War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (best e books to read .TXT) 📖

the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostóv danced the Trepák with Major Básov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostóv; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted “hurrah!” and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first post station.

During the first half of the journey⁠—from Kremenchúg to Kiev⁠—all Rostóv’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his three roans and Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously how things would be at Otrádnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it⁠—far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At the last post station before Otrádnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.

After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied expectation⁠—the feeling that “everything is just the same, so why did I hurry?”⁠—Nikoláy began to settle down in his old home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nikoláy soon found out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sónya was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nikoláy returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nikoláy most. Pétya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natásha, for a long while Nikoláy wondered and laughed whenever he looked at her.

“You’re not the same at all,” he said.

“How? Am I uglier?”

“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to her.

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.

She told him about her romance with Prince Andréy and of his visit to Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.

“Well, are you glad?” Natásha asked. “I am so tranquil and happy now.”

“Very glad,” answered Nikoláy. “He is an excellent fellow.⁠ ⁠… And are you very much in love?”

“How shall I put it?” replied Natásha. “I was in love with Borís, with my teacher, and with Denísov, but this is quite different. I feel at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before.”

Nikoláy expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage for a year; but Natásha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father’s will, and that she herself wished it so.

“You don’t at all understand,” she said.

Nikoláy was silent and agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nikoláy and even made him regard Bolkónski’s courtship skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not seen her with Prince Andréy. It always seemed to him that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.

“Why this delay? Why no betrothal?” he thought. Once, when he had touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too had doubts about this marriage.

“You see he writes,” said she, showing her son a letter of Prince Andréy’s, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a daughter’s future married happiness, “he writes that he won’t come before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health is very delicate. Don’t tell Natásha. And don’t attach importance to her being so bright: that’s because she’s living through the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!” (She always ended with these words.) “He is an excellent man!”

II

After reaching home Nikoláy was at first serious and even dull. He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where he was going, to Mítenka’s lodge and demanded an account of everything. But what an account of everything might be Nikoláy knew even less than the frightened and bewildered Mítenka. The conversation and the examination of the accounts with Mítenka did not last long. The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count’s voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.

“Robber!⁠ ⁠… Ungrateful wretch!⁠ ⁠… I’ll hack the dog to pieces! I’m not my father!⁠ ⁠… Robbing us!⁠ ⁠…” and so on.

Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mítenka out by the scruff of the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, “Be off! Never let me see your face here again,