War And Peace: Book 6 - CHAPTER XIII

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ONE EVENING the old countess in her bed-jacket, without her false curls and

with only one poor wisp of hair peeping out from under her white cotton

nightcap, was bowing down on the carpet, sighing and moaning as she repeated her

evening prayers. Her door creaked, and Natasha, also in a bed-jacket, ran in,

bare-legged, with her feet in slippers, and her hair in curl papers. The

countess looked round and frowned. She was repeating her last prayer. “Can it be

this couch will be my bier?” Her devotional mood was dispelled. Natasha, flushed

and eager, stopped suddenly short in her rapid movement as she saw her mother at

her prayers. She half-sat down and unconsciously put out her tongue at

herself.

Seeing that her mother was still praying, she ran on tiptoe to the bed; and

rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and

sprang on to that couch which the countess in her prayer feared might become her

bier. That couch was a high feather-bed, with five pillows, each smaller than

the one below. Natasha skipped in, sank into the feather-bed, rolled over

towards the side, and began snuggling up under the quilt, tucking herself up,

bending her knees up to her chin, kicking out and giving a faintly audible

giggle as she alternately hid her face under the quilt and peeped out at her

mother. The countess had finished her prayers, and was approaching her bed with

a stern face, but seeing that Natasha was playing bo-peep with her she smiled

her good-natured, weak smile.

“Come, come, come!” said the mother.

“Mamma, may I speak; yes?” said Natasha. “Come, under the chin, one, and now

another, and enough.” And she clutched at her mother's neck and kissed her

favourite place on her chin. In Natasha's behaviour to her mother there was a

superficial roughness of manner, but she had a natural tact and knack of doing

things, so that, however she snatched her mother in her arms, she always managed

so that she was not hurt, nor uncomfortable, nor displeased by it.

“Well, what is it to-night?” said her mother, settling herself in the pillows

and waiting for Natasha, who had already rolled over twice, to lie down by her

side under the bedclothes, to put out her arms and assume a serious

expression.

These visits of Natasha to her mother at night before the count came home

from the club were one of the greatest pleasures both of mother and

daughter.

“What is it to-night? And I want to talk to you…” Natasha put her hand on her

mother's lips.

“About Boris…I know,” she said seriously; “that's what I have come about.

Don't say it; I know. No, do say it!” She took her hand away. “Say it, mamma!

He's nice, eh?”

“Natasha, you are sixteen! At your age I was married. You say Boris is nice.

He is very nice, and I love him like a son! But what do you want? …What are you

thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see that…”

As she said this, the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha was

lying, looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany sphinxes

carved on a corner of the bedstead, so that the countess could only see her

daughter's face in profile. Her face impressed the countess by its strikingly

serious and concentrated expression.

Natasha was listening and considering.

“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'.

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