War And Peace: Book 15 - CHAPTER XVIII

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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.

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