War And Peace

‘Yes, it is,’ said Princess Marya with a smile. ‘Write to her parents. And leave it with me. I shall tell her when the time is right. I want this to happen. And I’ve a feeling in my heart that it will happen.’

‘No, it’s not possible! Oh, I’m so happy! Oh, I’m so happy! But no, it’s not possible!’ Pierre kept repeating, kissing Princess Marya’s hands.

‘Now off you go to Petersburg. That’s the best thing. And I shall write to you,’ she said.

‘Petersburg? Do I have to? All right, I’ll go. But I can call in tomorrow, can’t I?’

Next day Pierre came to say goodbye. Natasha was less animated than in recent days, but there were times during that day when Pierre looked into her eyes and felt as if he was melting away, that both of them had disappeared and there was nothing left but happiness. ‘Is it possible? No, it isn’t,’ he said to himself at every glance, every gesture, every word that came from her and filled his soul with gladness.

When the time came for him to say goodbye, he took her slender little hand and unconsciously held it a little longer in his own.

‘Is it possible that this hand, this face, these eyes, all these treasures of womanly charm, so far from me now, is it possible they might one day be mine for ever, and I could know them as closely as I know myself? No, it can’t be possible!’

‘Goodbye, Count,’ she said to him in a loud voice, though she added in a whisper, ‘I shall look forward so much to seeing you again.’

And those simple words, along with the look in her eyes and the expression on her face that went with them, would last Pierre for two whole months, as the source of inexhaustible memories, meanings and happy dreams. ‘I shall look forward so much to seeing you again.’ ‘Yes, yes, what was it she said? Yes. “I shall look forward so much to seeing you again.” Oh, I’m so happy! How can I be as happy as this?’ Pierre kept asking himself.

CHAPTER 19

On this occasion Pierre knew none of the spiritual torment that had troubled him under similar circumstances during his courtship of Hélène.

This time he never found himself doing what he had done before – squirming with a sickening sense of shame as he went over the things he had said; he didn’t keep saying to himself, ‘Oh, why didn’t I say that?’ or ‘Why, oh why did I say, “I love you”?’ Quite the reverse: he found himself going over in his imagination every word Natasha had spoken and everything he had said, along with all the details of every look and smile, without wanting to add anything, or take anything away, but just wanting to hear it over and over again. This time there wasn’t a shadow of doubt about the rightness or wrongness of what he had started. Only one terrible anxiety sometimes assailed his mind. Am I dreaming? Could Princess Marya be wrong? Am I being overconfident and egotistical? I believe it’s true, and yet I can just see it happening – I’m sure it will – Princess Marya will tell her about me, and she’ll smile back and say, ‘That’s funny! He’s certainly got things wrong. Doesn’t he realize he’s just a man, nothing more than a man, and I . . . well, I’m different, I live on a higher plane?’

This was his only doubt, but it never left Pierre alone for long. Similarly, he had stopped making plans. The happiness before him seemed so incredible that all he could do was wait for it to happen; there could be nothing beyond that. Bringing things to a conclusion was all that mattered.

Pierre was seized by a sudden frenzy of sheer joy, the sort of thing he didn’t think he was capable of. The whole meaning of life, for him and the whole world, seemed to be contained in his love and the possibility of being loved in return. Sometimes it seemed as if everybody was preoccupied by nothing but his future happiness. It was as if they were all rejoicing as much as he was but trying to hide it by pretending to be interested in other things. In every word and gesture he saw intimations of his own happiness. He often surprised people by looking or smiling at them in a blissful, meaningful way that seemed to express some secret empathy. But when he realized that people might be unaware of his happiness he pitied them from the bottom of his heart, and felt an urge to get them somehow to realize that the things they were interested in were all rubbish and nonsense not worth thinking about.