War and Peace (113 page)

“At any rate you might take back your words. Eh? If you want me to do as you wish. Eh!”

“I’ll take them back, I’ll take them back,” said Pierre, “and beg you to forgive me.” Pierre could not help glancing at the loose button. “And here’s money too, if you want some for your journey.”

Anatole smiled.

The expression of that base and cringing smile, that he knew so well in his wife, infuriated Pierre. “Oh, you vile, heartless tribe!” he cried, and walked out of the room.

Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.

Pierre drove to Marya Dmitryevna’s to report to her the execution of her commands, as to Kuragin’s banishment from Moscow. The whole house was in excitement and alarm. Natasha was very ill; and as Marya Dmitryevna told him in secret, she had on the night after she had been told Anatole was married, taken arsenic, which she had procured by stealth. After swallowing a little, she had been so frightened that she waked Sonya, and told her what she had done. Antidotes had been given in time, and now she was out of danger; but she was still so weak, that they could not dream of moving her to the country, and the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the count in great trouble, and Sonya in tears, but he could not see Natasha.

That day Pierre dined at the club, and heard on every side gossip about the attempted abduction of the young Countess Rostov, and persistently denied the story, assuring every one that the only foundation for it was that his brother-in-law had made the young lady an offer and had been refused. It seemed to Pierre that it was part of his duty to conceal the whole affair, and to save the young countess’s reputation.

He was looking forward with terror to Prince Andrey’s return, and drove round every day to ask for news of him from the old prince.

Prince Nikolay Andreitch heard all the rumours current in the town through Mademoiselle Bourienne; and he had read the note to Princess Marya, in which Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than usual, and looked forward with impatience to seeing his son.

A few days after Anatole’s departure, Pierre received a note from
Prince Andrey to inform him that he had arrived, and to beg him to go and see him.

The first minute of Prince Andrey’s arrival in Moscow, he was handed by his father Natasha’s note to Princess Marya, in which she broke off her engagement (the note had been stolen from Princess Marya, and given to the old prince by Mademoiselle Bourienne). He heard from his father’s lips the story of Natasha’s elopement, with additions.

Prince Andrey had arrived in the evening; Pierre came to see him the following morning. Pierre had expected to find Prince Andrey almost in the same state as Natasha, and he was therefore surprised when as he entered the drawing-room he heard the sound of Prince Andrey’s voice in the study, loudly and eagerly discussing some Petersburg intrigue. The old prince and some other voice interrupted him from time to time. Princess Marya came out to meet Pierre. She sighed, turning her eyes towards the door of the room, where Prince Andrey was, plainly intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow; but Pierre saw by Princess Marya’s face that she was glad both at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news of his fiancée’s treachery.

“He said he had expected it,” she said. “I know his pride will not allow him to express his feelings; but anyway, he has borne it better, far better, than I had expected. It seems it was to be so …”

“But is it all really at an end?” said Pierre.

Princess Marya looked at him with surprise. She could not understand how one could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince Andrey was very much changed, and visibly much more robust, but there was a new horizontal line between his brows. He was in civilian dress, and standing facing his father and Prince Meshtchersky, he was hotly arguing, making vigorous gesticulations.

The subject was Speransky, of whose sudden dismissal and supposed treason news had just reached Moscow.

“Now he” (Speransky) “will be criticised and condemned by all who were enthusiastic about him a month ago,” Prince Andrey was saying, “and were incapable of understanding his aims. It’s very easy to condemn a man when he’s out of favour, and to throw upon him the blame of all the mistakes of other people. But I maintain that if anything of value has been done in the present reign, it has been done by him—by him alone …” He stopped, seeing Pierre. His face quivered, and at once assumed a vindictive expression. “And posterity will do him justice,” he
finished, and at once turned to Pierre. “Well, how are you, still getting stouter?” he said eagerly, but the new line was still more deeply furrowed on his forehead. “Yes, I’m very well,” he answered to Pierre’s question, and he smiled. It was clear to Pierre that his smile meant, “I am well, but my health is of no use to any one now.”

After saying a few words to Pierre of the awful road from the frontiers of Poland, of people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and of M. Dessalle, whom he had brought back from Switzerland as a tutor for his son, Prince Andrey warmly took part again in the conversation about Speransky, which had been kept up between the two old gentlemen.

“If there had been treason, and there were proofs of his secret relations with Napoleon, they would have made them public,” he said, with heat and haste. “I don’t and I didn’t like Speransky personally, but I do like justice.”

Pierre recognized now in his friend that desire he knew only too well, for excitement and discussion of something apart from himself, simply in order to stifle thoughts that were too painful and too near his heart.

When Prince Meshtchersky had gone, Prince Andrey took Pierre’s arm, and asked him to come to the room that had been assigned him. In that room there was a folding bedstead and open trunks and boxes. Prince Andrey went up to one of them and took out a case. Out of the case he took a packet of letters. He did all this in silence, and very rapidly. He stood up again and cleared his throat. His face was frowning, and his lips set.

“Forgive me, if I’m troubling you …” Pierre saw that Prince Andrey was going to speak of Natasha, and his broad face showed sympathy and pity. That expression in Pierre’s face exasperated Prince Andrey. He went on resolutely, clearly, and disagreeably: “I have received a refusal from Countess Rostov, and rumours have reached me of your brother-in-law’s seeking her hand, or something of the kind. Is that true?”

“Both true and untrue,” began Pierre; but Prince Andrey cut him short.

“Here are her letters and her portrait,” he said. He took the packet from the table and gave it to Pierre.

“Give that to the countess … if you will see her.”

“She is very ill,” said Pierre.

“So she’s still here?” said Prince Andrey. “And Prince Kuragin?” he asked quickly.

“He has been gone a long while. She has been at death’s door.”

“I am very sorry to hear of her illness,” said Prince Andrey. He laughed a cold, malignant, unpleasant laugh like his father’s.

“But M. Kuragin, then, did not deign to bestow his hand on Countess Rostov?” said Prince Andrey. He snorted several times.

“He could not have married her, because he is married,” said Pierre.

Prince Andrey laughed unpleasantly, again recalling his father.

“And where is he now, your brother-in-law, may I ask?” he said.

“He went to Peter … but, really, I don’t know,” said Pierre.

“Well, that’s no matter,” said Prince Andrey. “Tell Countess Rostov from me that she was and is perfectly free, and that I wish her all prosperity.”

Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrey, as though reflecting whether he had not something more to say, or waiting for Pierre to say something, looked at him with a fixed gaze.

“Listen. Do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?” said Pierre. “Do you remember about—–?”

“I remember,” Prince Andrey answered hurriedly. “I said that a fallen woman should be forgiven, but I did not say I could forgive one. I can’t.”

“How can you compare it?…” said Pierre.

Prince Andrey cut him short. He cried harshly: “Yes, ask her hand again, be magnanimous, and all that sort of thing?… Oh, that’s all very noble, but I’m not equal to following in that gentleman’s tracks. If you care to remain my friend, never speak to me of that … of all this business. Well, good-bye. So you’ll give that?…”

Pierre left him, and went in to the old prince and Princess Marya.

The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Marya was the same as usual, but behind her sympathy for her brother, Pierre detected her relief that her brother’s marriage was broken off. Looking at them, Pierre felt what a contempt and dislike they all had for the Rostovs; felt that it would be impossible in their presence even to mention the name of the girl who could give up Prince Andrey for any one in the world.

At dinner they talked of the coming war, of which there could now be no doubt in the near future. Prince Andrey talked incessantly, and argued first with his father, and then with Dessalle, the Swiss tutor. He seemed more eager than usual, with that eagerness of which Pierre knew so well the inner cause.

That evening Pierre went to the Rostovs’ to fulfil Prince Andrey’s commission. Natasha was in bed, the count was at the club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went in to see Marya Dmitryevna, who was interested to know how Prince Andrey had taken the news. Ten minutes later, Sonya came in to Marya Dmitryevna.

“Natasha insists on seeing Count Pyotr Kirillitch,” she said.

“Why, are we to take him up to her, eh? Why, you are all in a muddle there,” said Marya Dmitryevna.

“No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing-room,” said Sonya.

Marya Dmitryevna could only shrug her shoulders. “When will the countess come? She has quite worn me out! You mind now, don’t tell her everything,” she said to Pierre. “One hasn’t the heart to scold her, she’s so piteous, poor thing.”

Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing-room, looking thinner, and with a pale, set face (not at all overcome with shame, as Pierre had expected to see her). When Pierre appeared in the doorway, she made a hurried movement, evidently in uncertainty whether to go to meet him, or to wait for him to come to her.

Pierre went hurriedly towards her. He thought she would give him her hand as usual. But coming near him she stopped, breathing hard, and letting her hands hang lifelessly, exactly in the same pose in which she used to stand in the middle of the room to sing, but with an utterly different expression.

“Pyotr Kirillitch,” she began, speaking quickly, “Prince Bolkonsky was your friend—he is your friend,” she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that everything was in the past, and now all was changed.) “He told me to apply to you …”

Pierre choked dumbly as he looked at her. Till then he had in his heart blamed her, and tried to despise her; but now he felt so sorry for her, that there was no room in his heart for blame.

“He is here now, tell him … to for … to forgive me.” She stopped short and breathed even more quickly, but she did not weep.

“Yes … I will tell him,” said Pierre; “but …” He did not know what to say.

Natasha was evidently dismayed at the idea that might have occurred to Pierre.

“No, I know that everything is over,” she said hurriedly. “No, that can
never be. I’m only wretched at the wrong I have done him. Only tell him that I beg him to forgive, to forgive, forgive me for everything …” Her whole body was heaving; she sat down on a chair.

A feeling of pity he had never known before flooded Pierre’s heart.

“I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more,” said Pierre; “but … I should like to know one thing …”

“To know what?” Natasha’s eyes asked.

“I should like to know, did you love …” Pierre did not know what to call Anatole, and flushed at the thought of him—“did you love that bad man?”

“Don’t call him bad,” said Natasha. “But I don’t … know, I don’t know …” She began crying again, and Pierre was more than ever overwhelmed with pity, tenderness, and love. He felt the tears trickling under his spectacles, and hoped they would not be noticed.

“We won’t talk any more of it, my dear,” he said. It seemed suddenly so strange to Natasha to hear the gentle, tender, sympathetic voice in which he spoke. “We won’t talk of it, my dear, I’ll tell him everything. But one thing I beg you, look on me as your friend; and if you want help, advice, or simply want to open your heart to some one—not now, but when things are clearer in your heart—think of me.” He took her hand and kissed it. “I shall be happy, if I am able …” Pierre was confused.

“Don’t speak to me like that; I’m not worth it!” cried Natasha, and she would have left the room, but Pierre held her hand. He knew there was something more he must say to her. But when he said it, he was surprised at his own words.

“Hush, hush, your whole life lies before you,” he said to her.

“Before me! No! All is over for me,” she said, with shame and self-humiliation.

“All over?” he repeated. “If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the world, and if I were free I would be on my knees this minute to beg for your hand and your love.”

For the first time for many days Natasha wept with tears of gratitude and softened feeling, and glancing at Pierre, she went out of the room.

Pierre followed her, almost running into the vestibule, and restraining the tears of tenderness and happiness that made a lump in his throat. He flung on his fur coat, unable to find the armholes, and got into his sledge.

“Now where, your excellency?” asked the coachman.

“Where?” Pierre asked himself. “Where can I go now? Not to the
club or to pay calls.” All men seemed to him so pitiful, so poor in comparison with the feeling of tenderness and love in his heart, in comparison with that softened, grateful glance she had turned upon him that last minute through her tears.

“Home,” said Pierre, throwing open the bearskin coat over his broad, joyously breathing chest in spite of ten degrees of frost.

It was clear and frosty. Over the dirty, half-dark streets, over the black roofs was a dark, starlit sky. It was only looking at the sky that Pierre forgot the mortifying meanness of all things earthly in comparison with the height his soul had risen to. As he drove into Arbatsky Square, the immense expanse of dark, starlit sky lay open before Pierre’s eyes. Almost in the centre of it above the Prechistensky Boulevard, surrounded on all sides by stars, but distinguished from all by its nearness to the earth, its white light and long, upturned tail, shone the huge, brilliant comet of 1812; the comet which betokened, it was said, all manner of horrors and the end of the world. But in Pierre’s heart that bright comet, with its long, luminous tail, aroused no feeling of dread. On the contrary, his eyes wet with tears, Pierre looked joyously at this bright comet, which seemed as though after flying with inconceivable swiftness through infinite space in a parabola, it had suddenly, like an arrow piercing the earth, stuck fast at one chosen spot in the black sky, and stayed there, vigorously tossing up its tail, shining and playing with its white light among the countless other twinkling stars. It seemed to Pierre that it was in full harmony with what was in his softened and emboldened heart, that had gained vigour to blossom into a new life.