《War And Peace》 Book4 CHAPTER XV
by Leo Tolstoy
TO SAY “TO-MORROW,” and maintain the right tone was not difficult, but to
arrive home alone, to see his sisters and brother, his mother and father, to
confess and beg for money to which he had no right after giving his word of
honour, was terrible.
At home they had not yet gone to bed. The younger members of the family after
coming home from the theatre had had supper, and were now in a group about the
clavichord. As soon as Nikolay entered the hall, he felt himself enfolded in the
poetic atmosphere of love which dominated their household that winter; and now,
since Dolohov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed to have grown thicker about
Sonya and Natasha, like the air before a storm. Sonya and Natasha, wearing the
light blue dresses they had put on for the theatre, stood at the clavichord,
pretty and conscious of being so, happy and smiling. Vera was playing draughts
with Shinshin in the drawing-room. The old countess, waiting for her son and her
husband to come in, was playing patience with an old gentlewoman, who was one of
their household. Denisov, with shining eyes and ruffled hair, was sitting with
one leg behind him at the clavichord. He was striking chords with his short
fingers, and rolling his eyes, as he sang in his small, husky, but true voice a
poem of his own composition, “The Enchantress,” to which he was trying to fit
music.
Draws me to my forsaken lyre?
What
rapture thrills my fingers slow,
What passion sets my heart
aglow?”
he sang in his passionate voice, his black, agate eyes gleaming at the
frightened and delighted Natasha.
“Splendid, capital!” Natasha cried. “Another couplet,” she said, not noticing
Nikolay.
“Everything's just the same with them,” thought Nikolay, peeping into the
drawing-room, where he saw Vera and his mother and the old lady playing patience
with her.
“Ah, and here's Nikolenka.” Natasha ran up to him. “Is papa at home?” he
asked.
“How glad I am that you have come,” said Natasha, not answering his question,
“we are having such fun. Vassily Dmitritch is staying a day longer for me, do
you know?”
“No, papa has not come in yet,” answered Sonya.
“Kolya, you there? Come to me, darling,” said the voice of the countess from
the drawing-room. Nikolay went up to his mother, kissed her hand, and sitting
down by her table, began silently watching her hands as they dealt the cards.
From the hall he kept hearing the sound of laughter and merry voices, persuading
Natasha to do something.
“Oh, very well, very well!” Denisov cried; “now it's no use crying off, it's
your turn to sing the barcarolle, I entreat you.”
The countess looked round at her silent son.
“What's the matter?” his mother asked Nikolay.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, as though sick of being continually asked the same
question: “Will papa soon be in?”
“I expect so.”
“Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it. What am I to do
with myself?” thought Nikolay, and he went back to the hall, where the
clavichord was.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude of the barcarolle
that Denisov particularly liked. Natasha was preparing to sing. Denisov was
watching her with impassioned eyes.
Nikolay began walking to and fro in the room.
“What can induce her to want to sing? What can she sing? And there's nothing
to be so happy about in it,” thought Nikolay.
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude. “My God, I'm ruined, I'm a
dishonoured man. Bullet through my head, that's the only thing left for me, and
not singing,” he thought. “Go away? But where? It makes no difference, let them
sing.”
Still walking about the room, Nikolay glanced gloomily at Denisov and the
girls, avoiding their eyes.
“Nikolenka, what's the matter?” Sonya's eyes asked, looking intently at him.
She saw at once that something had happened to him.
Nikolay turned away from her. Natasha, too, with her quick instinct instantly
detected her brother's state of mind. She noticed him, but she was herself in
such high spirits at that moment, she was so far from sorrow, from sadness, from
reproaches, that purposely she deceived herself (as young people so often do).
“No, I'm too happy just now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with any one's
sorrow,” she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I'm most likely mistaken, he
must be happy, just as I am.”
“Come, Sonya,” she said. walking into the very middle of the room, where to
her mind the resonance was best of all. Holding her head up, letting her arms
hang lifelessly as dancers do, Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to
her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still.
“Behold me, here I am!” she seemed to say, in response to the enthusiastic
gaze with which Denisov followed her. “And what can she find to be so pleased
at!” Nikolay wondered, looking at his sister. “How is it she isn't feeling dull
and ashamed!” Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved,
a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of
nothing at that moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those
notes that any one can produce at the same intervals, and hold for the same
length of time, yet a thousand times they leave us cold, and the thousand and
first time they set us thrilling and weeping.
Natasha had for the first time begun that winter to take singing seriously,
especially since Denisov had been so enthusiastic over her singing. She did not
now sing like a child; there was not now in her singing that comical childish
effort which used to be perceptible in it. But she did not yet sing well, said
the musical connoisseurs who heard her. “Not trained: a fine voice, it must be
trained,” every one said. But this was usually said a good while after her voice
was hushed. While that untrained voice, with its irregular breathing and its
strained transitions sounded, even connoisseurs said nothing, and simply enjoyed
that untrained voice, and simply longed to hear it again. Her voice had a
virginal purity, an ignorance of its capacities, and an unlaboured velvety
softness, so closely connected with its lack of art in singing, that it seemed
as though nothing could be changed in that voice without spoiling it.
“How is it?” thought Nikolay, hearing her voice and opening his eyes wide;
“what has happened to her? How she is singing to-day!” he thought. And all at
once the whole world was for him concentrated into anticipations of the next
note, the next bar, and everything in the world seemed divided up into three
motives: “Oh, mio crudele affetto … One, two, three…one…Oh, mio
crudele affetto … One, two, three … one. Ugh, this senseless life of ours!”
thought Nikolay. “All that, this calamity, and money, and Dolohov, and anger,
and honour—it's all nonsense … and this is what's the real thing…Now, Natasha!
now, darling! now, my girl! … how will she take that si? taken it! thank
God!” and without being conscious that he was singing, he himself sung a second
to support her high note. “My God! how fine! Can I have taken that note? how
glorious!” he thought.
Oh, how that note had thrilled, and how something better that was in Rostov's
soul began thrilling too. And that something was apart from everything in the
world, and above everything in the world. What were losses, and Dolohovs, and
honour beside it! … All nonsense! One might murder, and steal, and yet be
happy.…
