War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [292]
XII
Natasha was sixteen, and it was the year 1809, the same she had counted up to on her fingers with Boris four years ago, after they had kissed. Since then she had not seen Boris once. To Sonya and her mother, when the conversation turned to Boris, she said quite freely, as a decided thing, that all that had gone before was childishness, not worth talking about and long forgotten. But in the most secret depths of her soul the question whether her engagement to Boris was a joke or an important, binding promise tormented her.
Since Boris left Moscow for the army in 1805, he had not seen the Rostovs. He had visited Moscow several times, had passed by not far from Otradnoe, but had never once been to the Rostovs’.
It sometimes occurred to Natasha that he did not want to see her, and these surmises were confirmed by the sad tone in which the older people spoke of him.
“Nowadays people don’t remember old friends,” the countess used to say when Boris was mentioned.
Anna Mikhailovna, who had visited the Rostovs less often of late, also behaved with some special dignity and each time spoke rapturously and gratefully of her son’s merits and of the brilliant career he had entered upon. When the Rostovs came to Petersburg, Boris came to visit them.
He went to them not without emotion. The remembrance of Natasha was Boris’s most poetic remembrance. But at the same time he went with the firm intention of letting her and her family feel clearly that the childhood relations between himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant position in society owing to his intimacy with the countess Bezukhov, a brilliant position in the service owing to the patronage of an important person, whose confidence he fully enjoyed, and he had a nascent project of marrying one of the richest eligible girls in Petersburg, which could very easily be realized. When Boris entered the Rostovs’ drawing room, Natasha was in her room. Learning of his arrival, she blushed and almost ran into the drawing room, beaming with a more than affectionate smile.
Boris remembered the Natasha of four years ago, in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from under her curls and a desperate, childish laugh, and therefore when quite a different Natasha came in, he became embarrassed and his face showed a delighted surprise. Natasha was glad of that expression on his face.
“Well, do you recognize your old mischievous friend?” asked the countess. Boris kissed Natasha’s hand and said he was surprised at the change in her.
“How pretty you’ve grown!”
“What else!” Natasha’s shining eyes replied.
“And has papa aged?” she asked. Natasha sat down and, without entering into the conversation between Boris and the countess, silently studied her childhood wooer in the minutest detail. He felt the weight of that persistent and affectionate gaze upon him and glanced at her from time to time.
Boris’s uniform, spurs, tie, haircut—all this was of the most fashionable and comme il faut. Natasha noticed it at once. He sat slightly sideways on the armchair next to the countess, smoothing with his right hand the cleanest of molded gloves on the left, spoke with an especially refined pursing of the lips about the amusements of Petersburg high society, and with mild mockery recalled the old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances. It was not by chance, as Natasha could feel, that in naming the high aristocracy, he mentioned a ball he had attended at the ambassador’s and invitations from N. N. and S. S.
Natasha sat silently all the while, gazing at him from under her brows. This gaze disturbed and embarrassed Boris more and more. He interrupted his conversation and turned to look at Natasha more frequently. He stayed for no more than ten minutes and got up, bowing his way out. The same curious, defiant, and somewhat mocking eyes were looking at him. After his first visit, Boris said to himself that he found Natasha as attractive as ever, but that he