‘Will you be quick?’ said the count from outside the door, coming in. ‘Here are your smelling-salts. Madame Peronsky must be tired of waiting.’
‘Ready, miss,’ said the maid, lifting up the shortened tulle skirt on two fingers, blowing something off it, and giving it a shake to show her appreciation of the transparency and purity of what she had in her hands.
Natasha began putting on the dress.
‘In a minute, in a minute, don’t come in, papa,’ she shouted to her father at the door, from under the tulle of the dress that concealed all her face. Sonya slammed the door. A minute later the count was admitted. He was wearing a blue frock coat, stockings, and dancing-shoes, and was perfumed and pomaded.
‘Ah, papa, how nice you look, lovely!’ said Natasha, standing in the middle of the room, stroking out the folds of her tulle.
‘If you please, miss, if you please . . said a maid, pulling up the skirt and turning the pins from one corner of her mouth to the other with her tongue.
‘Say what you like!’ cried Sonya, with despair in her voice, as she gazed at Natasha’s skirt, ‘say what you like!—it’s too long still! ’
Natasha walked a little further off to look at herself in the pierglass. The skirt was too long.
‘My goodness, madam, it’s not a bit too long,’ said Mavrushka, creeping along the floor on her knees after her young lady.
‘Well, if it’s long, we’ll tack it up, in one minute, we’ll tack it up,’ said Dunyasha, a resolute character. And taking a needle out of the kerchief on her bosom she set to work again on the floor.
At that moment the countess in her cap and velvet gown walked shyly with soft steps into the room.
‘Oo-oo! my beauty! ’ cried the count. ‘She looks nicer than any of you! ’ . . . He would have embraced her, but, flushing, she drew back to avoid being crumpled.
‘Mamma, the cap should be more on one side,’ said Natasha. ‘I’ll pin it fresh,’ and she darted forward. The maids turning up her skirt, not prepared for her hasty movement, tore off a piece of the tulle.
‘Oh, mercy! What was that? Really it’s not my fault . . .’
‘It’s all right, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,’ said Dunyasha.
‘My beauty, my queen!’ said the old nurse coming in at the doorway. ‘And Sonyushka, too; ah, the beauties! . . .’
At a quarter past ten they were at last seated in their carriage and driving off. But they still had to drive to Tavritchesky Garden.
Madame Peronsky was ready and waiting. In spite of her age and ugliness, just the same process had been going on with her as with the Rostovs, not with flurry, for with her it was a matter of routine. Her elderly and unprepossessing person had been also washed and scented and powdered; she had washed as carefully behind her ears, and like the Rostovs’ nurse, her old maid had enthusiastically admired her mistress’s attire, when she came into the drawing-room in her yellow gown adorned with her badge of a maid-of-honour. Madame Peronsky praised the Rostovs’ costumes, and they praised her attire and her taste. Then, careful of their coiffures and their dresses, at eleven o’clock they settled themselves in the carriages and drove off.
XV
Natasha had not had a free moment all that day, and had not once had time to think of what lay before her.
In the damp, chill air, in the closeness and half dark of the swaying carriage, she pictured to herself for the first time what was in store for
her there, at the ball, in the brightly lighted halls—music, flowers, dancing, the Tsar, all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The prospect before her was so splendid that she could not even believe that it would come to pass: so incongruous it seemed with the chilliness, darkness, and closeness of the carriage. She could only grasp all that awaited her when, walking over the red cloth, she went into the vestibule, took off her cloak, and walked beside Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers up the lighted staircase. Only then she remembered how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic manner that she considered indispensable for a girl at a ball. But luckily she felt that there was a mist before her eyes; she could see nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She was unable to assume the manner that would have made her absurd; and moved on, thrilling with excitement, and trying with all her might simply to conceal it. And it was just in this mood that she looked her best. In front and behind them walked guests dressed in similar ball-dresses and conversing in similarly subdued tones. The looking-glasses on the staircases reflected ladies in white, blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their bare arms and necks.
