Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to
the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled
the children, was always ready to render the small services for
which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted
from her with insufficient gratitude.
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though
not on the same scale as under the old prince.
The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances,
were more than simple. The immense house on the old stone
foundations was of wood, plastered only inside. It had bare
deal floors and was furnished with very simple hard sofas,
armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs’ and Bolkonskis’ relations
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens
of servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a
year, on the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many
as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day or two. The
rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and
suppers, provided out of the produce of the estate.
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Chapter IX
It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820.
Natasha had been staying at her brother’s with her husband
and children since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three weeks as he said, but
had remained there nearly seven weeks and was expected
back every minute.
Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the
Rostovs this fifth of December.
On the sixth, which was his name day when the house
would be full of visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to
exchange his Tartar tunic for a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to the new church he
had built, and then receive visitors who would come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the
elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled
to spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined
the bailiff’s accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his wife’s nephew, wrote two business letters, and
walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was
a great saint’s day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at the long
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table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household
had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother’s
old lady companion Belova, his wife, their three children
with their governess and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his
tutor, Sonya, Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their
governess, and old Michael Ivanovich, the late prince’s architect, who was living on in retirement at Bald Hills.
Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When
her husband took his place she concluded, from the rapid
manner in which after taking up his table napkin he pushed
back the tumbler and wineglass standing before him, that
he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when he
came in to dinner straight from the farmespecially before
the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and
when she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited
till he had had his soup and then began to talk to him and
make him admit that there was no cause for his ill-humor.
But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy.
She asked him where he had been. He replied. She again
inquired whether everything was going well on the farm.
Her unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he
replied hastily.
‘Then I’m not mistaken,’ thought Countess Mary. ‘Why
is he cross with me?’ She concluded from his tone that he
was vexed with her and wished to end the conversation. She
knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but could not refrain
from asking some more questions.
Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon be2172
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came general and lively, and she did not talk to her husband.
When they left the table and went as usual to thank the old
countess, Countess Mary held out her hand and kissed her
husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.
‘You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even think
of being angry,’ he replied.
But the word always seemed to her to imply: ‘Yes, I am
angry but I won’t tell you why.’
Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even
Sonya and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have
liked them to disagree, could find nothing to reproach them
with; but even they had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they had been happiest
together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement and
hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess
Mary’s pregnancies, and this was such a time.
‘Well, messieurs et mesdames,’ said Nicholas loudly and
with apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary
that he did it on purpose to vex her), ‘I have been on my feet
since six this morning. Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so
today I’ll go and rest.’
And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and lay down on the sofa.
‘That’s always the way,’ thought Countess Mary. ‘He
talks to everyone except me. I see… I see that I am repulsive
to him, especially when I am in this condition.’ She looked
down at her expanded figure and in the glass at her pale,
sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked larger
than ever.
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And everything annoyed herDenisov’s shouting and
laughter, Natasha’s talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.
Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found
for feeling irritated.
Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of what they were saying, she softly left the
room and went to the nursery.
The children were playing at ‘going to Moscow’ in a carriage made of chairs and invited her to go with them. She
sat down and played with them a little, but the thought of
her husband and his unreasonable crossness worried her.
She got up and, walking on tiptoe with difficulty, went to
the small sitting room.
‘Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with
him,’ she said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice
him.
‘Mary, dear, I think he is asleephe was so tired,’ said Sonya, meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to
Countess Mary that she crossed her path everywhere). ‘Andrew may wake him.’
Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that Sonya was right, and for that very reason
flushed and with evident difficulty refrained from saying
something harsh. She made no reply, but to avoid obeying
Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
to the door. Sonya went away by another door. From the
room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his
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even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to
his wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth
handsome forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as
she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night when
he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat.
And at that moment little Andrew shouted from outside
the door: ‘Papa! Mamma’s standing here!’ Countess Mary
turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew
silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess
Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then
through the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat
again and stirring, and his voice said crossly:
‘I can’t get a moment’s peace…. Mary, is that you? Why
did you bring him here?’
‘I only came in to look and did not notice… forgive me..’
Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary
moved away from the door and took the boy back to the
nursery. Five minutes later little black-eyed three-year-old
Natasha, her father’s pet, having learned from her brother
that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room,
ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed
little girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the
sofa with energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having
examined the position of her father, who was asleep with
his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand which
lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on
his face.
‘Natasha, Natasha!’ came Countess Mary’s frightened
whisper from the door. ‘Papa wants to sleep.’
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‘No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,’ said little Natasha
with conviction. ‘He’s laughing.’
Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in
his arms.
‘Come in, Mary,’ he said to his wife.
She went in and sat down by her husband.
‘I did not notice him following me,’ she said timidly. ‘I
just looked in.’
Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at
his wife and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm
around her and kissed her hair.
‘May I kiss Mamma?’ he asked Natasha.
Natasha smiled bashfully.
‘Again!’ she commanded, pointing with a peremptory
gesture to the spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
‘I don’t know why you think I am cross,’ said Nicholas,
replying to the question he knew was in his wife’s mind.
‘You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when
you are like that. It always seems to me… ‘
‘Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself!’ he said gaily.
‘It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so plain…
always… and now… in this cond..’
‘Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears,
it’s love that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and
women of that kind who are loved for their beauty. But
