War and peace ( Constance Garnett-1900) полностью

‘Why, when it had been missed like that, and once down, any yard-dog could catch it of course,’ said Ilagin, at the same moment, red and breathless from the gallop and the excitement. At the same time Natasha, without taking breath, gave vent to her delight and excitement in a shriek • so shrill that it set every one’s ears tingling. In that shriek she expressed ij just what the others were expressing by talking all at once. And heil shriek was so strange that she must have been ashamed of that wild! scream, and the others must have been surprised at it at any other time The uncle himself twisted up the hare, flung him neatly and smartly t across his horse’s back, seeming to reproach them all by this gesture, anc with an air of not caring to speak to any one, he mounted his bay anc rode away. All but he, dispirited and disappointed, rode on, and it was some time before they could recover their previous affectation of in difference. For a long time after they stared at the red dog, Rugay, wh

with his round back spattered with mud, and clinking the rings of his- leash, walked with the serene air of a conqueror behind the uncle’s horse.

‘I'm like all the rest till it’s a question of coursing a hare; but then you had better look out!’ was what Nikolay fancied the dog’s air expressed.

When the uncle rode up to Nikolay a good deal later, and addressed a remark to him, he felt flattered at the uncle’s deigning to speak to him after what had happened.

VII

When Ilagin took leave of them in the. evening, Nikolay found himself ;o great a distance from home that he accepted the uncle’s invitation to stop hunting and to stay the night at the uncle’s little place, Mihailovka.

‘And if you all come to me—forward, quick march!’ said the uncle, it would be even better; you see, the weather’s damp, you could rest, ind the little countess could be driven back in a trap.’ The invitation Vas accepted; a huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a trap, and Nikolay, Natasha, and Petya rode to the uncle’s house.

Five men servants—little and big—ran out on to the front steps to fleet their master. Dozens of women, old and big and little, popped out it the back entrance to have a look at the huntsmen as they arrived, rhe presence of Natasha—a woman, a lady, on horseback—excited the uriosity of the uncle’s house-serfs to such a pitch that many of them vent up to her, stared her in the face, and, unrestrained by her presence, uade remarks about her, as though she were some prodigy on show, not human being, and not capable of hearing and understanding what was aid about her.

‘Arinka, look-ee, she sits sideways! Sits on so, while her skirt flies bout. . . . And look at the little horn!’

1 ‘Sakes alive! and the knife too. . .

‘A regular Tatar woman! ’

‘How do you manage not to tumble off?’ said the forwardest of them, ddressing Natasha boldly.

1 The uncle got off his horse at the steps of his little wooden house, hich was shut in by an overgrown garden. Looking from one to another f his household, he shouted peremptorily to those who were not wanted ) retire, and for the others to do all that was needed for the reception f his guests.

They all ran off in different directions. The uncle helped Natasha ) dismount, and gave her his arm up the shaky, plank steps.

Inside, the house, with boarded, unplastered walls, was not very ean; there was nothing to show that the chief aim of the persons living |i it was the removal of every spot, yet there were not signs of neglect, here was a smell of fresh apples in the entry, and the walls were hung ith foxskins and wolfskins.

The uncle led his guests through the vestibule into a little hall with a folding-table and red chairs, then into a drawing-room with a round birchwood table and a sofa, and then into his study, with a ragged sofa a threadbare carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of his father and mother and of himself in military uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobaccc and dogs. In the study the uncle asked his guests to sit down and make themselves at home, and he left them. Rugay came in, his back still covered with mud, and lay on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and his teeth. There was a corridor leading from the study, and in it the) could see a screen with ragged curtains. Behind the screen they heard feminine laughter and whispering. Natasha, Nikolay, and Petya took of! their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya leaned on his arm and fell asleep at once; Natasha and Nikolay sat without speaking. Their faces were burning; they were very hungry and very cheerful. They lookec at one another—now that the hunt was over and they were indoors Nikolay did not feel called upon to show his masculine superiority ovei his sister. Natasha winked at her brother; and they could neither of then restrain themselves long, and broke into a ringing laugh before they hac time to invent a pretext for their mirth.

After a brief interval, the uncle came in wearing a Cossack coat, bluf breeches, and little top-boots. And this very costume, at which Natasha had looked with surprise and amusement when the uncle wore it ai Otradnoe, seemed to her now the right costume here, and in no wa> inferior to frock coats or ordinary jackets. The uncle, too, was in good spirits; far from feeling mortified at the laughter of the brother anc sister (he was incapable of imagining that they could be laughing at his mode of life), he joined in their causeless mirth himself.

‘Well, this young countess here—forward, quick march!—I have nevei seen her like!’ he said, giving a long pipe to Rostov, while with a praco tised motion of three fingers he filled another—a short broken one—foi himself.

‘She’s been in the saddle all day—something for a man to boast of— and she’s just as fresh as if nothing had happened!’

Soon the door was opened obviously, from the sound, by a barefoofi servant-girl, and a stout, red-cheeked, handsome woman of about forty with a double chin and full red lips, walked in, with a big tray in hei hands. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in her eyes and in ever) gesture, she looked round at the guests, and with a genial smile bowed tc them respectfully.

In spite of her exceptional stoutness, which made her hold her hear. flung back, while her bosom and all her portly person was thrust forward this woman (the uncle’s housekeeper) stepped with extreme lightness She went to the table, put the tray down, and deftly with her plump white hands set the bottles and dishes on the table. When she had finishec this task she went away, standing for a moment in the doorway with i ; smile on her face. ‘Here I am—I am she! Now do you understand th< uncle?’ her appearance had said to Rostov. Who could fail to understand!

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Not Nikolay only, but even Natasha understood the uncle now and the significance of his knitted brows, and the happy, complacent smile, which puckered his lips as Anisya Fyodorovna came in. On the tray there were liqueurs, herb-brandy, mushrooms, biscuits of rye flour made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, foaming mead made from honey, apples, nuts raw and nuts baked, and nuts preserved in honey. Then Anisya Fyodorovna brought in preserves made with honey and with sugar, and ham and a chicken that had just been roasted.

All these delicacies were of Anisya Fyodorovna's preparing, cooking or preserving. All seemed to smell and taste, as it were, of Anisya Fyodorovna. All seemed to recall her buxomness, cleanliness, whiteness, and cordial smile.

‘A little of this, please, little countess,’ she kept saying, as she handed Natasha first one thing, then another'. Natasha ate of everything, and it seemed to her that such buttermilk biscuits, such delicious preserves, such nuts in honey, such a chicken, she had never seen nor tasted anywhere. Anisya Fyodorovna withdrew. Rostov and the uncle, as they sipped cherry brandy after supper, talked of hunts past and to come, of Rugay and Ilagin’s dogs. Natasha sat upright on the sofa, listening with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to waken Petya, and make him eat something, but he made incoherent replies, evidently in his sleep. Natasha felt so gay, so well content in these new surroundings, that her only fear was that the trap would come too soon for her. After a silence had chanced to fall upon them, as almost always happens when any one receives friends for the first time in his own house, the uncle said, in response to the thought in his guests’ minds:

‘Yes, so you see how I am finishing my days. . . . One dies—forward, quick march!—nothing is left. So why sin!’

The uncle’s face was full of significance and even beauty as he said this. Rostov could not help recalling as he spoke all the good things he had heard said by his father and the neighbours about him. Through the whole district the uncle had the reputation of being a most generous and disinterested eccentric. He was asked to arbitrate in family quarrels; he was chosen executor; secrets were entrusted to him; he was elected a justice, and asked to fill other similar posts; but he had always persisted in refusing all public appointments, spending the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay horse, the winter sitting at home, and the summer lying in his overgrown garden.

‘Why don’t you enter the service, uncle?’

‘I have been in the service, but I flung it up. I’m not fit for it. I can’t make anything of it. That’s your affair. I haven’t the wit for it. The chase, now, is a very different matter; there it’s all forward and quick march! Open the door there! ’ he shouted. ‘Why have you shut it?’ A door at the end of the corridor (which word the uncle always pronounced collidor, like a peasant) led to the huntsmen’s room, as the sitting-room for the huntsmen was called. There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the door into the huntsmen’s room. They could

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then hear distinctly from the corridor the sounds of the balalaika, unmistakably played by a master hand. Natasha had been for some time listening, and now she went out into the corridor to hear the music more clearly.

‘That’s Mitka, my coachman ... I bought him a good balalaika; I’m fond of it,’ said the uncle. It was his custom to get Mitka to play the balalaika in the men’s room when he came home from the chase. He was fond of hearing that instrument.

‘How well he plays! It’s really very nice,’ said Nikolay, with a certain unconscious superciliousness in his tone, as though he were ashamed to admit he liked this music.

‘Very nice?’ Natasha said reproachfully, feeling the tone in which her brother had spoken. ‘It’s not nice, but splendid, really!’ Just as the uncle’s mushrooms and honey and liqueurs had seemed to her the most delicious in the world, this playing struck her at that moment as the very acme of musical expression.

‘More, more, please,’ said Natasha in the doorway, as soon as the balalaika ceased. Mitka tuned up and began again gallantly twanging away at ‘My Lady,’ with shakes and flourishes. The uncle sat listening with his head on one side, and a slight smile. The air of ‘My Lady’ was repeated a hundred times over. Several times the balalaika was tuned up and the same notes were thrummed again, but the audience did not weary of it, and still longed to hear it again and again. Anisya Fyodorovna came in and stood with her portly person leaning against the doorpost.

‘You are pleased to listen!’ she said to Natasha, with a smile extraordinarily like the uncle’s smile. ‘He does play nicely,’ she said.

‘That part he never plays right,’ the uncle said suddenly with a vigorous gesture. ‘It ought to be taken more at a run—forward, quick march! . . . to be played lightly.’

‘Why, can you do it?’ asked Natasha.

The uncle smiled, and did not answer.

‘Just yoih look, Anisyushka, whether the strings are all right on the guitar, eh? It’s a long while since I have handled it. I had quite given it up! ’

Anisya Fyodorovna went very readily with her light step to do her master’s bidding, and brought him his guitar. Without looking at any one the uncle blew the dust off it, tapped on the case with his bony fingers, tuned it, and settled himself in a low chair. Arching his left elbow with a rather theatrical gesture, he held the guitar above the finger-board, and winking at Anisya Fyodorovna, he played, not the first notes of ‘My Lady,’ but a single pure musical chord, and then smoothly, quietly, but confidently began playing in very slow time the well-known song, ‘As along the high road.’ The air of the song thrilled in Nikolay’s and Natasha’s hearts in time, in tune with it, with the same sober gaiety— the same gaiety as was manifest in the whole personality of Anisya Fyodorovna. Anisya Fyodorovna flushed, and hiding her face in her kerchief, went laughing out of the room. The uncle still went on playing

the song carefully, correctly, and vigorously, gazing with a transformed, inspired face at the spot where Anisya Fyodorovna had stood. Laughter came gradually into his face on one side under his grey moustache, and it grew stronger as the song went on, as the time quickened, and breaks came after a flourish.

‘Splendid, splendid, uncle! Again, again!’ cried Natasha, as soon as he had finished. She jumped up from her place and kissed and hugged the uncle. ‘Nikolenka, Nikolenka! ’ she said, looking round at her brother as though to ask, ‘What do you say to it?’

Nikolay, too, was much pleased by the uncle’s playing. He played the song a second time. The smiling face of Anisya Fyodorovna appeared again in the doorway and other faces behind her. . . . ‘For the water from the well, a maiden calls to him to stay! ’ played the uncle. He made another dexterous flourish and broke off, twitching his shoulders.

‘Oh, oh, uncle darling!’ wailed Natasha, in a voice as imploring as though her life depended on it. The uncle got up, and there seemed to be two men in him at that moment—one smiled seriously at the antics of the merry player, while the merry player naively and carefully executed the steps preliminary to the dance.

‘Come, little niece!’ cried the uncle, waving to Natasha the hand that had struck the last chord.

Natasha flung off the shawl that had been wrapped round her, ran forward facing the uncle, and setting her arms akimbo, made the movements of her shoulder and waist.

Where, how, when had this young countess, educated by a French emigree, sucked in with the Russian air she breathed the spirit of that dance? Where had she picked up these movements which the pas de chale would, one might have thought, long ago have eradicated? But the spirit, the motions were those inimitable, unteachable, Russian gestures the uncle had hoped for from her. As soon as she stood up, and smiled that triumphant, proud smile of sly gaiety, the dread that had come on Nikolay and all the spectators at the first moment, the dread that she would not dance it well, was at an end and they were already admiring her.

She danced the dance well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender, graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.

‘Well done, little countess—forward, quick march!’ cried the uncle, laughing gleefully as he finished the dance. ‘Ah, that’s a niece to be proud of! She only wants a fine fellow picked out now for her husband,— and then, forward, quick march!’

‘One has been picked out already,’ said Nikolay, smiling.

‘Oh! ’ said the uncle in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha. Natasha nodded her head with a happy smile.

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‘And such an one! ’ she said. But as soon as she said it a different, new series of ideas and feelings rose up within her. ‘What was the meaning of Nikolay’s smile when he said: “One has been picked out already”? Was he glad of it, or not glad? He seemed to think my Bolkonsy would not approve, would not understand our gaiety now. No, he would quite understand it. Where is he now?’ Natasha wondered, and her face became serious at once. But that lasted only one second. ‘I mustn’t think, I mustn’t dare to think about that,’ she said to herself; and smiling, she sat down again near the uncle, begging him to play them something more.

The uncle played another song and waltz. Then, after a pause, he cleared his throat and began to sing his favourite hunting song:—

‘When there fall at evening glow The first flakes of winter snow.’ . . .

The uncle sang, as peasants sing, in full and naive conviction that in a song the whole value rests in the words, that the tune comes of itself, and that a tune apart is nothing, that the tune is only for the sake of the verse. And this gave the uncle’s unself-conscious singing a peculiar charm, like the song of birds. Natasha was in ecstasies over the uncle’s singing. She made up her mind not to learn the harp any longer, but to play only on the guitar. She asked the uncle for the guitar and at once struck the chords of the song.

At ten o’clock there arrived the wagonette, a trap, and three men on horseback, who had been sent to look for Natasha and Petya. The count and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, so said one of the men.

Petya was carried out and laid in the wagonette as though he had been a corpse. Natasha and Nikolay got into the trap. The uncle wrapped Natasha up, and said good-bye to her with quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far as the ridge which they had to ride round, fording the stream, and bade his huntsmen ride in front with lanterns.

‘Farewell, dear little niece!’ they heard called in the darkness by his voice, not the one Natasha had been familiar with before, but the voice that had sung ‘When fall at evening glow.’

There were red lights in the village they drove through and a cheerful smell of smoke.

‘What a darling that uncle is!’ said Natasha as they drove out into the highroad.

‘Yes,’ said Nikolay. ‘You’re not cold? ?

‘No, I’m very comfortable; very. I am so happy,’ said Natasha, positively perplexed at her own well-being. They were silent for a long while.

The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but could only hear them splashing through the unseen mud.

What w r as passing in that childlike, responsive soul, that so eagerly taught and made its own all the varied impressions of life? How were they all stored away in her heart? But she was very happy. They were

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getting near home when she suddenly hummed the air of ‘When fall at evening glow,’ which she had been trying to get all the way, and had only just succeeded in catching.

‘Have you caught it?’ said Nikolay.

‘What are you thinking of just now, Nikolay?’ asked Natasha. They, were fond of asking each other that question.

‘I?’ said Nikolay, trying to recall. ‘Well, you see, at first I was thinking that Rugay, the red dog, is like the uncle, and that if he were a man he would keep uncle always in the house with him, if not for racing, for music he’d keep him anyway. How jolly uncle is! Isn’t he? Well, and you?’

‘I? Wait a minute; wait a minute! Oh, I was thinking at first that here we are driving and supposing that we are going home, but God knows where we are going in this darkness, apd all of a sudden we shall arrive and see we are not at Otradnoe but in fairyland. And then I thought, too ... no; nothing more.’

‘I know, of course, you thought of him / said Nikolay, smiling, as Natasha could tell by his voice.

‘No,’ Natasha answered, though she really had been thinking at the same time of Prince Andrey and how he would like the uncle. ‘And I keep repeating, too, all the way I keep repeating: how nicely Anisyushka walked; how nicely . . .’ said Natasha. And Nikolay heard her musical, causeless, happy laugh.

‘And do you know?’ she said suddenly. ‘I know I shall never be as happy, as peaceful as I am now . . .’

‘W T hat nonsense, idiocy, rubbish!’ said Nikolay, and he thought: ‘What a darling this Natasha of mine is! I have never had, and never shall have, another friend like her. Why should she be married? I could drive like this with her for ever!’

‘What a darling this Nikolay of mine is!’ Natasha was thinking.

‘All! Still a light in the drawing-room,’ she said, pointing to the windows of their house gleaming attractively in the wet, velvety darkness of the night.

VIII

Count Ilya Andreitch had given up being a marshal of nobility, because that position involved too heavy an expenditure. But his difficulties were not removed by that. Often Natasha and Nikolay knew of uneasy, private consultations between their parents, and heard talk of selling the sumptuous ancestral house of the Rostovs and the estate near Moscow. When the count was no longer marshal it was not necessary to entertain on such a large scale, and they led a quieter life at Otradnoe than in former years. But the immense house and the lodges were still full of people; more than twenty persons still sat down to table with them. These were all their own people, time-honoured inmates of their household, almost members of the family, or persons who must, it seemed,

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inevitably live in the count’s house. Such were Dimmler, the music- master, and his wife; Vogel the dancing-master, with his family; an old Madame Byelov, and many others besides; Petya's tutors, the girls’ old governess, and persons who simply found it better or more profitable to live at the count’s than in a house of their own. They did not entertain so many guests as before, but they still lived in that manner, apart from which the count and countess could not have conceived of life at all. There was still the same hunting establishment, increased indeed by Nikolay. There were still the same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables; the same costly presents on name-days, and ceremonial dinners to the whole neighbourhood. There were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which, letting every one see his cards, he allowed himself to be plundered every day of hundreds by his neighbours, who looked upon the privilege of making up a rubber with Count Ilya Andreitch as a profitable investment.

The count went into his affairs as though walking into a huge net, trying not to believe that he was entangled, and at every step getting more and more entangled, and feeling too feeble either to tear the nets that held him fast, or with care and patience to set about disentangling them. The countess with her loving heart felt that her children were being ruined, that the count was not to blame, that he could not help being what he was, that he was distressed himself (though he tried to conceal it) at the consciousness of his own and his children’s ruin, and was seeking means to improve their position. To her feminine mind only one way of doing so occurred—that was, to marry Nikolay to a wealthy heiress. She felt that this was their last hope, and that if Nikolay were to refuse the match she had found for him she must bid farewell for ever to all chance of improving their position. This match was Julie Karagin, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, known to the Rostovs from childhood, and now left a wealthy heiress by the death of her last surviving brother.

The countess wrote directly to Madame Karagin in Moscow, suggesting to her the marriage of her daughter to her own son, and received a favourable reply from her. Madame Karagin replied that she was quite ready for her part to consent to the match, but everything must depend on her daughter’s inclinations. Madame Karagin invited Nikolay to come to Moscow. Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, had told her son that now that both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him married. She said that she could rest quietly in her grave if this were settled. Then she would say that she had an excellent girl in her eye, and would try and get from him his views on matrimony.

On other occasions she praised Julie and advised Nikolay to go to Moscow for the holidays to amuse himself a little. Nikolay guessed what his mother’s hints were aiming at, and on one such occasion he forced her to complete frankness. She told him plainly that all hope of improving their position rested now on his marrying Julie Karagin.

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‘What, if I loved a girl with no fortune would you really desire me, mamma, to sacrifice my feeling and my honour for the sake of money?’ he asked his mother, with no notion of the cruelty of his question, but simply wishing to show his noble sentiments.

‘No; you misunderstand me,’ said his mother, not knowing how to retrieve her mistake. ‘You misunderstand me, Nikolenka. It is your happiness I wish for,’ she added, and she felt she was speaking falsely, that she was blundering. She burst into tears.

‘Mamma, don't cry, and only tell me that you wish it, and you know that I would give my whole life, everything for your peace of mind,’ said Nikolay; ‘I will sacrifice everything for you, even my feelings.’

But the countess did not want the question put like that; she did not want to receive sacrifices from her son, she would have liked to sacrifice herself to him.

‘No; you don't understand me, don’t let us talk of it,’ she said, wiping away her tears.

‘Yes, perhaps I really do love a poor girl,’ Nikolay said to himself; ‘what, am I to sacrifice my feeling and my honour for fortune? I wonder how mamma could say such a thing. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her,' he thought; ‘I must not respond to her faithful, devoted love. And it is certain I should be happier with her than with any doll of a Julie. To sacrifice my feelings for the welfare of my family I can always do,’ he said to himself, ‘but I can’t control my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is more than anything and above anything for me.’

Nikolay did not go to Moscow, the countess did not renew her conversations with him about matrimony, and with grief, and sometimes with exasperation, saw symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and the portionless Sonya. She blamed herself for it, yet could not refrain from scolding and upbraiding Sonya, often reproving her without cause and addressing her as ‘my good girl.’ What irritated the kind- hearted countess more than anything was that this poor, dark-eyed niece was so meek, so good, so devoutly grateful to her benefactors, and so truly, so constantly, and so unselfishly in love with Nikolay that it was impossible to find any fault with her.

Nikolay went on spending his term of leave with his parents. From Prince Andrey a fourth letter had been received from Rome. In it he wrote that he would long ago have been on his way back to Russia, but that in the warm climate his wound had suddenly re-opened, which would compel him to defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was as much in love with her betrothed, as untroubled in her love, and as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as ever. But towards the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to suffer from fits of depression, against which she was unable to contend. She felt sorry for herself, sorry that all this time should be wasted and be of no use to any one, while she felt such capacity for loving and being loved.

Life was not gay in the Rostovs’ household.

IX

Christmas came, and except for the High Mass, the solemn and wearisome congratulations to neighbours and house-serfs, and the new gowns donned by every one, nothing special happened to mark the holidays, though the still weather with twenty degrees of frost, the dazzling sunshine by day and the bright, starlit sky at night seemed to call for some special celebration of the season.

On the third day of Christmas week, after dinner, all the members of the household had separated and gone to their respective rooms. It was the dullest time of the day. Nikolay, who had been calling on neighbours in the morning, was asleep in the divan-room. The old count was resting in his own room. In the drawing-room Sonya was sitting at a round table copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon, with a dejected countenance, was sitting in the window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to Sonya, looked at what she was doing, then went up to her mother and stood there mutely.

‘Why are you wandering about like an unquiet spirit?’ said her mother. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want him ... I want him at once, this minute,’ said Natasha, with a gleam in her eyes and no smile on her lips. The countess raised her head and looked intently at her daughter.

‘Don’t look at me, mamma; don’t look at me like that; I shall cry in a minute.’

‘Sit down; come and sit by me,’ said the countess.

‘Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasting time like this, mamma?’ . . . Her voice broke, tears gushed into her eyes, and to hide them, she turned quickly and went out of the room. She went into the divan-room, stood there, thought a moment and went to the maids’ room. There an old maid-servant was scolding a young girl who had run in breathless from the cold outside.

“Give over playing,’ said the old woman; ‘there is a time for everything.’

‘Let her off, Kondratyevna,’ said Natasha. ‘Run along, Mavrusha, run along.’

And after releasing Mavrusha, Natasha crossed the big hall and went to the vestibule. An old footman and two young ones were playing cards. They broke off and rose at the entrance of their young mistress. ‘What am I to do with them?’ Natasha wondered.

‘Yes, Nikita, go out, please . . . Where am I to send him? . . . Yes, go to the yard and bring me a cock, please; and you, Misha, bring me some oats.’

‘Just a few oats, if you please?’ said Misha, with cheerful readiness.

‘Run along; make haste,’ the old man urged him.

‘Fyodor, you get me some chalk.’

As she passed the buffet she ordered the samovar, though it was not the right time for it.

The buffet-waiter, Foka, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natasha liked to try her power over him. He did not believe in her order, and went to inquire if it were really wanted.

‘Ah, you’re a nice young lady!’ said Foka, pretending to frown at Natasha.

No one in the house sent people on errands and gave the servants so much work as Natasha. She could not see people without wanting to send them for something. She seemed to be trying to see whether one of them would not be cross or sulky with her; but no one’s orders were so readily obeyed by the servants as Natasha’s. ‘What am I to do? Where am I to go?’ Natasha wondered, strolling.slowly along the corridor.

‘Nastasya Ivanovna, what will my children be?’ she asked the buffoon, who came towards her in his woman’s jacket.

‘Fleas, and dragon-flies, and grasshoppers,’ answered the buffoon.

‘My God! my God! always the same. Oh, where am I to go? What am I to do with myself?’ And she ran rapidly upstairs, tapping with her shoes, to see Vogel and his wife, who had rooms on the top floor. The two governesses were sitting with the Vogels and on the table were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing the question which was the cheaper town to live in, Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and dreamy face, and got up. ‘The island Madagascar,’ she said. ‘Mada-ga-scar,’ she repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly; and making no reply to Madame Schoss’s inquiry into her meaning, she went out of the room.

Petya, her brother, was upstairs too. He was engaged with his tutor making fireworks to let off that night.

‘Petya! Petya!’ she shouted to him, ‘carry me downstairs.’ Petya ran to her and offered her his back, and he pranced along with her. ‘No, enough. The island Madagascar,’ she repeated, and jumping off his back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tried her power, and made sure that all were submissive, but yet that she was dull, Natasha went into the big hall, took up the guitar, and sat down with it in a dark corner behind a bookcase. She began fingering the strings in the bass, picking out a phrase she recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrey. For other listeners the sounds that came from her guitar would have had no sort of meaning, but these sounds called up in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light that fell from the crack in the pantry door, and listened to herself and recalled the past. She was in the mood for brooding over memories.

Sonya crossed the hall, and went into the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at her through the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the light falling through the crack

488 WAR AND PEACE

in the pantry door, and Sonya passing with the glass in just the same way. ‘Yes, and it was exactly the same in every detail,’ thought Natasha.

‘Sonya, what is this?’ called Natasha, twanging the thick cord with her fingers.

‘Oh, are you there?’ said Sonya starting, and she came up and listened. ‘I don’t know. A storm?’ she said timidly, afraid of being wrong.

‘Why, she started in just the same way, and came up and smiled the same timid smile when it all happened before,’ thought Natasha; ‘and just in the same way, too. ... I thought there was something wanting in her.’

‘No, it’s the chorus from the “Water Carrier,” listen.’ And Natasha hummed the air of the chorus, so that Sonya might catch it. ‘Where were you going?’ asked Natasha.

‘To change the water in my glass. I am just finishing colouring the design.’

‘You always find something to do, but I can’t, you know,’ said Natasha. ‘And where’s Nikolenka?’

‘I think he’s asleep.’

‘Sonya, do go and wake him,’ said Natasha. ‘Tell him I want him to sing with me.’

She sat a little longer, pondering on what was the meaning of its all having happened before, and not solving that question, and not in the least chagrined at being unable to do so, she passed again in her imagination to the time when she was with him, and he gazed at her with eyes of love.

‘Oh, if he would come quickly! I’m so afraid it will never come! And worst of all, I’m getting older, that’s the thing. There won’t be in me what there is in me now. Perhaps he is coming to-day, will be here immediately. Perhaps he has come, and is sitting there in the drawing-room. Perhaps he did come yesterday, and I have forgotten.’ She got up, put down her ■ guitar, and went into the parlour. All their domestic circle, tutors, gov- ■ ernesses, and guests were sitting at the tea-table. The servants were standing round the table. But Prince Andrey was not there, and the same old life was still going on.

‘Here she is,’ said the count, seeing Natasha coming in. ‘Come, sit by me.’ But Natasha stayed by her mother, looking about her as though seeking for something.

‘Mamma!’ she said. ‘Give me him, give me him, mamma, quickly, quickly,’ and again she could hardly suppress her sobs. She sat down to the table and listened to the talk of the elders and Nikolay, who had come in to tea. ‘My God, my God, the same people, the same talk, papa holding his cup, and blowing it just the same as always,’ thought Natasha, feeling with horror an aversion rising up in her for all her family, because they were always the same.

After tea Nikolay, Sonya, and Natasha went into the divan-room to their favourite corner, where their most intimate talks always began.

X

‘Does it happen to you,’ said Natasha to her brother, when they were settled in the divan-room, ‘to feel that nothing will ever happen—nothing; that all that is good is past? And it’s not exactly a bored feeling, but melancholy?’

‘I should think so!’ said he. ‘It has sometimes happened to me that when everything’s all right, and every one’s cheerful, it suddenly strikes one that one’s sick of it all, and all must die. Once in the regiment when I did not go to some merrymaking, and there the music was playing . . . and I felt all at once so dreary . . .’

‘Oh, I know that feeling; I know it, I know it,’ Natasha assented; ‘even when I was quite little, I used to have that feeling. Do you remember, once I was punished for eating some plums, and you were all dancing, and I sat in the schoolroom sobbing. I shall never forget it; I felt sad and sorry for every one, sorry for myself, and for every—every one. And what was the chief point, I wasn’t to blame,’ said Natasha; ‘do you remember?’

‘I remember,’ said Nikolay. ‘I remember that I came to you afterwards, and I longed to comfort you, but you know, I felt ashamed to. Awfully funny we used to be. I had a wooden doll then, and I wanted to give it you. Do you remember?’

‘And do you remember,’ said Natasha, with a pensive smile, ‘how long, long ago, when we were quite little, uncle called us into the study in the old house, and it was dark; we went in, and all at once there stood . . .’

‘A negro,’ Nikolay finished her sentence with a smile of delight; ‘ok course, I remember. To this day I don’t know whether there really was a negro, or whether we dreamed it, or were told about it.’

‘He was grey-headed, do you remember, and had white teeth; he stood and looked at us . . .’

‘Do you remember, Sonya?’ asked Nikolay.

‘Yes, yes, I do remember something too,’ Sonya answered timidly.

‘You know I have often asked both papa and mamma about that negro,’ said Natasha. ‘They say there never was a negro at all. But you remember him!’

‘Of course, I do. I remember his teeth, as if it were to-day.’

‘How strange it is, as though it were a dream. I like that.’

‘And do you remember how we were rolling eggs in the big hall, and all of a sudden two old women came in, and began whirling round on the carpet. Did that happen or not? Do you remember what fun it was?’

‘Yes. And do you remember how papa, in a blue coat, fired a gun off on the steps?’

Smiling with enjoyment, they went through their reminiscences; not the melancholy memories of old age, but the romantic memories of youth, those impressions of the remotest past in which dreamland melts into reality. They laughed with quiet pleasure.

Sonya was, as always, left behind by them, though their past had been spent together.

Sonya did not remember much of what they recalled, and what she did remember, did not rouse the same romantic feeling in her. She was simply enjoying their pleasure, and trying to share it.

She could only enter into it fully when they recalled Sonya’s first arrival. Sonya described how she had been afraid of Nikolay, because he had cording on his jacket, and the nurse had told her that they would tie her up in cording too.

‘And I remember, I was told you were found under a cabbage,’ said Natasha; ‘and I remember I didn’t dare to disbelieve it then, though I knew it was untrue, and I felt so uncomfortable.’

During this conversation a maid popped her head in at a door leading into the divan-room.

‘Miss, they’ve brought you a cock,’ she said in a whisper.

‘I don’t want it, Polya; tell them to take it away,’ said Natasha.

In the middle of their talk in the divan-room, Dimmler came into the room, and went up to the harp that stood in the corner. He took off the cloth-case, and the harp gave a jarring sound. ‘Edward Karlitch, do, please, play my favourite nocturne of M. Field,’ said the voice of the old countess from the drawing-room.

Dimmler struck a chord, and turning to Natasha, Nikolay, and Sonya, he said.

‘How quiet you young people are!’

‘Yes, we’re talking philosophy,’ said Natasha, looking round for a minute, and going on with the conversation. They were talking now about dreams.

Dimmler began to play. Natasha went noiselessly on tiptoe to the table, took the candle, carried it away, and going back, sat quietly in her place.

It was dark in the room, especially where they were sitting on the sofa, but the silver light of the full moon shone in at the big windows and lay on the floor.

‘Do you know, I think,’ said Natasha, in a whisper, moving up to Nikolay and Sonya, when Dimmler had finished, and still sat, faintly twanging the strings, in evident uncertainty whether to leave off playing or begin something new, ‘that one goes on remembering, and remember- ■ ing; one remembers till one recalls what happened before one was in this world. . . .’

‘That’s metempsychosis,’ said Sonya, who had been good at lessons, and remembered all she had learned. ‘The Egyptians used to believe that our souls had been in animals, and would go into animals again.’

‘No, do you know, I don’t believe that we were once in animals,’ said Natasha, still in the same whisper, though the music was over; ‘but I know for certain that we were once angels somewhere beyond, and we have been here, and that’s why we remember everything. . . .’

‘May I join you?’ said Dimmler, coming up quietly, and he sat down by them.

‘If we had been angels, why should we have fallen lower?’ said Nikolay. ‘No, that can’t be!’

‘Not lower . . . who told you we were lower? . . . This is how I know I have existed before,’ Natasha replied, with conviction: ‘The soul is immortal, you know ... so, if I am to live for ever, I have lived before too, I have lived for all eternity.’

‘Yes, but it’s hard for us to conceive of eternity,’ said Dimmler, who had joined the young people, with a mildly condescending smile, but now talked as quietly and seriously as they did.

‘Why is it hard to conceive of eternity?’ said Natasha. ‘There will be to-day, and there will be to-morrow, and there will be for ever, and yesterday has been, and the day before. . . .’

‘Natasha! now it’s your turn. Sing me something,’ called the voice of the countess. ‘Why are you sitting there so quietly, like conspirators?’

‘Mamma, I don’t want to a bit!’ said Natasha, but she got up as she said it.

None of them, not even Dimmler, who was not young, wanted to break off the conversation, and come out of the corner of the divan-room; but Natasha stood up, and Nikolay sat down to the clavichord. Standing, as she always did, in the middle of the room, and choosing the place where the resonance was greatest, Natasha began singing her mother’s favourite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung, and long before she sang again as she sang that evening. Count Ilya Andreitch listened to her singing from his study, where he was talking to Mitenka, and like a schoolboy in haste to finish his lesson and run out to play, he blundered in his orders to the steward, and at last paused, and Mitenka stood silent and smiling before him, listening too. Nikolay never took his eyes off his sister, and drew his breath when she did. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the vast difference between 'her and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be in ever so slight a degree fascinating like her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful, but mournful smile, and tears in her eyes, and now and then she shook her head. She, too, was thinking of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something terrible and unnatural in Natasha’s marrying Prince Andrey.

Dimmler, sitting by the countess, listened with closed eyes. ‘No, countess,’ he said, at last, ‘that’s a European talent; she has no need of teaching: that softness, tenderness, strength . . .’

‘Ah, I’m afraid for her, I’m afraid,’ said the countess, not remembering with whom she was speaking. Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her being happy.

Natasha had not finished singing when fourteen-year-old Petya ran in great excitement into the room to announce the arrival of the mummers.

Natasha stopped abruptly.

‘Idiot!’ she screamed at her brother. She ran to a chair, sank into it,

and broke into such violent sobbing that it was a long while before she could stop.

‘It’s nothing, mamma, it’s nothing really, it’s all right; Petya startled me,’ she said, trying to smile; but the tears still flowed, and the sobs still choked her.

The mummers—house-serfs dressed up as bears, Turks, tavern-keepers, and ladies—awe-inspiring or comic figures, at first huddled shyly together in the vestibule, bringing in with them the freshness of the cold outside, and a feeling of gaiety. Then, hiding behind one another, they crowded together in the big hall; and at first with constraint, but afterwards with more liveliness and unanimity, they started singing songs, and performing dances, and songs with dancing, and playing Christmas games. The countess after identifying them, and laughing at their costumes, went away to the drawing-room. Count Ilya Andreitch sat with a beaming smile in the big hall, praising their performances. The young people had disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared in the hall among the other mummers an old lady in a crinoline—this was Nikolay. Petya was a Turkish lady, Dimmler was a clown, Natasha a hussar, and Sonya a Circassian with eyebrows and moustaches smudged with burnt cork.

After those of the household who were not dressed up had expressed condescending wonder and approval, and had failed to recognise them, the young people began to think their costumes so good that they must display them to some one else.

Nikolay, who wanted to drive them all in his sledge, as the road was in capital condition, proposed to drive to their so-called uncle’s, taking about a dozen of the house-serfs in their mummer-dress with them.

‘No; why should you disturb the old fellow?’ said the countess. ‘Besides you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, let it be to the Melyukovs.’

Madame Melyukov was a widow with a family of children of various ages, and a number of tutors and governesses living in her house, four versts from the Rostovs’.

‘That’s a good idea, my love,’ the old count assented, beginning to be aroused. ‘Only let me dress up and I’ll go with you. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.’

But the countess would not agree to the count’s going; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Luisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to Madame Melyukov’s. Sonya, usually so shy and reticent, was more urgent than any in persuading Luisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya’s disguise was the best of all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming to her. Every one told her she looked very pretty, and she was in a mood of eager energy unlike her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be sealed, and in her masculine attire she seemed quite another person. Luisa Ivanovna consented to go;

WARANDPEACE 493

and half an hour later four sledges with bells drove up to the steps, their runners crunching, with a clanging sound, over the frozen snow.

Natasha was foremost in setting the note tone of holiday gaiety; and that gaiety, reflected from one to another, grew wilder and wilder, and reached its climax when they all went out into the frost, and talking, and calling to one another, laughing and shouting, got into the sledges.

Two of the sledges were the common household sledges; the third was the old count’s, with a trotting horse from Orlov’s famous stud; the fourth, Nikolay’s own, with his own short, shaggy, raven horse in the shafts. Nikolay, in his old lady’s crinoline and a hussar’s cloak belted over it, stood up in the middle of the sledge picking up the reins. It was so light that he could see the metal discs of the harness shining in the moonlight, and the eyes of the horses looking round in alarm at the noise made by the party under the portico of the approach.

Sonya, Natasha, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nikolay’s sledge. In the count’s sledge were Dimmler with his wife and Petya; the other mummers were seated in the other two sledges.

‘You go on ahead, Zahar!’ shouted Nikolay to his father’s coachman, so as to have a chance of overtaking him on the road.

The count’s sledge with Dimmler and the others of his party started forward, its runners creaking as though they were frozen to the snow, and the deep-toned bell clanging. The trace-horses pressed close to the shafts and sticking in the snow kicked it up, hard and glittering as sugar.

Nikolay followed the first sledge: behind him he heard the noise and crunch of the other two. At first they drove at a slow trot along the narrow road. As they drove by the garden, the shadows of the leafless trees often lay right across the road and hid the bright moonlight. But as soon as they were out of their grounds, the snowy plain, glittering like diamond with bluish lights in it, lay stretched out on all sides, all motionless and bathed in moonlight. Now and again a hole gave the first sledge a jolt; the next was jolted in just the same way, and the next, and the sledges followed one another, rudely breaking the iron-bound stillness.

‘A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!’ Natasha's voice rang out in the frost- bound air.

‘How light it is, Nikolenka,’ said the voice of Sonya.

Nikolay looked round at Sonya, and bent down to look at her face closer. It was a quite new, charming face with black moustaches, and eyebrows that peeped up at him from the sable fur—so close yet so distant—in the moonlight.

‘That used to be Sonya,’ thought Nikolay. He looked closer at her and smiled.

‘What is it, Nikolenka?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, and turned to his horses again.

As they came out on the trodden highroad, polished by sledge runners, and all cut up by the tracks of spiked horseshoes—visible in the snow in the moonlight—the horses of their own accord tugged at the reins and quickened their pace. The left trace-horse, arching his head, pulled in

jerks at his traces. The shaft-horse swayed to and fro, pricking up his ears as though to ask: ‘Are we to begin or is it too soon?’ Zahar’s sledge could be distinctly seen, black against the white snow, a long way ahead now, and its deep-toned bell seemed to be getting further away. They could hear shouts and laughter and talk from his sledge.

‘Now then, my darlings!’ shouted Nikolay, pulling a rein on one side, and moving his whip hand. It was only from the wind seeming to blow more freely in their faces, and from the tugging of the pulling trace- horses, quickening their trot, that they saw how fast the sledge was flying along. Nikolay looked behind. The other sledges, with crunching runners, with shouts, and cracking of whips, were hurrying after them. Their shaft- horse was moving vigorously under the yoke, with no sign of slackening, and every token of being ready to go faster and faster if required.

Nikolay overtook the first sledge. They drove down a hill, and into a wide, trodden road by a meadow near a river.

‘Where are we?’ Nikolay wondered. ‘Possibly Kosoy Meadow, I suppose. But no; this is something new I never saw before. This is not the Kosoy Meadow nor Demkin hill. It’s something—there’s no knowing what. It’s something new and fairy-like. Well, come what may!’ And shouting to his horses, he began to drive by the first sledge. Zahar pulled up his horses and turned his face, which was white with hoar-frost to the eyebrows.

Nikolay let his horses go; Zahar, stretching his hands forward, urged his on. ‘Come, hold on, master,’ said he.

The sledges dashed along side by side, even more swiftly, and the horses’ hoofs flew up and down more and more quickly. Nikolay began to get ahead. Zahar, still keeping his hands stretched forward, raised one hand with the reins.

‘Nonsense, master,’ he shouted. Nikolay put his three horses into a gallop and outstripped Zahar. The horses scattered the fine dry snow in their faces; close by they heard the ringing of the bells and the horses’ i legs moving rapidly out of step, and they saw the shadows of the sledge ; behind. From different sides came the crunch of runners over the snow, i and the shrieks of girls. Stopping his horses again, Nikolay looked round him. All around him lay still the same enchanted plain, bathed in moonlight, with stars scattered over its surface.

‘Zahar’s shouting that I’m to turn to the left, but why to the left?’ thought Nikolay. ‘Are we really going to the Melyukovs’; is this really Melyukovka? God knows where we are going, and God knows what is going to become of us—and very strange and nice it is what is happening to us.’ He looked round in the sledge.

‘Look, his moustache and his eyelashes are all white,’ said one of the strange, pretty, unfamiliar figures sitting by him, with fine moustaches and eyebrows.

‘I believe that was Natasha,’ thought Nikolay; ‘and that was Madame Schoss; but perhaps it’s not so; and that Circassian with the moustaches I don’t know, but I love her.’

‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked them. They laughed and did not answer. )immler from the sledge behind shouted, probably something funny, but hey could not make out what he said.

‘Yes, yes,’ voices answered, laughing.

But now came a sort of enchanted forest with shifting, black shadows, nd the glitter of diamonds, and a flight of marble steps, and silver roofs f enchanted buildings, and the shrill whine of some beasts. ‘And if it eally is Melyukovka, then it’s stranger than ever that after driving, God nows where, we should come to Melyukovka,’ thought Nikolay.

It certainly was Melyukovka, and footmen and maid-servants were unning out with lights and beaming faces.

‘Who is it?’ was asked from the entrance.

‘The mummers from the count’s; I can see by the horses,’ answered oices.

XI

'elagea Danilovna Melyukov, a broad-shouldered, energetic woman, 1 spectacles and a loose house dress, was sitting in her drawing-room, sur- bunded by her daughters, and doing her utmost to keep them amused, ’hey were quietly occupied in dropping melted wax into water and etching the shadows of the shapes it assumed, when they heard the oise of steps in the vestibule, and the voices of people arriving.

The hussars, fine ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, coughing and rub- ing the hoar-frost off their faces, came into the hall, w'here they were urriedly lighting candles. The clown—Dimmler—and the old lady— likolay—opened the dance. Surrounded by the shrieking children, the lummers hid their faces, and disguising their voices, bowed to their ostess and dispersed about the room.

‘Oh, there’s no recognising them. And Natasha! See what she looks ke! Really, she reminds me of some one. How good Edward Karlitch is! didn’t know him. And how he dances! Oh, my goodness, and here’s a 'ircassian too, upon my word; how it suits Sonyushka! And who’s this? /ell, you have brought us some fun! Take away the tables, Nikita, anya. And we were sitting so quiet and dull! ’

‘Ha—ha—he! . . . The hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy; and the :gs! . . . I can’t look at him, . . .’voices cried.

Natasha, the favourite of the young Melyukovs, disappeared with them ito rooms at the back of the house, and burnt cork and various dressing- nwns and masculine garments were sent for and taken from the footman y bare, girlish arms through the crack of the half-open door. In ten linutes all the younger members of the Melyukov family reappeared \ fancy dresses too.

Pelagea Danilovna, busily giving orders for clearing the room for the nests and preparing for their entertainment, walked about among the lummers in her spectacles, with a suppressed smile, looking close at lem and not recognising any one. She not only failed to recognise the

Rostovs and Dimmler, but did not even know her own daughters, o identify the masculine dressing-gowns and uniform in which they wer disguised.

‘And who is this?’ she kept saying, addressing her governess and gazin; into the face of her own daughter disguised as a Tatar of Kazan. ‘One o the Rostovs, I fancy. And you, my hussar, what regiment are you ir pray?’ she asked Natasha. ‘Give the Turk a preserved fruit,’ she said ti the footman carrying round refreshments; ‘that’s not forbidden by hi law.’

Sometimes, looking at the strange and ludicrous capers cut by th dancers, who, having made up their minds once for all that no one recog nised them, were quite free from shyness, Pelagea Danilovna hid he face in her handkerchief, and all her portly person shook with irrepres sible, good-natured, elderly laughter.

‘My Sashinette, my Sashinette!’ she said.

After Russian dances and songs in chorus, Pelagea Danilovna made al the party, servants and gentry alike, join in one large circle. The; brought in a string, a ring, and a silver rouble, and began playing games

An hour later all the fancy dresses were crumpled and untidy. Th corked moustaches and eyebrows were wearing off the heated, perspiring and merry faces. Pelagea Danilovna began to recognise the mummers She was enthusiastic over the cleverness of the dresses and the way the; suited them, especially the young ladies, and thanked them all for givin them such good fun. The guests were invited into the drawing-room fo supper, while the servants were regaled in the hall.

‘Oh, trying one’s fate in the bath-house, that’s awful!’ was said at th supper-table by an old maiden lady who lived with the Melyukovs.

‘Why so?’ asked the eldest daughter of the Melyukovs.

‘Well, you won’t go and try. It needs courage . . .’

‘I’ll go,’ said Sonya.

‘Tell us what happened to the young lady,’ said the second girl.

‘Well, it was like this,’ said the old maid. ‘The young lady went out she took a cock, two knives and forks, and everything proper, and sa down. She sat a little while, and all of a sudden she hears some one com ing,—-a sledge with bells driving up. She hears him coming. He walks ir precisely in the shape of a man, like an officer, and sat down beside he at the place laid for him.’

‘Ah! ah! . . .’ screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.

‘But what did he do? Did he talk like a man?’

‘Yes, like a man. Everything as it should be, and began to try and wii her over, and she should have kept him in talk till the cock crew; but sh got frightened,—simply took fright, and hid her face in her hands. And h caught her up. Luckily the maids ran in that minute . . .’

‘Come, why are you scaring them?’ said Pelagea Danilovna.

‘Why, mamma, you tried your fate yourself . . .’ said her daughter.

‘And how do they try fate in a granary?’ asked Sonya.

‘Why, at a time like this they go to the granary and listen. And accord

WARANDPEACE 497

ng to what you hear,—if there’s a knocking and a tapping, it’s bad; but f there’s a sound of sifting corn, it is good. But sometimes it happens . .

' ‘Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the granary?’

Pelagea Danilovna smiled.

‘Why, I have forgotten . . .’ she said. ‘I know none of you will go.’

‘No. I’ll go. Pelagea Danilovna, do let me, and I’ll go,’ said Sonya.

‘Oh, well, if you’re not afraid.’

‘Luisa Ivanovna, may I?’ asked Sonya.

1 Whether they were playing at the ring and string game, or the rouble »ame, or talking as now, Nikolay did not leave Sonya’s side, and looked fit her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him as though to-day, for the irst time, he had, thanks to that corked moustache, seen her fully as she vas. Sonya certainly was that evening gay. lively, and pretty, as Natasha lad never seen her before.

' ‘So, this is v» T hat she is, and what a fool I have been! ’ he kept thinking, ooking at her sparkling eyes, at the happy, ecstatic smile dimpling her cheeks under the moustache. He had never seen that smile before.

‘I’m not afraid of anything,’ said Sonya. ‘May I go at once?’ She got jp. They told Sonya where the granary was; how she was to stand quite silent and listen, and they gave her a cloak. She threw it over her head and glanced at Nikolay.

; ‘How exquisite that girl is! ’ he thought. ‘And what have I been think- ng about all this time?’

Sonya went out into the corridor to go to the granary. Nikolay hastily 'ivent out to the front porch, saying he was too hot. It certainly was stuffy ndoors from the crowd of people.

Outside there was the same still frost, the same moonlight, only even brighter than before. The light was so bright, and there were so many stars sparkling in the snow, that the sky did not attract the eye, and the •eal stars were haldly noticeable. The sky was all blackness and dreariness, the earth all brightness.

‘I’m a fool; a fool! What have I been waiting for all this time?’ thought STikolay; and running out into the porch he went round the corner of the house along the path leading to the back door. He knew Sonya would come hat way. Half-way there was a pile of logs of wood, seven feet long. It was covered with snow and cast a shadow. Across it and on one side of it there fell on the snow and the path a network of shadows from the bare old ime-trees. The wall and roof of the granary glittered in the moonlight, as though hewn out of some precious stone. There was the sound of the snapping of wood in the garden, and all was perfect stillness again. The ungs seemed breathing in, not air, but a sort of ever-youthful power ind joy.

From the maid-servants’ entrance came the tap of feet on the steps; there was a ringing crunch on the last step where the snow was heaped, ind the voice of the old maid said:

‘Straight on, along this path, miss. Only don’t look round!’

49§ WARANDPEACE

‘I’m not afraid,’ answered Sonya’s voice, and Sonya’s little feet in their dancing-shoes came with a ringing, crunching sound along the path towards Nikolay.

Sonya was muffled up in the cloak. She was two paces away when she saw him. She saw him, too, not as she knew him, and as she was always a little afraid of him. He was in a woman’s dress, with towzled hair, and a blissful smile that was new to Sonya. She ran quickly to him.

‘Quite different, and still the same,’ thought Nikolay, looking at her face, all lighted up by the moon. He slipped his hands under the cloak that covered her head, embraced her, drew her to him, and kissed the lips that wore a moustache and smelt of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and putting out her little hands held them against his cheeks on both sides.

‘Sonya! . . . Nikolenka! . . .’ was all they said. They ran to the granary and went back to the house, each at their separate door.

XII

When they were all driving back from Pelagea Danilovna’s, Natasha, who always saw and noticed everything, managed a change of places, so that Luisa Ivanovna and she got into the sledge with Dimmler, while ( Sonya was with Nikolay and the maids.

Nikolay drove smoothly along the way back, making no effort now to get in front. He kept gazing in the fantastic moonlight at Sonya, and seeking, in the continually shifting light behind those eyebrows and moustaches, his own Sonya, the old Sonya, and the Sonya of to-day, from whom he had resolved now never to be parted. He watched her intently, and when he recognised the old Sonya and the new Sonya, and recalled, as he smelt it, that smell of burnt cork that mingled with the thrill of the kiss, j he drew in a deep breath of the frosty air, and as he saw the earth flying by them, and the sky shining above, he felt himself again in fairyland.

‘Sonya, is it well with theeV he asked her now and then.

‘Yes,’ answered Sonya. ‘And thee?’

Half-way home, Nikolay let the coachman hold the horses, ran for a moment to Natasha’s sledge, and stood on the edge of it.

‘Natasha,’ he whispered in French, ‘do you know I have made up my mind about Sonya?’

‘Have you told her?’ asked Natasha, beaming all over at once with pleasure.

‘Ah, how strange you look with that moustache and those eyebrows, Natasha! Are you glad?’

‘I’m so glad; so glad! I was beginning to get cross with you. I never told you so, but you have not been treating her nicely. Such a heart as she has, Nikolenka. I am so glad! I’m horrid sometimes; but I felt ashamed of being happy without Sonya,’ Natasha went on. ‘Now, I’m so glad; there, run back to her.’

‘No; wait a moment. Oh, how funny you look!’ said Nikolay, still gaz- ng intently at her; and in his sister, too, finding something new, extraor- linary, and tenderly bewitching that he had never seen in her before. Natasha, isn’t it fairylike? Eh?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘you have done quite rightly.’

‘If I had seen her before as she is now,’ Nikolay was thinking. ‘I should lave asked her long ago what to do, and should have done anything she old me, and it would have been all right.’

‘So you’re glad,’ he said, ‘and I have done right?’

‘Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with mamma about it a little while go. Mamma said she was trying to catch you. How could she say such a hing! I almost stormed at mamma. I will never let any one say or think ny harm of her, for there’s nothing but good in her.’

‘So it’s all right?’ said Nikolay, once more gazing intently at his sister’s xpression to find out whether that were fhe truth. Then he jumped off he sledge and ran, his boots crunching over the snow, to his sledge. The ame happy, smiling Circassian, with a moustache and sparkling eyes, eeping from under the sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Cir- assian was Sonya, and that Sonya was for certain now his happy and wing future wife.

On reaching home, the young ladies told the countess how they had pent the time at the Melyukovs’, and then went to their room. They hanged their dresses, but without washing off their moustaches, sat for a )ng while talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live r hen they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and they mild be happy. Looking-glasses were standing on Natasha’s table, set rere earlier in the evening by Dunyasha, and arranged in the traditional ay for looking into the future.

‘Only when will that be? I’m so afraid it never will be. . . . It would e too happy!’ said Natasha, getting up and going to the looking-glasses. ‘Sit down, Natasha, perhaps you will see him,’ said Sonya.

Natasha lighted the candles and sat down. ‘I do see some one with a ioustache,’ said Natasha, seeing her own face.

‘You mustn’t laugh, miss,’ said Dunyasha.

With the assistance of Sonya and the maid, Natasha got the mirrors ito the correct position. Her face took a serious expression, and she was lent. For a long while she went on sitting, watching the series of retreat- g candles reflected in the looking-glasses, and expecting (in accordance ith the tales she had heard) at one minute to see a coffin, at the next to e him, Prince Andrey, in the furthest, dimmest, indistinct square. But ady as she was to accept the slightest blur as the form of a man or of a 'ffin, she saw nothing. She began to blink, and moved away from the oking-glass.

‘Why is it other people see things and I never see anything?’ she said, "ome, you sit down, Sonya; to-day you really must. Only look for me |. . I feel so full of dread to-day!’

Sonya, sat down to the looking-glass, got the correct position, and bega looking.

‘You will see, Sofya Alexandrovna will be sure to see something,’ whi pered Dunyasha, ‘you always laugh.’

Sonya heard these words, and heard Natasha say in a whisper: ‘Yes, know she’ll see something; she saw something last year too.’ For thr< minutes all were mute.

‘Sure to!’ whispered Natasha, and did not finish. ... All at on< Sonya drew back from the glass she was holding and put her hand ovi her eyes. ‘O Natasha! ’ she said. ‘Seen something? Seen something? Wh; did you see?’ cried Natasha, supporting the looking-glass. Sonya had set nothing. She was just meaning to blink and to get up, when she heai Natasha’s voice say: ‘Sure to!’ . . . She did not want to deceive eithi Dunyasha or Natasha, and was weary of sitting there. She did not kno herself how and why that exclamation had broken from her as she co' ered her eyes.

‘Did you see him?’ asked Natasha, clutching her by the hand.

‘Yes. Wait a bit. . . . I . . . did see him,’ Sonya could not help sa; ing, not yet sure whether by him Natasha meant Nikolay or Andrey. ‘WI not say I saw something? Other people see things! And who can te whether I have or have not?’ flashed through Sonya’s mind.

‘Yes, I saw him,’ she said.

‘How was it? How? Standing or lying down?’

‘No, I saw . . . At first there was nothing; then I saw him lying dowi

‘Andrey lying down? Is he ill?’ Natasha asked, fixing eyes of terror ( her friend.

‘No, on the contrary—on the contrary, his face was cheerful, and ) turned to me’; and at the moment she was saying this, it seemed to he self that she really had seen what she described.

‘Well, and then, Sonya? . .

‘Then I could make out more; something blue and red. . .

‘Sonya, when will he come back? When shall I see him? My God! feel so frightened for him, and for me, and frightened for everything cried Natasha; and answering not a word to Sonya’s attempts to comfo her, she got into bed, and long after the candle had been put out she 1; with wide-open eyes motionless on the bed, staring into the frosty moo 1 light through the frozen window -panes.

XIII