—seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of
being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing only—his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that
other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to
hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In
every word and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often
surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which
seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them. And when
he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied
them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them
that all that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of
attention.
When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
assumption that everybody’s welfare depended on this or that issue
of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and surprise
people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw everybody—both
those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning of life (that
is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who evidently did not
understand it—in the bright light of the emotion that shone within
himself, and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
everything that was good and worthy of being loved.
When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her memory
aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the bliss he
now knew. Prince Vasíli, who having obtained a new post and some
fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All
the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true
for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when
he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had
held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.
“I may have appeared strange and queer then,” he thought, “but I was
not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth
understanding in life, because... because I was happy.”
Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
discover personal attributes which he termed “good qualities” in people
before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by
loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving
them.
CHAPTER XX
After Pierre’s departure that first evening, when Natásha had said to
Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: “He looks just, yes, just as
if he had come out of a Russian bath—in a short coat and with his hair
cropped,” something hidden and unknown to herself, but irrepressible,
awoke in Natásha’s soul.
Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the
surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have
forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer complained of her
position, did not say a word about the past, and no longer feared to
make happy plans for the future. She spoke little of Pierre, but when
Princess Mary mentioned him a long-extinguished light once more kindled
in her eyes and her lips curved with a strange smile.