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Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman
wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,
surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling
dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking
at the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they
heard the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing
their throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the
vestibule, came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly
lighted. The clown- Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a
dance. Surrounded by the screaming children the mummers, covering
their faces and disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess
and arranged themselves about the room.
"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See
whom she looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr
Dimmler- isn't he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances.
Dear me, there's a Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear
Sonya. And who is that? Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and
Vanya- clear away the tables! And we were sitting so quietly.
Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy! And the
legs!... I can't look at him..." different voices were saying.
Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them
into the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and
male garments were called for and received from the footman by
bare girlish arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all
the young Melyukovs joined the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms
for the visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry
and the serfs, went about among the mummers without removing her
spectacles, peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and
failing to recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and
the Rostovs she failed to recognize, she did not even recognize
her own daughters, or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms,
which they had put on.
"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering
into the face of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar.
"I suppose it is one of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and
what regiment do you serve in?" she asked Natasha. "Here,
hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she ordered the butler
who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden by his
law."
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers
cut by the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being
disguised, no one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya
Danilovna hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout
body shook with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna
made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a
string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games
together.
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered.
The corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,
flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize
the mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly
how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for
having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper
in the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them
in the ballroom.
"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is
frightening!" said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs,
during supper.
"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.
"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."
"I'll go," said Sonya.
"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the
second Melyukov girl.
"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once
went out, took a cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and
sat down. After sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming...
a sleigh drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He
comes in, just in the shape of a man, like an officer- comes in
and sits down to table with her."
"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with
horror.
"Yes? And how... did he speak?"
"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he
began persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till
cockcrow, but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid
her face in her hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the
maids ran in just then..."
"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.
"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said
her daughter.
"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.
"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It
depends on what you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad;
but a sound of shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears
that, too."
"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none
of you would go?"
"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go,"
said Sonya.
"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"
"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the
ruble game or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side,
and gazed at her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it
was only today, thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had
fully learned to know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was
brighter, more animated, and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen
her before.
"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!"
he thought gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache
a happy rapturous smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never
seen before.
"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May
I go at once?" She got up.
They told her where the barn was and how she should stand
and listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over
her head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And
what have I been thinking of till now?"
Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas
went hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd
of people really had made the house stuffy.
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon,
but even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the
snow sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look
up at the sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black
and dreary, while the earth was gay.
"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?"
thought Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round
the corner of the house and along the path that led to the back
porch. He knew Sonya would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered
piles of firewood and across and along them a network of shadows
from the bare old lime trees fell on the snow and on the path.
This path led to the barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered
roof, that looked as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled
in the moonlight. A tree in the garden snapped with the frost,
and then all was again perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale
not air but the strength of eternal youth and gladness.
From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the
steps, the bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing
creak and he heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight,
straight, along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."
"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along
the path toward Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of
Sonya's feet in her thin shoes.
Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple
of paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the
Nicholas she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a
woman's dress, with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya.
She ran rapidly toward him.
"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas,
looking at her face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his
arms under the cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed
her to him, and kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and
had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips,
and disengaging her little hands pressed them to his cheeks.
"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They
ran to the barn and then back again, re-entering, he by the front
and she by the back porch.
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