Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to collect herself after this apparition, and she started to talk about the prince’s poor health. Speechless, Natasha and Princess Marya gazed at each other and the longer they remained speechless and continued to gaze at each other, leaving unsaid all those things that ought to have been said, the greater was the mutual antipathy that rose between them.
When the count returned, Natasha, almost indecently pleased to see him, got away as fast as she could, with a feeling akin to loathing for that frigid old woman of a princess, who was capable of putting her in such an embarrassing position, and also of spending half an hour with her without saying a word about Prince Andrey. ‘I just couldn’t have been the first to talk about him with that Frenchwoman in the room,’ thought Natasha. Meanwhile Princess Marya was tormenting herself in just the same way. She had known what needed to be said to Natasha, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to say it, partly because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way but also because she found it terribly difficult to begin talking about the marriage, though she couldn’t have said why. The count was well on his way out of the room when Princess Marya scurried across to Natasha, seized her hand and said with a deep sigh, ‘Wait a second. I think I should . . .’ Natasha looked at Princess Marya with a kind of scorn, though she too couldn’t have explained why.
‘Dear Natalie,’ said Princess Marya, ‘I want you to know how glad I am my brother has found such happiness . . .’ She paused, conscious of telling a lie. Natasha noted the pause and guessed the reason behind it.
‘Princess, I don’t think this is the right time to talk about it,’ said Natasha, with a show of dignity and aloofness, though she was choking on tears.
‘What have I said? What have I done?’ she thought the moment she was out of the room.
Natasha kept them waiting for dinner that evening. She was still up in her room, crying like a child, sniffling and sobbing. Sonya stood over her, kissing her hair.
‘Natasha, there’s nothing to cry about,’ she kept saying. ‘Why do you bother about them? It’ll soon pass, Natasha.’
‘No, if only you knew how humiliating it was . . . As if I . . .’
‘Natasha, don’t say anything. It’s not your fault, so why should you bother? Give me a kiss,’ said Sonya.
Natasha looked up and kissed her friend on the lips, pressing her wet face against hers.
‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know. It’s nobody’s fault,’ said Natasha. ‘It’s my fault. But it hurts, it hurts so much. Oh, why doesn’t he come?’
She went down to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitriyevna, fully aware of how the old prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice Natasha’s worried face and over dinner she kept a constant stream of loud jokes going with the count and the other guests.
CHAPTER 8
That evening the Rostovs went to the opera, where Marya Dmitriyevna had taken a box for them.
Natasha didn’t feel like going, but it was impossible to refuse a treat that Marya Dmitriyevna had arranged especially for her benefit. When she was all dressed up and waiting for her father in the big hall, she glanced at herself in the big mirror and saw that she looked pretty, very pretty, which made her feel even sadder than before, though it was a sweet and tender sadness.
‘Oh God, if only he was here with me now, I wouldn’t be like I used to be, silly and shy, I’d be quite different, I’d give him a hug, cuddle up to him and force him to look at me with those searching, questioning eyes, the way he used to look at me before, and then I’d make him laugh, the way he used to laugh, and his eyes – oh, I can see those eyes!’ thought Natasha. ‘And why should I bother about his father and sister? I don’t love anybody else but him, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile, a man’s smile yet also a little boy’s . . . No, it’s better if I don’t think about him, don’t think, forget him, completely forget him for the time being. I can’t bear all this waiting. I’ll be sobbing any minute now,’ and she turned away from the mirror in a great effort to avoid tears. ‘How can Sonya love Nikolay so calmly, so easily, and keep on waiting so patiently?’ she wondered, looking at Sonya, who had just come in, smartly dressed and holding a fan. ‘No, she’s not a bit like me. I can’t manage it.’
