War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [740]
Relations and friends advised Nikolai to renounce the inheritance. But Nikolai saw renouncing the inheritance as an expression of reproach to his father’s memory, which was sacred to him, and therefore would not hear of it and accepted the inheritance with the obligation to pay off the debts.
The creditors, who had been silent for so long, being bound, while the count was alive, by that undefined but powerful influence which his lax kindness had on them, suddenly all sued for recovery. There was, as always happens, a competition for who would get paid first, and those very people who, like Mitenka and others, held uncovered promissory notes as gifts, now turned out to be the most demanding creditors. Nikolai was given no time or respite, and those who, by the look of it, had felt sorry for the old man who was to blame for their losses (if there were losses), now fell mercilessly on the young heir, obviously guiltless before them, who voluntarily took the payment upon himself.
Not one of Nikolai’s proposed schemes succeeded; the estate went under the hammer for half its value, and half of the debts still remained unpaid. Nikolai accepted the thirty thousand offered him by his brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off the portion of debts he recognized as real debts of money. And to avoid being sent to jail for the remaining debts, as his creditors threatened, he went into the service again.
To go to the army, where he stood to get the first vacant post as regimental commander, was impossible, because his mother now clung to her son as her last enticement to life; and therefore, despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow, in the circle of people who had known him formerly, despite his loathing of the civil service, he accepted a civil post in Moscow and, having taken off his beloved uniform, settled with his mother and Sonya in a small apartment on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.
Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had no clear idea of Nikolai’s situation. Having borrowed money from his brother-in-law, Nikolai tried to conceal his disastrous situation from him. His situation was especially bad because he not only had to support himself, Sonya, and his mother on his twelve-hundred-rouble salary, but had to support his mother in such a way that she did not notice they were poor. The countess could not understand the possibility of life without the conditions of luxury she had been accustomed to since childhood, and, not realizing how difficult it was for her son, she demanded now a carriage they did not have to send for a lady acquaintance, now some expensive food for herself and wine for her son, now money so as to make a surprise gift to Natasha, Sonya, or Nikolai himself.
Sonya ran the household, took care of her aunt, read aloud to her, put up with her caprices and secret dislike, and helped Nikolai to conceal from the old countess the situation of poverty in which they found themselves. Nikolai felt he owed an unrepayable debt of gratitude to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother, admired her patience and devotion, but tried to distance himself from her.
In his heart it was as if he reproached her for being too perfect and having nothing to be reproached for. In her there was everything for which people are appreciated; but there was little of what would make him love her. And he felt that, the more he appreciated her, the less he loved her. He took her at her word, in the letter in which she had given him his freedom, and behaved with her now as if all that had been between them was long forgotten and could by no means be repeated.
Nikolai’s situation was becoming worse and worse. The thought of putting something aside from his salary proved a dream. He not only