Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in
the lace of her mother’s mantillanot paying the least attention to her severe remarkand began to laugh. She laughed,
and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll
which she produced from the folds of her frock.
‘Do you see?… My doll… Mimi… You see…’ was all
Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a
loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could
not help joining in.
‘Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,’
said the mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended
sternness, and turning to the visitor she added: ‘She is my
youngest girl.’
Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla, glanced up at her through tears of laughter,
and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene,
thought it necessary to take some part in it.
‘Tell me, my dear,’ said she to Natasha, ‘is Mimi a relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?’
Natasha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension
to childish things. She did not reply, but looked at her seri
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ously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer,
Anna Mikhaylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the
count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece,
and little Petya, his youngest boy, had all settled down in
the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain
within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth
that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms,
from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room
talk of society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly able
to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends
from childhood, were of the same age and both handsome
fellows, though not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his
calm and handsome face had regular, delicate features.
Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip,
and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm.
Nicholas blushed when he entered the drawing room. He
evidently tried to find something to say, but failed. Boris
on the contrary at once found his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that doll Mimi when
she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken;
how she had aged during the five years he had known her,
and how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natasha. She turned away from
him and glanced at her younger brother, who was screwing
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up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed
from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry
her. Boris did not laugh.
‘You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do
you want the carriage?’ he asked his mother with a smile.
‘Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,’ she answered,
returning his smile.
Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha.
The plump boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their
program had been disturbed.
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Chapter XII
The only young people remaining in the drawing room,
not counting the young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest
daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and
Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with
a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a
tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of
her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By
the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve
of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She
evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the
general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her
eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who
was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose
upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled
down only to spring up with more energy and again play
with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha and
Boris, escape from the drawing room.
‘Ah yes, my dear,’ said the count, addressing the visitor
and pointing to Nicholas, ‘his friend Boris has become an
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officer, and so for friendship’s sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering the military service,
my dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for
him in the Archives Department! Isn’t that friendship?’ remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
‘But they say that war has been declared,’ replied the visitor.
‘They’ve been saying so a long while,’ said the count, ‘and
they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it.
My dear, there’s friendship for you,’ he repeated. ‘He’s joining the hussars.’
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
‘It’s not at all from friendship,’ declared Nicholas, flaring
up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. ‘It is
not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my
vocation.’
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and
they were both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
‘Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking
Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!’ said the count,
shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter
that evidently distressed him.
‘I have already told you, Papa,’ said his son, ‘that if you
don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use
anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.I don’t know how to hide what I feel.’ As he
spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor.
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The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready
at any moment to start her gambols again and display her
kittenish nature.
‘All right, all right!’ said the old count. ‘He always flares
up! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all
think of how he rose from an ensign and became Emperor.
Well, well, God grant it,’ he added, not noticing his visitor’s
sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to young Rostov.
‘What a pity you weren’t at the Arkharovs’ on Thursday.
It was so dull without you,’ said she, giving him a tender
smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with
a coquettish smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a
confidential conversation without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sonya, who blushed
and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk he glanced
round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial
smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’ animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the
conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room
to find Sonya.
‘How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on
their sleeves!’ said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. ‘Cousinagedangereux voisinage;”* she
added.
*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
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‘Yes,’ said the countess when the brightness these young
people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if
answering a question no one had put but which was always
in her mind, ‘and how much suffering, how much anxiety
one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them
now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy.
One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so
dangerous both for girls and boys.’
‘It all depends on the bringing up,’ remarked the visitor.
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ continued the countess. ‘Till now
I have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and
had their full confidence,’ said she, repeating the mistake of
so many parents who imagine that their children have no
secrets from them. ‘I know I shall always be my daughters’
first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he will all
the same never be like those Petersburg young men.’
‘Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,’ chimed in
the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him
perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. ‘Just
fancy: wants to be an hussar. What’s one to do, my dear?’
‘What a charming creature your younger girl is,’ said the
visitor; ‘a little volcano!’
‘Yes, a regular volcano,’ said the count. ‘Takes after me!
And what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell
the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni!
We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons.’
‘Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice
to train it at that age.’
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‘Oh no, not at all too young!’ replied the count. ‘Why, our
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.’
‘And she’s in love with Boris already. Just fancy!’ said the
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris’ and went on,
evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied
her: ‘Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid it… goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly’
(she meant that they would be kissing), ‘but as it is, I know
every word she utters. She will come running to me of her
own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder
sister I was
