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

What is it to me?⁠ ⁠… I shall die!” she muttered, wrenching herself from Márya Dmítrievna’s hands with a vicious effort and sinking down again into her former position.

“Natálya!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “I wish for your good. Lie still, stay like that then, I won’t touch you. But listen. I won’t tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?”

Again Natásha’s body shook with sobs.

“Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?”

“I have no betrothed: I have refused him!” cried Natásha.

“That’s all the same,” continued Márya Dmítrievna. “If they hear of this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him⁠ ⁠… if he challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?”

“Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked you to?” shouted Natásha, raising herself on the sofa and looking malignantly at Márya Dmítrievna.

“But what did you want?” cried Márya Dmítrievna, growing angry again. “Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?⁠ ⁠… Well, if he had carried you off⁠ ⁠… do you think they wouldn’t have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he’s a scoundrel, a wretch⁠—that’s a fact!”

“He is better than any of you!” exclaimed Natásha getting up. “If you hadn’t interfered⁠ ⁠… Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sónya, why?⁠ ⁠… Go away!”

And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Márya Dmítrievna was to speak again but Natásha cried out:

“Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!” and she threw herself back on the sofa.

Márya Dmítrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody would know anything about it if only Natásha herself would undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened. Natásha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she grew cold and had a shivering fit. Márya Dmítrievna put a pillow under her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some lime-flower water, but Natásha did not respond to her.

“Well, let her sleep,” said Márya Dmítrievna as she went out of the room supposing Natásha to be asleep.

But Natásha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep and did not speak to Sónya who got up and went to her several times.

Next day Count Ilyá Andréevich returned from his estate near Moscow in time for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed. Márya Dmítrievna met him and told him that Natásha had been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was better now. Natásha had not left her room that morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would write to her.

When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound of a man’s footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. “What is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?” asked the count.

After a moment’s silence Natásha answered: “Yes, ill.”

In reply to the count’s anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. Márya Dmítrievna confirmed Natásha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter’s distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sónya and Márya Dmítrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the country.

XIX

From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostóvs came to Moscow the effect Natásha had on him made him hasten to carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Osip Alexéevich’s widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased husband’s.

When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Márya Dmítrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great importance relating to Andréy Bolkónski and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding Natásha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her was stronger than a married man’s should be for his friend’s fiancée. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.

“What can have happened? And what can they want with me?” thought he as he dressed to go to Márya Dmítrievna’s. “If only Prince Andréy would hurry up and come and marry her!” thought he on his way to the house.

On the Tverskóy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.

“Pierre! Been back long?” someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makárin dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the