Bab Bab 140 · 第140章

Count Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility

because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs

did not improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents

conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of

selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was

not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal,

and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the

enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty

sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had

settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons

who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were

Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his

family, Belóva, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many

others such as Pétya’s tutors, the girls’ former governess, and

other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to

live in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many visitors

as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and

countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was

still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the

same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive

presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there

were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which—spreading

out his cards so that everybody could see them—he let himself be

plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked

upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostóv as a most

profitable source of income.

The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe

that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and

feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and

patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt

that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count’s fault

for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to

hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and

his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the

position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one

solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to

be their last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found

for him, she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters

right. This match was with Julie Karágina, the daughter of excellent

and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostóvs had known from childhood, and

who had now become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of

her brothers.

The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting

a marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer

from her. Karágina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and

everything depend on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas

to come to Moscow.

Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that

now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him

married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that

were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl

and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.

At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to

Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his

mother’s remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations

induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope

of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie

Karágina.

“But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would

you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of

money?” he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question

and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.

“No, you have not understood me,” said his mother, not knowing how

to justify herself. “You have not understood me, Nikólenka. It is

your happiness I wish for,” she added, feeling that she was telling an

untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.

“Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I

will give my life, anything, to put you at ease,” said Nicholas. “I

would sacrifice anything for you—even my feelings.”

But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not

want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice

for him.

“No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about it,” she

replied, wiping away her tears.

“Maybe I do love a poor girl,” said Nicholas to himself. “Am I to

sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could

speak so to me. Because Sónya is poor I must not love her,” he

thought, “must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should

certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can

always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,” he said to

himself, “but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sónya, that

feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else.”

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the

conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes

with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and

the portionless Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could

not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sónya, often pulling her up

without reason, addressing her stiffly as “my dear,” and using the

formal “you” instead of the intimate “thou” in speaking to her.

The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sónya because that

poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly

grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and

unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for

finding fault with her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had

come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have

been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly

reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till

the beginning of the new year. Natásha was still as much in love with

her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as

ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at

the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits

of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:

sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to

anyone—while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostóvs’ home.