War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [753]
No one could tell her anything so soothing and sensible as this little three-month-old being, when he lay at her breast and she felt the movement of his mouth and the puffing of his little nose. This being said: “You’re angry, you’re jealous, you’d like to take revenge on him, you’re afraid, but here I am. Here I am…” And there was nothing to reply. It was more than true.
In those two weeks of worry, Natasha so often resorted to the baby to be soothed, so fussed over him, that she overfed him and he fell sick. She was terrified by his illness, but at the same time it was what she needed. Taking care of him made it easier for her to endure the worry about her husband.
She was nursing when the noise of Pierre’s sleigh was heard in the drive, and the nanny, who knew what would gladden her mistress, came through the door, inaudibly but quickly, with a beaming face.
“He’s come?” Natasha asked in a quick whisper, afraid to move lest she awaken the baby, who was falling asleep.
“He’s come, dearie,” whispered the nanny.
The blood rushed to Natasha’s face and her feet made an involuntary movement, but she could not jump up and run. The baby opened his eyes again and looked. “You’re here,” he seemed to say, and again lazily smacked his lips.
Having gently withdrawn her breast, Natasha rocked the baby, handed him over to the nanny, and went with quick steps to the door. But at the door she stopped, as if feeling a pang of remorse that, in her gladness, she had left the baby too quickly, and turned to look. The nanny, her elbows raised, was lifting the baby over the railing of his little bed.
“Just go, just go, dearie, don’t worry, just go,” the nanny whispered, smiling, with the familiarity that is usually established between a nanny and her mistress.
And Natasha ran with light steps to the front hall.
Denisov, with his pipe, coming out from the study to the reception room, here recognized Natasha for the first time. A bright, shining, joyful light was pouring in streams from her transformed face.
“He’s come!” she said to him on the run, and Denisov felt that he was delighted by the fact that Pierre, for whom he had very little love, had come. Having run to the front hall, Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat unwinding his scarf.
“It’s him! Really! Here he is!” she said to herself, and, flying to him, she embraced him, pressed his head to her breast, and then, pushing it away, looked at the frosty, red-cheeked, and happy face of Pierre. “Yes, it’s him; happy, content…”
And suddenly she remembered all the torments of waiting that she had felt over the last two weeks: the joy shining on her face vanished; she frowned, and a stream of reproaches and angry words poured out on Pierre.
“Yes, it’s fine for you! You’re very glad, you had a good time…But what about me? You might at least feel sorry for the children. I’m nursing, my milk went bad. Petya almost died. And you’re having a very good time. Yes, a good time.”
Pierre knew he was not guilty, because he could not have come sooner; he knew that this outburst was improper on her part, and knew that in two minutes it would pass; he knew, above all, that he himself was cheerful and happy. He would have liked to smile, but did not even dare to think of it. He made a pitiful, frightened face and cowered.
“I couldn’t, by God! But how’s Petya?”
“He’s all right now, let’s go. You ought to be ashamed! If only you could see how I am without you, how I suffered…”
“Are you well?”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” she said, still holding on to his hand. And they went to their rooms.
When Nikolai and his wife came looking for Pierre, he was in the nursery, holding his awakened nursling son on his enormous right palm, dandling him. A merry smile lingered on his broad face with its open, toothless mouth. The storm had long since spent