War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [364]
“I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon! As God is my witness, I didn’t know,” the old man muttered, and, having looked Natasha up and down, he left. Mlle Bourienne was the first to recover after this apparition and began talking about the prince’s ill health. Natasha and Princess Marya silently looked at each other, and the longer they looked at each other silently, without saying what they needed to say, the more ill-willed were their thoughts about each other.
When the count came back, Natasha was discourteously glad of it and hastened to leave: at that moment she almost hated this old, dry princess, who could put her in such an awkward position and spend half an hour with her while saying nothing about Prince Andrei. “I couldn’t be the first to start talking about him in front of this Frenchwoman,” thought Natasha. Princess Marya meanwhile was suffering over the same thing. She knew what she needed to say to Natasha, but she also could not do it because Mlle Bourienne hindered her, and because she herself did not know why it was so hard for her to start talking about this marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess Marya went up to Natasha with quick steps, took her by the hands, and, sighing deeply, said: “Wait, I must…” Natasha looked at Princess Marya mockingly, not knowing why herself.
“Dear Natalie,” said Princess Marya, “please know that I am glad my brother has found happiness…” She stopped, feeling that she was saying an untruth. Natasha noticed this pause and guessed the reason for it.
“I think, Princess, that now is not the right time to speak of it,” Natasha said with outward dignity and coldness, and with tears that she could feel in her throat.
“What have I said, what have I done!” she thought as soon as she left the room.
They waited dinner a long time that day for Natasha. She sat in her room and wept like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sonya stood over her and kissed her hair.
“Natasha, what is it?” she was saying. “What do you care about them? It will all pass, Natasha.”
“No, if you only knew how offensive it was…as if I…”
“Don’t say it, Natasha, it’s not your fault, so what do you care? Kiss me,” said Sonya.
Natasha raised her head, kissed her friend on the lips, and pressed her wet face to her.
“I can’t tell, I don’t know. It’s nobody’s fault,” said Natasha, “it’s my fault. But it’s all terribly painful. Oh, why doesn’t he come!…”
She came out for dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice Natasha’s upset face and bantered, firmly and loudly, with the count and the other guests at the table.
VIII
That evening the Rostovs went to the opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna had obtained tickets.
Natasha did not want to go, but she could not reject Marya Dmitrievna’s kindness, which was meant exclusively for her. When she came out, dressed, to the reception room, and, looking in the big mirror while waiting for her father, saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt still more sad; but this was a sweet and amorous sadness.
“My God! if he were here, I wouldn’t do it like before, with such stupid shyness at something, I’d embrace him in a new way, simply, I’d press myself to him, make him look at me with those searching, curious eyes with which he looked at me so often, and then I’d make him laugh as he laughed then, and his eyes—how I see those eyes!” thought Natasha. “And what do his father and sister matter to me: I love him alone, him, with his face and eyes, with his manly and at the same time childlike smile…No, better not to think about him, not to think, to forget, forget completely for the time being. I won’t survive this waiting, I’ll start sobbing right now,” and she left the mirror, making an effort not to burst into tears. “And how can Sonya love Nikolenka so steadily, so peacefully, and wait so long and patiently?” she wondered, looking at Sonya, who was coming in, also dressed, holding