|
The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to
return very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther.
At midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown
with young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see
all his whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman
stood alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely
been loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving
tongue at intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now
again giving tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded
ravine that a fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining
together, rushed along the ravine toward the ryefield and away
from Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge
of the ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox
to show itself at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,
and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush
going hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now
they drew close to the fox which began to dodge between the field
in sharper and sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly
a strange white borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and
everything was in confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped
figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with tails turned away
from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the
dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.
"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that
huntsman from? He is not 'Uncle's' man."
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without
strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high
saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The
huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from
that spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on
in case of a fight.
"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan,"
said Nicholas' groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and
rode at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the
hounds together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where
the fight was going on.
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden
up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would
end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting
and rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.
While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak
respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was
angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even
aware of it.
"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.
"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And
it was my gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He
snatches at the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on
my saddle! Do you want a taste of this?..." said the huntsman,
pointing to his dagger and probably imagining himself still speaking
to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister
and Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,
Ilagin's, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel
and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to
the Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the
very woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox
their dogs had chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual
absence of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports
of his arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest
foe. He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his
whip and fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate
steps to punish his enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman
in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black
horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and
courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young
count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised
his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and
would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a
fox hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better
acquainted with the count and invited him to draw his covert.
Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful,
had followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging
friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver
cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that
the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase
as well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs
to come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually
kept for himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas
agreed, and the hunt, now doubled, moved on.
The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt
servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle,"
Rostov, and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs,
trying not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily
for rivals to their own borzois.
Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with muscles
like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had
heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that beautiful
bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about
the year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless
tone. "Is she swift?"
"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after,"
answered Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza,
for which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families
of house serfs. "So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing
to boast of, Count?" he went on, continuing the conversation
they had begun. And considering it polite to return the young
count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his borzois and picked out
Milka who attracted his attention by her breadth. "That black-spotted
one of yours is fine- well shaped!" said he.
"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and
thought: "If only a full-grown hare would cross the field
now I'd show you what sort of borzoi she is," and turning
to his groom, he said he would give a ruble to anyone who found
a hare.
"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how
some sportsmen can be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself,
I can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in company such as this...
what could be better?" (he again raised his cap to Natasha)
"but as for counting skins and what one takes, I don't care
about that."
"Of course not!"
"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not
mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the
chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that..."
"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi
whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble,
holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry,
"A-tu!" (This call and the uplifted whip meant that
he saw a sitting hare.)
"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly.
"Yes, we must ride up.... Shall we both course it?"
answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza and "Uncle's" red
Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against
his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo my Milka at once!"
he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin toward
the hare.
"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached
the whip who had sighted the hare- and not without agitation he
looked round and whistled to Erza.
"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing
"Uncle."
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each
of your borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands.
Try yours against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"
"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!"
he added, involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection
and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt
the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were trying
to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip
and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that
were far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the
whips, but not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving
slowly and sedately.
"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred
paces toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost
coming next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack
on leash rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from
all sides the borzois that were not on leash darted after the
hounds and the hare. All the hunt, who had been moving slowly,
shouted, "Stop!" calling in the hounds, while the borzoi
whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped across the field
setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin, Nicholas,
Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how
they went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only
to lose sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they
had started was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did
not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting
and trampling that resounded from all sides at once. He took a
dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him,
and, finally having chosen his direction and realized his danger,
laid back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had been lying
in the stubble, but in front of him was the autumn sowing where
the ground was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted
him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue
him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's red-spotted Erza
passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with terrible
swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had seized him,
rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and bounded
off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the broad-haunched,
black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry.
It looked as if Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but
she overtook him and flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the
beautiful Erza reached him, but when close to the hare's scut
paused as if measuring the distance, so as not to make a mistake
this time but seize his hind leg.
"Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own.
Erza did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she
would have seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the
balk between the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka
were abreast, running like a pair of carriage horses, and began
to overtake the hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on
the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so quickly.
"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a
third voice just then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining
and curving its back, caught up with the two foremost borzois,
pushed ahead of them regardless of the terrible strain, put on
speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk onto the ryefield,
again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to his knees
in the muddy field, and all one could see was how, muddying his
back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois surrounded
him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of dogs.
Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a
pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously
glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched.
He spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's
it, come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the
thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come
on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if
he were abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had
insulted him, and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying
himself. "There are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it,
come on!..."
"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing
down the hare's muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it,
come on!"
"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times
by herself," said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone
and regardless of whether he were heard or not.
"But what is there in running across it like that?"
said Ilagin's groom.
"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel
could take it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless
from his gallop and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha,
without drawing breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so
piercingly that it set everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek
she expressed what the others expressed by all talking at once,
and it was so strange that she must herself have been ashamed
of so wild a cry and everyone else would have been amazed at it
at any other time. "Uncle" himself twisted up the hare,
threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's back as if by that
gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not
wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The
others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much
later were they able to regain their former affectation of indifference.
For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who, his arched
back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash, walked
along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air
of a conqueror.
"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a
question of coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his
appearance seem to Nicholas to be saying.
When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and
began talking to him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened,
"Uncle" deigned to speak to him.
|
