At first the mummers (house serfs dressed up as bears, Turks, tavern-keepers and fine ladies, monsters and clowns) huddled together timidly in the vestibule, though they had already brought in from outside a breath of cold air and a sense of fun. Then, hiding behind each other, they bumbled and bustled into the great hall, where things began rather uncertainly but soon became more and more hectic and friendly, with singing and dancing, and Christmas games. The countess, after working out who was who and having a good laugh at their costumes, went away to the drawing-room. Count Ilya sat there in the great hall beaming with pleasure and praising their performance. The youngsters had disappeared.
Half an hour later an old lady in a farthingale appeared amidst the other mummers in the hall – it was Nikolay. There was also a Turkish lady – Petya; a clown – Dimmler; a hussar – Natasha; and a Circassian boy with burnt-cork eyebrows and moustaches – Sonya.
After many a polite expression of surprise, bemusement and praise from those who were not dressed up, the young people began to think their costumes were so good they ought to be shown off to a wider audience.
Nikolay’s first impulse was to put them all in his sledge and, with the roads in such good condition, drive over to ‘Uncle’s’ along with a dozen house serfs in their costumes.
‘No, why bother the old fellow?’ said the countess. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the Melyukovs’.’
Madame Melyukov was a widow living with several children of various ages and their tutors and governesses in a house only a couple of miles down the road.
‘Jolly good idea, my love,’ the old count put in, his spirits rising. ‘Just let me find a costume for myself and I’ll come with you. I’ll give Pashette something to look at.’
But the countess wouldn’t let him go; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that he must stay at home, but if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would agree to go with them the young ladies could go to Madame Melyukov’s. Sonya, normally so shy and retiring, was the most vociferous in pleading with Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
Sonya’s disguise was the best of them all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were particularly fetching. Everyone told her how pretty she looked, and she was taken right out of herself in a new mood of excitement and energy. An inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and dressed like a man she seemed like a completely different person. Louisa Ivanovna proved amenable, and half an hour later four troikas with merrily jingling bells and runners crunching and creaking over the frozen snow drove round to the front steps.
Natasha took the lead in setting the right tone of Christmas cheer, which passed quickly from one person to the next, grew wilder and wilder and came to a splendid climax as they all walked out into the frosty air, chatting and calling across to each other, with much laughter and shouting, and got into the sledges.
Two of the troikas were harnessed to workaday sledges, the third sledge was the old count’s, with a trotter from Orlov’s famous stud as the shaft-horse, while the fourth one belonged to Nikolay, and he had put his own short, shaggy black horse to the shaft. Nikolay, with a hussar’s cloak belted over his old lady’s farthingale, stood up tall in the middle of the sledge and held the reins. The light was so good that he could see the metal fittings on the harnesses glinting in the moonlight, and the horses eyes’ goggling in alarm at the racket coming from the travellers in the dark shadow of the porch.
Sonya, Natasha, Madame Schoss and two maids got into Nikolay’s sledge. Into the old count’s went Dimmler, his wife and Petya, while the other mummers, the house serfs, took their places in the last two sledges.
‘Zakhar, you go on ahead!’ shouted Nikolay to his father’s coachman, so that he could overtake him on the way. The old count’s sledge with Dimmler and his party on board lurched forward, its runners creaking as if they were frozen to the snow, and the big bell clanging. The trace-horses leant into the shafts and as their hooves plunged into the snow they kicked it up, hard and glittering like sugar.
Nikolay followed on behind the first sledge, and after him came the other two, crunching and grating. At first they drove down the narrow road at a slow trot. As they drove down past the garden, the leafless trees sometimes cast their shadows right across the road and hid the bright moonlight. But once they were out of the gates, the snowy plain, glittering with diamonds in a wash of midnight-blue, opened out on all sides, quiescent and bathed in moonlight. Now and again the first sledge would jolt over a pothole, followed by the next one and the one after that, and the sledges stretched out along the road, brutally assaulting the frozen stillness.
‘Look, hare-tracks, lots of them!’ Natasha’s voice rang out through the frosty air.
