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“Oh, Snya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had promised Bolknski. He was glad I was free to refuse him.”
Snya sighed sorrowfully.
“But you haven’t refused Bolknski?” said she.
“Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolknski. Why do you think so badly of me?”
“I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this...”
“Wait a bit, Snya, you’ll understand everything. You’ll see what a man he is! Now don’t think badly of me or of him. I don’t think badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?”
Snya did not succumb to the tender tone Natsha used toward her. The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natsha’s face became, the more serious and stern grew Snya’s.
“Natsha,” said she, “you asked me not to speak to you, and I haven’t spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don’t trust him, Natsha. Why this secrecy?”
“Again, again!” interrupted Natsha.
“Natsha, I am afraid for you!”
“Afraid of what?”
“I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,” said Snya resolutely, and was herself horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natsha’s face.
“And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s not your business! It won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer. Leave me alone, leave me alone! I hate you!”
“Natsha!” moaned Snya, aghast.
“I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!” And Natsha ran out of the room.
Natsha did not speak to Snya again and avoided her. With the same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.
Hard as it was for Snya, she watched her friend and did not let her out of her sight.
The day before the count was to return, Snya noticed that Natsha sat by the drawing room window all the morning as if expecting something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Snya took to be Anatole.
Snya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that at dinner and all that evening Natsha was in a strange and unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not finish, and laughed at everything.
After tea Snya noticed a housemaid at Natsha’s door timidly waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at the door learned that another letter had been delivered.
Then suddenly it became clear to Snya that Natsha had some dreadful plan for that evening. Snya knocked at her door. Natsha did not let her in.
“She will run away with him!” thought Snya. “She is capable of anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle,” Snya remembered. “Yes, that’s it, she means to elope with him, but what am I to do?” thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that Natsha had some terrible intention. “The count is away. What am I to do? Write to Kurgin demanding an explanation? But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused Bolknski—she sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away....” To tell Mrya Dmtrievna who had such faith in Natsha seemed to Snya terrible. “Well, anyway,” thought Snya as she stood in the dark passage, “now or never I must prove that I remember the family’s goodness to me and that I love Nicholas. Yes! If I don’t sleep for three nights I’ll not leave this passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the family be disgraced,” thought she.
Anatole had lately moved to Dlokhov’s. The plan for Natalie Rostva’s abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dlokhov a few days before, and on the day that Snya, after listening at Natsha’s door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution. Natsha had promised to come out to Kurgin at the back porch at ten that evening. Kurgin was to put her into a troyka he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of Kmenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a marriage ceremony over them. At Kmenka a relay of horses was to wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would hasten abroad with post horses.
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with Dlokhov’s help.
Two witnesses for the mock marriage—Khvstikov, a retired petty official whom Dlokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and Makrin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded affection for Kurgin—were sitting at tea in Dlokhov’s front room.
In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dlokhov in a traveling cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay an abacus and some bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were packing the last of his things. Dlokhov was counting the money and noting something down.
“Well,” he said, “Khvstikov must have two thousand.”
“Give it to him, then,” said Anatole.
“Makrka” (their name for Makrin) “will go through fire and water for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled,” said Dlokhov, showing him the memorandum. “Is that right?”
“Yes, of course,” returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dlokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his face.
Dlokhov banged down the lid of his desk and turned to Anatole with an ironic smile:
“Do you know? You’d really better drop it all. There’s still time!”
“Fool,” retorted Anatole. “Don’t talk nonsense! If you only knew... it’s the devil knows what!”
“No, really, give it up!” said Dlokhov. “I am speaking seriously. It’s no joke, this plot you’ve hatched.”
“What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?” said Anatole, making a grimace. “Really it’s no time for your stupid jokes,” and he left the room.
