said Sonya softly.
Natasha gave a smile of triumph.
'No, Sonya, I can't go on like this!' she said. 'I can't hide it from you any longer. You know we love each other! . . . Sonya, darling, he writes . . . Sonya . . .'
Sonya goggled at Natasha as if she couldn't believe her ears.
'What about Bolkonsky?' she said.
'Oh, Sonya, oh, if you knew how happy I am!' said Natasha. 'You don't know what love . . .'
'But, Natasha, do you mean to say it's all over?'
Natasha gazed wide-eyed at Sonya as if she didn't understand the question.
'Are you breaking it off with Prince Andrey, then?' said Sonya.
'Oh, you don't understand. Don't talk nonsense. Just listen,' said Natasha, with a flash of irritation.
'No, I don't believe it,' repeated Sonya. 'I can't understand you. Look, you've been in love with one man for a whole year, and now suddenly . . . I mean, you've only seen him three times, Natasha. I don't believe it. This is some kind of joke. Three days, and you've forgotten everything, and . . .'
'Three days,' said Natasha. 'I seem to have been in love with him for a hundred years. I'm sure I've never been in love before. You wouldn't understand. Sonya. Wait a minute - come and sit here.' Natasha hugged and kissed her. 'I've heard it can happen this way - you probably have too - but this is the first time I've felt love like this. It's not what I've felt before. The moment I set eyes on him, I knew he was my master and I was his slave, and I couldn't help loving him. Yes, his slave! I'll do whatever he commands. You wouldn't understand. Well, what can I do? What can I do, Sonya?' said Natasha, her face full of rapture and alarm.
'Well, stop and think what you're doing,' said Sonya. 'I can't leave things like this. These secret letters . . . How could you let him do all that?' she said, with scarcely concealed horror and revulsion.
'I've just told you,' answered Natasha, 'I have no will of my own. Can't you get it into your head? I'm in love with him!'
'Well, I can't let it go on like this. I'm going to tell on you,' cried Sonya, bursting into tears.
'You what? For heaven's sake . . . If you tell on me, we're enemies,' said Natasha. 'You want me to be miserable. You want them to come between us . . .'
Seeing Natasha in such a state of alarm, Sonya wept tears of shame and sorrow for her friend.
'But what's happened between the two of you?' she asked. 'What's he been saying to you? Why doesn't he come to the house?'
Natasha ignored her.
'For heaven's sake, Sonya, don't tell anybody. Don't torment me,' Natasha implored her. 'Remember, you shouldn't get mixed up in things like this. I've told you . . .'
'But why all this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?' Sonya persisted. 'Why doesn't he ask for your hand straight out? Look, Prince Andrey gave you a completely free hand in case this sort of thing . . . But I just can't believe it. Natasha, have you thought about the secret reasons behind it?'
Natasha looked at Sonya in amazement. This was obviously the first time the question had occurred to her, and she didn't know how to respond.
'Well, I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be some!' Sonya sighed and shook her head distrustfully.
'If there were any reasons . . .' she started to say, but Natasha, anticipating her misgivings, interrupted in some alarm.
'Sonya, you can't start having doubts about him, you really can't! Don't you see that?' she cried.
'Does he love you?'
'Does he love me?' parroted Natasha, beaming indulgently at her friend's obtuseness. 'Well, you've read his letter, haven't you? And you have seen him.'
'But what if he's a dishonourable man?'
'Him? How could he be dishonourable? If you only knew!' said Natasha.
'Well, if he's not dishonourable, he ought to do one of two things - either say what his intentions are or stop seeing you. And if you won't do it, I will. I'll write to him. And I'll tell your papa,' said Sonya, full of determination.
'But I can't live without him!' cried Natasha.
'Natasha, I don't understand you. What exactly are you saying? Think of your father. Think of Nikolay.'
'I'm not bothered about anybody else. He's the only one I love. How dare you call him dishonourable? Don't you know I'm in love with him?' cried Natasha. 'Sonya, go away. I don't want to quarrel with you. Go away, for heaven's sake. Just go away. You can see how miserable I am,' cried Natasha viciously, in a voice of barely controlled exasperation and near-despair. Sonya ran out of the room sobbing her heart out.
Natasha went over to the table and without a moment's thought sat straight down and wrote the reply to Princess Marya that she hadn't been able to write all morning. In the letter she told Princess Marya in a word or two that any misunderstandings between them were now at an end. She was going to take full advantage of Prince Andrey's magnanimity in giving her complete freedom as they parted from each other. She asked her to forget everything and forgive her if she had anything to apologize for, but she couldn't be his wife. Just for the moment everything seemed so easy, straightforward and clear-cut.
The Rostovs were due to leave town on Friday, and on Wednesday the count took a prospective purchaser down to his estate near Moscow.
On the day he left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a grand dinner-party at Julie Karagin's; Marya Dmitriyevna went with them. At the dinner Natasha met Anatole again, and Sonya watched as she said something to him, taking great care not to be overheard, and all through the meal Natasha looked more excited than ever. When they got home it was Natasha who started the conversation that Sonya had been waiting for.
'Listen, Sonya, you've been saying all sorts of silly things about him,' Natasha began in a tiny voice, the kind of voice that children put on when they are looking for praise. 'Well, I've had it all out with him tonight.'
'Well, what did he say? Come on, what did he say? Natasha, I'm so glad you're not angry with me. Tell me the whole story. Tell me the truth. What did he say?'
Natasha considered what to say.
'Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said . . . He asked me what kind of promise I had given Bolkonsky. He was so glad I'm in a position to refuse him.'
Sonya gave a bleak sigh.
'But you haven't refused Bolkonsky, have you?' she said.
'Well, maybe I have! Maybe it's all over with Bolkonsky. Why do you think so badly of me?'
'I don't think anything. I just don't understand . . .'
'Just wait, Sonya, and you'll understand. You'll see the sort of man he is. Don't think too badly of either of us.'
'I don't think badly of people. I like everybody and I'm sorry for everybody. But what can I do?'
Sonya was not won over by Natasha's ingratiating tone. The softer and more appealing Natasha's face grew, the more serious and severe Sonya's became.
'Natasha,' she said, 'you asked me not to talk to you, and I haven't done. But now you've started things off. Natasha, I don't trust him. Why this secrecy?'
'Again, again!' interrupted Natasha.
'Natasha, I'm afraid for you.'
'What is there to be afraid of?'
'I'm afraid you'll be ruined,' said Sonya firmly, horrified to hear her own words.
Natasha's face looked angry again.
'All right then, I'll be ruined, I will, I'll be ruined for ever. But it's nothing to do with you. You won't suffer for it, I will. Leave me alone, just leave me alone. I hate you!'
'Natasha!' Sonya appealed to her in great distress.
'I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy for ever!' And Natasha ran out of the room.
Natasha avoided Sonya and didn't speak to her again. With the same mixture of excitement, wonder and guilt on her face she wandered through the rooms seizing on one thing after another, and throwing everything down as soon as she picked it up.
Hard as it was on Sonya, she kept watch over her friend and never let her out of her sight.
The day before the count was due to return Sonya happened to notice that Natasha had spent all morning sitting at the drawing-room window, as if she was waiting for something, and suddenly she gave a signal to a passing officer whom Sonya assumed to be Anatole.
Sonya kept an even closer watch on her friend, and she noticed that all through dinner and afterwards during the evening Natasha was in a strange mood, most unlike her usual self. When people asked her questions she gave silly answers, she started sentences and never finished them, and she kept laughing all the time.
After tea Sonya saw a timid-looking maid waiting for her to go past Natasha's door. She let her go in, listened at the door and found out that another letter had arrived. Suddenly it dawned on Sonya that Natasha was hatching some dreadful plan for that evening. She knocked at the door, but Natasha wouldn't let her in.
'She's going to run away with him!' thought Sonya. 'She's capable of anything. There's been a pitiful kind of look on her face today and real determination. And she cried when she said goodbye to Papa,' Sonya remembered. 'Yes, that's it, she's going to run away with him. What can I do about it?' wondered Sonya, remembering all the signals given off by Natasha showing clearly that she had some terrible plan in mind. 'Count Rostov isn't here. What can I do? I could write to Kuragin and demand an explanation. But who says he's bound to answer? I could write to Pierre - that was what Prince Andrey asked me to do if there was any trouble . . . But perhaps she really has broken things off with Bolkonsky - she did send that letter to Princess Marya yesterday. And Uncle's not here.'
To tell Marya Dmitriyevna, who had such faith in Natasha, seemed a terrible thing to do.
'Well, one way or another,' thought Sonya, standing in the dark corridor, 'now or never it's time for me to show my appreciation of all the benefits I've had from this family and my love for Nikolay. No, if I have to go three nights without sleep, I'm not leaving this corridor, and I'll stop her going by brute force. I'm not going to stand by and see this family ruined and disgraced,' she thought.
CHAPTER 16
Anatole had recently moved in with Dolokhov. A plan for abducting the Rostov girl had been thought up and worked out in detail by Dolokhov over several days, and the evening when Sonya had listened at Natasha's door and made up her mind to keep guard over her was the very day when the plan was due to be carried out. Natasha had promised to come out at ten o'clock and meet Kuragin by the back porch. Kuragin would be waiting for her with a troika, get her on board and drive her from Moscow to the village of Kamenka forty miles away, where an unfrocked priest would be standing by ready to marry them. At Kamenka a relay of horses would be waiting to take them down to the Warsaw road, from where they would use post-horses to take them out of the country.
Anatole had secured a passport, an order for post-horses, ten thousand roubles borrowed from his sister and another ten thousand raised by Dolokhov.
The two necessary witnesses - Khvostikov, a low-grade civil servant now retired and regularly exploited by Dolokhov at the card-table, and Makarin, a former hussar, a pleasant man with no backbone, whose devotion to Kuragin knew no bounds - were now sitting in Dolokhov's front room drinking tea.
In Dolokhov's big study, adorned with Persian rugs, bearskins and weaponry right up to the ceiling, Dolokhov sat waiting, fully rigged out in travelling cloak and high boots, in front of an open bureau with accounts and bundles of banknotes lying around on it. Anatole, with his uniform unbuttoned, was stalking about, going from the room where the witnesses were sitting through the study into a back room, where his French valet and one or two other servants were doing the last of the packing. Dolokhov was counting notes and jotting down figures.
'Well,' he said, 'you'll have to give Khvostikov two thousand.'
'Well, give him it, then,' said Anatole.
'Makarka - ' (their name for Makarin) 'well, he'd go through fire and water for you and not ask for any reward. That's it then, the accounts are finished,' said Dolokhov, showing him a note. 'Does that look all right?'
'Yes, of course it does,' said Anatole, obviously not listening, just staring into space with a permanent grin on his face.
Dolokhov slammed the bureau shut, and turned to Anatole with a sardonic smile.
'Hey, listen - why don't you drop all this while there's still time?' he said.
'Idiot!' said Anatole. 'Stop talking rubbish. If only you knew . . . It's hellishly important to me!'
'I still think you should drop it,' said Dolokhov. 'It's serious, this scheme of yours. No laughing matter.'
'You will have your little joke. To hell with you! Do you hear?' said Anatole, frowning. 'I'm not in the mood for your stupid jokes.' And he walked out of the room.
As he did so Dolokhov was smiling a lofty, rather contemptuous smile.
'Hang on a minute,' he called after Anatole. 'I'm not joking. This is serious. Come back in here! Come on!'
Anatole came back into the room, trying to concentrate as he looked at Dolokhov and obviously reluctant to submit.
'Listen. I'm saying this for the last time. Why would I want to joke with you? Have I ever got in your way? Who made all the arrangements? Who found you a priest? Who got you a passport and all this money? It was me.'
'All right. Thank you very much. Do you think I'm not grateful?' Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
'So I have helped you, but I've still got to tell you the truth. This is a dangerous business, and when you come to think of it, it's stupid. You take her away - well and good. Do you think they'll leave it at that? It'll come out that you're already married. Then they'll have you up on a criminal charge . . .'
'Oh, rubbish, rubbish!' said Anatole, scowling again. 'I've gone through this time and again, haven't I?' And Anatole, with the stubborn attachment that you tend to find in small-minded people to any conclusion stemming from their own mental processes, outlined the argument he had already gone through a hundred times with Dolokhov.
'Let me go through it again. I've decided that if this marriage turns out to be invalid,' he said, bending one finger back, 'that means I'm not responsible. And if it is valid, it won't matter. Anyway, abroad nobody's going to know anything about it. See? It's all right, isn't it? And you will go on and on and on about it!'
'Oh, please, why don't you drop the whole thing? You'll only get yourself into a mess . . .'
'To hell with you!' said Anatole, and he strode off into the next room clutching his hair, but he was soon back and he sat down in an armchair with his feet tucked up, right in front of Dolokhov. 'I'm in a hellish state! Do you know what I mean? How's that for a heartbeat?' He took Dolokhov's hand and placed it on his heart. 'But oh, that foot, my dear boy, those eyes! A goddess!' he rhapsodized in French. 'Can you hear what I'm saying?'
Dolokhov watched him with a cold smile, a gleam in his handsome eyes and a hard stare, obviously minded to get more fun out of him.
'What will you do when the money runs out?'
'When the money runs out? Eh?' Anatole parroted, genuinely taken aback by any thoughts for the future. 'What shall we do when the money runs out? I don't know . . . You do say some stupid things!' He looked at his watch. 'Time to get going!' Anatole disappeared into the back room.
'How much longer? Do get a move on!' he shouted at the servants.
Dolokhov cleared away the money, called a servant and told him to fetch them something to eat and drink before the journey, and then went through to where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.
Anatole was lying on the study sofa, propped up on one elbow, smiling to himself and mouthing tender pleasantries.
'Come in here and have a bite to eat. And a drink!' Dolokhov called from the next room.
'I don't feel like it,' answered Anatole, still wrapped up in his own smiles.
'Come on. Balaga's arrived.'
Anatole got to his feet and went through into the dining-room. Balaga was a well-known troika driver, who had known Dolokhov and Anatole for the last six years and had often driven them around in his sledges. More than once, when Anatole's regiment had been stationed at Tver, he had picked him up in Tver of an evening, got to Moscow by dawn, and driven him back the next night. More than once he had driven Dolokhov out of trouble. More than once he had driven them round the town with gypsies and 'the little ladies', as he called them, on board. More than once he had run pedestrians and other vehicles off the Moscow roads in their service, always relying on his 'gentlemen', as he called them, to get him out of trouble. Many a horse of his had been ridden into the ground with them in the sledge. More than once they had thrashed him; more than once they had got him drunk on champagne and madeira, which was much to his taste, and he knew things about both of them that would have dispatched any ordinary man to Siberia ages ago. They often brought Balaga in on things when they were out on the town, getting him to drink and dance with the gypsies, and their money had passed through his hands in thousands. In their service he risked his life and his skin twenty times a year, and he wore out more horses than their over-generous payments could ever make up for. But he liked them, liked the furious pace of their driving - they could cover twenty miles in an hour and a half - liked driving coachmen off the road and running down pedestrians in Moscow, and hurtling along the Moscow streets. He liked to hear the wild shouts and drunken voices behind him, yelling, 'Get a move on!' when they were already going flat out, and he liked to lash the occasional passing peasant across the neck when he was already reeling back more dead than alive. 'Real gentlemen!' he thought.
Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga - he drove like a Jehu and he liked what they liked. With other customers Balaga drove a hard bargain, squeezing twenty-five roubles out of them for a two-hour drive, and he seldom went out himself, generally sending one of his young boys. But when it came to 'his own gentlemen' he always did the driving, and he never asked for payment.
Only two or three times a year, when he happened to know through their valets that there was money around, would he turn up in the morning, quite sober, bow down and ask them to help him out. The gentlemen always invited him to sit down.
'I was wondering whether you might be able to oblige, Fyodor Ivanovich, sir,' or, 'Your Excellency,' he would say, 'I'm right out of horses, and I need to go the fair. If you could just lend me something, whatever you can m