Natalya Nikolayevna, who was still busy in her sleep-ing-room, apparently heard with her maternal ear that Sonya was not stirring, and went in to see for herself. She took a cushion, and with her large white hand, rais-ing the girl’s rosy head, laid it gently on the cushion. Sonya sighed deeply, settled her shoulders, and let her head rest on the pillow, not saying “merci” but taking it as a matter of course.
“Not there, not there, Gavrilovna, Katya,” said Nata-lya Nikolayena, addressing the two maid-servants who were making a bed; and with one hand, as it were in pass-ing, smoothing her daughter’s disordered locks. With-out delaying, and without haste, Natalya Nikolayevna put things in order, and by the time her husband and son returned everything was in readiness, the trunks were removed from the rooms; in Pierre’s sleeping-room everything was just as it had been for years and years at Irkutsk; his khalat, his pipe, his tobacco-box, his eau sucre, the Gospels which he read at night, and even a little image fastened in some way above the beds, to the luxurious wall-hangings of the rooms of Chevalier, who did not employ this form of adornment, though that evening they made their appearance in all the rooms of the third suite of the hotel.
Natalya Nikolayevna, having got things arranged to rights, put on her collar and cuffs, which in spite of the long journey she had kept clean, brushed her hair, and sat down opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes had a far-away look; she gazed, and rested!
It would seem that she rested, not from the labor of getting settled only, not from the journey only, not from her weary years only; she rested, it seemed, from her whole life; and the far distance into which she gazed, where in imagination she saw the living faces of dear ones, that was the rest for which she sighed. Whether it was the exploit of love which she had performed for her husband’s sake, or the love which she had felt for her children when they were small, whether it was her heavy loss, or the peculiarity of her character, any one, looking at this woman, must have certainly compre-hended that nothing more from her was to be expected, that she had already, and long ago, given herself to life, and that nothing remained for her. There remained a certain beautiful and melancholy dignity of worth, like old memories, like moonlight. It was impossible to im-agine her otherwise than surrounded by reverence and all the amenities of life. That she should ever be hungry and eat ravenously, or that she should ever wear soiled linen, that she should ever stumble or forget to blow her nose, was utterly unthinkable. It was a physical im-possibility! Why this was so, I do not know; but her every motion was majesty, grace, sympathy for all those that enjoyed the sight of her.
“Sie pflegen und weben Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben”
She knew that couplet and liked it, but she was not guided by it. Her whole nature was the expression of this thought; her whole life unconsciously devoted to the weaving of invisible roses into the lives of those with whom she came into contact. She accompanied her husband to Siberia purely because she loved him; she did what she might do for him, and she involuntarily did everything for him. She made his bed for him, she packed his things, she prepared his dinner and tea for him, and above all, she was always where he was, and greater happiness no woman could give her husband.
In the drawing-room the samovar was singing on the round table. Before it sat Natalya Nikolayevna. Sonya was wrinkling up her forehead and smiling under her mother’s hand, which tickled her, when with trimmed fin-ger-tips and shining cheeks and brows, the father’s bald spot was especially brilliant, fresh clean linen and dark hair and beaming faces, the men came into the room.
“It has grown lighter since you have come in,” said Natalya Nikolayevna. “Ye powers, 1 how white.”
For years she had said this every Saturday, and every Saturday Pierre had experienced a sense of modesty and satisfaction. They sat down at the table; there was a smell of tea and tobacco, the voices of the parents and the children were heard, and of the servants who in the same room were carrying away the cups. They re-called the amusing things which had happened on the road, they praised Sonya’s mode of dressing her hair, they chatted and laughed. Geographically they had all been transported five thousand versts into an entirely different and alien environment, but morally they were that evening still at home, just the same as their pe-culiar lonely family life had made them. Of this there was to be no morrow. Piotr Ivanovitch sat down near the samovar and smoked his pipe. He was not gay at all.
“Well, here we are back again,” said he, “and I am glad that we shall not see any one this evening; this evening will be the last that we shall spend together as a family;” and he drank these words down with a great swallow of tea.
“Why the last, Pierre?”
“Why? Because the young eagles have been taught to fly; they will have to be building their own nests, and so they will be flying off each in his own direction.” ….
1 Batyushka.
“How absurd,” exclaimed Sony a, taking his glass from him, and smiling as she smiled at everything. “The old nest is good enough.”
“The old nest is a wretched nest; the father-eagle could not build it; he got into a cage; his young ones were hatched in the cage and he was let out only when his wings were no longer able to bear him aloft. No, the young eagles will have to build their nests higher, more successfully, nearer to the sun. They are his young, in order that his example may aid them; but the old eagle, as long as he has his eyes, will look out for them, and if he becomes blind will listen for them …. give me a little rum, more, more …. there, that will do!”
“Let us see who will leave the others first,” remarked Sonya, giving her mother a fleeting glance, as if she reproached herself for speaking before her. “Let us see who will leave the others first,” she repeated. “I have no fear for myself or for Serozha either.”
Serozha was striding up and down the room and thinking how the next day he would order some new clothes, and trying to decide whether he would go him-self or send for the tailor, and so he was not interested in the conversation between Sonya and his father.
Sonya laughed.
“What is the matter with you? What is it?” asked their father.
“You are younger than we are, papa, ever so much younger, that is a fact,” said she, and again she laughed.
“How is that? “exclaimed the old man, and the gloomy frown on his brow melted away in an affection-ate and, at the same time, rather scornful smile.
Natalya Nikolayevna leaned out from behind the samovar, which prevented her from seeing her husband.
“Sonya is right. You are only sixteen years old, Pierre. Serozha is younger in his feelings, but you are younger than he in spirit. I can foresee what he will do, but you are still capable of surprising me.”
Whether it was that the old man recognized the justice of the remark, or being flattered by it did not know what answer to make, he went on smoking in silence, drinking his tea, and only letting his eyes flash. But Serozha, with the egotism characteristic of youth, for the first time began to feel interested in what was said about him, joined the conversation, and assured them that he was really old, that his coming to Moscow and the new life which was opening before him did not re-joice him in the least, that he was perfectly calm in his thought and expectations of the future.
“Nevertheless this is the last evening,” repeated Piotr Ivanovitch. “To-morrow it will no longer be the same.”
And once more he filled up his glass with rum. And for some time longer he sat by the tea-table with an expression on his face as if he had much to say, but there was no one to listen. He kept pouring out the rum until his daughter surreptitiously carried away the bottle.
II
WHEN MR. CHEVALIER returned to his own room, after he had been up-stairs to arrange for his guests, he com-municated his observations concerning the newcomers to the partner of his life, who, dressed in laces and silk, had her place in the Paris fashion behind the desk; in the same room sat several of the habitues of the es-tablishment. Serozha, while he was down-stairs, had noticed that room and its occupants. You, probably, have also noticed it if ever you have been in Moscow.
If you, a modest man, not acquainted with Moscow, have arrived too late for a dinner invitation, have been mis-taken in your supposition that the hospitable Muscovites will invite you to dinner and they have not invited you, or if you simply desire to dine in the best hotel, you will go into the anteroom. Three or four lackeys will dart forward; one of them will take your shuba from you and congratulate you on the new
