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THE BIBLICAL TRADITION tells us that the absence of work—idleness—was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness
has remained the same in fallen man; but the curse still lies heavy upon man,
and not only because in the sweat of our brow we must eat bread, but because
from our moral qualities we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice
tells us that we must be to blame for being idle. If a man could find a state in
which while being idle he could feel himself to be of use and to be doing his
duty, he would have attained to one side of primitive blessedness. And such a
state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is enjoyed by a whole class—the
military class. It is in that obligatory and irreproachable idleness that the
chief attraction of military service has always consisted, and will always
consist.
Nikolay Rostov was enjoying this blessed privilege to the full, as after the
year 1807 he remained in the Pavlograd regiment, in command of the squadron that
had been Denisov's.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, who would have been thought
rather bad form by his old acquaintances in Moscow, though he was loved and
respected by his comrades, his subordinates, and his superior officers, and was
well content with his life. Of late—in the year 1809—he had found more and more
frequently in letters from home complaints on the part of his mother that their
pecuniary position was going from bad to worse, and that it was high time for
him to come home, to gladden and comfort the hearts of his old parents.
As he read those letters, Nikolay felt a pang of dread at their wanting to
drag him out of the surroundings in which, by fencing himself off from all the
complexities of existence, he was living so quietly and peacefully. He felt that
sooner or later he would have to plunge again into that whirlpool of life, with
many difficulties and business to attend to, with the steward's accounts, with
quarrels and intrigues, and ties, with society, with Sonya's love and his
promise to her. All that was terribly difficult and complicated; and he answered
his mother's letters with cold letters in French on the classic model, beginning
“Ma chère maman,” and ending: “Votre obéissant fils,” saying
nothing of any intention of coming home. In 1810 he received letters from home
in which he was told of Natasha's engagement to Bolkonsky, and of the marriage
being deferred for a year, because the old prince would not consent to it. This
letter chagrined and mortified Nikolay. In the first place, he was sorry to be
losing from home Natasha, whom he cared more for than all the rest of the
family. Secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not having been at
home at the time, as he would have shown this Bolkonsky that it was by no means
such an honour to be connected with him, and that if he cared for Natasha he
could get on just as well without his crazy old father's consent. For a moment
he hesitated whether to ask for leave, so as to see Natasha engaged, but then
the manœuvres were just coming on, and thoughts of Sonya, of complications,
recurred to him, and again he put it off. But in the spring of the same year he
got a letter from his mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that
letter decided him. She wrote that if Nikolay did not come and look after
things, their whole estate would have to be sold by auction, and they would all
be beggars. The count was so weak, put such entire confidence in Mitenka, and
was so good-natured, and every one took advantage of him, so that things were
going from bad to worse. “I beseech you, for God's sake, to come at once, if you
don't want to make me and all your family miserable,” wrote the countess.
That letter produced an effect on Nikolay. He had that common sense of
mediocrity which showed him what was his duty.
His duty now was, if not to retire from the army, at least to go home on
leave. Why he had to go, he could not have said; but, after his after-dinner
nap, he ordered his grey mare to be saddled, a terribly vicious beast that he
had not ridden for a long while.
He returned home with his horse in a lather, and told Lavrushka—he had kept
on Denisov's old valet—and the comrades who dropped in that evening, that he had
applied for leave and was going home. It was strange and difficult for him to
believe that he was going away without hearing from the staff whether he had
been promoted to be a captain or had received the St. Anne for the last
manœuvres (a matter of the greatest interest to him). It was strange to him to
think of going away like this without having sold Count Goluhovsky his three
roan horses, over which the Polish count was haggling with him. Rostov had taken
a bet that he would get two thousand for them. It seemed inconceivable that
without him the ball could take place which the hussars were to give in honour
of their favourite Polish belle, Madame Pshazdetsky, to outdo the Uhlans, who
had given a ball to their favourite belle, Madame Borzhozovsky. Yet he knew he
must leave world, where all was well and all was clear, to go where all was
nonsensical and complicated. A week later his leave came. His comrades—not only
in the regiment, but throughout the whole brigade—gave Rostov a dinner that cost
a subscription of fifteen roubles a head. Two bands of musicians played, two
choruses sang; Rostov danced the trepak with Major Bazov; the drunken
officers tossed him in the air, hugged him, dropped him; the soldiers of the
third squadron tossed him once more and shouted hurrah! Then they put Rostov in
a sledge and escorted him as far as the first posting-station on his way.
For the first half of the journey, from Krementchug to Kiev, all Rostov's
thoughts—as is apt to be the case with travellers—turned to what he had left
behind—to his squadron. But after being jolted over the first half of the
journey, he had begun to forget his three roans and his quartermaster,
Dozhoyveyky, and was beginning to wonder uneasily what he should find on
reaching Otradnoe. The nearer he got, the more intense, far more intense, were
his thoughts of home (as though moral feeling were subject to the law of
acceleration in inverse ratio with the square of the distance). At the station
nearest to Otradnoe he gave the sledge-driver a tip of three roubles, and ran
breathless up the steps of his home, like a boy.
After the excitement of the first meeting, and the strange feeling of
disappointment after his expectations—the feeling that “it's just the same; why
was I in such a hurry?”—Nikolay began to settle down in his old world of home.
His father and mother were just the same, only a little older. All that was new
in them was a certain uneasiness and at times a difference of opinion, which he
had never seen between them before, and soon learned to be due to the
difficulties of their position.
Sonya was now nearly twenty. She would grow no prettier now; there was no
promise in her of more to come; but what she had was enough. She was brimming
over with love and happiness as soon as Nikolay came home, and this girl's
faithful, steadfast love for him gladdened his heart. Petya and Natasha
surprised Nikolay more than all the rest. Petya was a big, handsome lad of
thirteen, whose voice was already cracking; he was full of gaiety and clever
pranks. Nikolay did not get over his wonder at Natasha for a long while, and
laughed as he looked at her.
“You're utterly different,” he told her.
“How? Uglier?”
“No, quite the contrary; but what dignity! A real princess!” he whispered to
her.
“Yes, yes, yes,” cried Natasha gleefully.
Natasha told him all the story of Prince Andrey's lovemaking, of his visit to
Otradnoe, and showed him his last letter.
“Well, are you glad?” asked Natasha. “I'm so at peace and happy now.”
“Very glad,” answered Nikolay. “He's a splendid fellow. Are you very much in
love, then?”
“How shall I say?” answered Natasha. “I was in love with Boris, with our
teacher, with Denisov; but this is utterly different. I feel calm, settled. I
know there is no one better than he in the world, and so I am calm now and
content. It's utterly different from anything before…”
Nikolay expressed his dissatisfaction at the marriage being put off for a
year. But Natasha fell on him with exasperation, proving to him that no other
course was possible, that it would be a horrid thing to enter a family against
the father's will, and that she would not consent to it herself.
“You don't understand at all, at all,” she kept saying.
Nikolay paused a moment, and then said he agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. It seemed quite incredible
that she was a girl in love and parted from her betrothed lover. She was
even-tempered, serene, and quite as light-hearted as ever. This made Nikolay
wonder, and look on the engagement to Bolkonsky rather sceptically. He could not
believe that her fate was by now sealed, especially as he had never seen her
with Prince Andrey. It still seemed to him that there was something not real in
this proposed marriage.
“Why this delay? Why were they not formally betrothed?” he thought.
Once in talking to his mother about his sister, he found to his surprise, and
partly to his satisfaction, that at the bottom of her heart his mother sometimes
regarded the marriage as sceptically as he did.
“Here, you see, he writes,” she said, showing her son a letter from Prince
Andrey with that latent feeling of grudge which mothers always have in regard to
their daughter's happiness in marriage, “he writes that he won't be coming
before December. What can it be that keeps him? Illness, no doubt! His health is
very weak. Don't tell Natasha. Don't make a mistake, because she seems in good
spirits; it's the last she has of her girlhood, and I know how she is when she
gets his letters. Still, God grant, all may be well yet,” she always concluded:
“he's a splendid fellow.”
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