War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [34]
“How many times have I asked you not to take my things,” she said. “You have a room of your own.” She took the inkstand from Nikolai.
“Just a moment,” he said, dipping his pen.
“You manage to do everything at the wrong time,” said Vera. “The way you came running into the drawing room just now, everyone was ashamed of you.”
In spite of, or precisely because of, the fact that what she said was perfectly correct, no one answered her, and the four only exchanged glances with each other. She lingered in the room, with the inkstand in her hand.
“And what secrets can there be at your age between Natasha and Boris and between you two? It’s all silliness!”
“Well, what does it matter to you, Vera?” Natasha said pleadingly in a quiet little voice.
Clearly, that day she was being kinder and more affectionate with everyone than ever.
“Very silly,” said Vera. “I’m ashamed of you. Why secrets?”
“We all have our secrets. We don’t bother you and Berg,” Natasha said, flaring up.
“Of course you don’t,” said Vera, “because there can never be anything bad in my actions. But I shall tell mama how you behave with Boris.”
“Natalya Ilyinichna behaves very well with me,” said Boris. “I can’t complain,” he said.
“Stop it, Boris, you’re such a diplomat” (the word diplomat was much in vogue among children in that special sense they endowed it with); “it’s even boring,” Natasha said in an offended, trembling voice. “Why is she pestering me?”
“You’ll never understand it,” she said, turning to Vera, “because you’ve never loved anybody, you have no heart, you’re just a Madame de Genlis” (this nickname, considered very offensive, had been given to Vera by Nikolai), “and your highest pleasure is to do unpleasant things to others. Go and flirt with Berg as much as you like,” she said quickly.
“I certainly won’t go running after a young man in front of guests…”
“Well, she’s done it,” Nikolai mixed in, “she’s said unpleasant things to everybody and upset everybody. Let’s go to the nursery.”
All four, like a frightened flock of birds, got up and left.
“They said unpleasant things to me, but I said nothing to anybody,” said Vera.
“Madame de Genlis, Madame de Genlis!” laughing voices said behind the door.
The beautiful Vera, who had such an irritating, unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, apparently untouched by what had been said to her, went up to the mirror and straightened her scarf and hair. Looking at her beautiful face, she appeared to become even colder and calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
“Ah! chère,” said the countess, “in my life, too, tout n’est pas rose. Don’t I see that, du train que nous allons,*89 our fortune won’t last long! It’s all his club and his kindness. Our life in the country—is that any respite? Theater, hunting, God knows what. Ah, why talk about me! Well, how did you arrange it all? I often marvel at you, Annette, how at your age you can gallop off in a carriage, by yourself, to Moscow, to Petersburg, to all the ministers, to all the nobility, and you know how to deal with them all—I marvel at it! Well, how did it get arranged? I don’t know how to do any of it.”
“Ah, my dear heart!” Princess Anna Mikhailovna replied. “God forbid that you ever learn how hard it is to be left a widow without support and with a son whom you love to distraction. One learns everything,” she went on with a certain pride. “My lawsuit has taught me. If I need to see one of these trumps, I write a note: ‘Princesse une telle†90 wishes to see so and so’—and I go in person, in a hired cab two, even three times, even four—until I get what I want. It’s all the same to me what they think of me.”
“Well, whom did you solicit for Borenka?” asked the countess. “Here your son is an officer in the guards, and Nikolushka is going as a junker.28 There’s no one to solicit. Who did you ask?”
“Prince Vassily. He was very nice. He agreed at once to do everything and reported to the emperor,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said with rapture, forgetting entirely about all the