Chương Chương 155 · 第155章

During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Hélène’s box,

the door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush

against anyone.

“Let me introduce my brother to you,” said Hélène, her eyes

shifting uneasily from Natásha to Anatole.

Natásha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer

and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome

at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he

had long wished to have this happiness—ever since the Narýshkins’

ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing

her. Kurágin was much more sensible and simple with women than among

men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natásha was strangely and

agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this

man about whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his

smile was most naïve, cheerful, and good-natured.

Kurágin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a

previous performance Semënova had fallen down on the stage.

“And do you know, Countess,” he said, suddenly addressing her as an

old, familiar acquaintance, “we are getting up a costume tournament;

you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at

the Karágins’! Please come! No! Really, eh?” said he.

While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,

her neck, and her bare arms. Natásha knew for certain that he was

enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel

constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that

he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye

so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking into his

eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of

modesty she had always felt between herself and other men. She did not

know how it was that within five minutes she had come to feel herself

terribly near to this man. When she turned away she feared he might

seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They

spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that they were closer to

one another than she had ever been to any man. Natásha kept turning to

Hélène and to her father, as if asking what it all meant, but Hélène

was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her

look, and her father’s eyes said nothing but what they always said:

“Having a good time? Well, I’m glad of it!”

During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole’s

prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natásha, to break

the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and

blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing

something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.

“At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant

ce sont les jolies femmes, * isn’t that so? But now I like it very

much indeed,” he said, looking at her significantly. “You’ll come

to the costume tournament, Countess? Do come!” and putting out his

hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, “You will be the

prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a

pledge!”

* Are the pretty women.

Natásha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did

himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper

intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had

not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that

he was there, behind, so close behind her.

“How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?” she

asked herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked

straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the

good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just

as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with

horror that no barrier lay between him and her.

The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natásha

went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the

world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed

quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her

betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once

recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.

In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm

about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared

down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natásha saw.

She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kurágin whom

she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole

came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was

putting Natásha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and

flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,

smiling tenderly.

Only after she had reached home was Natásha able clearly to think over

what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she

was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she

gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.

“O God! I am lost!” she said to herself. “How could I let him?”

She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to

realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand

what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure,

and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the

bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the

music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly

naked Hélène with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried

“bravo!”—there in the presence of that Hélène it had all seemed

clear and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.

“What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing

of conscience I am feeling now?” she thought.

Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natásha have told all

she was feeling. She knew that Sónya with her severe and simple views

would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such

a confession. So Natásha tried to solve what was torturing her by

herself.

“Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?” she asked herself, and

with soothing irony replied: “What a fool I am to ask that! What did

happen to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn’t lead him on

at all. Nobody will know and I shall never see him again,” she told

herself. “So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is

nothing to repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why ‘still?’

O God, why isn’t he here?” Natásha quieted herself for a moment,

but again some instinct told her that though all this was true, and

though nothing had happened, yet the former purity of her love for

Prince Andrew had perished. And again in imagination she went over her

whole conversation with Kurágin, and again saw the face, gestures, and

tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.