War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [384]
“Marya Dmitrievna, let me see her, for God’s sake!” she said. Marya Dmitrievna, not answering her, unlocked the door and went in. “Vile, nasty…in my own home, mean girl, hussy…I’m only sorry for her father!” thought Marya Dmitrievna, trying to quench her wrath. “Hard as it is, I’ll tell everybody to keep quiet and conceal it from the count.” Marya Dmitrievna went into the room with resolute steps. Natasha lay on the sofa, covering her head with her hands, and did not stir. She lay in the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.
“A fine one! very fine!” said Marya Dmitrievna. “Setting up trysts with your lovers in my house! There’s no use pretending. You listen when I speak to you.” Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. “You listen when I speak to you. You’ve disgraced yourself like the lowest wench. I know what I’d do with you, but I’m sorry for your father. I’ll conceal it.” Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body began to heave with noiseless, convulsive sobs that choked her. Marya Dmitrievna glanced at Sonya and sat on the sofa beside Natasha.
“He’s lucky he got away from me; but I’ll find him,” she said in her rough voice. “Do you hear what I say?” She put her big hand under Natasha’s face and turned it towards her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were surprised, seeing Natasha’s face. Her eyes were glittering and dry, her lips compressed, her cheeks sunken.
“Let me…be…what do I…I’ll…die…” she said, freed herself from Marya Dmitrievna with an angry thrust, and lay in her former position.
“Natalya!…” said Marya Dmitrievna. “I wish you well. You’re lying there, well, so lie there, I won’t touch you, but you listen…I won’t even speak of how guilty you are. You know it yourself. Well, now your father will come tomorrow, and what am I to tell him? Eh?”
Again Natasha’s body shook with sobs.
“Well, so he finds out, and your brother, and your fiancé!”
“I have no fiancé, I refused him,” cried Natasha.
“It makes no difference,” Marya Dmitrievna went on. “So they’ll find out, and what then, will they leave it at that? I know your father, he’ll challenge him to a duel. Won’t that be a fine thing? Eh?”
“Ah, let me be, why did you interfere with everything! Why? why? who asked you to?” cried Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and looking angrily at Marya Dmitrievna.
“And what would you have liked?” Marya Dmitrievna shouted, getting angry again. “You weren’t locked up, were you? Who prevented him from coming to the house? Why carry you off like some Gypsy woman?…So he’d carry you off, and then what, do you think they wouldn’t find him? Your father, or your brother, or your fiancé? He’s a scoundrel, a villain, that’s what!”
“He’s better than all of you,” Natasha cried, getting up. “If you hadn’t interfered…Oh, my God, what is it, what is it! Why, Sonya! Go away!…” And she sobbed with that despair with which people weep only over a grief of which they feel themselves the cause. Marya Dmitrievna tried to speak again, but Natasha shouted: “Go away, go away, you all hate me and despise me!” and she threw herself onto the sofa again.
Marya Dmitrievna went on for some time admonishing Natasha and impressing upon her that all this must be kept from the count, that no one would learn anything, if only Natasha would take it upon herself to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened. Natasha did not answer. She was no longer weeping, but she became feverish and began to shiver. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under her head, covered her with two blankets, and herself brought her lime-flower tea, but Natasha did not respond to her.
“Well, let her sleep,” said Marya Dmitrievna, going out of the room, thinking she was asleep. But Natasha was not asleep, and her fixed, wide-open eyes looked straight ahead from her pale face. Natasha did not sleep all that night, did not weep, and did not speak with Sonya, who got up several times and went over to her.
By lunchtime the next day, as promised, Count Ilya Andreich arrived