War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [347]
“Only when will it all be? Never, I’m afraid…It would be too good!” said Natasha, getting up and going over to the mirrors.
“Sit down, Natasha, maybe you’ll see him,” said Sonya. Natasha lit the candles and sat down.
“I see someone with a mustache,” said Natasha, seeing her own face.
“Don’t laugh, miss,” said Dunyasha.
With the help of Sonya and the maid, Natasha found the right position for the mirror; her face acquired a grave expression, and she fell silent. For a long time she sat looking at the row of candles going into the depths of the mirrors, supposing (according to stories she had heard) that she would see a coffin, or that she would see him, Prince Andrei, in that last dim, blurry square. But however ready she was to take the smallest spot for the image of a man or a coffin, she saw nothing. She started blinking rapidly and left the mirror.
“Why is it others see things, and I don’t?” she said. “Well, you sit down, Sonya; you must do it tonight,” she said. “In my place…I feel so frightened tonight!”
Sonya sat down before the mirror, got into the right position, and began to look.
“Now, Sofya Alexandrovna’s sure to see something,” Dunyasha said in a whisper, “because you just laugh all the time.”
Sonya heard those words and heard Natasha say in a whisper:
“And I know she’ll see something; she did last year.”
For about three minutes they were all silent. “She’s sure to!” Natasha whispered and did not finish…Suddenly Sonya moved away the mirror she was holding and covered her eyes with her hand.
“Ah, Natasha!” she said.
“Did you see something? Did you? What did you see?” Natasha cried.
“I told you so,” said Dunyasha, holding up the mirror.
Sonya had not seen anything, she had been just about to blink her eyes and get up when she heard Natasha’s voice say “She’s sure to…” She did not want to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, and it was hard to go on sitting there. She did not know how and why that cry had escaped her when she covered her eyes with her hand.
“Did you see him?” asked Natasha, seizing her hand.
“Yes. Wait…I…saw him,” Sonya said involuntarily, still not knowing who Natasha meant by him: him Nikolai, or him Andrei.
“But why shouldn’t I say what I saw? Other people see things! And who can catch me out about whether I did or didn’t see anything?” flashed in Sonya’s head.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said.
“How? How? Standing up or lying down?”
“No, I saw…First there was nothing, then I suddenly saw him lying down.”
“Andrei lying down? Is he sick?” Natasha asked, looking at her friend with fearfully fixed eyes.
“No, quite the opposite—he had a cheerful face, and he turned to me,” and the moment she said it, she herself thought she had seen what she said.
“And then, Sonya?”
“Then I didn’t quite see, there was something blue and red…”
“Sonya! When will he come back? When will I see him? My God, how I fear for him and for myself, and I’m frightened about everything…” Natasha said, and, without a word of reply to Sonya’s consolations, she went to bed and, long after the candle was put out, lay motionless, open-eyed, on her bed, looking at the frosty moonlight through the windows.
XIII
Soon after Christmastime, Nikolai told his mother about his love for Sonya and his firm decision to marry her. The countess, who had long noticed what was happening between Sonya and Nikolai, and had been expecting this talk, listened silently to his words and said to her son that he could marry whomever he wanted, but that neither she nor his father would give their blessing to such a marriage. For the first time, Nikolai felt that his mother was displeased with him, and that, despite all her love for him, she would not yield. Coldly and without looking