Kabanata Kabanata 127 · 第127章

Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston

with Count Rostóv, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he

happened to be directly facing Natásha, and was struck by a curious

change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and not

only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by

her look of gentle indifference to everything around.

“What’s the matter with her?” thought Pierre, glancing at her.

She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without

looking at him, made some reply to Borís who sat down beside her. After

playing out a whole suit and to his partner’s delight taking five

tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had

entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at

Natásha.

“What has happened to her?” he asked himself with still greater

surprise.

Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a

look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up

at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And

the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again

alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had

again become what she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and

youthful expression in his friend’s face.

Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with

his back to Natásha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six

rubbers he watched her and his friend.

“Something very important is happening between them,” thought

Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and

made him neglect the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing

like that, and Pierre was released. Natásha on one side was talking

with Sónya and Borís, and Véra with a subtle smile was saying

something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking

whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Véra, having

noticed Prince Andrew’s attentions to Natásha, decided that at a

party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were

absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone,

began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her

sister. With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to

be, she felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.

When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Véra was being carried away

by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a

thing that rarely happened with him.

“What do you think?” Véra was saying with an arch smile. “You are

so discerning, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at

a glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her

attachments? Could she, like other women” (Véra meant herself),

“love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what

I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?”

“I know your sister too little,” replied Prince Andrew, with a

sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, “to

be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that

the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be,”

he added, and looked up at Pierre who was just approaching them.

“Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,” continued

Véra—mentioning “our days” as people of limited intelligence are

fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the

peculiarities of “our days” and that human characteristics change

with the times—“in our days a girl has so much freedom that the

pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must

be confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.” This return to

the subject of Natalie caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with

discomfort: he was about to rise, but Véra continued with a still more

subtle smile:

“I think no one has been more courted than she,” she went on, “but

till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know,

Count,” she said to Pierre, “even our dear cousin Borís, who,

between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness...”

(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).

Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.

“You are friendly with Borís, aren’t you?” asked Véra.

“Yes, I know him....”

“I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natásha?”

“Oh, there was childish love?” suddenly asked Prince Andrew,

blushing unexpectedly.

“Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le

cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. * Don’t you think so?”

* “Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.”

“Oh, undoubtedly!” said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural

liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful

with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these

jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.

“Well?” asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange animation with

surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natásha as he rose.

“I must... I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andrew. “You

know that pair of women’s gloves?” (He referred to the Masonic

gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he

loved.) “I... but no, I will talk to you later on,” and with a

strange light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince

Andrew approached Natásha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how

Prince Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.

But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he

should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on

the affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his face.

The party was very successful and quite like other parties he had

seen. Everything was similar: the ladies’ subtle talk, the cards, the

general raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the tea

cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening

parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud conversation

among the men and a dispute about something important and clever. Now

the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.