War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [563]
The countess began to cry.
“Yes, yes, mama, these are very hard times!” said Berg.
Natasha left with her father and, as if having difficulty figuring something out, first followed after him, then ran downstairs.
Petya was standing on the porch, handing out weapons to the servants who were leaving Moscow. The hitched-up carts were still standing in the courtyard. Two of them had been unloaded, and an officer, supported by his orderly, was getting into one of them.
“Do you know why?” Petya asked Natasha (Natasha understood what Petya meant: why their father and mother had quarreled). She did not reply.
“Because papa wanted to give all the carts to the wounded,” said Petya. “Vassilyich told me. In my opinion…”
“In my opinion,” Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to Petya, “in my opinion, this is so vile, so loathsome, so…I don’t know what! Are we some sort of Germans?…” Her throat trembled with convulsive sobs, and, afraid of weakening and expending the charge of her anger for nothing, she turned and rushed precipitously up the stairs. Berg was sitting by the countess and, with respectful intimacy, was trying to comfort her. The count was pacing the room with his pipe in his hands, when Natasha, her face distorted by anger, stormed into the room and with quick steps went up to her mother.
“This is vile! This is loathsome!” she shouted. “It can’t be that you ordered it.”
Berg and the countess looked at her in perplexity and fear. The count stopped by the window, listening.
“Mama, this can’t be; look at what’s happening in the courtyard!” she shouted. “They’re being left!…”
“What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do you want?”
“The wounded, that’s who! It can’t be, mama; it’s like nothing…No, mama, darling, it’s not right, please, forgive me, darling…What do we care what we take, only look at what’s happening in the courtyard…Mama!…It can’t be!…”
The count stood by the window and, without turning his face, listened to Natasha’s words. Suddenly he snuffed his nose and brought his face close to the window.
The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face ashamed for her mother, saw her agitation, understood why her husband did not turn to look at her now, and glanced around her with a lost air.
“Ah, do as you like! As if I’m hindering anybody!” she said, still not surrendering outright.
“Mama, darling, forgive me!”
But the countess pushed her daughter aside and went up to the count.
“Mon cher, you give the necessary orders…I don’t know about such things,” she said, lowering her eyes guiltily.
“The eggs…the eggs are teaching the hen…” the count said through happy tears, and he embraced his wife, who was glad to hide her ashamed face on his chest.
“Papa, mama! May I give the orders? May I?…” asked Natasha. “We’ll take the most necessary things anyway…” she said.
The count nodded affirmatively to her, and Natasha, running quickly, as she used to run when playing blindman’s buff, rushed through the reception room to the front hall, down the steps, and into the courtyard.
People gathered around Natasha and could not believe the strange instructions she gave them, until the count himself, in his wife’s name, confirmed the instructions to hand over all the carts to the wounded and put the trunks in the storerooms. Once they understood the instructions, the people, joyful and bustling, got down to the new task. Now the servants not only did not find it strange, but, on the contrary, it seemed as though it could not be otherwise; just as, a quarter of an hour before, not only had no one found it strange that the wounded should be left behind and objects taken along, but it had seemed as though it could not be otherwise.
The whole household, as if making up for not having done it earlier, began bustling about the new task of accommodating the wounded. The wounded crawled out of their rooms and with pale, joyful faces surrounded the carts. Rumor also reached the neighboring houses that there