War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [747]
IX
It was the eve of the winter feast of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. That year Natasha, her children and husband had been visiting with her brother since the early fall. Pierre was in Petersburg, where he had gone on his own special business, as he put it, for three weeks and had already stayed for seven. He was expected any moment.
On the fifth of December, besides the Bezukhov family, Nikolai’s old friend, retired general Vassily Fyodorovich Denisov, also visited the Rostovs.
On the sixth, the feast day, when guests would gather, Nikolai knew he would have to take off his quilted jacket, put on a frock coat and narrow boots with narrow toes, and go to the new church he had built, and then receive congratulations, serve refreshments, and talk about the election of the marshal of nobility and about the harvest; but he still considered it his right to spend the eve of the day as usual. Before dinner Nikolai went through the bailiff’s accounts from the Ryazan village, the estate of his wife’s nephew, wrote two business letters, and strolled to the threshing floor, the cattle and horse yards. Having taken measures against the general drunkenness expected the next day on the occasion of the patron saint’s feast, he came to dinner and, having no time for a private talk with his wife, sat down at the long table set for twenty, at which the whole household was gathered. At the table were his mother, the old Mrs. Belov, who lived with her, his wife, his three children, the governess, the tutor, his nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Mikhail Ivanych, the prince’s architect, who was living in retirement at Bald Hills.
Countess Marya sat at the opposite end of the table. As soon as her husband sat in his place, by the gesture with which, having removed the napkin, he quickly shifted the goblet and wineglass that stood in front of him, Countess Marya decided that he was in a bad humor, as sometimes happened to him, especially before the soup, and when he had come to dinner straight from farmwork. Countess Marya knew that mood very well, and when she was in a good mood herself, she calmly waited until he had had his soup, and only then began to talk to him and make him admit that he was in a bad humor for no reason; but today she completely forgot this observation of hers; it pained her that he was angry with her for no reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He told her. She also asked whether everything was all right on the farm. He winced unpleasantly from her unnatural tone and answered brusquely.
“So I wasn’t mistaken,” thought Countess Marya. “Why is he angry with me?” In the tone of his answer, Countess Marya heard ill will towards her and a wish to break off the conversation. She felt that her words were unnatural, but she could not keep from asking several more questions.
Thanks to Denisov, the conversation at dinner soon became general and lively, and Countess Marya did not talk to her husband. When they left the table and went to thank the old countess, Countess Marya kissed her husband, holding out her hand, and asked him why he was angry with her.
“You always have the strangest notions; I never thought of being angry,” he said.
But the word always answered Countess Marya: “Yes, I’m angry, and I don’t want to say so.”
Nikolai and his wife got along so well that even Sonya and the old countess, who, out of jealousy, wished for some disagreement between them, could find no pretext for reproach; but there were also moments of hostility between them. Sometimes, precisely after the happiest periods, a feeling of estrangement and hostility suddenly came over them; this feeling appeared most often at the time of Countess Marya’s pregnancies. She was in one of those periods now.