War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [701]
And a sweet sorrow came over her, and tears already welled up in her eyes, but suddenly she asked herself: to whom is she saying this? Where is he, and who is he now? And again everything was veiled in a dry, hard perplexity, and again, tensely knitting her brows, she peered there, where he was. And it seemed to her that she was just about to penetrate the mystery…But at the moment when the incomprehensible seemed about to be revealed, her hearing was painfully struck by a loud rattling of the door handle. Quickly and heedlessly, with a frightened look on her face, unconcerned with her, the maid Dunyasha came into the room.
“Please go to your father, quickly,” said Dunyasha, with a peculiar and animated expression. “A misfortune, about Pyotr Ilyich…a letter,” she said with a sob.
II
Besides a general feeling of alienation from all people, Natasha experienced at that time a particular feeling of alienation from the persons of her own family. All of them—her father, her mother, Sonya—were so close, so habitual, so humdrum, that all their words and feelings seemed to her an insult to that world in which she had been living recently, and she was not only indifferent, but looked at them with hostility. She heard Dunyasha’s words about Pyotr Ilyich, about the misfortune, but she did not understand them.
“What sort of misfortune is there for them, what sort of misfortune could there be? With them it’s all their old, habitual, and peaceful thing,” Natasha said to herself.
When she entered the reception room, her father was quickly coming out of the countess’s room. His face was pinched and wet with tears. He had clearly run out of that room in order to let loose the sobs that were choking him. Seeing Natasha, he waved his arms desperately and broke into painfully convulsive gasps, which disfigured his round, soft face.
“Pe…Petya…Go, go, she’s…she’s…calling…” And weeping like a child, quickly moving his weakened legs, he went over to a chair and almost fell into it, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly it was as if an electric shock ran through Natasha’s whole being. Something hit her terribly painfully in the heart. She felt a terrible pain; it seemed to her that something had torn inside her and she was dying. But after the pain, she suddenly felt free of the ban on life that had lain on her. Seeing her father and hearing her mother’s terrible, coarse cry from behind the door, she instantly forgot herself and her grief. She ran to her father, but he, strengthlessly waving his hand, pointed at the door to her mother’s room. Princess Marya, pale, with a trembling lower jaw, came out of the door and took Natasha by the hand, saying something to her. Natasha did not see, did not hear her. With quick steps she went through the door, stopped for a moment as if struggling with herself, and ran to her mother.
The countess was lying in an armchair, stretched out somehow strangely, awkwardly, and beating her head against the wall. Sonya and the maids were holding her by the arms.
“Natasha! I want Natasha!…” cried the countess. “It’s not true, it’s not true…He’s lying…I want Natasha!” she cried, pushing away everyone around her. “Get out of here, all of you, it’s not true! Killed!…ha, ha, ha!…it’s not true!”
Natasha placed her knee on the chair, bent over her mother, embraced her, raised her with unexpected strength, turned her face towards her, and pressed herself to her.
“Mama!…darling!…I’m here, my dearest. Mama,” she whispered to her, not pausing for a second.
She would not let go of her mother, struggled with her gently, called for pillows, water, unbuttoned and tore open her mother’s dress.
“My dearest, my darling…mama…dear heart,” she whispered ceaselessly, kissing her head, hands, face, and feeling the tears flowing irrepressibly, in streams, tickling her nose and cheeks.
The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her eyes, and became calm for a moment. Suddenly,