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The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting
the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who
was four years older than her sister and behaved already like
a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya
was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which
were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round
her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in
the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck.
By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility
of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner,
she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises
to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it
proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling,
but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes
watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate
girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant
impose upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled
down only to spring up with more energy and again play with her
cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha and Boris, escape
from the drawing room.
"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the
visitor and pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become
an officer, and so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university
and me, his old father, and entering the military service, my
dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for him in
the Archives Department! Isn't that friendship?" remarked
the count in an inquiring tone.
"But they say that war has been declared," replied
the visitor.
"They've been saying so a long while," said the
count, "and they'll say so again and again, and that will
be the end of it. My dear, there's friendship for you," he
repeated. "He's joining the hussars."
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas,
flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It
is not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is
my vocation."
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they
were both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining
with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas
back with him. It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging
his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter that evidently
distressed him.
"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that
if you don't wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no
use anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government
clerk.- I don't know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke
he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth
at Sonya and the young lady visitor.
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready
at any moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish
nature.
"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He
always flares up! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads;
they all think of how he rose from an ensign and became Emperor.
Well, well, God grant it," he added, not noticing his visitor's
sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned
to young Rostov.
"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday.
It was so dull without you," said she, giving him a tender
smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed
the heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the
midst of his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately
angry glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain
the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room.
All Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause
in the conversation, and then with a distressed face left the
room to find Sonya.
"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts
on their sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas
as he went out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"* she
added.
*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these
young people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if
answering a question no one had put but which was always in her
mind, "and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had
to go through that we might rejoice in them now! And yet really
the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always
anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both for girls
and boys."
"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the
visitor.
"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess.
"Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend
and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake
of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets
from them. "I know I shall always be my daughters' first
confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does
get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he will all the same
never be like those Petersburg young men."
"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed
in the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing
by deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants
to be an hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"
"What a charming creature your younger girl is,"
said the visitor; "a little volcano!"
"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes
after me! And what a voice she has; though she's my daughter,
I tell the truth when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni!
We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons."
"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the
voice to train it at that age."
"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count.
"Why, our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."
"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!"
said the countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went
on, evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied her:
"Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid
it... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly"
(she meant that they would be kissing), "but as it is, I
know every word she utters. She will come running to me of her
own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I spoil
her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister
I was stricter."
"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked
the handsome elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally
do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at
learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what
she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-
the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering
why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
"People are always too clever with their eldest children
and try to make something exceptional of them," said the
visitor.
"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess
was too clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what
of that? She's turned out splendidly all the same," he added,
winking at Vera.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return
to dinner.
"What manners! I thought they would never go," said
the countess, when she had seen her guests out.
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