War And Peace: Book 6 - CHAPTER XXI

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

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 that

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.

Prince Andrey scowled, and was mute.

“But, of course, you are a friend of Boris's?” Vera said to him

“Yes, I know him. …”

“He has probably told you of his childish love for Natasha?”

“Oh, was there a childish love between them?” asked Prince Andrey with a

sudden, unexpected flush on his face.

“Yes. You know between cousins the close intimacy often leads to love.

Cousinhood is a dangerous neighbourhood. Isn't it?”

“Oh, not a doubt of it,” said Prince Andrey, and with sudden and unnatural

liveliness, he began joking with Pierre about the necessity of his being careful

with his cousins at Moscow, ladies of fifty, and in the middle of these jesting

remarks he got up, and taking Pierre's arm, drew him aside.

“Well, what is it?” said Pierre, who had been watching in wonder his friend's

excitement, and noticed the glance he turned upon Natasha as he got up.

“I must, I must talk to you,” said Prince Andrey. “You know that pair of

women's gloves” (he referred to the masonic gloves given to a newly initiated

brother to be entrusted to the woman he loved). “I … but no, I will talk to you

later on. …” And with a strange light in his eyes and a restlessness in his

movements, Prince Andrey approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw

that Prince Andrey asked her some question, and she answered him, flushing

hotly.

But at that moment Berg approached Pierre, and insisted upon his taking part

in an argument between the general and the colonel on affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of glee never left his face. The

soirée was a great success, and exactly like other soirées he had

seen. Everything was precisely similar: the ladies' refined conversation, and

the cards, and after the cards the general raising his voice and the samovar and

the tea cakes; but one thing was still lacking, which he had always seen at

soirées, and wished to imitate. There was still wanting the usual loud

conversation between the gentlemen and discussion about some serious

intellectual question. The general had started that conversation, and Berg drew

Pierre into it.

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