War and Peace (99 page)

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung, and long before she sang again as she sang that evening. Count Ilya Andreitch listened to her singing from his study, where he was talking to Mitenka, and like a schoolboy in haste to finish his lesson and run out to play, he blundered in his orders to the steward, and at last paused, and Mitenka stood silent and smiling before him, listening too. Nikolay never took his eyes off his sister, and drew his breath when she did. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the vast difference between her and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be in ever so slight a
degree fascinating like her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful, but mournful smile, and tears in her eyes, and now and then she shook her head. She, too, was thinking of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something terrible and unnatural in Natasha’s marrying Prince Andrey.

Dimmler, sitting by the countess, listened with closed eyes. “No, countess,” he said, at last, “that’s a European talent; she has no need of teaching: that softness, tenderness, strength …”

“Ah, I’m afraid for her, I’m afraid,” said the countess, not remembering with whom she was speaking. Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her being happy.

Natasha had not finished singing when fourteen-year-old Petya ran in great excitement into the room to announce the arrival of the mummers.

Natasha stopped abruptly.

“Idiot!” she screamed at her brother. She ran to a chair, sank into it, and broke into such violent sobbing that it was a long while before she could stop.

“It’s nothing, mamma, it’s nothing really, it’s all right; Petya startled me,” she said, trying to smile; but the tears still flowed, and the sobs still choked her.

The mummers—house-serfs dressed up as bears, Turks, tavern-keepers, and ladies—awe-inspiring or comic figures, at first huddled shyly together in the vestibule, bringing in with them the freshness of the cold outside, and a feeling of gaiety. Then, hiding behind one another, they crowded together in the big hall; and at first with constraint, but afterwards with more liveliness and unanimity, they started singing songs, and performing dances, and songs with dancing, and playing Christmas games. The countess after identifying them, and laughing at their costumes, went away to the drawing-room. Count Ilya Andreitch sat with a beaming smile in the big hall, praising their performances. The young people had disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared in the hall among the other mummers an old lady in a crinoline—this was Nikolay. Petya was a Turkish lady, Dimmler was a clown, Natasha a hussar, and Sonya a Circassian with eyebrows and moustaches smudged with burnt cork.

After those of the household who were not dressed up had expressed condescending wonder and approval, and had failed to recognise them,
the young people began to think their costumes so good that they must display them to some one else.

Nikolay, who wanted to drive them all in his sledge, as the road was in capital condition, proposed to drive to their so-called uncle’s, taking about a dozen of the house-serfs in their mummer-dress with them.

“No; why should you disturb the old fellow?” said the countess. “Besides you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, let it be to the Melyukovs’.”

Madame Melyukov was a widow with a family of children of various ages, and a number of tutors and governesses living in her house, four versts from the Rostovs’.

“That’s a good idea, my love,” the old count assented, beginning to be aroused. “Only let me dress up and I’ll go with you. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.”

But the countess would not agree to the count’s going; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Luisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to Madame Melyukov’s. Sonya, usually so shy and reticent, was more urgent than any in persuading Luisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya’s disguise was the best of all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming to her. Every one told her she looked very pretty, and she was in a mood of eager energy unlike her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be sealed, and in her masculine attire she seemed quite another person. Luisa Ivanovna consented to go; and half an hour later four sledges with bells drove up to the steps, their runners crunching, with a clanging sound, over the frozen snow.

Natasha was foremost in setting the tone of holiday gaiety; and that gaiety, reflected from one to another, grew wilder and wilder, and reached its climax when they all went out into the frost, and talking, and calling to one another, laughing and shouting, got into the sledges.

Two of the sledges were the common household sledges; the third was the old count’s, with a trotting horse from Orlov’s famous stud; the fourth, Nikolay’s own, with his own short, shaggy, raven horse in the shafts. Nikolay, in his old lady’s crinoline and a hussar’s cloak belted over it, stood up in the middle of the sledge picking up the reins. It was so light that he could see the metal discs of the harness shining in the moonlight, and the eyes of the horses looking round in alarm at the noise made by the party under the portico of the approach.

Sonya, Natasha, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nikolay’s sledge. In the count’s sledge were Dimmler with his wife and Petya; the other mummers were seated in the other two sledges.

“You go ahead, Zahar!” shouted Nikolay to his father’s coachman, so as to have a chance of overtaking him on the road.

The count’s sledge with Dimmler and the others of his party started forward, its runners creaking as though they were frozen to the snow, and the deep-toned bell clanging. The trace-horses pressed close to the shafts and sticking in the snow kicked it up, hard and glittering as sugar.

Nikolay followed the first sledge: behind him he heard the noise and crunch of the other two. At first they drove at a slow trot along the narrow road. As they drove by the garden, the shadows of the leafless trees often lay right across the road and hid the bright moonlight. But as soon as they were out of their grounds, the snowy plain, glittering like a diamond with bluish lights in it, lay stretched out on all sides, all motionless and bathed in moonlight. Now and again a hole gave the first sledge a jolt; the next was jolted in just the same way, and the next, and the sledges followed one another, rudely breaking the iron-bound stillness.

“A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!” Natasha’s voice rang out in the frostbound air.

“How light it is, Nikolenka,” said the voice of Sonya.

Nikolay looked round at Sonya, and bent down to look at her face closer. It was a quite new, charming face with black moustaches, and eyebrows that peeped up at him from the sable fur—so close yet so distant—in the moonlight.

“That used to be Sonya,” thought Nikolay. He looked closer at her and smiled.

“What is it, Nikolenka?”

“Nothing,” he said, and turned to his horses again.

As they came out on the trodden highroad, polished by sledge runners, and all cut up by the tracks of spiked horseshoes visible in the snow in the moonlight—the horses of their own accord tugged at the reins and quickened their pace. The left trace-horse, arching his head, pulled in jerks at his traces. The shaft-horse swayed to and fro, pricking up his ears as though to ask: “Are we to begin or is it too soon?” Zahar’s sledge could be distinctly seen, black against the white snow, a long way ahead now, and its deep-toned bell seemed to be getting further away. They could hear shouts and laughter and talk from his sledge.

“Now then, my darlings!” shouted Nikolay, pulling a rein on one
side, and moving his whip hand. It was only from the wind seeming to blow more freely in their faces, and from the tugging of the pulling trace-horses, quickening their trot, that they saw how fast the sledge was flying along. Nikolay looked behind. The other sledges, with crunching runners, with shouts, and cracking of whips, were hurrying after them. Their shaft-horse was moving vigorously under the yoke, with no sign of slackening, and every token of being ready to go faster and faster if required.

Nikolay overtook the first sledge. They drove down a hill and into a wide, trodden road by a meadow near a river.

“Where are we?” Nikolay wondered. “Possibly Kosoy Meadow, I suppose. But no; this is something new I never saw before. This is not the Kosoy Meadow nor Demkin hill. It’s something—there’s no knowing what. It’s something new and fairy-like. Well, come what may!” And shouting to his horses, he began to drive by the first sledge. Zahar pulled up his horses and turned his face, which was white with hoar-frost to the eyebrows.

Nikolay let his horses go; Zahar, stretching his hands forward, urged his on. “Come, hold on, master,” said he.

The sledges dashed along side by side, even more swiftly, and the horses’ hoofs flew up and down more and more quickly. Nikolay began to get ahead. Zahar, still keeping his hands stretched forward, raised one hand with the reins.

“Nonsense, master,” he shouted. Nikolay put his three horses into a gallop and outstripped Zahar. The horses scattered the fine dry snow in their faces; close by they heard the ringing of the bells and the horses’ legs moving rapidly out of step, and they saw the shadows of the sledge behind. From different sides came the crunch of runners over the snow, and the shrieks of girls. Stopping his horses again, Nikolay looked round him. All around him lay still the same enchanted plain, bathed in moonlight, with stars scattered over its surface.

“Zahar’s shouting that I’m to turn to the left, but why to the left?” thought Nikolay. “Are we really going to the Melyukovs’; is this really Melyukovka? God knows where we are going, and God knows what is going to become of us—and very strange and nice it is what is happening to us.” He looked round in the sledge.

“Look, his moustache and his eyelashes are all white,” said one of the strange, pretty, unfamiliar figures sitting by him, with fine moustaches and eyebrows.

“I believe that was Natasha,” thought Nikolay; “and that was Madame Schoss; but perhaps it’s not so; and that Circassian with the moustaches I don’t know, but I love her.”

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked them. They laughed and did not answer. Dimmler from the sledge behind shouted, probably something funny, but they could not make out what he said.

“Yes, yes,” voices answered, laughing.

But now came a sort of enchanted forest with shifting, black shadows, and the glitter of diamonds, and a flight of marble steps, and silver roofs of enchanted buildings, and the shrill whine of some beasts. “And if it really is Melyukovka, then it’s stranger than ever that after driving, God knows where, we should come to Melyukovka,” thought Nikolay.

It certainly was Melyukovka, and footmen and maid-servants were running out with lights and beaming faces.

“Who is it?” was asked from the entrance.

“The mummers from the count’s; I can see by the horses,” answered voices.

Pelagea Danilovna Melyukov, a broad-shouldered, energetic woman in spectacles and a loose house dress, was sitting in her drawing-room, surrounded by her daughters, and doing her utmost to keep them amused. They were quietly occupied in dropping melted wax into water and watching the shadows of the shapes it assumed, when they heard the noise of steps in the vestibule, and the voices of people arriving.

The hussars, fine ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, coughing and rubbing the hoar-frost off their faces, came into the hall, where they were hurriedly lighting candles. The clown—Dimmler—and the old lady—Nikolay—opened the dance. Surrounded by the shrieking children, the mummers hid their faces, and disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and dispersed about the room.

“Oh, there’s no recognising them. And Natasha! See what she looks like! Really, she reminds me of some one. How good Edward Karlitch is! I didn’t know him. And how he dances! Oh, my goodness, and here’s a Circassian too, upon my word; how it suits Sonyushka! And who’s this? Well, you have brought us some fun! Take away the tables, Nikita Vanya. And we were sitting so quiet and dull!”

“Ha—ha—he!… The hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy; and the legs!… I can’t look at him,…” voices cried.

Natasha, the favourite of the young Melyukovs, disappeared with them into rooms at the back of the house, and burnt cork and various dressing-gowns and masculine garments were sent for and taken from the footman by bare, girlish arms through the crack of the half-open door. In ten minutes all the younger members of the Melyukov family reappeared in fancy dresses too.

Pelagea Danilovna, busily giving orders for clearing the room for the guests and preparing for their entertainment, walked about among the mummers in her spectacles, with a suppressed smile, looking close at them and not recognising any one. She not only failed to recognise the Rostovs and Dimmler, but did not even know her own daughters, or identify the masculine dressing-gowns and uniforms in which they were disguised.

“And who is this?” she kept saying, addressing her governess and gazing into the face of her own daughter disguised as a Tatar of Kazan. “One of the Rostovs, I fancy. And you, my hussar, what regiment are you in, pray?” she asked Natasha. “Give the Turk a preserved fruit,” she said to the footman carrying round refreshments; “that’s not forbidden by his law.”

Sometimes, looking at the strange and ludicrous capers cut by the dancers, who, having made up their minds once for all that no one recognised them, were quite free from shyness, Pelagea Danilovna hid her face in her handkerchief, and all her portly person shook with irrepressible, good-natured, elderly laughter.

“My Sashinette, my Sashinette!” she said.

After Russian dances and songs in chorus, Pelagea Danilovna made all the party, servants and gentry alike, join in one large circle. They brought in a string, a ring, and a silver rouble, and began playing games.

An hour later all the fancy dresses were crumpled and untidy. The corked moustaches and eyebrows were wearing off the heated, perspiring, and merry faces. Pelagea Danilovna began to recognise the mummers. She was enthusiastic over the cleverness of the dresses and the way they suited them, especially the young ladies, and thanked them all for giving them such good fun. The guests were invited into the drawing-room for supper, while the servants were regaled in the hall.