War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [618]
In the two days that passed between the time of this announcement and Rostov’s visit, Princess Marya never stopped thinking of how she ought to behave in relation to him. First she decided that she would not come out to the drawing room when he called on her aunt, that it was improper for her, in deep mourning, to receive guests; then she thought that that would be rude after what he had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor’s wife had some sort of designs on her and Rostov (their glances and words occasionally seemed to confirm that conjecture); then she said to herself that only she, in her depravity, could think that of them: they could not help realizing that, in her position, when she was still in deep mourning, such matchmaking would be insulting both to her and to her father’s memory. Supposing that she would come out to him, Princess Marya thought up the words he would say to her and she to him; and these words seemed to her now undeservedly cold, now too fraught with significance. Most of all she feared the embarrassment which, she felt, was bound to overcome her and betray her as soon as she saw him.
But on Sunday after the liturgy, when a footman came to the drawing room and announced that Count Rostov was there, the princess showed no embarrassment; only a slight flush came to her cheeks, and her eyes lit up with a new, luminous brightness.
“Have you seen him, aunt?” Princess Marya asked in a calm voice, not knowing herself how she could be so outwardly calm and natural.
When Rostov entered the room, the princess lowered her head for a moment, as if giving her guest time to greet her aunt, and then, just as Nikolai turned to her, she raised her head and her shining eyes met his gaze. In a movement full of dignity and grace, she rose with a joyful smile, gave him her slender, delicate hand, and began to speak in a voice in which, for the first time, new, throaty, feminine notes sounded. Mlle Bourienne, who was in the drawing room, looked at Princess Marya with bewildered astonishment. A skillful coquette herself, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a man she wanted to please.
“Either black is quite becoming to her, or she has really grown quite pretty, and I haven’t noticed it. And, above all—that tact and grace!” thought Mlle Bourienne.
If Princess Marya had been able to reflect at that moment, she would have been more astonished than Mlle Bourienne at the change that had taken place in her. From the moment she saw that dear, beloved face, some new force of life had taken hold of her and made her speak and act apart from her own will. Her face, from the time Rostov entered, was suddenly transformed. As the complex, skillful artwork on the sides of a carved and painted lantern, which had seemed crude, dark, and meaningless before, suddenly emerges with unexpected, striking beauty when the light is lit inside: so was Princess Marya’s face suddenly transformed. For the first time, all that pure, spiritual inner work, which she had so far lived by, emerged. All her inner work of discontent with herself, her suffering, her yearning for the good, obedience, love, self-sacrifice—all this now shone in those luminous eyes, in her fine smile, in every feature of her tender face.
Rostov saw it all as clearly as if he knew her whole life. He sensed that the being before him was quite different, and better, than all those he had met till then, and, above all, better than himself.
The conversation was most simple and insignificant. They talked of the war, involuntarily exaggerating, like everyone else, their grief at these events, talked of their last meeting,