‘Damn the lot of them, these peasants, and money problems and everything being carried forward,’ he thought. ‘Years ago I could add up with the best of them in a card school, but carrying things forward is beyond me,’ he told himself, and from that time on he kept out of the business side of the family.
But one day the countess called her son in and told him she still held an IOU from Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand roubles, and she asked Nikolay what he thought should be done with it.
‘Well,’ answered Nikolay, ‘you say it’s my decision. I don’t like Anna Mikhaylovna, and I don’t like Boris, but they were friends of ours, and they were poor. So that’s what I’d do!’ and he tore the note into pieces, which made the countess sob with tears of joy. After this, the young Rostov put all forms of business to one side and devoted himself with enormous enthusiasm to what was for him a new occupation – hunting – which the old count’s estate catered for in the grand manner.
CHAPTER 3
The first signs of winter were in the air now, with morning frosts hardening the earth after its soaking by the autumn rain. The grass had gone tussocky and it stood out in splashes of bright green against patches of brown winter rye trodden down by the cattle, pale yellow corn stubble and reddish strips of buckwheat. The uplands and copses, which at the end of August had still been green islands among the black fields and stubble, had turned into golden and crimson islands in a sea of bright green early-winter crops. The hares had half-grown their winter coats, the fox-cubs were beginning to leave the den, and the young wolves had grown bigger than dogs. This was the best time of the year for hunting. Rostov, suddenly the keenest of country sportsmen, could see that his hounds were not quite hunting-fit and their pads were still tender, so when the hunters met they decided to rest the dogs for three days and then go out on a grand hunt on the 16th of September, starting at the Oak Grove, where there was an unhunted litter of wolves.
This was how things stood on the 14th of September.
All that day the hounds were kept in. There had been a sharp frost, but by evening the sky had clouded over and it had begun to thaw. On the morning of the 15th of September young Rostov stood at the window in his dressing-gown and gazed out on a morning that was perfect for hunting. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the sky looked as if it was melting and dissolving into the ground. The only movement detectable in the air was the gentle descent of microscopic beads of moisture in a misty drizzle. Out in the garden bare branches were hung with limpid droplets dripping down on to newly fallen leaves. The kitchen-garden soil gleamed black and wet like the heart of a poppy, and only a few feet away it melted into the damp shroud of grey mist.
Nikolay went out on to the wet, muddy porch. There was a smell of dogs and rotting leaves. Milka, a stocky black and white bitch, lay there watching with her wide, bulbous black eyes, and when she caught sight of her master she got up, stretched back, lay down again like a hare and then suddenly jumped up to lick him on the nose and moustache. Another dog, a borzoi, suddenly spotted his master from the garden path, arched his back and shot up the steps, wagging his tail and rubbing up against Nikolay’s legs.
There was a shout: ‘Halloo!’ It was the inimitable hunting call that somehow combines deep bass with reedy tenor. And round the corner came the head huntsman and whipper-in, Danilo, all grizzled and wrinkled, with his hair cut straight across his forehead Ukrainian-style. He was holding a curved hunting-crop, and he had the air of aloofness and total scorn that you only see in huntsmen. He greeted his master by raising his Circassian cap while treating him to a look of great disdain. Such scorn was not meant to offend his master. Nikolay knew full well that this Danilo, for all his air of superiority and all-round contempt, belonged to him, man and huntsman.
‘Oh, it’s you, Danilo,’ said Nikolay rather shyly, sensing as he took in the splendid hunting weather, the dogs and the huntsman that he was being carried away by the kind of irresistible surge of pleasure that makes you forget all your previous intentions, like a lover with his mistress.
‘What shall we do, sir?’ The bass voice, hoarse from hallooing, rang out like an archdeacon’s, and a pair of furtive black eyes glinted at the silent young master, two eyes that seemed to say, ‘You can’t resist this, can you?’
‘Nice day for it, eh? Go for a gallop? Spot of hunting?’ said Nikolay, scratching Milka behind the ears.
Danilo said nothing, but both his eyes were winking.
