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.’
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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,
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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.
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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
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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 serfsthe men on one side and the women on the otherwho 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 exertionsthe least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms
when turning, or stamp her footwhich 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
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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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Chapter XXI
While in the Rostovs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was
being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were getting the
supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors
pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession,
communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house
there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such
moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of
undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive
funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been
assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the
count’s health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine’s court, Count
Bezukhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone
stood up respectfully when the Military Governor, having
stayed about half an hour alone with the dying man, passed
out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape
as quickly as from the glances fixed on him by the doctors,
clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince Vasili, who had
grown thinner and paler during the last few days, escorted
him to the door, repeating something to him several times
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in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing
one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee
and covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a
while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes,
went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor
leading to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest
princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in
nervous whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came
from the dying man’s room, grew silent and gazed with eyes
full of curiosity or expectancy at his door, which creaked
slightly when opened.
‘The limits of human life… are fixed and may not be
o’erpassed,’ said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat
beside him and was listening naively to his words.
‘I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?’ asked
the lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as
