War and Peace (112 page)

From the day of his wife’s arrival in Moscow, Pierre had been intending to go away somewhere else, simply not to be with her. Soon after the Rostovs’ arrival in Moscow, the impression made upon him by Natasha
had impelled him to hasten in carrying out his intention. He went to Tver to see the widow of Osip Alexyevitch, who had long before promised to give him papers of the deceased’s.

When Pierre came back to Moscow, he was handed a letter from Marya Dmitryevna, who summoned him to her on a matter of great importance, concerning Andrey Bolkonsky and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding Natasha. It seemed to him that he had for her a feeling stronger than a married man should have for a girl betrothed to his friend. And some fate was continually throwing him into her company.

“What has happened? And what do they want with me?” he thought as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitryevna’s. “If only Prince Andrey would make haste home and marry her,” thought Pierre on the way to the house.

In the Tverskoy Boulevard some one shouted his name.

“Pierre! Been back long?” a familiar voice called to him. Pierre raised his head. Anatole, with his everlasting companion Makarin, dashed by in a sledge with a pair of grey trotting-horses, who were kicking up the snow on to the forepart of the sledge. Anatole was sitting in the classic pose of military dandies, the lower part of his face muffled in his beaver collar, and his head bent a little forward. His face was fresh and rosy; his hat, with its white plume, was stuck on one side, showing his curled, pomaded hair, sprinkled with fine snow.

“Indeed, he is the real philosopher!” thought Pierre. “He sees nothing beyond the present moment of pleasure; nothing worries him, and so he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What would I not give to be just like him!” Pierre mused with envy.

In Marya Dmitryevna’s entrance-hall the footman, as he took off Pierre’s fur coat, told him that his mistress begged him to come to her in her bedroom.

As he opened the door into the reception-room, Pierre caught sight of Natasha, sitting at the window with a thin, pale, and ill-tempered face. She looked round at him, frowned, and with an expression of frigid dignity walked out of the room.

“What has happened?” asked Pierre, going in to Marya Dmitryevna.

“Fine doings,” answered Marya Dmitryevna. “Fifty-eight years I have lived in the world—never have I seen anything so disgraceful.” And exacting from Pierre his word of honour not to say a word about all he was to hear, Marya Dmitryevna informed him that Natasha had broken off her engagement without the knowledge of her parents; that the cause
of her doing so was Anatole Kuragin, with whom Pierre’s wife had thrown her, and with whom Natasha had attempted to elope in her father’s absence in order to be secretly married to him.

Pierre, with hunched shoulders and open mouth, listened to what Marya Dmitryevna was saying, hardly able to believe his ears. That Prince Andrey’s fiancée, so passionately loved by him, Natasha Rostov, hitherto so charming, should give up Bolkonsky for that fool Anatole, who was married already (Pierre knew the secret of his marriage), and be so much in love with him as to consent to elope with him—that Pierre could not conceive and could not comprehend. He could not reconcile the sweet impression he had in his soul of Natasha, whom he had known from childhood, with this new conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. “They are all alike,” he said to himself, reflecting he was not the only man whose unhappy fate it was to be bound to a low woman. But still he felt ready to weep with sorrow for Prince Andrey, with sorrow for his pride. And the more he felt for his friend, the greater was the contempt and even aversion with which he thought of Natasha, who had just passed him with such an expression of rigid dignity. He could not know that Natasha’s heart was filled with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not her fault that her face accidentally expressed dignity and severity.

“What! get married?” cried Pierre at Marya Dmitryevna’s words. “He can’t get married; he is married.”

“Worse and worse,” said Marya Dmitryevna. “He’s a nice youth. A perfect scoundrel. And she’s expecting him; she’s been expecting him these two days. We must tell her; at least she will leave off expecting him.”

After learning from Pierre the details of Anatole’s marriage, and pouring out her wrath against him in abusive epithets, Marya Dmitryevna informed Pierre of her object in sending for him. Marya Dmitryevna was afraid that the count or Bolkonsky, who might arrive any moment, might hear of the affair, though she intended to conceal it from them, and might challenge Kuragin, and she therefore begged Pierre to bid his brother-in-law from her to leave Moscow and not to dare to show himself in her presence. Pierre promised to do as she desired him, only then grasping the danger menacing the old count, and Nikolay, and Prince Andrey. After briefly and precisely explaining to him her wishes, she let him go to the drawing-room.

“Mind, the count knows nothing of it. You behave as though you
know nothing,” she said to him. “And I’ll go and tell her it’s no use for her to expect him! And stay to dinner, if you care to,” Marya Dmitryevna called after Pierre.

Pierre met the old count. He seemed upset and anxious. That morning Natasha had told him that she had broken off her engagement to Bolkonsky.

“I’m in trouble, in trouble, my dear fellow,” he said to Pierre, “with those girls without the mother. I do regret now that I came. I will be open with you. Have you heard she has broken off her engagement without a word to any one? I never did, I’ll admit, feel very much pleased at the marriage. He’s an excellent man, of course, but still there could be no happiness against a father’s will, and Natasha will never want for suitors. Still it had been going on so long, and then such a step, without her father’s or her mother’s knowledge! And now she’s ill, and God knows what it is. It’s a bad thing, count, a bad thing to have a daughter away from her mother.…” Pierre saw the count was greatly troubled, and tried to change the conversation to some other subject, but the count went back again to his troubles.

Sonya came into the drawing-room with an agitated face.

“Natasha is not very well; she is in her room and would like to see you. Marya Dmitryevna is with her and she asks you to come too.”

“Why, yes, you’re such a great friend of Bolkonsky’s; no doubt she wants to send him some message,” said the count. “Ah, my God, my God! How happy it all was!” And clutching at his sparse locks, the count went out of the room.

Marya Dmitryevna had told Natasha that Anatole was married. Natasha would not believe her, and insisted on the statement being confirmed by Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him across the corridor to Natasha’s room.

Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitryevna, and she met Pierre at the door with eyes of feverish brilliance and inquiry. She did not smile nor nod to him. She simply looked hard at him, and that look asked him simply: was he a friend or an enemy like the rest, as regards Anatole? Pierre in himself had evidently no existence for her.

“He knows everything,” said Marya Dmitryevna, addressing Natasha. “Let him tell you whether I have spoken the truth.”

As a hunted, wounded beast looks at the approaching dogs and hunters, Natasha looked from one to the other.

“Natalya Ilyinitchna,” Pierre began, dropping his eyes and conscious
of a feeling of pity for her and loathing for the operation he had to perform, “whether it is true or not cannot affect you since …”

“Then it is not true that he is married?”

“No; it is true.”

“Has he been married long?” she asked. “On your word of honour?”

Pierre told her so on his word of honour.

“Is he still here?” she asked rapidly.

“Yes, I have just seen him.”

She was obviously incapable of speaking; she made a sign with her hands for them to leave her alone.

Pierre did not stay to dinner but went away at once on leaving Natasha’s room. He drove about the town looking for Anatole Kuragin, at the very thought of whom the blood rushed to his heart, and he felt a difficulty in breathing. On the ice-hills, at the gypsies’, at Somoneno he was not to be found. Pierre drove to the club. In the club everything was going on just as usual: the members who had come in to dinner were sitting in groups; they greeted Pierre, and talked of the news of the town. The footman, after greeting him, told him, as he knew his friends and his habits, that there was a place left for him in the little dining-room, that Prince Mihail Zaharitch was in the library, and that Pavel Timofeitch had not come in yet. One of Pierre’s acquaintances asked him in the middle of a conversation about the weather, whether he had heard of Kuragin’s elopement with Natalie Rostov, of which every one was talking in the town; was it true? Pierre said, laughing, that it was all nonsense, for he had just come from the Rostovs’. He asked every one about Anatole; one man told him he had not come in yet; another said he was to dine there that day. It was strange to Pierre to look at that calm, indifferent crowd of people, who knew nothing of what was passing in his soul. He walked about the hall, waited till every one had come in, and still seeing nothing of Anatole, he did not dine, but drove home.

Anatole was dining that day with Dolohov, and consulting with him how to achieve the exploit that had miscarried. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he went to his sister’s, to discuss with her means for arranging their meeting. When Pierre, after vainly driving
about all Moscow, returned home, his valet told him that Prince Anatole Vassilyevitch was with the countess. The drawing-room of the countess was full of guests.

Pierre did not bestow a greeting on his wife, whom he had not seen since his return (she was more hateful to him than ever at that moment); he walked into the drawing-room, and seeing Anatole, went straight up to him.

“Ah, Pierre,” said the countess, going up to her husband, “you don’t know what a plight our poor Anatole is in …” She stopped short, seeing in her husband’s bowed head, in his glittering eyes, in his resolute tread, that terrible look of rage and power, which she knew and had experienced in her own case after the duel with Dolohov.

“Wherever you are, there is vice and wickedness,” said Pierre to his wife. “Anatole, come along, I want a word with you,” he said in French. Anatole looked round at his sister, and got up obediently, prepared to follow Pierre.

Pierre took him by the arm, drew him to him, and walked out of the room.

“If you allow yourself in my drawing-room …” Ellen whispered; but Pierre walked out of the room, without answering her.

Anatole followed him, with his usual jaunty swagger. But his face betrayed uneasiness. Going into his own room, Pierre shut the door, and addressed Anatole without looking at him. “Did you promise Countess Rostov to marry her? Did you try to elope with her?”

“My dear fellow,” answered Anatole, in French (as was the whole conversation), “I don’t consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that tone.”

Pierre’s face, which had been pale before, was distorted by fury. With his big hand he clutched Anatole by the collar of his uniform, and proceeded to shake him from side to side, till Anatole’s face showed a sufficient degree of terror.

“When I say I
want
a word with you …” Pierre repeated.

“Well, what? this is stupid. Eh?” said Anatole, feeling a button of his collar that had been torn off with the cloth.

“You’re a scoundrel and a blackguard; and I don’t know what prevents me from permitting myself the pleasure of braining you with this, see,” said Pierre, expressing himself so artificially, because he was speaking French. He took up a heavy paper-weight, and lifted it in a menacing way, but at once hurriedly put it down in its place.

“Did you promise to marry her?”

“I, I,… I … didn’t think … I never promised, though, because …”

Pierre interrupted him.

“Have you any of her letters? Have you any letters?” Pierre repeated, advancing upon Anatole. Anatole glanced at him, and at once thrust his hand in his pocket, and took out a pocket-book.

Pierre took the letter he gave him, and pushing away a table that stood in the way, he plumped down on the sofa.

“I won’t be violent, don’t be afraid,” said Pierre, in response to a gesture of alarm from Anatole. “Letters—one,” said Pierre, as though repeating a lesson to himself. “Two”—after a moment’s silence he went on, getting up again and beginning to walk about—“to-morrow you are to leave Moscow.”

“But how can I …?”

“Three”—Pierre went on, not heeding him—“you are never to say a word of what has passed between you and the young countess. That I know I can’t prevent your doing; but if you have a spark of conscience …” Pierre walked several times up and down the room. Anatole sat at the table, scowling and biting his lips.

“You surely must understand that, apart from your own pleasure, there’s the happiness, the peace of other people; that you are ruining a whole life, simply because you want to amuse yourself. Amuse yourself with women like my wife—with them you’re within your rights, they know what it is you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience of vice; but to promise a girl to marry her … to deceive, to steal … Surely you must see that it’s as base as attacking an old man or a child!…”

Pierre paused and glanced at Anatole, more with inquiry now than with wrath.

“I don’t know about that. Eh?” said Anatole, growing bolder as Pierre gained control over his rage. “I don’t know about that, and I don’t want to,” he said, looking away from Pierre, and speaking with a slight quiver of his lower jaw, “but you have said words to me, base and all that sort of thing, which as a man of honour I can’t allow any one to do.”

Pierre looked at him in amazement, not able to understand what it was he wanted.

“Though it has been only
tête-à-tête
,” Anatole went on, “still I can’t …”

“What, do you want satisfaction?” said Pierre sarcastically.