《War And Peace》Book7 CHAPTER XII

《War And Peace》　Book7 　CHAPTER XII
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

WHEN THEY WERE ALL DRIVING BACK from Pelagea Danilovna's, Natasha, who always
saw and noticed everything, managed a change of places, so that Luisa Ivanovna
and she got into the sledge with Dimmler, while Sonya was with Nikolay and the
maids.

Nikolay drove smoothly along the way back, making no effort now to get in
front. He kept gazing in the fantastic moonlight at Sonya, and seeking, in the
continually shifting light behind those eyebrows and moustaches, his own Sonya,
the old Sonya, and the Sonya of to-day, from whom he had resolved now never to
be parted. He watched her intently, and when he recognised the old Sonya and the
new Sonya, and recalled, as he smelt it, that smell of burnt cork that mingled
with the thrill of the kiss, he drew in a deep breath of the frosty air, and as
he saw the earth flying by them, and the sky shining above, he felt himself
again in fairyland.

“Sonya, is it well with thee?” he asked her now and then.

“Yes,” answered Sonya. “And thee?”

Half-way home, Nikolay let the coachman hold the horses, ran for a moment to
Natasha's sledge, and stood on the edge of it.

“Natasha,” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind about
Sonya?”

“Have you told her?” asked Natasha, beaming all over at once with
pleasure.

“Ah, how strange you look with that moustache and those eyebrows, Natasha!
Are you glad?”

“I'm so glad; so glad! I was beginning to get cross with you. I never told
you so, but you have not been treating her nicely. Such a heart as she has,
Nikolenka. I am so glad! I'm horrid sometimes; but I felt ashamed of being happy
without Sonya,” Natasha went on. “Now, I'm so glad; there, run back to
her.”

“No; wait a moment. Oh, how funny you look!” said Nikolay, still gazing
intently at her; and in his sister, too, finding something new, extraordinary,
and tenderly bewitching that he had never seen in her before. “Natasha, isn't it
fairylike? Eh?”

“Yes,” she answered, “you have done quite rightly.”

“If I had seen her before as she is now,” Nikolay was thinking, “I should
have asked her long ago what to do, and should have done anything she told me,
and it would have been all right.”

“So you're glad,” he said, “and I have done right?”

“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with mamma about it a little while age.
Mamma said she was trying to catch you. How could she say such a thing! I almost
stormed at mamma. I will never let any one say or think any harm of her, for
there's nothing but good in her.”

“So it's all right?” said Nikolay, once more gazing intently at his sister's
expression to find out whether that were the truth. Then he jumped off the
sledge and ran, his boots crunching over the wet snow, to his sledge. The same
happy, smiling Circassian, with a moustache and sparkling eyes, peeping from
under the sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian was Sonya,
and that Sonya was for certain now his happy and loving future wife.

On reaching home, the young ladies told the countess how they had spent the
time at the Melyukov's, and then went to their room. They changed their dresses,
but without washing off their moustaches, sat for a long while talking of their
happiness. They talked of how they would live when they were married, how their
husbands would be friends, and they would be happy. Looking-glasses were
standing on Natasha's table, set there earlier in the evening by Dunyasha, and
arranged in the traditional way for looking into the future.

“Only when will that be? I'm so afraid it never will be.…It would be too
happy!” said Natasha, getting up and going to the looking-glasses.

“Sit down, Natasha, perhaps you will see him,” said Sonya.

Natasha lighted the candles and sat down. “I do see some one with a
moustache,” said Natasha, seeing her own face.

“You mustn't laugh, miss,” said Dunyasha.

With the assistance of Sonya and the maid, Natasha got the mirrors into the
correct position. Her face took a serious expression, and she was silent. For a
long while she went on sitting, watching the series of retreating candles
reflected in the looking-glasses, and expecting (in accordance with the tales
she had heard) at one minute to see a coffin, at the next to see him,
Prince Andrey, in the furthest, dimmest, indistinct square. But ready as she was
to accept the slightest blur as the form of a man or of a coffin, she saw
nothing. She began to blink, and moved away from the looking-glass.

“Why is it other people see things and I never see anything?” she said.
“Come, you sit down, Sonya; to-day you really must. Only look for me … I feel so
full of dread to-day!”

Sonya sat down to the looking-glass, got the correct position, and began
looking.

“You will see, Sonya Alexandrovna will be sure to see something,” whispered
Dunyasha, “you always laugh.”

Sonya heard these words, and heard Natasha say in a whisper: “Yes, I know
she'll see something; she saw something last year too.” For three minutes all
were mute.

“Sure to!” whispered Natasha, and did not finish.… All at once Sonya drew
back from the glass she was holding and put her hand over her eyes. “O Natasha!”
she said. “Seen something? Seen something? What did you see?” cried Natasha,
supporting the looking-glass. Sonya had seen nothing. She was just meaning to
blink and to get up, when she heard Natasha's voice say: “Sure to!” … She did
not want to deceive either Dunyasha or Natasha, and was weary of sitting there.
She did not know herself how and why that exclamation had broken from her as she
covered her eyes.

“Did you see him?” asked Natasha, clutching her by the hand.

“Yes. Wait a bit.… I … did see him,” Sonya could not help saying, not yet
sure whether by him Natasha meant Nikolay or Andrey. “Why not say I saw
something? Other people see things! And who can tell whether I have or have
not?” FLASHed through Sonya's mind.

“Yes, I saw him,” she said.

“How was it? How? Standing or lying down?”

“No, I saw … At first there was nothing; then I saw him lying down.”

“Andrey lying down? Is he ill?” Natasha asked, fixing eyes of terror on her
friend.

“No, on the contrary—on the contrary, his face was cheerful, and he turned to
me”; and at the moment she was saying this, it seemed to herself that she really
had seen what she described.

“Well, and then, Sonya? …”

“Then I could make out more; something blue and red.…”

“Sonya, when will he come back? When shall I see him? My God! I feel so
frightened for him, and for me, and frightened for everything …” cried Natasha;
and answering not a word to Sonya's attempts to comfort her, she got into bed,
and long after the candle had been put out she lay with wide-open eyes
motionless on the bed, staring into the frosty moonlight through the frozen
window-panes.