War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [139]
“I’m asking you when you got a letter from Bolkonsky,” Prince Vassily repeats for the third time. “You’re so distracted, my dear.”
Prince Vassily smiles, and Pierre sees that everyone, everyone is smiling at him and at Hélène. “Well, so what if you all know,” Pierre says to himself. “Well, so what? it’s true,” and he smiles his meek, childlike smile, and Hélène smiles, too.
“When did you get it? From Olmütz?” Prince Vassily repeats, as if he needs to know in order to settle an argument.
“Can one really speak and think about such trifles?” thinks Pierre.
“Yes, from Olmütz,” he answers with a sigh.
After supper Pierre led his lady after the others to the drawing room. The guests began to depart, and some left without saying good-bye to Hélène. As if not wishing to tear her away from her serious occupation, some approached for a moment and left quickly, forbidding her to see them off. The diplomat was sadly silent as he left the drawing room. He was thinking about all the vanity of his diplomatic career compared with Pierre’s happiness. The old general grumbled angrily at his wife when she asked him how his foot was. “Ah, you old fool,” he thought. “Elena Sergeevna, now, she’ll be the same beauty even when she’s fifty.”
“It seems I can congratulate you,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to the princess and kissed her warmly. “If it weren’t for my migraine, I would have stayed.”
The princess said nothing in reply; she was tormented by envy of her daughter’s happiness.
While the guests were taking their leave, Pierre remained alone with Hélène for a long time in the small drawing room where they were sitting. Often before, during the last month and a half, he had remained alone with Hélène, but he had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that this was necessary, but he simply could not resolve upon this last step. He was ashamed; it seemed to him that here, beside Hélène, he was occupying someone else’s place. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice was telling him. “This happiness is for those who do not have what you have.” But he had to say something, and so he began to speak. He asked her whether she was pleased with tonight’s soirée. She answered with her usual simplicity that this name day had been one of the most pleasant for her.
Some of the nearest relations were still there. They were sitting in the big drawing room. Prince Vassily walked lazily over to Pierre. Pierre stood up and said it was already late. Prince Vassily gave him a sternly questioning look, as if what he had said was so strange that he could not even hear it well. But then the expression of sternness changed, and Prince Vassily pulled Pierre’s arm down, seated him, and smiled gently.
“Well, Lelya?” he at once addressed his daughter in that careless tone of habitual tenderness which is adopted by parents who have been affectionate with their children since childhood, but which Prince Vassily only approximated by means of imitating other parents.
And again he turned to Pierre.
“‘Sergei Kuzmich, from all sides,’” he said, undoing the top button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but it was clear from his smile that he realized it was not the anecdote about Sergei Kuzmich that interested Prince Vassily just then; and Prince Vassily realized that Pierre realized it. Prince Vassily suddenly burbled something and left. To Pierre it looked as if even Prince Vassily was embarrassed. The sight of this worldly old man’s embarrassment touched Pierre; he glanced at Hélène—she, too, seemed embarrassed, and her glance said: “Well, it’s your own fault.”
“I must inevitably cross it, but I can’t, I can’t,” thought Pierre, and again he began talking about unrelated things,