Chapter Chapter 83 · 第83章

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 Rostóv household that winter and, now after

Dólokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker

round Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya

and Natásha, 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. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín 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.

Denísov, 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 his sparkling

black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.

“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she

said, without noticing Nicholas.

“Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas,

glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with

the old lady.

“Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.

“Is Papa at home?” he asked.

“I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him.

“We are enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer

for my sake! Did you know?”

“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.

“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

Natásha to sing.

“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “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.

Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to

Denísov’s favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing.

Denísov 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.

Sónya 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 Denísov and the

girls and avoiding their eyes.

“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him

seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.

Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha 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, Sónya!” 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, Natásha, 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 Denísov followed her.

“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his

sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”

Natásha 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 and 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.

Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,

mainly because Denísov 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 Dólokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all

nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natásha, 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 Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else

in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and

Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob

and yet be happy....”