War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [558]
“Are you asleep, mama?”
“Ah, as if I could sleep!” the countess, who had just dozed off, said, waking up.
“Mama, darling,” said Natasha, kneeling before her mother and putting her face close to hers. “It’s my fault, forgive me, I’ll never do it again, I woke you up. Mavra Kuzminishna sent me, they’ve brought some wounded officers, will you allow them to?…They’ve got nowhere to go; I know you’ll allow them to…” she spoke quickly, without pausing for breath.
“What officers? Whom have they brought? I don’t understand anything,” said the countess.
Natasha laughed; the countess also smiled weakly.
“I knew you’d say yes…so I’ll tell them.” And Natasha kissed her mother, got up, and went to the door.
In the reception room she met her father, who had come home with bad news.
“We’ve sat ourselves out!” the count said with involuntary vexation. “The club’s closed, the police are leaving.”
“Papa, is it all right that I’ve invited the wounded into the house?” Natasha said to him.
“Of course it’s all right,” the count said absentmindedly. “That’s not the point. I’m now asking you not be taken up with trifles, but to help pack and leave, leave tomorrow…” And the count gave the same orders to the butler and the servants. At dinner Petya, who had come home, told them his news.
He said that weapons had been distributed to the people that day in the Kremlin, that, though Rastopchin’s poster had said he would give the call two days beforehand, the orders had certainly already been given that all the people should go to the Three Hills tomorrow with their weapons, and a major battle would take place there.
The countess kept glancing with timid horror at her son’s merry, flushed face as he was saying that. She knew that if she said a word about it, if she asked Petya not to go to this battle (she knew he was glad of this impending battle), he would say something about men, honor, the fatherland—something senseless, masculine, obstinate, against which it would be impossible to object—and the matter would be spoiled, and therefore, hoping to arrange everything so as to leave before then and take Petya along as a defender and protector, she said nothing to Petya, but summoned the count after dinner and tearfully implored him to take her away quickly, that same night if possible. With the involuntary feminine cunning of love, she, who so far had shown perfect fearlessness, said that she would die of fear unless they left that night. She was afraid of everything now, without feigning.
XIV
Mme Schoss, who had gone to see her daughter, increased the countess’s fear still more by telling her what she had seen in Myasnitskaya Street at a drinking establishment on her way home. As she came down the street, she had been unable to reach home because of a drunken crowd of people rioting outside the establishment. She had hired a cab and come home by a back lane; and the cabby had told her that people were breaking open the barrels in the drinking establishment, that they had been ordered to.
After dinner the whole Rostov household, with enthusiastic haste, got to work packing things and preparing for departure. The old count, suddenly getting to work after dinner, kept going back and forth from the yard to the house, shouting senselessly at the hurrying people, telling them to hurry still more. Petya was in charge in the courtyard. Sonya did not know what to do under the influence of the count’s contradictory orders, and was completely at a loss. People, shouting, arguing, and making noise, rushed about the rooms and the courtyard. Natasha, with her typical passion in everything, also suddenly got to work. At first her interference in the work of packing was met with mistrust. Everybody expected some joke from her and did not want to obey her; but she stubbornly and passionately demanded to be obeyed, became angry, all but wept that they did not listen to her, and finally got them to believe her. Her first