‘Yes, I was brought up quite differently,’ remarked the
handsome elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Vera’s beauty as smiles
generally do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and
therefore unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking,
not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and
had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyonethe visitors and countess
aliketurned to look at her as if wondering why she had said
it, and they all felt awkward.
‘People are always too clever with their eldest children
and try to make something exceptional of them,’ said the
visitor.
‘What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too clever with Vera,’ said the count. ‘Well, what of
that? She’s turned out splendidly all the same,’ he added,
winking at Vera.
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The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
‘What manners! I thought they would never go,’ said the
countess, when she had seen her guests out.
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Chapter XIII
When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only
went as far as the conservatory. There she paused and stood
listening to the conversation in the drawing room, waiting for
Boris to come out. She was already growing impatient, and
stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming at once, when
she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching neither
quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.
Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round,
brushed a little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined his handsome face. Natasha,
very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting to see what
he would do. He stood a little while before the glass, smiled,
and walked toward the other door. Natasha was about to call
him but changed her mind. ‘Let him look for me,’ thought she.
Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked her
first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding
place, watchingas under an invisible capto see what went on in
the world. She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure.
Sonya, muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the
drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
‘Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?’ said he,
running up to her.
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‘It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!’ sobbed Sonya.
‘Ah, I know what it is.’
‘Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back
to her!’
‘So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and
yourself like that, for a mere fancy?’ said Nicholas taking her
hand.
Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not
stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush
with sparkling eyes. ‘What will happen now?’ thought she.
‘Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
everything!’ said Nicholas. ‘And I will prove it to you.’
‘I don’t like you to talk like that.’
‘Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sonya!’ He drew her
to him and kissed her.
‘Oh, how nice,’ thought Natasha; and when Sonya and
Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory she followed and
called Boris to her.
‘Boris, come here,’ said she with a sly and significant look.
‘I have something to tell you. Here, here!’ and she led him into
the conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had
been hiding.
Boris followed her, smiling.
‘What is the something?’ asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she
had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
‘Kiss the doll,’ said she.
Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but
did not reply.
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‘Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,’ said she, and
went further in among the plants and threw down the doll.
‘Closer, closer!’ she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.
‘And me? Would you like to kiss me?’ she whispered almost
inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling,
and almost crying from excitement.
Boris blushed.
‘How funny you are!’ he said, bending down to her and
blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he,
embraced him so that both her slender bare arms clasped him
above his neck, and, tossing back her hair, kissed him full on
the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other
side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
‘Natasha,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you, but..’
‘You are in love with me?’ Natasha broke in.
‘Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that…. In another
four years… then I will ask for your hand.’
Natasha considered.
‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,’ she counted on her
slender little fingers. ‘All right! Then it’s settled?’
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
‘Settled!’ replied Boris.
‘Forever?’ said the little girl. ‘Till death itself?’
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into
the adjoining sitting room.
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Chapter XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired
that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was
told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came ‘to congratulate.’ The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete talk with
the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna,
whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
‘With you I will be quite frank,’ said Anna Mikhaylovna.
‘There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so
value your friendship.’
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The
countess pressed her friend’s hand.
‘Vera,’ she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently
not a favorite, ‘how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see
you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..’
The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not
seem at all hurt.
‘If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,’
she replied as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and
smiled scornfully. Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who
was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever
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written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window and
ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha
looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in
love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant
feeling in Vera.
‘How often have I asked you not to take my things?’ she
said. ‘You have a room of your own,’ and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
‘In a minute, in a minute,’ he said, dipping his pen.
‘You always manage to do things at the wrong time,’ continued Vera. ‘You came rushing into the drawing room so
that everyone felt ashamed of you.’
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that
very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at
one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in
her hand.
‘And at your age what secrets can there be between
Natasha and Boris, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!’
‘Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?’ said Natasha in
defense, speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.
‘Very silly,’ said Vera. ‘I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!’
‘All have secrets of their own,’ answered Natasha, getting
warmer. ‘We don’t interfere with you and Berg.’
‘I should think not,’ said Vera, ‘because there can never
be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma
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how you are behaving with Boris.’
‘Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me,’ remarked
Boris. ‘I have nothing to complain of.’
‘Don’t, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome,’ said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled
slightly. (She used the word ‘diplomat,’ which was just then
much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they
attached to it.) ‘Why does she bother me?’ And she added,
turning to Vera, ‘You’ll never understand it, because you’ve
never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame
de Genlis and nothing more’ (this nickname, bestowed on
Vera by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), ‘and your
greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt
with Berg as much as you please,’ she finished quickly.
‘I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..’
‘Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,’ put in
Nicholas‘said unpleasant things to everyone and upset
them. Let’s go to the nursery.’
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the
room.
‘The unpleasant things were said to me,’ remarked Vera,
‘I said none to anyone.’
‘Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!’ shouted laughing voices through the door.
The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating
and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently
unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her
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own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and
calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going
on.
‘Ah, my dear,’ said the countess, ‘my life is not all roses
either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means
won’t last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature.
Even in the country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting,
and heaven knows what besides! But don’t let’s talk about
me; tell me how you managed everything. I often wonder
at you, Annettehow at your age you can rush off alone in a
carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those ministers and
great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s quite
astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly do it.’
‘Ah, my love,’ answered Anna Mikhaylovna, ‘God grant
you never know what it is to be left a widow without
