|
The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that
Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went
out to look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed,
went out with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the
room. Petya was no longer with the family, he had gone on with
his regiment which was making for Troitsa.
The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to
cry. Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench
under the icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid
no attention to her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless
moaning of the adjutant, three houses off.
"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the
yard chilled and frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow
will burn, there's an awful glow! Natasha, do look! You can see
it from the window," she said to her cousin, evidently wishing
to distract her mind.
But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was
said to her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove.
She had been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when
Sonya, to the surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for
some unaccountable reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of
Prince Andrew's wound and of his being with their party. The countess
had seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya
had cried and begged to be forgiven and now, as if trying to atone
for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her cousin.
"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said
she.
"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes,
Moscow."
And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her,
she turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that
it was evident that she could not see anything, and again settled
down in her former attitude.
"But you didn't see it!"
"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice
that pleaded to be left in peace.
Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither
Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem
of importance to Natasha.
The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The
countess went up to her daughter and touched her head with the
back of her hand as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then
touched her forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was
feverish, and finally kissed her.
"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better
lie down," said the countess.
"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once,"
said Natasha.
When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew
was seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she
had at first asked many questions: Where was he going? How was
he wounded? Was it serious? And could she see him? But after she
had been told that she could not see him, that he was seriously
wounded but that his life was not in danger, she ceased to ask
questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving what they
told her, and convinced that say what she might she would still
be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a corner
of the coach with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which
the countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat
in the same way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving.
She was planning something and either deciding or had already
decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but what
it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her.
"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."
A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame
Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.
"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,"
Natasha replied irritably and she went to the window and opened
it. Through the open window the moans of the adjutant could be
heard more distinctly. She put her head out into the damp night
air, and the countess saw her slim neck shaking with sobs and
throbbing against the window frame. Natasha knew it was not Prince
Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in the same
yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess
exchanged a look with Sonya.
"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the
countess, softly touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie
down."
"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha,
and began hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.
When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket,
she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been
made up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of
hair to the front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced
fingers rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her
head moved from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly
wide, looked fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night
was finished she sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay
on the side nearest the door.
"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said
Sonya.
"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie
down," she added crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.
The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and
lay down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light
left in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire
at Little Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night
came the noise of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks
had set up across the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans
could still be heard.
For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds
that reached her from inside and outside the room and did not
move. First she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking
of her bed under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore
and Sonya's gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha.
Natasha did not answer.
"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.
After short silence the countess spoke again but this time
no one replied.
Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing.
Natasha did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out
from under the quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor.
As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped
in a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied
near by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning
of the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.
"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.
No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed
herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with
her slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked.
Stepping cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a
kitten the few steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.
It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically
against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking
with alarm and terror and overflowing with love.
She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto
the cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt
refreshed her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man,
stepped over him, and opened the door into the part of the hut
where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest
corner, on a bench beside a bed on which something was lying,
stood a tallow candle with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.
From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's
wound and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him.
She did not know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be
painful, but felt the more convinced that it was necessary.
All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night.
But now that the moment had come she was filled with dread of
what she might see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was
he like that incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was
altogether like that. In her imagination he was that terrible
moaning personified. When she saw an indistinct shape in the corner,
and mistook his knees raised under the quilt for his shoulders,
she imagined a horrible body there, and stood still in terror.
But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She cautiously took
one step and then another, and found herself in the middle of
a small room containing baggage. Another man- Timokhin- was lying
in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others-
the doctor and a valet- lay on the floor.
The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake
by the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this
strange apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket,
and nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What
do you want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more
swiftly to what was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man
as that body looked, she must see him. She passed the valet, the
snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly
with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she had always seen
him.
He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face,
his glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially
his neck, delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar
of his shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look,
such as she had never seen on him before. She went up to him and
with a swift, flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.
He smiled and held out his hand to her.
|
