Kabanata Kabanata 159 · 第159章

Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began

to move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Márya Dmítrievna

appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natásha kept looking

uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept

every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.

After breakfast, which was her best time, Márya Dmítrievna sat down in

her armchair and called Natásha and the count to her.

“Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is

my advice,” she began. “Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince

Bolkónski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to

begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had

to say!”

“Well, and he?” asked the count.

“He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s the use

of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out,” said Márya

Dmítrievna. “My advice to you is finish your business and go back

home to Otrádnoe... and wait there.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Natásha.

“Yes, go back,” said Márya Dmítrievna, “and wait there. If your

betrothed comes here now—there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but

alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to

you.”

Count Rostóv approved of this suggestion, appreciating its

reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to

visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,

against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otrádnoe.

“That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took

her,” said the old count.

“No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he

won’t—that’s his affair,” said Márya Dmítrievna, looking for

something in her reticule. “Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there

is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I’ll send after you.

Though I don’t like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with

God’s blessing!”

Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to

Natásha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.

“She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She’s

afraid you might think that she does not like you.”

“But she doesn’t like me,” said Natásha.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Márya Dmítrievna.

“I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,” replied

Natásha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold

and angry resolution that caused Márya Dmítrievna to look at her more

intently and to frown.

“Don’t answer like that, my good girl!” she said. “What I say is

true! Write an answer!”

Natásha did not reply and went to her own room to read Princess

Mary’s letter.

Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that

had occurred between them. Whatever her father’s feelings might be,

she begged Natásha to believe that she could not help loving her as

the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to

sacrifice everything.

“Do not think, however,” she wrote, “that my father is

ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be

forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his

son happy.” Princess Mary went on to ask Natásha to fix a time when

she could see her again.

After reading the letter Natásha sat down at the writing table

to answer it. “Dear Princess,” she wrote in French quickly and

mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all that

had happened the evening before? “Yes, yes! All that has happened, and

now all is changed,” she thought as she sat with the letter she had

begun before her. “Must I break off with him? Must I really? That’s

awful...” and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to

Sónya and began sorting patterns with her.

After dinner Natásha went to her room and again took up Princess

Mary’s letter. “Can it be that it is all over?” she thought.

“Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all

that went before?” She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its

former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kurágin. She

vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the scenes of

happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and

at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of

yesterday’s interview with Anatole.

“Why could that not be as well?” she sometimes asked herself in

complete bewilderment. “Only so could I be completely happy; but now I

have to choose, and I can’t be happy without either of them. Only,”

she thought, “to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide

it from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is

spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew’s

love, in which I have lived so long?”

“Please, Miss!” whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious

air. “A man told me to give you this—” and she handed Natásha a

letter.

“Only, for Christ’s sake...” the girl went on, as Natásha,

without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter

from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only

that it was a letter from him—from the man she loved. Yes, she loved

him, or else how could that have happened which had happened? And how

could she have a love letter from him in her hand?

With trembling hands Natásha held that passionate love letter which

Dólokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it

an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.

“Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you

or to die. There is no other way for me,” the letter began. Then he

went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him—for

this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her—but that if

she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could

hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and

carry her off to the ends of the earth.

“Yes, yes! I love him!” thought Natásha, reading the letter for the

twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of

it.

That evening Márya Dmítrievna was going to the Akhárovs’ and

proposed to take the girls with her. Natásha, pleading a headache,

remained at home.