‘No doubt about it,’ said Prince Andrey, and then, suddenly stimulated in the most awkward way, he started ribbing Pierre about the need to watch his step with his fifty-year-old lady cousins in Moscow, only to get to his feet in mid-joke, seize hold of Pierre’s arm and take him to one side.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Pierre, who had been watching his friend’s strange agitation in some amazement, and had seen him glance across at Natasha as he got up.
‘Listen, I must talk to you,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘You know that pair of women’s gloves . . .’ (He had in mind the masonic gloves given to a newly initiated brother for presentation to the woman he loved.) ‘I . . . er, no, I’ll talk to you later . . .’ And with a strange glint in his eyes and a restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrey went over to Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre watched as Prince Andrey asked her something and she blushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came over to Pierre, and insisted on his settling a dispute on Spanish affairs that had arisen between the general and the colonel.
Berg was pleased and happy. A smile of gratification was never off his face. The soirée was proving a great success, the exact image of all the other soirées he had ever been to. All the details were identical: subtle exchanges between the ladies, the card-playing and the general raising his voice as they played, the samovar, the cakes . . . only one thing was missing, something he had seen at every soirée and now wished to replicate. There had not yet been any shouting from the gentlemen or an argument about something serious and high-minded. The general had started just such a conversation and Berg now brought Pierre into it.
CHAPTER 22
Next day Prince Andrey went to lunch at the Rostovs’, invited by Count Ilya, and spent the whole day there.
Everyone in the house could sense who Prince Andrey had really come to see, and he made no attempt to hide his efforts to spend the whole day with Natasha.
There was a feeling of dreadful anticipation everywhere, not only in Natasha’s inner being – frightened, but happy and excited as she was – but permeating the whole household, as if some portentous event was just about to come to pass. The countess watched Prince Andrey closely, with an air of great concern and sorrow, whenever he talked to Natasha, and when he turned to look at her she would respond rather coyly, talking of this and that. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha on her own, and equally afraid of being
When Prince Andrey had gone home that night the countess went over to Natasha and whispered, ‘Well?’
‘Mamma, for heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything just now. It’s not something I can talk about,’ said Natasha.
Nevertheless, Natasha lay in her mother’s bed for a long time that night, scared and excited, her darting eyes gradually settling into a stare. She told her everything he had said – he had lavished praise on her, talked about going abroad, asked where they were spending the summer, and wanted to know all about Boris.
‘But all this, this . . . Oh, I’ve never felt like this before!’ she said. ‘But I feel so scared when I’m with him, I’m always scared when I’m with him. What does it mean? Is this the real thing? Is that what it means? Mamma, are you asleep?’
‘No, darling, I’m scared too,’ answered her mother. ‘Go on, off you go to bed.’
‘No, I shan’t sleep. Oh, sleep is so stupid! Mamma, darling, I’ve never felt anything like this before,’ she said, shocked and panicky at the feelings she recognized in herself. ‘Who’d have thought . . . ?’
Natasha now had the impression she had fallen in love with Prince Andrey the first time she had seen him at Otradnoye. Sudden happiness seemed to have caught her unawares with all its dreadful strangeness – how odd that the man she had chosen there and then (as she now knew for certain), this very man should turn up again, apparently not indifferent to her.
‘It all had to happen – he came to Petersburg just when we were here. And we met, as we had to, at the ball. It was all fate. We’re obviously victims of fate. Everything’s been leading up to this. That first time, the minute I saw him, I had a special feeling.’
‘What was it he said to you? What was all that poetry about? Read it to me . . .’ said her mother pensively, casting her mind back to some lines of verse that Prince Andrey had written in Natasha’s album.
‘Mamma, he’s a widower – is there anything wrong in that?’
‘Hush, Natasha. Don’t forget to say your prayers. Marriages are made in heaven,’ she said, quoting the French proverb.
‘Mamma, darling, oh, I do love you! And I’m so happy!’ cried Natasha, shedding tears of excitement and happiness, and hugging her mother.
