‘I can’t help loving the light. It’s not my fault. And I’m
‘Yes, I am,’ Pierre agreed, and as he watched his friend, his eyes brimmed with sweet sadness. The brighter Prince Andrey’s fate became, the gloomier his own seemed to be.
CHAPTER 23
If Prince Andrey was to marry he would need his father’s consent, so the next day he set off to see him.
The old prince received his son’s announcement with a show of outward equanimity which masked hidden fury. He couldn’t understand how anyone could want to alter his way of living by introducing innovations when his life was drawing to its close. ‘If they would only let me live my life out in my own way, and then do what they want . . .’ the old man said to himself. Dealing with his son, however, he employed the kind of diplomacy that he reserved for special occasions. Adopting a calm tone, he discussed the whole matter.
First, the marriage was not a brilliant one in terms of birth, fortune or social standing. Second, Prince Andrey was not in the first flush of youth, his health was not good (the old man set great store by this), and the girl was very young. Third, there was his son; it would be a pity to entrust him to some slip of a girl. ‘Fourth and last,’ said the father to his son with a mocking glance, ‘I appeal to you. Put it all off for a year, go abroad and see to your health, find a German tutor for Prince Nikolay – you’ve been wanting to do that – and then, if your love, passion, determination – whatever you want to call it – still matters to you, then get married. And that’s my last word on the subject – I mean it, my very last word . . .’ the old prince concluded, his tone clearly indicating that nothing was going to change his mind.
Prince Andrey could see through the old man: he was hoping that either Andrey’s feelings or those of his fiancée would fail the test of a year’s delay, or that he, the old prince, would be dead by the end of it, and he decided to fall in with his father’s wish. He would make a proposal and then postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after his last evening visit to the Rostovs’ Prince Andrey returned to Petersburg.
After the conversation with her mother Natasha spent the whole of the next day waiting for Bolkonsky, but he didn’t come. A second and a third day came and went – still no visit. Pierre stayed away too, and Natasha, unaware that Prince Andrey had gone off to see his father, didn’t know what to make of his absence.
Three weeks went by like this. Natasha refused to go out. She walked the house like a ghost, gloomy and listless, weeping in secret at night, and she stopped going in to see her mother at bedtime. She was continually blushing and very touchy. She had the impression that her disappointment was an open secret and they were all laughing at her and feeling sorry for her. For all the intensity of her personal sorrow, it was hurt pride that made her misery even more painful.
One day she came in to see the countess and started to say something, only to collapse in tears. They were the tears of a child whose feelings have been hurt and it can’t see why it is being punished. The countess did what she could to comfort her daughter. At first Natasha simply listened and listened, but then suddenly she interrupted her mother.
‘Please don’t, Mamma. I’ve stopped thinking about it – I don’t want to any more! Oh why did he keep coming here and then suddenly stop?’ There was a tremor in her voice and she was on the verge of tears, but she recovered her composure and went on to say, ‘And now I don’t want to get married at all. And besides I’m scared of him. Anyway, now I’m completely relaxed about everything.’
The day after this conversation Natasha put on one of her old dresses, one she knew she could rely on to feel good in all morning, and from first thing she resumed her old way of life, which had been abandoned ever since the ball. After morning tea she went out into the big hall, which she particularly liked because of its strong resonance, and did her singing practice, singing scales. When she had finished the first exercise she stood still in the middle of the hall and repeated one snatch of melody that particularly appealed to her. She listened enraptured, as if for the first time, by the charm of the notes as they swelled out to fill the vast spaces of the great room before slowly dying away, and suddenly she was happy again.
