Kabanata Kabanata 143 · 第143章

Pelagéya Danílovna Melyukóva, a broadly built, energetic woman

wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded

by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They

were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows

the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and

voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their

throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,

came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The

clown—Dimmler—and the lady—Nicholas—started a dance. Surrounded

by the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and

disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves

about the room.

“Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natásha! See whom

she looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr

Dimmler—isn’t he good! I didn’t know him! And how he dances. Dear

me, there’s a Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sónya.

And who is that? Well, you have cheered us up! Nikíta and Vanya—clear

away the tables! And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The

hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can’t look at

him...” different voices were saying.

Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ favorite, disappeared with them into

the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments

were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from

behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukóvs joined the

mummers.

Pelagéya Danílovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the

visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,

went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering

into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any

of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostóvs she failed to

recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late

husband’s, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.

“And who is this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of

her own daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one

of the Rostóvs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?”

she asked Natásha. “Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!”

she ordered the butler who was handing things round. “That’s not

forbidden by his law.”

Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the

dancers, who—having decided once for all that being disguised, no one

would recognize them—were not at all shy, Pelagéya Danílovna hid

her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with

irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.

“My little Sásha! Look at Sásha!” she said.

After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelagéya Danílovna

made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string,

and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games together.

In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked

eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed,

and merry faces. Pelagéya Danílovna began to recognize the mummers,

admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they

suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained

her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room,

and the serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.

“Now to tell one’s fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!”

said an old maid who lived with the Melyukóvs, during supper.

“Why?” said the eldest Melyukóv girl.

“You wouldn’t go, it takes courage....”

“I’ll go,” said Sónya.

“Tell what happened to the young lady!” said the second Melyukóv

girl.

“Well,” began the old maid, “a young lady once went out, took a

cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting

a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with

harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a

man, like an officer—comes in and sits down to table with her.”

“Ah! ah!” screamed Natásha, rolling her eyes with horror.

“Yes? And how... did he speak?”

“Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading

her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got

frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he

caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then....”

“Now, why frighten them?” said Pelagéya Danílovna.

“Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...” said her daughter.

“And how does one do it in a barn?” inquired Sónya.

“Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what

you hear; hammering and knocking—that’s bad; but a sound of shifting

grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too.”

“Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn.”

Pelagéya Danílovna smiled.

“Oh, I’ve forgotten...” she replied. “But none of you would

go?”

“Yes, I will; Pelagéya Danílovna, let me! I’ll go,” said Sónya.

“Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?”

“Louisa Ivánovna, may I?” asked Sónya.

Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or

talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sónya’s side, and gazed at her

with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks

to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And

really, that evening, Sónya was brighter, more animated, and prettier

than Nicholas had ever seen her before.

“So that’s what she is like; what a fool I have been!” he thought

gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous

smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Sónya. “May I go at once?”

She got up.

They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen,

and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and

shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.

“What a darling that girl is!” thought he. “And what have I been

thinking of till now?”

Sónya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went

hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people

really had made the house stuffy.

Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even

brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with

so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real

stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was

gay.

“I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?” thought

Nicholas, and running out from the porch he went round the corner of

the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sónya

would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and

across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees

fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the barn. The log

walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out

of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the garden

snapped with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His

bosom seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and

gladness.

From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the

bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard

the voice of an old maidservant saying, “Straight, straight, along the

path, Miss. Only, don’t look back.”

“I am not afraid,” answered Sónya’s voice, and along the path

toward Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sónya’s feet

in her thin shoes.

Sónya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces

away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she had

known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman’s dress, with

tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sónya. She ran rapidly toward

him.

“Quite different and yet the same,” thought Nicholas, looking at her

face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak

that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her

on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sónya

kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed

them to his cheeks.

“Sónya!... Nicholas!”... was all they said. They ran to the barn

and then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back

porch.