War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The kitten, with her eyes glued on him, seemed likely at any second to pounce like a real cat and start teasing him.
'Very well, then,' said the old count. 'Such passion. It's that man Bonaparte. He's turned all their heads. They keep thinking about him rising from little corporal to Emperor. Well, God bless them . . .' he added, not noticing the visitor's smile of amusement.
While their elders began talking about Bonaparte, Julie, Madame Karagin's daughter, turned to young Rostov, and said, 'I missed you at the Arkharovs on Thursday. It was very dull without you,' she said, giving him a sweet smile. Feeling flattered, he smiled his flirtatious young man's smile and moved closer to her. With the equally smiling Julie he started a private conversation, blissfully unaware that his spontaneous smile had pierced a jealous Sonya to the heart; she was left with a forced smile on her blushing face. In mid-conversation he happened to glance at her. Sonya glared back venomously, got to her feet and left the room, scarcely holding back her tears, and still wearing that forced smile. Nikolay's liveliness evaporated. He waited for the first break in the conversation, and went off to find Sonya, his face a picture of dismay.
'Oh, these young people, they do wear their hearts on their sleeves!' said Anna Mikhaylovna, nodding after Nikolay's retreating figure. 'Cousins, cousins, troubles in dozens,' she added.
'Yes,' said the countess, when the ray of sunshine that had come into the room with the young people had vanished, as if she was answering a question that no one had asked but was always on her mind. 'How many trials and tribulations we have to go through in order to enjoy them as they are now! And even now, I'll swear there's more dread than enjoyment. You're always, always afraid for them. Especially at this age when there are so many dangers both for girls and boys.'
'It all depends on how they were brought up,' said the visitor.
'You're quite right,' the countess went on. 'Up to now, thank God, I've been a good friend to my children and they trust me completely.' The countess was repeating the delusion of so many parents, who imagine their children have no secrets from them. 'I know my daughters will always turn to me as their first confidante, and I know that if Nikolay, with his impulsive nature, gets up to no good (boys will be boys) it won't be anything like those young gentlemen in Petersburg.'
'Yes, they're splendid children, splendid,' agreed the count, who resolved all his thorny problems by finding everything splendid. 'Just imagine! My son a hussar! Still, whatever you want, my dear.'
'Your younger girl is such a nice creature!' said the visitor. 'What a fireball!'
'She's a fireball, all right,' said the count. 'Takes after me. And what a voice! I know she's my daughter, but I'm telling you she's going to be a singer, another Salomoni.20 We've engaged an Italian to give her lessons.'
'Isn't she too young? They say it damages the voice to train it at that age.'
'Too young? No, she isn't,' said the count. 'Don't forget - our mothers used to get married at twelve or thirteen.'
'Well, she's certainly in love - with your Boris! How about that?' said the countess, smiling gently and looking at Boris's mother. Once again prompted by an idea that was constantly on her mind, she went on, 'If I was too strict with her, you see, if I was to stop her . . . Heaven knows what they might get up to on the quiet,' (she had in mind kissing) 'whereas now I know every word she speaks. Tonight she'll come to me and tell me everything. Perhaps I do spoil her a bit, but, well, I think it's the best thing to do . . . I was strict with the eldest.'
'Yes. I was brought up quite differently,' said the girl in question, the radiant young Countess Vera, with a smile. But, unusually, it was a smile that did nothing for Vera's face; on the contrary she looked unnatural, and therefore unpleasing. She, the elder daughter, was good-looking, quite intelligent, good at her lessons and well brought up; she had a nice voice and she talked good sense. But, it was odd - everybody there, including the visitor and the countess, looked at her in some surprise when she spoke and they were all embarrassed.
'You're always too clever by half with the first ones, trying to do something different,' said the visitor.
'Our sins will out. My dear countess was a bit too clever with Vera,' said the count. 'Never mind, she's turned out splendid all the same,' he added, with a wink of approval in Vera's direction.
The visitors got up and left, accepting the dinner invitation.
'Dreadful manners. I thought they'd never go,' said the countess as she saw them off.
CHAPTER 10
When Natasha came rushing out of the drawing-room, she ran only as far as the conservatory, where she stopped and listened to them still talking in the drawing-room, and she waited for Boris to come out. She soon began to lose patience, stamping her little foot and almost bursting into tears when he didn't come, but then she suddenly heard someone's footsteps, not too relaxed, not too quick, the measured tread of a young man. Natasha nipped between two tubs of flowers and hid.
Boris came to a halt and stood there in the middle of the room, glanced round, flicked a speck of dirt off the sleeve of his uniform and went over to the mirror to examine his handsome face. Natasha kept quiet and peeped out of her hiding-place, wondering what he was going to do. He stood there for a moment before the glass, smiled at himself and walked towards the opposite door. Natasha was just about to call him when she had second thoughts. 'Let him look for me,' she said to herself.
Boris had only just gone when in through the other door came Sonya, all red in the face and mouthing some angry words through her tears. Natasha stopped herself from running out to meet her, and stayed in hiding, as if she was magically invisible, to watch what was going on in the world. She was enjoying an exquisite new pleasure. Sonya was muttering something and glaring round at the drawing-room door. The door opened and out came Nikolay.
'Sonya! What's wrong with you? How could you?' said Nikolay, running up to her.
'It's nothing. Leave me alone!' Sonya was sobbing.
'No, I know what it is.'
'That's all right then. Go back to her.'
'So-o-onya! Just let me speak! Can you really want to torture me - and yourself - over a silly bit of nonsense?' said Nikolay, taking her hand. Sonya left her hand where it was, and stopped crying.
Natasha, holding her breath, as quiet as a mouse, looked out from her hiding-place with gleaming eyes. 'What's next?' she thought.
'Oh, Sonya! You're more than the whole world to me! You're everything,' said Nikolay. 'I'll prove it to you.'
'I don't like it when you talk like that.'
'Well, I won't then. Please forgive me, Sonya.' He pulled her close and kissed her.
'Oh, how nice!' thought Natasha, and when Sonya and Nikolay had gone out of the room she followed them and called for Boris.
'Boris, please come here,' she said with a sly, meaningful look. 'I've got something to tell you. Here, here,' she said, and she led him into the conservatory, to the place where she had been hiding between the tubs. Boris followed, smiling.
'What something?' he inquired. She was embarrassed. She looked round, and when she saw the doll she had dropped on to a tub she picked it up.
'Kiss my doll,' she said. Boris looked at her eager face, closely, tenderly, and said nothing. 'You won't? Well, come here then,' she said, plunging further in among the flowers, and she threw the doll away. 'Closer, closer!' she whispered. She grabbed hold of the young officer's cuffs, and her blushing face was a mixture of triumph and alarm.
'Would you like to kiss me?' Her whisper was barely audible, as she peeped up at him coyly, grinning and almost weeping with emotion.
Boris went red in the face. 'You are a funny girl' he managed to say, bending down towards her, redder than ever, but without actually doing anything. He was waiting for the next move. Suddenly she skipped up on to a tub to make herself taller than Boris, flung her slender, bare arms right round his neck, and flicked her hair back with a toss of the head. Then she kissed him right on the lips.
'Natasha,' he said, 'you know I love you, but . . .'
'Are you really in love with me?' Natasha broke in.
'Yes, of course I am, but, please, we mustn't do that again . . . In four years' time . . . Then I shall ask for your hand.'
Natasha thought things over.
'Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,' she said, counting on her tiny little fingers.
'Good. It's all settled then?' And her excited face radiated delight and relief.
'Yes,' said Boris.
'For ever?' said the little girl. 'Till death us do part?' And, taking his arm, with happiness written all over her face she walked quietly beside him into the next room.
CHAPTER 11
The countess was so tired from receiving visitors that she gave orders not to admit any more, and the porter was told just to issue dinner invitations to anyone else who turned up with name-day congratulations. The countess was looking forward to an intimate chat with her childhood friend, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she had arrived from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her pleasant, careworn face, moved closer to the countess in her easy-chair.
'With you I can speak my mind,' said Anna Mikhaylovna. 'We're old friends, and there aren't many of us left! That's why I value your friendship so much.'
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her friend's hand.
'Vera,' said the countess to her elder daughter (clearly not the favourite one), 'you don't seem to understand anything. Can't you see you're not wanted now? Go and see your sisters, or something . . .'
The lovely young countess gave a scornful smile, not at all disconcerted.
'If only you had told me, Mama, I would have gone away ages ago,' she said, and went off to her room. But passing by the sitting-room, she noticed two couples arranged symmetrically in front of two windows. She stopped and gave a contemptuous smile. Sonya was sitting close by Nikolay, who was copying out some poetry for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were sitting by another window, and they stopped speaking when Vera came in. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
It was amusing and quite touching to see these lovesick little girls, but the sight of them didn't seem to arouse any pleasant feelings in Vera. 'How many times have I asked you,' she said, 'not to take my things? You have rooms of your own.' She took the inkstand away from Nikolay.
'Wait, wait, wait,' he said, dipping his pen in.
'You have no sense of timing,' said Vera. 'Trust you to come rushing into the drawing-room and embarrass everybody.' Despite her being in the right, or perhaps because of that, nobody answered, and the four of them simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room, holding the inkstand. 'And what secrets can you have at your age, Natasha and Boris? And you two! Stupid nonsense!'
'What's it got to do with you, Vera?' said Natasha in their defence, speaking very softly. Today she seemed to be sweeter and nicer than ever to them all.
'Don't be stupid,' said Vera; 'I'm ashamed of you. What kind of secrets . . .'
'Everybody has secrets. We don't interfere with you and Berg,' said Natasha, getting angry.
'I should think not,' said Vera, 'because there is nothing wrong in anything I do. But I shall tell Mama how you behave with Boris.'
'Natalya behaves perfectly well with me,' said Boris. 'I have no complaint.'
'Oh, shut up, Boris, you're such a diplomat.' ('Diplomat' was a catchword with the children, who had given it their own special meaning.) 'I'm fed up with this,' said Natasha, her voice trembling with resentment, 'why does she always pick on me? You'll never understand,' she said to Vera, 'because you've never been in love, you've no heart, you're just a Madame de Genlis'21 (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nikolay, was intended to be very insulting) 'and nothing gives you more pleasure than being nasty to other people. You can flirt with Berg as much as you like,' she said quickly.
'Well, one thing I won't do is go running after a young man in front of visitors . . .'
'Now she's got what she wanted,' Nikolay put in. 'She's said nasty things to everybody, and upset us all. Let's go to the nursery.'
All four rose like a startled flock of birds and left the room.
'You said nasty things to me. I didn't say anything nasty to anybody,' said Vera.
'Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!' cried their laughing voices through the door.
This beautiful girl who had caused so much offence and unpleasantness to them all smiled, and, evidently quite indifferent to what had been said to her, she went over to the mirror and tidied her scarf and hair. One look at her own lovely face and she seemed to grow colder and more composed than ever.
In the drawing-room they were still talking.
'Alas, my dear,' said the countess, 'my path is not strewn with roses either. Do you think I can't see that, the way things are going, our fortune won't last much longer? With him it's the club and being generous to everyone. When we're in the country do you think we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting parties, heaven knows what else. But let's not talk about me. Come on, tell me how you managed it. Annette, you amaze me, the way you go galloping off in your carriage, on your own, at your age, to Moscow, Petersburg, seeing all those ministers and important people, and you certainly know how to get round them. You amaze me. Well, how did you manage it? All this is beyond me.'
'Oh, my dear!' answered Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. 'God willing, you'll never know what it's like to be left a widow, with no one to support you and a son you love to distraction. You just learn how to get by,' she said with some pride. 'My lawsuit has taught me a good deal. If I want to see one of these bigwigs, I send them a note: "Princess X desires to meet Minister Y," and I go myself in a cab two or three times - maybe four or five - until I get what I want. I don't care what people think about me.'
'Well, come on, whom did you talk to about your little Boris?' asked the countess. 'Your boy's a guards officer now, and my little Nikolay's going in as a cadet. We have no one to put a word in for him. But whom did you ask?'
'Prince Vasily. He was so kind. He agreed to everything straightaway, and then he put it to the Emperor,' said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna with some delight, forgetting all the humiliation she had gone through to get what she wanted.
'And how is he, Prince Vasily? Getting on a bit?' inquired the countess. 'I haven't seen him since our theatricals at the Rumyantsevs'. He must have forgotten me by now. He flirted with me, you know.' She smiled at the memory of it.
'He hasn't changed,' answered Anna Mikhaylovna. 'So approachable, so full of generosity. All those honours haven't gone to his head. "I regret that I can do so little for you, my dear Princess," he said, "but do tell me what you want." Yes, he's a splendid man, and he knows that blood's thicker than water. But Natalie, you know how much I love my son. I don't know what I wouldn't do to make him happy. But now my affairs are in such a bad state,' Anna Mikhaylovna went on, lowering her voice with great sadness in her face. 'I'm in the most dreadful situation. My wretched lawsuit is gobbling up everything I have, and it's not getting anywhere. Can you imagine, I literally haven't got a penny to my name, and I have no idea how to get Boris kitted out.' She took out her handkerchief and began to weep. 'I must have five hundred roubles, and all I have is one twenty-five rouble note. I'm in such a desperate situation . . . My only hope now is Count Kirill Bezukhov. If he won't agree to support his godson - you did know he was Boris's godfather, didn't you? - and give him a small allowance, all my efforts will have been in vain. I shan't be able to kit him out.'
The countess, who could feel her own eyes filling with tears, thought things over but said nothing.
'I often think . . . perhaps it's sinful to do so,' said the princess, 'but I do often think: here he is, Count Kirill, living all alone . . . that huge fortune . . . and what is he living for? Life is a b
'I'm sure he'll leave something to Boris,' said the countess.
'Heaven knows, my dear! These wealthy grandees are so selfish. Anyway I'm going to see him at once with Boris, and I shall tell him straight. People can think what they want. I really don't care when my son's fate depends on it.' The princess got to her feet. 'It's two o'clock, and you dine at four. I can just get there and back.'
And so, like a Petersburg businesswoman who knows how to manage her time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent for her son, and went out with him into the hall.
'Goodbye, my dear,' she said to the countess, who was seeing her off. 'Wish me luck,' she whispered so her son couldn't hear.
'You're off to see Count Kirill, my dear?' said the count, coming from the dining-room into the hall. 'If he's feeling better, invite Pierre to dine with us. He's been here lots of times. Used to dance with the children. Make sure you invite him, my dear. We'll see what happens, but I think Taras will surpass himself this time. He says Count Orlov22 has never had a dinner like the one we're having tonight.'
CHAPTER 12
'Boris, my dear,' said Anna Mikhaylovna as Countess Rostov's carriage took them along the straw-covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Kirill Bezukhov's house. 'Boris, my dear,' said the mother, freeing her hand from her old mantle and laying it on her son's hand with a timid caress, 'be affectionate and be attentive. Count Kirill is your godfather, when all's said and done, and your future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and do be nice to him. You know you can.'
'If I could be sure that anything would come of this other than humiliation . . .' her son began coldly. 'But I did promise, and I'm doing it for your sake.' Despite the fact someone's carriage was standing at the entrance, the porter, studying the mother and son (who had walked straight in unannounced through the glass vestibule between two rows of statues in niches), and eyeing the old mantle suspiciously, asked who they wanted to see, the princesses or the count. On hearing that they wanted the count, he said that his Excellency was worse today and could not receive any visitors.