‘What? Who to? . . . You must be joking!’ cried the count, an apoplectic red spreading over his neck and the back of his neck, as it does with old people.
‘I promised to pay up tomorrow,’ said Nikolay.
‘Oh no!’ exclaimed the count, throwing his arms in the air as he flopped down helplessly on to a sofa.
‘Can’t be helped! Everybody does it,’ said his son, outwardly brazen and breezy but feeling in his heart of hearts that he was an unspeakable cad and his crime could never be redeemed in a lifetime. He felt like kissing his father’s hands, going down on his knees and begging for forgiveness, and here he was casually, even rather rudely, telling him this sort of thing happened to everybody.
Count Ilya lowered his eyes at these words from his son, and began fidgeting as if he was looking for something.
‘Yes, yes . . .’ he managed to say. ‘It will be difficult, I’m afraid, difficult to raise . . . but it happens to everybody! Yes, it happens to everybody . . .’ The old count flashed a look at his son, straight in the face, and walked out of the room . . . Nikolay had been preparing himself for a refusal, but this he had not expected.
‘Papa! Pa-pa!’ he cried out, sobbing, after the retreating figure. ‘Please, forgive me!’ Seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.
While father and son were having this discussion, another one, hardly less important, was taking place between mother and daughter. Natasha had rushed in wildly excited and run over to her mother.
‘Mamma! . . . Mamma! . . . he’s done it . . . he’s . . .’
‘Done what?’
‘He’s . . . He’s proposed to me! Mamma! Mamma!’ she cried.
The countess couldn’t believe her ears. Denisov proposing? Who to? . . . Her tiny little Natasha, who had only just grown out of playing with dolls and was still in the school-room.
‘Natasha, that’s enough. Don’t be so silly!’ she said, hoping it might be a joke.
‘I’m not being silly! I’m telling you what’s happened,’ said Natasha angrily. ‘I’ve come to ask you what to do, and you say I’m being silly!’
The countess shrugged.
‘If it is true that
‘But he’s not a fool,’ said Natasha, serious and resentful.
‘Well, what do you want, then? You all seem to be in love nowadays. Oh well, if you’re in love perhaps you’d better marry him,’ said the countess with an angry smile. ‘Good luck to you.’
‘No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him. I don’t think I am.’
‘Well, go and tell him.’
‘Mamma, are you angry with me? Don’t be angry, dearest Mamma. It’s not my fault, is it?’
‘No, of course I’m not, darling. If you like, I’ll go and tell him,’ said the countess with another smile.
‘No, I can do it, only tell me what to say. It’s all so easy for you,’ she added, warming to her smile. ‘Oh, if only you could have seen him saying it! I know he didn’t mean to. He just blurted it out.’
‘Well, anyway, you’ve got to go and refuse him.’
‘No, I can’t. I feel sorry for him! He’s so nice.’
‘Well, you’d better accept then. Yes, it’s about time you got married,’ said her mother with pointed irony.
‘No, Mamma, but I am sorry for him. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Well, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll speak to him myself,’ said the countess, indignant at the very idea of someone treating her little Natasha like an adult.
‘No, no, you mustn’t! I’ll do it. You come and listen at the door.’
And Natasha ran across the drawing-room into the hall where Denisov was still sitting at the clavichord in the same chair, with his face buried in his hands. He leapt to his feet at the sound of her little footsteps.
‘Natalie,’ he said, hurrying towards her, ‘decide my fate. It is in your hands!’
‘Vasily Dmitrich, I’m sorry! . . . You are so nice . . . but we can’t . . . you know . . . but I’ll always love you as I do now.’
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard some strange, incomprehensible sounds. She kissed him on his unkempt curly black head. At that moment they heard the hurried rustling of the old countess’s skirts as she bore down on them.
‘Vasily Dmitrich, I thank you for the honour you do us,’ said the countess in an embarrassed tone which Denisov took as a harsh one, ‘but my daughter is so young, and I would have thought that as a friend of my son you would have approached me first. If you had, you would not have put me in the position of having to make this refusal.’
‘Countess . . .’ began Denisov with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He wanted to say more but he had dried up. Natasha could not look calmly on such a pathetic sight. She broke down in a series of loud sobs.
