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The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts
congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had
thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the brownish
strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and against the
pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines
and the copses, which at the end of August had still been green
islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and bright-red
islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already half
changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to scatter,
and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best time
of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young sportsman
Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give
them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September,
to go on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where
there was an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and
the air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast
and it began to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in
his dressing gown, looked out of the window, he saw it was an
unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was as if the sky were melting
and sinking to the earth without any wind. The only motion in
the air was that of the dripping, microscopic particles of drizzling
mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with transparent
drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in the
kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell
of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched
bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master,
stretched her hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly
jumped up and licked him right on his nose and mustache. Another
borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the garden path,
arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted
tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.
"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's
call which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and
round the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman,
a gray, wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead,
Ukrainian fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look
of independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen.
He doffed his Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully.
This scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that
this Daniel, disdainful of everybody and who considered himself
above them, was all the same his serf and huntsman.
"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the
sight of the weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was
being carried away by that irresistible passion for sport which
makes a man forget all his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets
in the presence of his mistress.
"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman
in his deep bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing-
and two flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his
master, who was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes
seemed to be asking.
"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?"
asked Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed
out after a minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into
the Otradnoe enclosure. They were howling there." (This meant
that the she-wolf, about whom they both knew, had moved with her
cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a mile and a half from
the house.)
"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas.
"Come to me with Uvarka."
"As you please."
"Then put off feeding them."
"Yes, sir."
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'
big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room
was like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture
and surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and
as usual stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and
not move, for fear of breaking something in the master's apartment,
and he hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from
under that ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an
opinion that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go
hunting), Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just
as Daniel was about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not
having done up her hair or finished dressing and with her old
nurse's big shawl wrapped round her. Petya ran in at the same
time.
"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you
would! Sonya said you wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the
sort of day when you couldn't help going."
"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly,
for today, as he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to
take Natasha and Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting:
it would be dull for you."
"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha.
"It's not fair; you are going by yourself, are having the
horses saddled and said nothing to us about it."
"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!"
shouted Petya.
"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas
to Natasha.
"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha
decisively. "Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael
must come with my dogs," she added to the huntsman.
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at
all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him
impossible. He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were
none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental
injury on the young lady.
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