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CHAPTER XXII
Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew
dined with the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew
came, and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all
day. Not only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured
Natasha, but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at
something important that was bound to happen. The countess looked
with sad and sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked
to Natasha and timidly started some artificial conversation about
trifles as soon as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave
Natasha and afraid of being in the way when she was with them.
Natasha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when she remained
alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by his
timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but
could not bring himself to do so.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess
went up to Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"
"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now!
One can't talk about that," said Natasha.
But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now
frightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight
before her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told
her he was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend
the summer, and then how he had asked her about Boris.
"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!"
she said. "Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always
afraid when I'm with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that
it's the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"
"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered
her mother. "Now go!"
"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep!
Mummy! Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before,"
she said, surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of
in herself. "And could we ever have thought!..."
It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince
Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as
if she feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again
the very man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she
had done so) and of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent
to her.
"And it had to happen that he should come specially to
Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that we should
meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything
led up to this! Already then, directly I saw him I felt something
peculiar."
"What else did he say to you? What are those verses?
Read them..." said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to
some verses Prince Andrew had written in Natasha's album.
"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"
"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in
heaven,'" said her mother.
"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!"
cried Natasha, shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing
her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and
telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make
her his wife.
That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The
French ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood
who had of late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant
ladies and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked
through the rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded,
and morose air.
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous
depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since
the intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly
been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he
had begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and
dark thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener
than before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between
his protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by
the contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried
equally to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and
Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him insignificant
in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what? presented
itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic
labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him.
Toward midnight, after he had left the countess' apartments, he
was sitting upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the
original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a
table in his low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when someone
came in. It was Prince Andrew.
"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied,
dissatisfied air. "And I, you see, am hard at it." He
pointed to his manuscript book with that air of escaping from
the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work.
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed
life on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing
his sad look, smiled at him with the egotism of joy.
"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell
you about it yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never
experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my friend!"
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person
down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.
"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have
believed it, but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented
myself and suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment
for anything in the world, I have not lived till now. At last
I live, but I can't live without her! But can she love me?...
I am too old for her.... Why don't you speak?"
"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly,
rising and beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always
thought it.... That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl....
My dear friend, I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt,
marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier
man than you."
"But what of her?"
"She loves you."
"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling
and looking into Pierre's eyes.
"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.
"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding
him by the arm. "Do you know the condition I am in? I must
talk about it to someone."
"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre,
and his face really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened
gladly to Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was,
quite a different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his
contempt for life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person
to whom he made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told
all that was in his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans
for an extended future, said he could not sacrifice his own happiness
to his father's caprice, and spoke of how he would either make
his father consent to this marriage and love her, or would do
without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that had
mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent
of himself.
"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I
was capable of such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is
not at all the same feeling that I knew in the past. The whole
world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she,
and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything
where she is not, and there is all gloom and darkness...."
"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes,
yes, I understand that."
"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault.
And I am very happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for
my sake."
"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend
with a touched and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince
Andrew's lot appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
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