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PIERRE, as one of the most honoured guests, was obliged to sit down to boston
with the old count, the general, and the colonel. As he sat at the boston-table
he happened to be directly facing Natasha and he was struck by the curious
change that had come over her since the day of the ball. Natasha was silent, and
not only was she not so pretty as she had been at the ball, she would have been
positively plain but for the look of gentle indifference to everything in her
face
“What is wrong with her?” Pierre wondered, glancing at her. She was sitting
by her sister at the tea-table; she gave reluctant answers to Boris at her side
and did not look at him. After playing all of one suit and taking five tricks to
his partner's satisfaction, Pierre, having caught the sound of greetings and the
steps of some one entering while he took his tricks glanced at her again.
“Why, what has happened to her?” he said to himself in still greater
wonder.
Prince Andrey was standing before her saying something to her with an
expression of guarded tenderness on his face. She, lifting her head, was looking
at him, flushing crimson, and visibly trying to control her breathing, which
came in panting gasps. And the vivid glow of some inner fire that had been
quenched before was alight in her again. She was utterly transformed. From a
plain girl she was once more the beautiful creature she had been at the
ball.
Prince Andrey went up to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, youthful
expression in his friend's face. Several times Pierre changed his seat during
the play, sitting sometimes with his back to Natasha, sometimes facing her, and
during all the six rubbers he was observing her and his friend.
“Something very serious is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and a
feeling at once of gladness and of bitterness made him agitated and forgetful of
the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying it was of no use playing like
that, and Pierre was at liberty. Natasha, at one side of the room, was talking
to Sonya and Boris. Vera, with a subtle smile, was saying something to Prince
Andrey. Pierre went up to his friend, and, asking whether they were talking
secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, noticing Prince Andrey's attention to
Natasha, felt that at a soirée, at a real soirée, it was
absolutely necessary there should be delicate allusions to the tender passion,
and seizing an opportunity when Prince Andrey was alone, began a conversation
with him upon the emotions generally, and her sister in particular. She felt
that, with a guest so intellectual as she considered Prince Andrey, she must put
all her diplomatic tact into the task before her. When Pierre went up to them he
noticed that Vera was in full flow of self-complacent talk, while Prince Andrey
seemed embarrassed—a thing that rarely happened to him.
“What do you think?” Vera was saying with a subtle smile. “You, prince, have
so much penetration and see into people's characters at once. What do you think
about Natalie? Is she capable of constancy in her attachments? Is she capable,
like other women” (Vera meant herself) “of loving a man once for all and
remaining faithful to him for ever? That's what I regard as true love! What do
you think, prince?”
“I know your sister too little,” answered Prince Andrey, with a sarcastic
smile, under which he tried to conceal his embarrassment, “to decide a question
so delicate; and, besides, I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is,
the more constant she is apt to be,” he added, and he looked at Pierre, who at
that moment joined them.
“Yes, that is true, prince. In these days,” pursued Vera (talking of “these
days,” as persons of limited intellect as a rule love to do, supposing they have
discovered and estimated the peculiarities of the times and that human
characteristics do change with the times), “in these days a girl has so much
liberty that the pleasure of being paid attention often stifles these feelings
in her. And Natalie, it must be confessed, is very susceptible on that
side.”
This going back to Natasha again made Prince Andrey contract his brows
disagreeably. He tried to get up, but Vera persisted with a still more subtle
smile.
“Nobody, I imagine, has been so much run after as she has,” Vera went on;
“but no one, until quite of late, has ever made a serious impression on her. Of
course, you know, count,” she turned to Pierre, “even our charming cousin,
Boris, who, entre nous, was very, very far gone in the region of the
tender passion …” She intended an allusion to the map of love then in
fashion.
Prince Andrey scowled, and was mute.
“But, of course, you are a friend of Boris's?” Vera said to him
“Yes, I know him. …”
“He has probably told you of his childish love for Natasha?”
“Oh, was there a childish love between them?” asked Prince Andrey with a
sudden, unexpected flush on his face.
“Yes. You know between cousins the close intimacy often leads to love.
Cousinhood is a dangerous neighbourhood. Isn't it?”
“Oh, not a doubt of it,” said Prince Andrey, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness, he began joking with Pierre about the necessity of his being careful
with his cousins at Moscow, ladies of fifty, and in the middle of these jesting
remarks he got up, and taking Pierre's arm, drew him aside.
“Well, what is it?” said Pierre, who had been watching in wonder his friend's
excitement, and noticed the glance he turned upon Natasha as he got up.
“I must, I must talk to you,” said Prince Andrey. “You know that pair of
women's gloves” (he referred to the masonic gloves given to a newly initiated
brother to be entrusted to the woman he loved). “I … but no, I will talk to you
later on. …” And with a strange light in his eyes and a restlessness in his
movements, Prince Andrey approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw
that Prince Andrey asked her some question, and she answered him, flushing
hotly.
But at that moment Berg approached Pierre, and insisted upon his taking part
in an argument between the general and the colonel on affairs in Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of glee never left his face. The
soirée was a great success, and exactly like other soirées he had
seen. Everything was precisely similar: the ladies' refined conversation, and
the cards, and after the cards the general raising his voice and the samovar and
the tea cakes; but one thing was still lacking, which he had always seen at
soirées, and wished to imitate. There was still wanting the usual loud
conversation between the gentlemen and discussion about some serious
intellectual question. The general had started that conversation, and Berg drew
Pierre into it.
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