A few of the closest relatives were still there, lingering on, sitting in the large drawing-room. Prince Vasily walked casually over towards Pierre. Pierre stood up and said it was getting late. Prince Vasily fixed him with a stern, questioning look, as if his words were so strange he must have misheard. But the stern glance soon disappeared and Prince Vasily took Pierre by the arm, drawing him down into a seat and beaming affectionately.
‘And how’s my little daughter?’ he said to her abruptly, using the casual tone of familiar affection that comes naturally to parents who have cuddled their children since childhood, but in his case had been worked out by imitating other parents. Again he turned to Pierre. ‘ “Sergey Kuzmich. From all sides . . .” ’ he proclaimed, undoing the top button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew Prince Vasily was not really interested in Sergey Kuzmich, and that Prince Vasily knew that Pierre knew. Then Prince Vasily suddenly mumbled something and walked away. Pierre got the impression that Prince Vasily was quite embarrassed, and he was moved by the sight of embarrassment in this old man of the world. He glanced round at Hélène and she looked embarrassed too. Her eyes seemed to say, ‘Well, you did it.’
‘I must cross that line, but I can’t, I just can’t do it . . .’ thought Pierre, and he launched into something different, asking about Sergey Kuzmich and the point of the story because he hadn’t quite heard it. Hélène smiled and said she didn’t know either.
Prince Vasily had gone into the drawing-room, where the princess was talking about Pierre in subdued tones to an elderly lady.
‘Yes, of course it’s a very brilliant match, but –
‘Marriages are made in heaven,’ retorted the elderly lady.
Prince Vasily walked to the far corner and sat down on a sofa as if he hadn’t heard them. He closed his eyes and seemed to nod off. His head began to droop, but then he roused himself.
‘Aline,’ he said to his wife, ‘go and see what they are doing.’
The princess went to the door and, strolling past with an air of studied nonchalance, she managed a glance into the little drawing-room. Pierre and Hélène were sitting there talking just as before.
‘Just the same,’ she said in answer to her husband.
Prince Vasily frowned, twisting his mouth to one side, and his cheeks began to twitch with that nasty, brutal expression of his. He shook himself, got up, tossed his head back and walked with firm steps past the ladies and into the little drawing-room. He strode in quickly and went straight up to Pierre, full of delight. The prince’s face was so outrageously triumphant that Pierre rose in alarm the moment he saw him.
‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘My wife has told me.’ He put one arm around Pierre, the other around his daughter. ‘My dear boy! Hélène! I am so very pleased.’ His voice quavered. ‘I was so fond of your father . . . and she will make you a good wife . . . God bless you both!’ He embraced his daughter, then Pierre again, and kissed him with his old man’s mouth. There were real tears on his cheeks. ‘Aline, come here,’ he called out.
The princess came in and she wept too. The elderly lady also wiped an eye with her handkerchief. They kissed Pierre, and he kissed the hand of his lovely Hélène several times. Soon they found themselves alone together again.
‘All this had to be and couldn’t have been otherwise,’ thought Pierre, ‘so it’s no use wondering whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It has to be a good thing because it’s something definite, and there’s no more of that agonizing suspense.’ Pierre held his fiancée’s hand in silence and gazed at the rise and fall of her superb bosom.
‘Hélène!’ he said out loud, and immediately stopped. ‘There’s something special that’s supposed to be said on these occasions,’ he thought, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what was supposed to be said on these occasions. He looked her in the eyes. She leant forward closer to him. Her face glowed red.
‘Oh, please . . . take them off,’ she asked, pointing to his spectacles.
Pierre took them off, and in his eyes, besides that strange look that people always have when they remove their spectacles, there was a look of alarm and bemusement. He made an attempt to bend down and kiss her hand but after one quick, rough toss of her head she found his lips and brought them to her own. Pierre was struck by the new, unpleasantly distorted expression on her face.
‘It’s too late now, it’s all over and I do love her,’ thought Pierre.
‘I love you!’ he said in formal French, suddenly recalling what was supposed to be said on these occasions. But the words sounded so feeble that he felt sick and ashamed.
Six weeks later he was living as a married man in the enormous, newly refurbished Petersburg mansion of the Counts Bezukhov, the proud owner, as people pointed out, of a beautiful wife and millions of roubles.
CHAPTER 3
