War and Peace
She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is covered
even by a ball dress.
“I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
fire and pressed it there!”
Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natásha’s wildly bright
eyes, Rostóv re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no
meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life;
and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not seem
to him senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.
“Well, and is that all?” he asked.
“We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
for life, but I don’t understand that, I forget quickly.”
“Well, what then?”
“Well, she loves me and you like that.”
Natásha suddenly flushed.
“Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
forget all that.... She says: ‘I shall love him always, but let him be
free.’ Isn’t that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn’t it?”
asked Natásha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what
she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
Rostóv became thoughtful.
“I never go back on my word,” he said. “Besides, Sónya is so
charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness.”
“No, no!” cried Natásha, “she and I have already talked it over.
We knew you’d say so. But it won’t do, because you see, if you say
that—if you consider yourself bound by your promise—it will seem as
if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying
her because you must, and that wouldn’t do at all.”
Rostóv saw that it had been well considered by them. Sónya had already
struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had caught
a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt
that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even marry
her, Rostóv thought, but just now there were so many other pleasures
and interests before him! “Yes, they have taken a wise decision,” he
thought, “I must remain free.”
“Well then, that’s excellent,” said he. “We’ll talk it over
later on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!”
“Well, and are you still true to Borís?” he continued.
“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Natásha, laughing. “I don’t think
about him or anyone else, and I don’t want anything of the kind.”
“Dear me! Then what are you up to now?”
“Now?” repeated Natásha, and a happy smile lit up her face. “Have
you seen Duport?”
“No.”
“Not seen Duport—the famous dancer? Well then, you won’t
understand. That’s what I’m up to.”
Curving her arms, Natásha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back
a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
“See, I’m standing! See!” she said, but could not maintain herself
on her toes any longer. “So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll never
marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell anyone.”
Rostóv laughed so loud and merrily that Denísov, in his bedroom, felt
envious and Natásha could not help joining in.
“No, but don’t you think it’s nice?” she kept repeating.
“Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Borís?”
Natásha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell
him so when I see him!”
“Dear me!” said Rostóv.
“But that’s all rubbish,” Natásha chattered on. “And is
Denísov nice?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed!”
“Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
Denísov?”
“Why terrible?” asked Nicholas. “No, Váska is a splendid
fellow.”
“You call him Váska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?”
“Very.”
“Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.”
And Natásha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostóv met Sónya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know
how to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not
be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as
you—Sónya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
Natásha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then
thanked him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his
freedom and told her that one way or another he would never cease to
love her, for that would be impossible.
“How strange it is,” said Véra, selecting a moment when all were
silent, “that Sónya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
like strangers.”
Véra’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
only Sónya, Nicholas, and Natásha, but even the old countess,
who—dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making
a brilliant match—blushed like a girl.
Denísov, to Rostóv’s surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
ladies and gentlemen than Rostóv had ever expected to see him.
CHAPTER II
On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostóv was welcomed
by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
Nikólenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
The Rostóvs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
Gavríl to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sónya on the sly—he now
recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka
at the Arkhárovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal
Kámenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a
colonel of forty to whom Denísov had introduced him.
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as
he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke
about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he
had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the
Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared
the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of
as the “angel incarnate.”
During Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he
did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was
very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was
at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no
time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and
prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he
thought of Sónya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself,
“Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom
I do not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I
want to, but now I have no time.” Besides, it seemed to him that the
society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls
and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing so against his
will. The races, the English Club, sprees with Denísov, and visits to
a certain house—that was another matter and quite the thing for a
dashing young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilyá Rostóv was very busy
arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagratión at the English Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktíst, the club’s
head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and
fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee
of the club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagratión, for few men knew
so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale,
and still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with
pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
several thousand rubles.
“Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle soup, you
know!”
“Shall we have three cold dishes then?” asked the cook.
The count considered.
“We can’t have less—yes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s one,”
said he, bending down a finger.
“Then am I to order those large sterlets?” asked the steward.
“Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear me! I
was forgetting. We must have another entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!”
he clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri!
Eh, Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum
who appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, the gardener,
to set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots
here on Friday.”
Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his “little
countess” to have a rest, but remembering something else of
importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome,
rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by
his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.
“Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!” said the old man with a smile,
as if he felt a little confused before his son. “Now, if you would
only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra,
but shouldn’t we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like
that sort of thing.”
“Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagratión worried himself less before
the battle of Schön Grabern than you do now,” said his son with a
smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
“Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!”
And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
son.
“What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktíst?” said
he. “Laughing at us old fellows!”