War and Peace

he valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sónya
and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
Natásha and the countess remained in the room. Pétya was no longer
with the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for
Tróitsa.

The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natásha,
pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just
where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father’s
words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three
houses off.

“Oh, how terrible,” said Sónya returning from the yard chilled and
frightened. “I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there’s an awful
glow! Natásha, do look! You can see it from the window,” she said to her
cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.

But Natásha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in
this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sónya, to the surprise
and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found
it necessary to tell Natásha of Prince Andrew’s wound and of his being
with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as
she was with Sónya. Sónya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now,
as if trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her
cousin.

“Look, Natásha, how dreadfully it is burning!” said she.

“What’s burning?” asked Natásha. “Oh, yes, Moscow.”

And as if in order not to offend Sónya and to get rid of her, she turned
her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident
that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her former
attitude.

“But you didn’t see it!”

“Yes, really I did,” Natásha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left
in peace.

Both the countess and Sónya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow
nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to
Natásha.

The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went
up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she
was wont to do when Natásha was ill, then touched her forehead with her
lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.

“You are cold. You are trembling all over. You’d better lie down,” said
the countess.

“Lie down? All right, I will. I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha.

When Natásha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
could she see him? But after she had been told that she could not see
him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger,
she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving
what they told her, and convinced that say what she might she would
still be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a corner
of the coach with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which the
countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat in the same
way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving. She was
planning something and either deciding or had already decided something
in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not
know, and this alarmed and tormented her.

“Natásha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed.”

A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.

“No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,” Natásha replied
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put
her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck
shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame. Natásha knew
it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in
the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess exchanged
a look with Sónya.

“Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,” said the countess, softly
touching Natásha’s shoulders. “Come, lie down.”

“Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha, and began hurriedly
undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.

When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat
down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the
floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front,
and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly
unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side
to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before
her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the
sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.

“Natásha, you’d better lie in the middle,” said Sónya.

“I’ll stay here,” muttered Natásha. “Do lie down,” she added crossly,
and buried her face in the pillow.

The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sónya undressed hastily and lay down.
The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in
the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
Mytíshchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
of people shouting at a tavern Mamónov’s Cossacks had set up across the
street, and the adjutant’s unceasing moans could still be heard.

For a long time Natásha listened attentively to the sounds that reached
her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard
her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under
her, then Madame Schoss’ familiar whistling snore and Sónya’s gentle
breathing. Then the countess called to Natásha. Natásha did not answer.

“I think she’s asleep, Mamma,” said Sónya softly.

After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
replied.

Soon after that Natásha heard her mother’s even breathing. Natásha did
not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt,
was growing cold on the bare floor.

As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a
crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near
by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of the
adjutant was heard. Natásha sat up.

“Sónya, are you asleep? Mamma?” she whispered.

No one replied. Natásha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple,
bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one
foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and
grasped the cold door handle.

It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against
all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and
terror and overflowing with love.

She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold,
damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With
her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened
the door into the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark
in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on which
something was lying, stood a tallow candle with a long, thick, and
smoldering wick.

From the moment she had been told that morning of Prince Andrew’s wound
and his presence there, Natásha had resolved to see him. She did not
know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the
more convinced that it was necessary.

All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant
moaning of the adjutant’s? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she saw an
indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees raised under the
quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood
still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She
cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man—Timókhin—was
lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others—the
doctor and a valet—lay on the floor.

The valet sat up and whispered something. Timókhin, kept awake by the
pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap.
The valet’s sleepy, frightened exclamation, “What do you want? What’s
the matter?” made Natásha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the
corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, she must see him.
She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw
Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she
had always seen him.

He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck,
delicate as a child’s, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt,
gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never
seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
youthful movement dropped on her knees.

He smiled and held out his hand to her.