War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [196]
“So what, then?” he merely asked.
“Well, we’re such friends, such friends! This is just silliness—the ruler; but we’re friends forever. If she loves someone, it’s forever. I don’t understand it. I forget at once.”
“Well, so what?”
“Well, so she loves me and you.” Natasha suddenly blushed. “Well, you remember, before you left…So she says you should forget it all…She said: ‘I’ll always love him, but let him be free.’ That’s excellent, excellent and noble, isn’t it? Right, right? very noble? right?” Natasha asked so earnestly and excitedly that it was clear that what she was saying now, she had said before through tears. Rostov pondered.
“I don’t take back my word in anything,” he said. “And besides, Sonya is so lovely—what fool would renounce his happiness?”
“No, no,” cried Natasha. “She and I already talked about it. We knew you’d say that. But it’s impossible, because, you see, if you say that—if you consider yourself bound by your word, it comes out as if she’d said it on purpose. It comes out as if you’re forced to marry her, and doesn’t come out right at all.”
Rostov saw that they had thought it out very well. Sonya had already struck him with her beauty yesterday. Today, having glimpsed her fleetingly, he thought her better still. She was a lovely sixteen-year-old girl, obviously passionately in love with him (he did not doubt it for a moment). Why shouldn’t he love her and even marry her? thought Rostov; but not now. Now there were so many other joys and things to do! “Yes, they’ve thought it out splendidly,” he thought. “I should remain free.”
“Well, that’s splendid,” he said, “we’ll talk later. Ah, I’m so glad to see you!” he added. “Well, and what about you, you haven’t betrayed Boris?” asked her brother.
“What silliness!” cried Natasha, laughing. “I don’t want to think or know about him or anybody else.”
“Well, now! So what’s with you?”
“Me?” Natasha repeated, and a happy smile lit up her face. “Have you seen Duport?”
“No.”
“The famous Duport, the ballet master—you haven’t seen him? Then you won’t understand. Here’s what I am.” Natasha rounded her arms, took up her skirt as if to dance, ran a few steps, turned, made an entrechat, tapped her foot against her ankle, and went a few steps on the very tips of her toes. “See me standing? So there!” she said; but she could not hold it. “That’s what I am! I’ll never marry anyone, I’ll become a dancer. Only don’t tell anybody.”
Rostov laughed so loudly and merrily that Denisov felt envious in his room, and Natasha, unable to help herself, laughed with him. “No, but it’s nice, isn’t it?” she kept saying.
“Very nice. So you no longer want to marry Boris?”
Natasha blushed.
“I don’t want to marry anybody. I’ll tell him the same when I see him.”
“Well, now!” said Rostov.
“Oh, yes, that’s all trifles,” Natasha went on babbling. “And what, is Denisov nice?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, good-bye, go get dressed. Is he scary, Denisov?”
“Why scary?” asked Nicolas. “No, Vaska’s a sweet man.”
“You call him Vaska?…Strange. And what, is he very nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Well, come quickly and have tea. All of us together.”
And Natasha got up on tiptoe and walked out of the room as ballet dancers do, but smiling as only happy fifteen-year-old girls do. Meeting Sonya in the drawing room, Rostov blushed. He did not know how to treat her. Yesterday they had kissed each other in the first moment of the joy of meeting, but today he felt he could not do so; he felt that all of them, his mother and sisters, were looking at him questioningly, waiting to see how he behaved with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her as Miss Sonya. But their eyes met without any formality and gave each