________________________________________________
_ It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till
midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm
and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read
the letter.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the
house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the
room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing
at the same time.
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
living with the Rostovs.
"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,
prepared to sympathize in any way.
The count sobbed yet more.
"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
tell the little countess!"
Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief
wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried
her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and
till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's
help, would inform her.
At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war
news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been
received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that
they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each
time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she
glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very
adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha,
who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to
feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her
ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was
some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had
something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was
preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how
sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not
venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat
anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her
governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna
Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon
as she overtook her in the sitting room.
"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"
"Nothing, my dear."
"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know
something."
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
"You are a little slyboots," she said.
"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,
reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.
"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
mamma."
"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once."
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the
letter, on condition that she should tell no one.
"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself, "I
won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.
"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful
triumph.
"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.
Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced
on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears.
"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked
Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very
glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself
so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing."
Natasha smiled through her tears.
"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.
"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an
officer."
"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma."
Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of
those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have
killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them."
"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"
"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.
"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's
silence.
Sonya smiled.
"Do I remember Nicholas?"
"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him
perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive
gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite
meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said.
"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."
"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.
"It's not that I don't remember- I know what he is like, but not
as I remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my eyes and remember, but
Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."
"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
as long as I live."
Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and
said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there
was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt
anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
"Shall you write to him?" she asked.
Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas,
and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already
an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of
herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had
taken on himself?
"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
blushing.
"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"
Sonya smiled.
"No."
"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."
"Why should you be ashamed?"
"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."
"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new
Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant
Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"
"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.
"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya,
with the air of an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at
dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her
eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a
snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna,
with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.
"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her.
"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then
silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then
footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud
expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation
and admits the public to appreciate his skill.
"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait
and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her
lips.
When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him,
embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter
and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she
slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya
now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a
brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he
had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his
father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he
kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to
Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them
to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the
same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came
into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran
away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her
dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped
down on the floor. The countess was crying.
"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one
should be glad and not cry."
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked
at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
countess.
Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses,
and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the
letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it
fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary,
how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of
whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son
about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count,
that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that
this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange
surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his
own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages,
showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to
manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward
manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her
as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up
in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the
little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry,
suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that
that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son
and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.
"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he
himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about
his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has
remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was
only so high- I always said...."
For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied
out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of
the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and
equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna
Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor
with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication
for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her
letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the
Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was
quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand
Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not
reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the
same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money
by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them
to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya,
Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles
for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son. _
Read next: Book Three: 1805: Chapter 7
Read previous: Book Three: 1805: Chapter 5
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