War and Peace (88 page)

After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey’s request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had not dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions?… For his hopes for the future?… Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was.
This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.

As soon as Natasha had finished singing, she went up to him, and asked how he liked her voice. She asked this, and was abashed after saying it, conscious that she ought not to have asked such a question. He smiled, looking at her, and said he liked her singing, as he liked everything she did.

It was late in the evening when Prince Andrey left the Rostovs’. He went to bed from the habit of going to bed, but soon saw that he could not sleep. He lighted a candle and sat up in bed; then got up, then lay down again, not in the least wearied by his sleeplessness: he felt a new joy in his soul, as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the open daylight. It never even occurred to him that he was in love with this little Rostov girl. He was not thinking about her. He only pictured her to himself, and the whole of life rose before him in a new light as he did so. “Why do I struggle? Why am I troubled in this narrow cramped routine, when life, all life, with all its joys, lies open before me?” he said to himself. And for the first time for a very long while, he began making happy plans for the future. He made up his mind that he ought to look after his son’s education, to find a tutor, and entrust the child to him. Then he ought to retire from the army, and go abroad, see England, Switzerland, Italy. “I must take advantage of my liberty, while I feel so much youth and strength in me,” he told himself. “Pierre was right in saying that one must believe in the possibility of happiness, in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let us leave the dead to bury the dead; but while one is living, one must live and be happy,” he thought.

One morning Colonel Adolphe Berg, whom Pierre knew just as he knew every one in Moscow and Petersburg, called upon him. He was wearing a brand-new uniform, and had his powdered locks standing up over his forehead, as worn by the Tsar Alexander Pavlovitch.

“I have just been calling on the countess, your spouse, and to my misfortune, my request could not be granted. I hope I shall be more fortunate with you, count,” he said, smiling.

“What is it you desire, colonel? I am at your disposal.”

“I am by now, quite settled in my new quarters,” Berg informed him
with perfect conviction that to hear this fact could not but be agreeable; “and so I was desirous of giving a little
soirée
for my friends and my spouse.” (He smiled still more blandly.) “I meant to ask the countess and you to do me the honour to come to us for a cup of tea, and … to supper.”

Only the Countess Elena Vassilyevna, who considered it beneath her to associate with nobodies like the Bergs, could have had the cruelty to refuse such an invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to gather together a small and select company at his new rooms; and why it would be agreeable to him to do so; and why he would grudge spending money on cards, or anything else harmful; but was ready for the sake of good society to incur expense, that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to come.

“Only not late, count, if I may venture to beg. Ten minutes to eight, I venture to beg. We will make up a party for boston. Our general is coming; he is very kind to me. We will have a little supper, count, so I shall esteem it an honour.”

Contrary to his usual habit (he was almost always late) Pierre arrived at the Bergs’ not at ten minutes to eight, but at a quarter to eight.

The Bergs had made all necessary preparations for their little party, and were quite ready to receive their guests.

Berg and his wife were sitting in a new, clean, light study, furnished with little busts and pictures and new furniture. Berg, with his new uniform closely buttoned up, sat beside his wife, and was explaining to her that one always could and ought to cultivate the acquaintance of people above one—for only then is there anything agreeable in acquaintances. “You pick up something, you can put in a word for something. Look at me now, how I used to manage in the lower grades (Berg reckoned his life not by years but by promotions). “My comrades are nothing still, while I’m a lieutenant-colonel. I have the happiness of being your husband” (he got up and kissed Vera’s hand, but on the way turned back the corner of the rug, which was rucked-up). “And how did I obtain all this? Chiefly by knowing how to select my acquaintances. It goes without saying, of course, that one has to be conscientious and punctual in the discharge of one’s duties.”

Berg smiled with a sense of his own superiority over a mere weak woman, and paused, reflecting that this charming wife of his was, after all, a weak woman, who could never attain all that constituted a man’s dignity,—
ein Mann zu sein
. Vera smiled, too, at the same time with a
sense of her superiority over her conscientious, excellent husband, who yet, like all men, according to Vera’s ideas of them, took such a mistaken view of life. Berg, judging from his wife, considered all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging from her husband only, and generalising from her observation of him, supposed that all men ascribed common-sense to none but themselves, and at the same time had no understanding for anything, and were conceited and egoistic.

Berg got up, and cautiously embracing his wife so as not to crush the lace bertha, for which he had paid a round sum, he kissed her just on her lips.

“There’s only one thing: we mustn’t have children too soon,” he said, by a connection of ideas of which he was himself unconscious.

“Yes,” answered Vera, “I don’t at all desire that. We must live for society.”

“Princess Yusupov was wearing one just like that,” said Berg, pointing with a happy and good-humoured smile to the bertha.

At that moment they were informed that Count Bezuhov had arrived. Both the young couple exchanged glances of self-satisfaction, each mentally claiming the credit of this visit.

“See what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,” thought Berg. “See what comes of behaving properly!”

“But, please, when I am entertaining guests,” said Vera, “don’t you interrupt me, because I know with what to entertain each of them, and what to say in the company of different people.”

Berg, too, smiled.

“Oh, but sometimes men must have their masculine conversation,” he said.

Pierre was shown into the little drawing-room, in which it was impossible to sit down without disturbing the symmetry, tidiness, and order; and consequently it was quite comprehensible, and not strange, that Berg should magnanimously offer to disturb the symmetry of the armchair or of the sofa for an honoured guest, and apparently finding himself in miserable indecision in the matter, should leave his guest to solve the question of selection. Pierre destroyed the symmetry, moved out a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera promptly began their
soirée
, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their guest.

Vera, deciding in her own mind that Pierre ought to be entertained with conversation about the French Embassy, promptly embarked upon
that subject. Berg, deciding that masculine conversation was what was required, interrupted his wife’s remarks by reference to the question of war with Austria, and made an unconscious jump from the general subject to personal considerations upon the proposal made him to take part in the Austrian campaign, and the reasons which had led him to decline it. Although the conversation was extremely disconnected, and Vera resented the intervention of the masculine element, both the young people felt with satisfaction that although only one guest was present, the
soirée
had begun very well, and that their
soirée
was as like every other
soirée
as two drops of water,—with the same conversation and tea and lighted candles.

The next to arrive was Boris, an old comrade of Berg’s. There was a certain shade of patronage and condescension in his manner to Berg and Vera. After Boris came the colonel and his lady, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the
soirée
now began to be exactly, incontestably, like all other
soirées
. Berg and Vera could hardly repress their smiles of glee at the sight of all this movement in their drawing-room, at the sound of the disconnected chatter, and the rustle of skirts and of curtsies. Everything was precisely as everybody always has it; especially so was the general, who admired their rooms, clapped Berg on the shoulder, and with paternal authority insisted on arranging the table for boston. The general sat by Count Ilya Andreivitch, as the guest next in precedence to himself. The elderly guests were together, the younger people together, the hostess at the tea-table, on which there were cakes in the silver cake-basket exactly like the cakes at the Panins’ soirées. Everything was precisely like what everybody else had.

Pierre, as one of the most honoured guests, was obliged to sit down to boston with the old count, the general, and the colonel. As he sat at the boston-table he happened to be directly facing Natasha and he was struck by the curious change that had come over her since the day of the ball. Natasha was silent, and not only was she not so pretty as she had been at the ball, she would have been positively plain but for the look of gentle indifference to everything in her face.

“What is wrong with her?” Pierre wondered, glancing at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea-table; she gave reluctant answers to Boris
at her side and did not look at him. After playing all of one suit and taking five tricks to his partner’s satisfaction, Pierre, having caught the sound of greetings and the steps of some one entering while he took his tricks glanced at her again.

“Why, what has happened to her?” he said to himself in still greater wonder.

Prince Andrey was standing before her saying something to her with an expression of guarded tenderness on his face. She, lifting her head, was looking at him, flushing crimson, and visibly trying to control her breathing, which came in panting gasps. And the vivid glow of some inner fire that had been quenched before was alight in her again. She was utterly transformed. From a plain girl she was once more the beautiful creature she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrey went up to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, youthful expression in his friend’s face. Several times Pierre changed his seat during the play, sitting sometimes with his back to Natasha, sometimes facing her, and during all the six rubbers he was observing her and his friend.

“Something very serious is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and a feeling at once of gladness and of bitterness made him agitated and forgetful of the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying it was of no use playing like that, and Pierre was at liberty. Natasha, at one side of the room, was talking to Sonya and Boris. Vera, with a subtle smile, was saying something to Prince Andrey. Pierre went up to his friend, and, asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, noticing Prince Andrey’s attention to Natasha, felt that at a
soirée
, at a real
soirée
, it was absolutely necessary there should be delicate allusions to the tender passion, and seizing an opportunity when Prince Andrey was alone, began a conversation with him upon the emotions generally, and her sister in particular. She felt that, with a guest so intellectual as she considered Prince Andrey, she must put all her diplomatic tact into the task before her. When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was in full flow of self-complacent talk, while Prince Andrey seemed embarrassed—a thing that rarely happened to him.

“What do you think?” Vera was saying with a subtle smile. “You, prince, have so much penetration and see into people’s characters at once. What do you think about Natalie? Is she capable of constancy
in her attachments? Is she capable, like other women” (Vera meant herself) “of loving a man once for all and remaining faithful to him for ever? That’s what I regard as true love! What do you think, prince?”

“I know your sister too little,” answered Prince Andrey, with a sarcastic smile, under which he tried to conceal his embarrassment, “to decide a question so delicate; and, besides, I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is, the more constant she is apt to be,” he added, and he looked at Pierre, who at that moment joined them.

“Yes, that is true, prince. In these days,” pursued Vera (talking of “these days,” as persons of limited intellect as a rule love to do, supposing they have discovered and estimated the peculiarities of the times and that human characteristics do change with the times), “in these days a girl has so much liberty that the pleasure of being paid attention often stifles these feelings in her. And Natalie, it must be confessed, is very susceptible on the side.”

This going back to Natasha again made Prince Andrey contract his brows disagreeably. He tried to get up, but Vera persisted with a still more subtle smile.

“Nobody, I imagine, has been so much run after as she has,” Vera went on; “but no one, until quite of late, has ever made a serious impression on her. Of course, you know, count,” she turned to Pierre, “even our charming cousin, Boris, who,
entre nous
, was very, very far gone in the region of the tender passion …” She intended an allusion to the map of love then in fashion.