Sonya could see the justice of this. The only possibility of easing the Rostovs’ plight was by marrying Nikolay to an heiress, and the princess would be an excellent match. But this was a bitter pill to swallow. In spite of her grief, or perhaps because of it, she took on all the hardest jobs in sorting things out and stowing them away, and kept herself busy for days on end. The count and countess consulted her when there were instructions to be given. Petya and Natasha, by contrast, never lifted a finger to help; they just got in the way and irritated everybody. All day long the house rang with their flying footsteps, yells and shrieks of laughter about nothing at all. They were happy and laughing not because there was any reason for laughter. It was the other way round: they were so full of high spirits and great glee that everything seemed reason enough for joy and laughter. Petya was flying high because he had left home a boy, and come back (so everyone told him) a splendid young man, because he was back home again, because he had left Belaya Tserkov, where active service had seemed such a remote prospect, and come back to Moscow, where the fighting would start any day now, but most of all because Natasha, who always set the pace for him, was flying high herself. And she was like that because she had spent too much time being sad, and now, with no more reminders of why she had been so sad, she was well again. And also because there was someone to adore her; being adored was like greasing the wheels that turned her into a smooth-running machine, and Petya certainly adored her. But most of all they were flying high because war was at the walls of Moscow, there would be fighting at the gates, arms were being given out, everybody was rushing about and running away, and something quite sensational was happening, which is always a source of delight, especially for young people.
CHAPTER 13
On Saturday, the 31st of August, the Rostov household looked as if it had been turned upside down. Every door was wide open, every stick of furniture had been carried outside or shifted around, and all the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. The rooms were littered with trunks, straw, wrapping-paper and string. Peasants and house serfs clomped across the parquet floors as they took things outside. The courtyard was crowded with carts, some of them stacked with goods and roped up, others yet to be filled.
Courtyard and house were alive with voices and footsteps, and swarming with house servants and peasants who had come in with the carts. The count had gone off somewhere first thing. The countess had gone down with a headache from all the racket and the hurly-burly, and she was lying flat out in the new sitting-room with a vinegar poultice across her forehead. Petya was out. (He had slipped away to see a young friend; the pair of them were planning to get themselves transferred from the militia into a front-line regiment.) Sonya was out in the big hall, supervising the stowage of glass and china. Natasha was sitting in the middle of the floor amidst the wreckage of her room, in a sea of scattered dresses, ribbons and scarves. She was staring down at the floor as she clutched an old ballgown, the one she had worn at her first Petersburg ball – and how unfashionable it looked now.
Natasha felt embarrassed that she was doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, and several times that morning she had tried to get involved, but her heart wasn’t in it. Mentally and physically she was incapable of undertaking anything unless her heart and soul were in it. She had stood over Sonya for a few minutes while she packed the china, and she had tried to help, but not for long; soon she was off to her room to see to her own packing. At first it was fun to be giving away some of her dresses and ribbons to the maids, but when it came to packing what was left, it was too much trouble.
‘Dunyasha, would you pack my things, darling? Please. Would you?’
Only too readily Dunyasha promised to do everything, whereupon Natasha sat herself down on the floor with the old ballgown in her hands, and let her thoughts wander – anything to avoid what should have been on her mind there and then. Natasha was jolted out of her reverie by the sound of the maids chattering in the next room and then clattering out of their room and down the back stairs. Natasha got to her feet and looked out of the window. There on the street was a huge train of wagons that had come to a halt, full of wounded men.
Maids, footmen, housekeeper, the old nurse, cooks, coachmen, grooms, and kitchen-boys – they were all out there at the gates, staring at the wounded men.
Natasha flung a white pocket-handkerchief over her hair, and held the corners with both hands as she went down to the street.
