War And Peace

While their elders began talking about Bonaparte, Julie, Madame Karagin’s daughter, turned to young Rostov, and said, ‘I missed you at the Arkharovs on Thursday. It was very dull without you,’ she said, giving him a sweet smile. Feeling flattered, he smiled his flirtatious young man’s smile and moved closer to her. With the equally smiling Julie he started a private conversation, blissfully unaware that his spontaneous smile had pierced a jealous Sonya to the heart; she was left with a forced smile on her blushing face. In mid-conversation he happened to glance at her. Sonya glared back venomously, got to her feet and left the room, scarcely holding back her tears, and still wearing that forced smile. Nikolay’s liveliness evaporated. He waited for the first break in the conversation, and went off to find Sonya, his face a picture of dismay.

‘Oh, these young people, they do wear their hearts on their sleeves!’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, nodding after Nikolay’s retreating figure. ‘Cousins, cousins, troubles in dozens,’ she added.

‘Yes,’ said the countess, when the ray of sunshine that had come into the room with the young people had vanished, as if she was answering a question that no one had asked but was always on her mind. ‘How many trials and tribulations we have to go through in order to enjoy them as they are now! And even now, I’ll swear there’s more dread than enjoyment. You’re always, always afraid for them. Especially at this age when there are so many dangers both for girls and boys.’

‘It all depends on how they were brought up,’ said the visitor.

‘You’re quite right,’ the countess went on. ‘Up to now, thank God, I’ve been a good friend to my children and they trust me completely.’ The countess was repeating the delusion of so many parents, who imagine their children have no secrets from them. ‘I know my daughters will always turn to me as their first confidante, and I know that if Nikolay, with his impulsive nature, gets up to no good (boys will be boys) it won’t be anything like those young gentlemen in Petersburg.’

‘Yes, they’re splendid children, splendid,’ agreed the count, who resolved all his thorny problems by finding everything splendid. ‘Just imagine! My son a hussar! Still, whatever you want, my dear.’

‘Your younger girl is such a nice creature!’ said the visitor. ‘What a fireball!’

‘She’s a fireball, all right,’ said the count. ‘Takes after me. And what a voice! I know she’s my daughter, but I’m telling you she’s going to be a singer, another Salomoni.²⁰ We’ve engaged an Italian to give her lessons.’

‘Isn’t she too young? They say it damages the voice to train it at that age.’

‘Too young? No, she isn’t,’ said the count. ‘Don’t forget – our mothers used to get married at twelve or thirteen.’

‘Well, she’s certainly in love – with your Boris! How about that?’ said the countess, smiling gently and looking at Boris’s mother. Once again prompted by an idea that was constantly on her mind, she went on, ‘If I was too strict with her, you see, if I was to stop her . . . Heaven knows what they might get up to on the quiet,’ (she had in mind kissing) ‘whereas now I know every word she speaks. Tonight she’ll come to me and tell me everything. Perhaps I do spoil her a bit, but, well, I think it’s the best thing to do . . . I was strict with the eldest.’

‘Yes. I was brought up quite differently,’ said the girl in question, the radiant young Countess Vera, with a smile. But, unusually, it was a smile that did nothing for Vera’s face; on the contrary she looked unnatural, and therefore unpleasing. She, the elder daughter, was good-looking, quite intelligent, good at her lessons and well brought up; she had a nice voice and she talked good sense. But, it was odd – everybody there, including the visitor and the countess, looked at her in some surprise when she spoke and they were all embarrassed.

‘You’re always too clever by half with the first ones, trying to do something different,’ said the visitor.

‘Our sins will out. My dear countess was a bit too clever with Vera,’ said the count. ‘Never mind, she’s turned out splendid all the same,’ he added, with a wink of approval in Vera’s direction.

The visitors got up and left, accepting the dinner invitation.

‘Dreadful manners. I thought they’d never go,’ said the countess as she saw them off.

CHAPTER 10

When Natasha came rushing out of the drawing-room, she ran only as far as the conservatory, where she stopped and listened to them still talking in the drawing-room, and she waited for Boris to come out. She soon began to lose patience, stamping her little foot and almost bursting into tears when he didn’t come, but then she suddenly heard someone’s footsteps, not too relaxed, not too quick, the measured tread of a young man. Natasha nipped between two tubs of flowers and hid.