War and Peace (85 page)

“Well, so what then?” she said.

“You have completely turned his head, and what for? What do you want of him? You know you can’t marry him.”

“Why not?” said Natasha, with no change in her attitude.

“Because he’s so young, because he’s poor, because he’s a relation … because you don’t care for him yourself.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know. It’s not right, my darling.”

“But if I want to …” said Natasha.

“Leave off talking nonsense,” said the countess.

“But if I want to …”

“Natasha, I am serious …”

Natasha did not let her finish; she drew the countess’s large hand to her, and kissed it on the upper side, and then on the palm, then turned it over again and began kissing it on the knuckle of the top joint of the finger, then on the space between the knuckles, then on a knuckle again, whispering: “January, February, March, April, May.”

“Speak, mamma; why are you silent? Speak,” she said, looking round at her mother, who was gazing tenderly at her daughter, and apparently in gazing at her had forgotten all she meant to say.

“This won’t do, my dear. It’s not every one who will understand your childish feelings for one another, and seeing him on such intimate terms with you may prejudice you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and what is of more consequence, it’s making him wretched for nothing. He had very likely found a match that would suit him, some wealthy girl, and now he’s half-crazy.”

“Half-crazy?” repeated Natasha.

“I’ll tell you what happened in my own case. I had a cousin …”

“I know—Kirilla Matveitch; but he’s old.”

“He was not always old. But I tell you what, Natasha, I’ll speak to Boris. He mustn’t come so often …”

“Why mustn’t he, if he wants to?”

“Because I know it can’t come to anything.”

“How do you know? No, mamma, don’t speak to him. What nonsense!” said Natasha, in the tone of a man being robbed of his property. “Well, I won’t marry him, so let him come, if he enjoys it and I enjoy it.”
Natasha looked at her mother, smiling. “Not to be married, but—just so,” she repeated.

“How so, my dear?”

“Oh, just so. I see it’s very necessary I shouldn’t marry him, but … just so.”

“Just so, just so,” repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she went off into a good-natured, unexpectedly elderly laugh.

“Don’t laugh, stop,” cried Natasha; “you’re shaking all the bed. You’re awfully like me, just another giggler … Stop …” She snatched both the countess’s hands, kissed one knuckle of the little finger, for June, and went on kissing—July, August—on the other hand. “Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? Were men as much in love with you? And he’s very nice, very, very nice! Only not quite to my liking—he’s so narrow, somehow, like a clock on the wall.… Don’t you understand?… Narrow, you know, grey, light-coloured …”

“What nonsense you talk!” said the countess.

Natasha went on:

“Don’t you really understand? Nikolenka would understand … Bezuhov now—he’s blue, dark blue and red, and he’s quadrangular.”

“You’re flirting with him, too,” said the countess, laughing.

“No, he’s a freemason, I have heard. He’s jolly, dark blue and red; how am I to explain to you …”

“Little countess,” they heard the count’s voice through the door, “you’re not asleep?” Natasha skipped up, snatched up her slippers, and ran barefoot to her own room. For a long while she could not go to sleep. She kept musing on no one’s being able to understand all she understood and all that was in her.

“Sonya?” she wondered, looking at her friend asleep, curled up like a kitten with her great mass of hair. “No, how could she! She’s virtuous. She’s in love with Nikolenka and doesn’t care to know anything more. Mamma, even she doesn’t understand. It’s wonderful how clever I am and how … she is charming,” she went on, speaking of herself in the third person, and fancying that it was some very clever, the very cleverest and finest of men, who was saying it of her … “There is everything, everything in her,” this man continued, “extraordinarily clever, charming and then pretty, extraordinarily pretty, graceful. She swims, rides capitally, and a voice!—a marvellous voice, one may say!” She hummed her favourite musical phrase from an opera of Cherubini, flung herself into bed, laughed with delight at the thought that she would soon be
asleep, called to Dunyasha to blow out the candle; and before Dunyasha had left her room she had already passed into another still happier world of dreams, where everything was as easy and as beautiful as in reality, and was only better because it was all different.

Next day the countess sent for Boris, and talked to him, and from that day he gave up visiting at the Rostovs’.

On the 31st of December, on the eve of the new year 1810, a ball was given by a grand personage who had been a star of the court of Catherine. The Tsar and the diplomatic corps were to be present at this ball.

The well-known mansion of this grandee in the English Embankment was illuminated by innumerable lights. The police were standing at the lighted entry, laid with red baize; and not merely policemen, but a police commander was at the entrance, and dozens of officers of the police. Carriages kept driving away, and fresh ones kept driving up, with grooms in red livery and grooms in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons; while ladies in satin and ermine stepped carefully out on the carriage steps, that were let down with a bang, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize of the entry.

Almost every time a new carriage drove up, a whisper ran through the crowd and hats were taken off. “The Emperor?… No, a minister … prince … ambassador … Don’t you see the plumes?…” was audible in the crowd. One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know every one, and mentioned by name all the most celebrated personages of the day.

A third of the guests had already arrived at this ball, while the Rostovs, who were to be present at it, were still engaged in hurried preparations.

Many had been the discussions and the preparations for that ball in the Rostov family; many the fears that an invitation might not arrive, that the dresses would not be ready, and that everything would not be arranged as it ought to be.

The Rostovs were to be accompanied by Marya Ignatyevna Peronsky, a friend and relation of the countess, a thin and yellow maid-of-honour
of the old court, who was acting as a guide to the provincial Rostovs in the higher circles of Petersburg society.

At ten o’clock the Rostovs were to drive to Tavritchesky Garden to call for the maid-of-honour. Meantime it was five minutes to ten, and the young ladies were not yet dressed.

Natasha was going to her first great ball. She had got up at eight o’clock that morning, and had spent the whole day in feverish agitation and activity. All her energies had since morning been directed to the one aim of getting herself, her mother, and Sonya as well dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands. The countess was to wear a dark red velvet dress; the two girls white tulle dresses over pink silk slips, and roses on their bodices. They were to wear their hair
à la grecque
.

All the essentials were ready. Feet, arms, necks, and ears had been washed, scented, and powdered with peculiar care in readiness for the ball. Openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons had been put on. The hairdressing was almost accomplished. Sonya was finishing dressing, so was the countess; but Natasha, who had been busily looking after every one, was behindhand. She was still sitting before the looking-glass with a
peignoir
thrown over her thin shoulders. Sonya, already dressed, stood in the middle of the room, and was trying to fasten in a last ribbon, hurting her little finger as she pressed the pin with a scrooping sound into the silk.

“Not like that, Sonya, not like that!” said Natasha, turning her head, and clutching her hair in both hands, as the maid arranging it was not quick enough in letting it go. “The ribbon mustn’t go like that; come here.” Sonya squatted down. Natasha pinned the ribbon in her own way.

“Really, miss, you mustn’t do so,” said the maid, holding Natasha’s hair.

“Oh, my goodness! Afterwards! There, that’s right, Sonya.”

“Will you soon be ready?” they heard the countess’s voice. “It will be ten in a minute.”

“Immediately, immediately.… And are you ready, mamma?”

“Only my cap to fasten on.”

“Don’t do it without me,” shouted Natasha; “you don’t know how to!”

“But it’s ten o’clock already.”

It had been arranged to be at the ball at half-past ten, and Natasha still had to dress, and they had to drive to Tavritchesky Garden.

When her coiffure was finished, Natasha, in her mother’s dressing-jacket and a short petticoat under which her dancing-shoes could be seen, ran up to Sonya, looked her over, and then ran to her mother. Turning her head round, she pinned on her cap, and hurriedly kissing her grey hair, ran back to the maids who were shortening her skirt.

All attention was now centred on Natasha’s skirt, which was too long. Two maids were running it up round the edge, hurriedly biting off the threads. A third one, with pins in her teeth and lips, was running from the countess to Sonya; a fourth was holding up the whole tulle dress in her arms.

“Mavrushka, quicker, darling!”

“Give me that thimble, miss.”

“Will you be quick?” said the count from outside the door, coming in. “Here are your smelling-salts. Madame Peronsky must be tired of waiting.”

“Ready, miss,” said the maid, lifting up the shortened tulle skirt on two fingers, blowing something off it, and giving it a shake to show her appreciation of the transparency and purity of what she had in her hands.

Natasha began putting on the dress.

“In a minute, in a minute, don’t come in, papa,” she shouted to her father at the door, from under the tulle of the dress that concealed all her face. Sonya slammed the door. A minute later the count was admitted. He was wearing a blue frock coat, stockings, and dancing-shoes, and was perfumed and pomaded.

“Ah, papa, how nice you look, lovely!” said Natasha, standing in the middle of the room, stroking out the folds of her tulle.

“If you please, miss, if you please …” said a maid, pulling up the skirt and turning the pins from one corner of her mouth to the other with her tongue.

“Say what you like!” cried Sonya, with despair in her voice, as she gazed at Natasha’s skirt, “say what you like!—it’s too long still!”

Natasha walked a little further off to look at herself in the pierglass. The skirt was too long.

“My goodness, madam, it’s not a bit too long,” said Mavrushka, creeping along the floor on her knees after her young lady.

“Well, if it’s long, we’ll tack it up, in one minute, we’ll tack it up,” said Dunyasha, a resolute character. And taking a needle out of the kerchief on her bosom she set to work again on the floor.

At that moment the countess in her cap and velvet gown walked shyly with soft steps into the room.

“Oo-oo! my beauty!” cried the count. “She looks nicer than any of you!” … He would have embraced her, but, flushing, she drew back to avoid being crumpled.

“Mamma, the cap should be more on one side,” said Natasha. “I’ll pin it fresh,” and she darted forward. The maids turning up her skirt, not prepared for her hasty movement, tore off a piece of the tulle.

“Oh, mercy! What was that? Really it’s not my fault …”

“It’s all right, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,” said Dunyasha.

“My beauty, my queen!” said the old nurse coming in at the doorway. “And Sonyushka, too; ah, the beauties!…”

At a quarter past ten they were at last seated in their carriage and driving off. But they still had to drive to Tavritchesky Garden.

Madame Peronsky was ready and waiting. In spite of her age and ugliness, just the same process had been going on with her as with the Rostovs, not with flurry, for with her it was a matter of routine. Her elderly and unprepossessing person had been also washed and scented and powdered; she had washed as carefully behind her ears, and like the Rostovs’ nurse, her old maid had enthusiastically admired her mistress’s attire, when she came into the drawing-room in her yellow gown adorned with her badge of a maid-of-honour. Madame Peronsky praised the Rostovs’ costumes, and they praised her attire and her taste. Then, careful of their coiffures and their dresses, at eleven o’clock they settled themselves in the carriages and drove off.

Natasha had not had a free moment all that day, and had not once had time to think of what lay before her.

In the damp, chill air, in the closeness and half dark of the swaying carriage, she pictured to herself for the first time what was in store for her there, at the ball, in the brightly lighted halls—music, flowers, dancing, the Tsar, all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The prospect before her was so splendid that she could not even believe that it would come to pass: so incongruous it seemed with the chilliness, darkness, and closeness of the carriage. She could only grasp all that awaited her when, walking over the red cloth, she went into the vestibule, took off her
cloak, and walked beside Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers up the lighted staircase. Only then she remembered how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic manner that she considered indispensable for a girl at a ball. But luckily she felt that there was a mist before her eyes; she could see nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She was unable to assume the manner that would have made her absurd; and moved on, thrilling with excitement, and trying with all her might simply to conceal it. And it was just in this mood that she looked her best. In front and behind them walked guests dressed in similar ball-dresses and conversing in similarly subdued tones. The looking-glasses on the staircases reflected ladies in white, blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their bare arms and necks.