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The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and
the count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing
rooms, some in the sitting room, some in the library.
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty
from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at
everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered
round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played
first. After she had played a little air with variations on the
harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and
Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing something.
Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was evidently
very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.
"What shall we sing?" she said.
"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.
"Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said
Natasha. "But where is Sonya?"
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the
room ran to look for her.
Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha
ran to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded
that she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the
passage was the place of mourning for the younger female generation
in the Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face
downward on Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest,
crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding her face with
her slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively that her bare
little shoulders shook. Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly
happy all that saint's day, suddenly changed: her eyes became
fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners
of her mouth drooped.
"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo...
Oo...!" And Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look
quite ugly, and she began to wail like a baby without knowing
why, except that Sonya was crying. Sonya tried to lift her head
to answer but could not, and hid her face still deeper in the
bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-striped feather bed and
hugging her friend. With an effort Sonya sat up and began wiping
her eyes and explaining.
"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers...
have come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry,"
and she showed a paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas
had written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no
one can understand... what a soul he has!"
And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I
love you and Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength;
"he is nice... there are no difficulties in your way....
But Nicholas is my cousin... one would have to... the Metropolitan
himself... and even then it can't be done. And besides, if she
tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the countess as her mother
and called her so) "that I am spoiling Nicholas' career and
am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness,"
and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so much,
and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to
her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
everything, only I have nothing...."
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands
and in the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face
showed that she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.
"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed
the true reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has
said something to you since dinner? Hasn't she?"
"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied
some others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show
them to Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would
never allow him to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see
how he's been with her all day... Natasha, what have I done to
deserve it?..."
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha
lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began
comforting her.
"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her!
Do you remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in
the sitting room after supper? Why, we settled how everything
was to be. I don't quite remember how, but don't you remember
that it could all be arranged and how nice it all was? There's
Uncle Shinshin's brother has married his first cousin. And we
are only second cousins, you know. And Boris says it is quite
possible. You know I have told him all about it. And he is so
clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you cry, Sonya,
dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.
"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right
and she won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself,
and he doesn't care at all for Julie."
Natasha kissed her on the hair.
Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone,
and it seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws,
and begin playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly
smoothing her frock and hair.
"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a
crisp lock that had strayed from under her friend's plaits.
Both laughed.
"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"
"Come along!"
"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is
so funny!" said Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel
so happy!"
And she set off at a run along the passage.
Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking
away the verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little
chest, ran after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room
with flushed face and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request
the young people sang the quartette, "The Brook," with
which everyone was delighted. Then Nicholas sang a song he had
just learned:
At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
How sweet, as fancies wander free,
To feel that in this world there's one
Who still is thinking but of thee!
That while her fingers touch the harp
Wafting sweet music music the lea,
It is for thee thus swells her heart,
Sighing its message out to thee...
A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
But oh! till then I cannot live!...
He had not finished the last verse before the young people
began to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of
the feet and the coughing of the musicians were heard from the
gallery.
Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had
engaged him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political
conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.
When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to
Pierre said, laughing and blushing:
"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."
"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied;
"but if you will be my teacher..." And lowering his
big arm he offered it to the slender little girl.
While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians
tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was
perfectly happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had
been abroad. She was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking
to him like a grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one
of the ladies had given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of
a society woman (heaven knows when and where she had learned it)
she talked with her partner, fanning herself and smiling over
the fan.
"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess
as she crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.
Natasha blushed and laughed.
"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to
be surprised at?"
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of
chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and
Marya Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the
more distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves
after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,
entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,
both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony
somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna.
He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face
and as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he
clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery,
addressing the first violin:
"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"
This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in
his youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of
the anglaise.)
"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company,
and quite forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner
she bent her curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring
with her laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure
at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and
stout partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened
his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,
and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared
the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively
gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry
peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom
were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs- the men on one side
and the women on the other- who with beaming faces had come to
see their master making merry.
"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!"
loudly remarked the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not
and did not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect,
her powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to
the countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined
in the dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump
figure, in Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more
and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting
more and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by
the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with
which he capered about on his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced
no less impression by slight exertions- the least effort to move
her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her foot-
which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity.
The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could
not attract a moment's attention to their own evolutions and did
not even try to do so. All were watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them
to "look at Papa!" though as it was they never took
their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the dance the count,
breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster.
Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more lightly, and yet more
lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya Dmitrievna, now
on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his partner round
to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft foot
backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a wide
sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led
by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping
their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere,"
said the count.
"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna,
tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.
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