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To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was
not difficult, but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother,
mother, and father, confess and ask for money he had no right
to after giving his word of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round
the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in
that poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household
that winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball,
seemed to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air
does before a thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue
dresses they had worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious
of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera
was playing chess with Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess,
waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing patience
with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with
sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking
chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes
rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some
verses called "Enchantress," which he had composed,
and to which he was trying to fit music:
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill? He was
singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his sparkling
black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.
"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another
verse, she said, without noticing Nicholas.
"Everything's still the same with them," thought
Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and
his mother with the old lady.
"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running
up to him.
"Is Papa at home?" he asked.
"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without
answering him. "We are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich
is staying a day longer for my sake! Did you know?"
"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.
"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called
the old countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently
at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From
the dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices
trying to persuade Natasha to sing.
"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's
no good making excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla-
I entweat you!"
The countess glanced at her silent son.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually
asked the same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"
"I expect so."
"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about
it! Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into
the dancing room where the clavichord stood.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.
Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing?
There's nothing to be happy about!" thought he.
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through
my brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts
ran on. "Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!"
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov
and the girls and avoiding their eyes.
"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed
on him seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened
to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick
instinct, had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But,
though she noticed it, she was herself in such high spirits at
that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that
she purposely deceived herself as young people often do. "No,
I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's
sorrow," she felt, and she said to herself: "No, I must
be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am."
"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle
of the room, where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly,
as ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels
to her toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the
rapt gaze with which Denisov followed her.
"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas,
looking at his sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest
rose, her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious
of her surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which
anyone may produce at the same intervals hold for the same time,
but which leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and
first time thrill you and make you weep.
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing.
She no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing
that comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it
before; but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs
who heard her said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful
voice that must be trained." Only they generally said this
some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained
voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted
in it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet
untrained velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of
art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could
be altered without spoiling it.
"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her
with widely opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she
is singing today!" And suddenly the whole world centered
for him on anticipation of the next note, the next phrase, and
everything in the world was divided into three beats: "Oh
mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one, two, three...
One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...
One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas.
"All this misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and
honor- it's all nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha,
now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she take that si?
She's taken it! Thank God!" And without noticing that he
was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third below
the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it?
How fortunate!" he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that
was finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from
everything else in the world and above everything in the world.
"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All
nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."
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