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

whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natásha sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got up again.

“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.

Her brother Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

“Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”

Pétya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

“No, don’t⁠ ⁠… the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off his back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull, Natásha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andréy. What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on the past.

Sónya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natásha glanced at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the light falling through that crack once before and Sónya passing with a glass in her hand. “Yes it was exactly the same,” thought Natásha.

“Sónya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.

“Oh, you are there!” said Sónya with a start, and came near and listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she ventured timidly, afraid of being wrong.

“There! That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling timidly when all this happened before,” thought Natásha, “and in just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her.”

“No, it’s the chorus from ‘The Water-Carrier’, listen!” and Natásha sang the air of the chorus so that Sónya should catch it. “Where were you going?” she asked.

“To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design.”

“You always find something to do, but I can’t,” said Natásha. “And where’s Nikólenka?”

“Asleep, I think.”

“Sónya, go and wake him,” said Natásha. “Tell him I want him to come and sing.”

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.

“Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing old⁠—that’s the thing! There won’t then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it.” She rose, put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.

All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table⁠—but Prince Andréy was not there and life was going on as before.

“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natásha enter. “Well, sit down by me.” But Natásha stayed by her mother and glanced round as if looking for something.

“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly, quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.

She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the elders and Nikoláy, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!” thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the same.

After tea, Nikoláy, Sónya, and Natásha went to the sitting room, to their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.

X

“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natásha to her brother, when they settled down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more to come⁠—nothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?”

“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was music⁠ ⁠… and suddenly I felt so depressed⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natásha interrupted him. “When I was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent⁠—that was the chief thing,” said Natásha. “Do you remember?”

“I remember,” answered Nikoláy. “I remember that I came to you afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?”

“And do you remember,” Natásha asked with a pensive smile, “how once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the study⁠—that was