War And Peace: Book 12 - CHAPTER VII

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

THE TERRIBLE NEWS of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and

wounded, and the even more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached Voronezh

in the middle of September. Princess Marya, learning of her brother's wound only

from the newspapers, and having no definite information about him, was preparing

(so Nikolay heard, though he had not seen her) to set off to try and reach

Prince Andrey.

On hearing the news of the battle of Borodino and of the abandonment of

Moscow, Rostov felt, not despair, rage, revenge, nor any such feeling, but a

sudden weariness and vexation with everything at Voronezh, and a sense of

awkwardness and uneasy conscience. All the conversations he listened to seemed

to him insincere; he did not know what to think of it all, and felt that only in

the regiment would all become clear to him again. He made haste to conclude the

purchase of horses, and was often without good cause ill-tempered with his

servant and quarter-master.

Several days before Rostov's departure there was a thanksgiving service in

the cathedral for the victory gained by the Russian troops, and Nikolay went to

the service. He was a little behind the governor, and was standing through the

service meditating with befitting sedateness on the most various subjects. When

the service was concluding, the governor's wife beckoned him to her.

“Did you see the princess?” she said, with a motion of her hand towards a

lady in black standing behind the choir.

Nikolay recognised Princess Marya at once, not so much from the profile he

saw under her hat as from the feeling of watchful solicitude, awe, and pity

which came over him at once. Princess Marya, obviously buried in her own

thoughts, was making the last signs of the cross before leaving the

church.

Nikolay gazed in wonder at her face. It was the same face he had seen before;

there was the same general look of refined, inner, spiritual travail; but now

there was an utterly different light in it. There was a touching expression of

sadness, of prayer and of hope in it. With the same absence of hesitation as he

had felt before in her presence, without waiting for the governor's wife to urge

him, without asking himself whether it were right, whether it were proper for

him to address her here in church, Nikolay went up to her, and said he had heard

of her trouble and grieved with his whole heart to hear of it. As soon as she

heard his voice, a vivid colour glowed in her face, lighting up at once her joy

and her sorrow.

“One thing I wanted to tell you, princess,” said Rostov, “that is, that if

Prince Andrey Nikolaevitch were not living, since he is a colonel, it would be

announced immediately in the gazettes.”

The princess looked at him, not comprehending his words, but comforted by the

expression of sympathetic suffering in his face.

“And I know from so many instances that a wound from a splinter” (the papers

said it was from a grenade) “is either immediately fatal or else very slight,”

Nikolay went on. “We must hope for the best, and I am certain …”

Princess Marya interrupted him.

“Oh, it would be so aw …” she began, and her emotion choking her utterance,

she bent her head with a graceful gesture, like everything she did in his

presence, and glancing gratefully at him followed her aunt.

That evening Nikolay did not go out anywhere, but stayed at home to finish

some accounts with the horse-vendors. By the time he had finished his work it

was rather late to go out anywhere, but still early to go to bed, and Nikolay

spent a long while walking up and down the room, thinking over his life, a thing

that he rarely did.

Princess Marya had made an agreeable impression on him at Bogutcharovo. The

fact of his meeting her then in such striking circumstances, and of his mother

having at one time pitched precisely on her as the wealthy heiress suitable for

him, had led him to look at her with special attention. During his stay at

Voronezh, that impression had become, not merely a pleasing, but a very strong

one. Nikolay was impressed by the peculiar, moral beauty which he discerned in

her at this time. He had, however, been preparing to go away, and it had not

entered his head to regret that in leaving Voronezh he was losing all chance of

seeing her. But his meeting with Princess Marya that morning in church had,

Nikolay felt, gone more deeply to his heart than he had anticipated and more

deeply than he desired for his peace of mind. That pale, delicate, melancholy

face, those luminous eyes, those soft, gracious gestures, and, above all, the

deep and tender melancholy expressed in all her features, agitated him and drew

his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear an appearance of higher, spiritual

life (it was why he did not like Prince Andrey), he spoke of it contemptuously

as philosophy, idealism; but in Princess Marya it was just in that melancholy,

showing all the depth of a spiritual world, strange and remote to Nikolay, that

he found an irresistible attraction.

“She must be a marvellous girl! An angel, really!” he said to himself. “Why

am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?” And involuntarily he

compared the two: the poverty of the one and the wealth of the other in those

spiritual gifts, which Nikolay was himself without and therefore prized so

highly. He tried to picture what would have happened if he had been free, and in

what way he would have made her an offer and she would have become his wife. No,

he could not imagine that. A feeling of dread came over him and that picture

would take no definite shape. With Sonya he had long ago made his picture of the

future, and it was all so simple and clear, just because it was all made up and

he knew all there was in Sonya. But with Princess Marya he could not picture his

future life, because he did not understand her—he simply loved her.

There was something light-hearted, something of child's play in his dreams of

Sonya. But to dream of Princess Marya was difficult and a little terrible.

“How she was praying!” he thought. “One could see that her whole soul was in

her prayer. Yes, it was that prayer that moves mountains, and I am convinced

that her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I want?” he

bethought himself. “What do I want? Freedom, release from Sonya. She was right,”

he thought of what the governor's wife had said, “nothing but misery can come of

my marrying her. Muddle, mamma's grief … our position … a muddle, a fearful

muddle! Besides, I don't even love her. No, I don't love her in the right way.

My God! take me out of this awful, hopeless position!” he began praying all at

once. “Yes, prayer will move mountains, but one must believe, and not pray, as

Natasha and I prayed as children for the snow to turn into sugar, and then ran

out into the yard to try whether it had become sugar. No; but I am not praying

for trifles now,” he said, putting his pipe down in the corner and standing with

clasped hands before the holy picture. And softened by the thought of Princess

Marya, he began to pray as he had not prayed for a long while. He had tears in

his eyes and a lump in his throat when Lavrushka came in at the door with

papers.

“Blockhead! bursting in when you're not wanted!” said Nikolay, quickly

changing his attitude.

“A courier has come,” said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice, “from the governor, a

letter for you.”

“Oh, very well, thanks, you can go!”

Nikolay took the two letters. One was from his mother, the other from Sonya.

He knew them from the handwriting, and broke open Sonya's letter first. He had

hardly read a few lines when his face turned white and his eyes opened wide in

dismay and joy. “No, it's not possible!” he said aloud. Unable to sit still, he

began walking to and fro in the room, holding the letter in both hands as he

read it. He skimmed through the letter, then read it through once and again, and

shrugging his shoulders and flinging up his hands, he stood still in the middle

of the room with wide-open mouth and staring eyes. What he had just been praying

for with the assurance that God would answer his prayer had come to pass; but

Nikolay was astounded at it as though it were something extraordinary, and as

though he had not expected it, and as though the very fact of its coming to pass

so quickly proved that it had not come from God, to whom he had been praying,

but was some ordinary coincidence.

The knot fastening his freedom, that had seemed so impossible to disentangle,

had been undone by this unexpected and, as it seemed to Nikolay, uncalled-for

letter from Sonya. She wrote that their late misfortunes, the loss of almost the

whole of the Rostovs' property in Moscow, and the countess's frequently

expressed desire that Nikolay should marry Princess Bolkonsky, and his silence

and coldness of late, all taken together led her to decide to set him free from

his promise, and to give him back complete liberty.

“It would be too painful to me to think that I could be a cause of sorrow and

discord in the family which has overwhelmed me with benefits,” she wrote; “and

the one aim of my love is the happiness of those I love, and therefore I beseech

you, Nicolas, to consider yourself free, and to know that in spite of

everything, no one can love you more truly than your—SONYA.”

Both letters were from Troitsa. The other letter was from the countess. It

described the last days in Moscow, the departure, the fire and the loss of the

whole of their property. The countess wrote too that Prince Andrey had been

among the train of wounded soldiers who had travelled with them. He was still in

a very critical condition, but that the doctor said now that there was more

hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.

With this letter Nikolay went next day to call on Princess Marya. Neither

Nikolay nor Princess Marya said a word as to all that was implied by the words:

“Natasha is nursing him”; but thanks to this letter, Nikolay was brought

suddenly into intimate relations, almost those of a kinsman with the

princess.

Next day Rostov escorted Princess Marya as far as Yaroslavl, and a few days

later he set off himself to join his regiment.

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