War and Peace (211 page)

“Yes, and he is so different from him. They say men are better friends when they are utterly different. That must be true; he is not a bit like him in anything, is he?”

“Yes, and he is such a splendid fellow.”

“Well, good-night,” answered Natasha. And the same mischievous smile lingered a long while as though forgotten on her face.

For a long while Pierre could not sleep that night. He walked up and down his room, at one moment frowning deep in some difficult train of thought, at the next shrugging his shoulders and shaking himself and at the next smiling blissfully.

He thought of Prince Andrey, of Natasha, of their love, and at one moment was jealous of her past, and at the next reproached himself, and then forgave himself for the feeling. It was six o’clock in the morning, and still he paced the room.

“Well, what is one to do, if there’s no escaping it? What is one to do? It must be the right thing, then,” he said to himself; and hurriedly undressing, he got into bed, happy and agitated, but free from doubt and hesitation.

“However strange, however impossible such happiness, I must do everything that we may be man and wife,” he said to himself.

Several days previously Pierre had fixed on the following Friday as the date on which he would set off to Petersburg. When he waked up next day it was Thursday, and Savelitch came to him for orders about packing the things for the journey.

“To Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is in Petersburg?” he unconsciously asked, though only of himself. “Yes, some long while ago, before this happened, I was meaning for some reason to go to Petersburg,”
he recalled. “Why was it? And I shall go, perhaps. How kind he is, and how attentive, how he remembers everything!” he thought, looking at Savelitch’s old face. “And what a pleasant smile!” he thought.

“Well, and do you still not want your freedom, Savelitch?” asked Pierre.

“What should I want my freedom for, your excellency? With the late count—the Kingdom of Heaven to him—we got on very well, and under you, we have never known any unkindness.”

“Well, but your children?”

“My children too will do very well, your excellency; under such masters one can get on all right.”

“Well, but my heirs?” said Pierre. “All of a sudden I shall get married … It might happen, you know,” he added, with an involuntary smile.

“And I make bold to say, a good thing too, your excellency.”

“How easy he thinks it,” thought Pierre. “He does not know how terrible it is, how perilous. Too late or too early … It is terrible!”

“What are your orders? Will you be pleased to go to-morrow?” asked Savelitch.

“No; I will put it off a little. I will tell you later. You must excuse the trouble I give you,” said Pierre, and watching Savelitch’s smile, he thought how strange it was, though, that he should not know there was no such thing as Petersburg, and that
that
must be settled before everything.

“He really does know, though,” he thought; “he is only pretending. Shall I tell him? What does he think about it? No, another time.”

At breakfast, Pierre told his cousin that he had been the previous evening at Princess Marya’s, and had found there—could she fancy whom—Natasha Rostov.

The princess looked as though she saw nothing more extraordinary in that fact than if Pierre had seen some Anna Semyonovna.

“You know her?” asked Pierre.

“I have seen the princess,” she answered, “and I had heard they were making a match between her and young Rostov. That would be a very fine thing for the Rostovs; I am told they are utterly ruined.”

“No, I meant, do you know Natasha Rostov?”

“I heard at the time all about that story. Very sad.”

“She does not understand, or she is pretending,” thought Pierre. “Better not tell her either.”

The princess, too, had prepared provisions for Pierre’s journey.

“How kind they all are,” thought Pierre, “to trouble about all this now, when it certainly can be of no interest to them. And all for my sake; that is what’s so marvellous.”

The same day a police officer came to see Pierre, with an offer to send a trusty agent to the Polygonal Palace to receive the things that were to-day to be restored among the owners.

“And this man too,” thought Pierre, looking into the police officer’s face, “what a nice, good-looking officer, and how good-natured! To trouble about such trifles
now
. And yet they say he is not honest, and takes bribes. What nonsense! though after all why shouldn’t he take bribes? He has been brought up in that way. They all do it. But such a pleasant, good-humoured face, and he smiles when he looks at me.”

Pierre went to Princess Marya’s to dinner. As he drove through the streets between the charred wrecks of houses, he admired the beauty of those ruins. The chimneys of stoves, and the tumbledown walls of houses stretched in long rows, hiding one another, all through the burnt quarters of the town, and recalled to him the picturesque ruins of the Rhine and of the Colosseum. The sledge-drivers and men on horseback, the carpenters at work on the frames of the houses, the hawkers and shopkeepers all looked at Pierre with cheerful, beaming faces, and seemed to him to say: “Oh, here he is! We shall see what comes of it.”

On reaching Princess Marya’s house, Pierre was beset by a sudden doubt whether it were true that he had been there the day before, and had really seen Natasha and talked to her. “Perhaps it was all my own invention, perhaps I shall go in and see no one.” But no sooner had he entered the room than in his whole being, from his instantaneous loss of freedom, he was aware of her presence. She was wearing the same black dress, that hung in soft folds, and had her hair arranged in the same way, but she was utterly different. Had she looked like this when he came in yesterday, he could not have failed to recognise her.

She was just as he had known her almost as a child, and later when betrothed to Prince Andrey. A bright, questioning light gleamed in her eyes; there was a friendly and strangely mischievous expression in her face.

Pierre dined, and would have spent the whole evening with them; but Princess Marya was going to vespers, and Pierre went with them.

Next day Pierre arrived early, dined with them, and stayed the whole evening. Although Princess Marya and Natasha were obviously glad to
see their visitor, and although the whole interest of Pierre’s life was now centred in that house, by the evening they had said all they had to say, and the conversation passed continually from one trivial subject to another and often broke off altogether. Pierre stayed so late that evening that Princess Marya and Natasha exchanged glances, plainly wondering whether he would not soon go. Pierre saw that, but he could not go away. He began to feel it irksome and awkward, but still he sat on because he
could not
get up and go.

Princess Marya, foreseeing no end to it, was the first to get up, and complaining of a sick headache, she began saying good-night.

“So you are going to-morrow to Petersburg?” she said.

“No, I am not going,” said Pierre hurriedly, with surprise and a sort of resentment in his tone. “No … yes, to Petersburg. To-morrow, perhaps; but I won’t say good-bye. I shall come to see if you have any commissions to give me,” he added, standing before Princess Marya, turning very red, and not taking leave.

Natasha gave him her hand and retired. Princess Marya, on the contrary, instead of going away, sank into an armchair, and with her luminous, deep eyes looked sternly and intently at Pierre. The weariness she had unmistakably betrayed just before had now quite passed off. She drew a deep, prolonged sigh, as though preparing for a long conversation.

As soon as Natasha had gone, all Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness instantly vanished, and were replaced by excited eagerness.

He rapidly moved a chair close up to Princess Marya. “Yes, I wanted to tell you,” he said, replying to her look as though to words. “Princess, help me. What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my dear friend, listen to me. I know all about it. I know I am not worthy of her; I know that it is impossible to talk of it now. But I want to be a brother to her. No, not that, I don’t, I can’t …” He paused and passed his hands over his face and eyes. “It’s like this,” he went on, making an evident effort to speak coherently. “I don’t know since when I have loved her. But I have loved her alone, only her, all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without her. I cannot bring myself to ask for her hand now; but the thought that, perhaps, she might be my wife and my letting slip this opportunity … opportunity … is awful. Tell me, can I hope? Tell me, what am I to do? Dear princess,” he said, after a brief pause, touching her hand as she did not answer.

“I am thinking of what you have just told me,” answered Princess
Marya. “This is what I think. You are right that to speak to her of love now …” The princess paused. She had meant to say that to speak to her of love now was impossible; but she stopped, because she had seen during the last three days by the sudden change in Natasha that she would by no means be offended if Pierre were to avow his love, that, in fact, it was the one thing she desired.

“To speak to her now … is out of the question,” she nevertheless said.

“But what am I to do?”

“Trust the matter to me,” said Princess Marya. “I know …”

Pierre looked into her eyes. “Well, well …” he said.

“I know that she loves … that she will love you,” Princess Marya corrected herself.

She had hardly uttered the words, when Pierre leaped up, and with a face of consternation clutched at Princess Marya’s hand.

“What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think so?…”

“Yes, I think so,” said Princess Marya, smiling. “Write to her parents. And leave it to me. I will tell her when it is possible. I desire it to come to pass. And I have a feeling in my heart that it will be so.”

“No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it cannot be!… How happy I am! No, it cannot be!” Pierre kept saying, kissing Princess Marya’s hands.

“You should go to Petersburg; it will be better. And I will write to you,” she said.

“To Petersburg? I am to go? Yes, very well, I will go. But I can come and see you to-morrow?”

Next day Pierre came to say good-bye. Natasha was less animated than on the preceding days; but sometimes that day, looking into her eyes, Pierre felt that he was vanishing away, that he and she were no more, that there was nothing but happiness. “Is it possible? No, it cannot be,” he said to himself at every glance she gave, every gesture, every word, that filled his soul with gladness.

When, on saying good-bye, he took her thin, delicate hand he unconsciously held it somewhat longer in his own.

“Is it possible that that hand, that face, those eyes, all that treasure of womanly charm, so far removed from me, is it possible it may all one day be my own for ever, as close and intimate as I am to myself? No, it’s surely impossible?…”

“Good-bye, count,” she said to him aloud. “I shall so look forward to seeing you again,” she added in a whisper.

And those simple words, and the look in the eyes and the face, that accompanied them, formed the subject of inexhaustible reminiscences, interpretations, and happy dreams for Pierre during two whole months. “I shall look forward to seeing you again.” “Yes, yes, how did she say it? Yes. ‘I shall so look forward to seeing you again.’ Oh, how happy I am! How can it be that I am so happy!” Pierre said to himself.

There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now like what had passed within him in similar circumstances during the time of his being betrothed to Ellen.

He did not go over, as he had then, with a sickening sense of shame the words he had uttered; he did not say to himself: “Oh, why did I not say that, and why, oh why, did I say then: I love you.” Now, on the contrary, every word of hers and of his own, he went over in his imagination with every detail of look and smile, and wanted to add nothing, to take nothing away, he longed only to hear it over again. As for doubts—whether what he contemplated doing was right or wrong—there was never a trace of them now. Only one terrible doubt sometimes assailed his mind. Was it not all a dream? Was not Princess Marya mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe in it; but all at once—and it’s what is sure to happen—Princess Marya tells her; and she smiles and answers: “How queer! He has certainly made a mistake. Doesn’t he know that he is a man, a mere man, while I?… I am something altogether different, higher.”

This doubt alone often beset Pierre. He made no plans of any sort now. The happiness before him seemed to him so incredible that the only thing that mattered was to bring it to pass, and nothing could be beyond. Everything else was over.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which Pierre had believed himself incapable, seized upon him. The whole meaning of life, not for him only, but for all the world, seemed to him centred in his love and the possibility of her loving him. Sometimes all men seemed to him to be absorbed in nothing else than his future happiness. It seemed to him sometimes that they were all rejoicing as he was himself, and were only trying to conceal that joy, by pretending to be occupied with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw an allusion to his happiness. He
often surprised people by his significant and blissful looks and smiles, that seemed to express some secret understanding with them. But when he realised that people could not know of his happiness, he pitied them from the bottom of his heart, and felt an impulse to try to make them somehow understand that all that they were interested in was utter nonsense and trifles not deserving of attention.

When suggestions were made to him that he should take office under government, or when criticisms of any sort on general, political questions, or on the war, were made before him, on the supposition that one course of events or another would affect the happiness of all men, he listened with a gentle smile of commiseration, and astounded the persons conversing with him by his strange observations. But both those persons, who seemed to Pierre to grasp the true significance of life, that is, his feeling, and those luckless wretches who obviously had no notion of it—all at this period appeared to Pierre in the radiant light of his own glowing feeling; so that on meeting any one, he saw in him without the slightest effort everything that was good and deserving of love.