War And Peace: Book 7 - CHAPTER VII

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

WHEN ILAGIN TOOK LEAVE of them in the evening, Nikolay found himself so great

a distance from home that he accepted the uncle's invitation to stop hunting and

to stay the night at the uncle's little place, Mihailovka.

“And if you all come to me—forward, quick march!” said the uncle, “it would

be even better; you see, the weather's damp, you could rest, and the little

countess could be driven back in a trap.” The invitation was accepted; a

huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a trap, and Nikolay, Natasha, and Petya rode

to the uncle's house.

Five men servants—little and big—ran out on to the front steps to meet their

master. Dozens of women, old and big and little, popped out at the back entrance

to have a look at the huntsmen as they arrived. The presence of Natasha—a woman,

a lady, on horseback—excited the curiosity of the uncle's house-serfs to such a

pitch that many of them went up to her, stared her in the face, and,

unrestrained by her presence, made remarks about her, as though she were some

prodigy on show, not a human being, and not capable of hearing and understanding

what was said about her.

“Arinka, look-ée, she sits sideways! Sits on so, while her skirt flies

about.… And look at the little horn!”

“Sakes alive! and the knife too.…”

“A regular Tatar woman!”

“How do you manage not to tumble off?” said the forwardest of them,

addressing Natasha boldly.

The uncle got off his horse at the steps of his little wooden house, which

was shut in by an overgrown garden. Looking from one to another of his

household, he shouted peremptorily to those who were not wanted to retire, and

for the others to do all that was needed for the reception of his guests.

They all ran off in different directions. The uncle helped Natasha to

dismount, and gave her his arm up the shaky, plank steps.

Inside, the house, with boarded, unplastered walls, was not very clean; there

was nothing to show that the chief aim of the persons living in it was the

removal of every spot, yet there were not signs of neglect. There was a smell of

fresh apples in the entry, and the walls were hung with foxskins and

wolfskins.

The uncle led his guests through the vestibule into a little hall with a

folding-table and red chairs, then into a drawing-room with a round birchwood

table and a sofa, and then into his study, with a ragged sofa, a threadbare

carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of his father and mother, and of himself in

military uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. In the study the

uncle asked his guests to sit down and make themselves at home, and he left

them. Rugay came in, his back still covered with mud, and lay on the sofa,

cleaning himself with his tongue and his teeth. There was a corridor leading

from the study, and in it they could see a screen with ragged curtains. Behind

the screen they heard feminine laughter and whispering. Natasha, Nikolay, and

Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya leaned on his arm and

fell asleep at once; Natasha and Nikolay sat without speaking. Their faces were

burning; they were very hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another—now

that the hunt was over and they were indoors, Nikolay did not feel called upon

to show his masculine superiority over his sister. Natasha winked at her

brother; and they could neither of them restrain themselves long, and broke into

a ringing laugh before they had time to invent a pretext for their mirth.

After a brief interval, the uncle came in wearing a Cossack coat, blue

breeches, and little top-boots. And this very costume, at which Natasha had

looked with surprise and amusement when the uncle wore it at Otradnoe, seemed to

her now the right costume here, and in no way inferior to frock coats or

ordinary jackets. The uncle, too, was in good spirits; far from feeling

mortified at the laughter of the brother and sister (he was incapable of

imagining that they could be laughing at his mode of life), he joined in their

causeless mirth himself.

“Well, this young countess here—forward, quick march!—I have never seen her

like!” he said, giving a long pipe to Rostov, while with a practised motion of

three fingers he filled another—a short broken one—for himself.

“She's been in the saddle all day—something for a man to boast of—and she's

just as fresh as if nothing had happened!”

Soon the door was opened obviously, from the sound, by a barefoot

servant-girl, and a stout, red-cheeked, handsome woman of about forty, with a

double chin and full red lips, walked in, with a big tray in her hands. With

hospitable dignity and cordiality in her eyes and in every gesture, she looked

round at the guests, and with a genial smile bowed to them respectfully.

In spite of her exceptional stoutness, which made her hold her head flung

back, while her bosom and all her portly person was thrust forward, this woman

(the uncle's housekeeper) stepped with extreme lightness. She went to the table,

put the tray down, and deftly with her plump, white hands set the bottles and

dishes on the table. When she had finished this task she went away, standing for

a moment in the doorway with a smile on her face. “Here I am—I am she!

Now do you understand the uncle?” her appearance had said to Rostov. Who could

fail to understand? Not Nikolay only, but even Natasha understood the uncle now

and the significance of his knitted brows, and the happy, complacent smile,

which puckered his lips as Anisya Fyodorovna came in. On the tray there were

liqueurs, herb-brandy, mushrooms, biscuits of rye flour made with buttermilk,

honey in the comb, foaming mead made from honey, apples, nuts raw and nuts

baked, and nuts preserved in honey. Then Anisya Fyodorovna brought in preserves

made with honey and with sugar, and ham and a chicken that had just been

roasted.

All these delicacies were of Anisya Fyodorovna's preparing, cooking or

preserving. All seemed to smell and taste, as it were, of Anisya Fyodorovna. All

seemed to recall her buxomness, cleanliness, whiteness, and cordial smile.

“A little of this, please, little countess,” she kept saying, as she handed

Natasha first one thing, then another. Natasha ate of everything, and it seemed

to her that such buttermilk biscuits, such delicious preserves, such nuts in

honey, such a chicken, she had never seen nor tasted anywhere. Anisya Fyodorovna

withdrew. Rostov and the uncle, as they sipped cherry brandy after supper,

talked of hunts past and to come, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs. Natasha sat

upright on the sofa, listening with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to

waken Petya, and make him eat something, but he made incoherent replies,

evidently in his sleep. Natasha felt so gay, so well content in these new

surroundings, that her only fear was that the trap would come too soon for her.

After a silence had chanced to fall upon them, as almost always happens when any

one receives friends for the first time in his own house, the uncle said, in

response to the thought in his guests' minds:

“Yes, so you see how I am finishing my days.… One dies—forward, quick

march!—nothing is left. So why sin!”

The uncle's face was full of significance and even beauty as he said this.

Rostov could not help recalling as he spoke all the good things he had heard

said by his father and the neighbours about him. Through the whole district the

uncle had the reputation of being a most generous and disinterested eccentric.

He was asked to arbitrate in family quarrels; he was chosen executor; secrets

were entrusted to him; he was elected a justice, and asked to fill other similar

posts; but he had always persisted in refusing all public appointments, spending

the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay horse, the winter sitting at

home, and the summer lying in his overgrown garden.

“Why don't you enter the service, uncle?”

“I have been in the service, but I flung it up. I'm not fit for it. I can't

make anything of it. That's your affair. I haven't the wit for it. The chase,

now, is a very different matter; there it's all forward and quick march! Open

the door there!” he shouted. “Why have you shut it?” A door at the end of the

corridor (which word the uncle always pronounced collidor, like a

peasant) led to the huntsmen's room, as the sitting-room for the huntsmen was

called. There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the

door into the huntsmen's room. They could then hear distinctly from the corridor

the sounds of the balalaika, unmistakably played by a master hand. Natasha had

been for some time listening, and now she went out into the corridor to hear the

music more clearly.

“That's Mitka, my coachman … I bought him a good balalaika; I'm fond of it,”

said the uncle. It was his custom to get Mitka to play the balalaika in the

men's room when he came home from the chase. He was fond of hearing that

instrument.

“How well he plays! It's really very nice,” said Nikolay, with a certain

unconscious superciliousness in his tone, as though he were ashamed to admit he

liked this music.

“Very nice?” Natasha said reproachfully, feeling the tone in which her

brother had spoken. “It's not nice, but splendid, really!” Just as the uncle's

mushrooms and honey and liqueurs had seemed to her the most delicious in the

world, this playing struck her at that moment as the very acme of musical

expression.

“More, more, please,” said Natasha in the doorway, as soon as the balalaika

ceased. Mitka tuned up and began again gallantly twanging away at “My Lady,”

with shakes and flourishes. The uncle sat listening with his head on one side,

and a slight smile. The air of “My Lady” was repeated a hundred times over.

Several times the balalaika was tuned up and the same notes were thrummed again,

but the audience did not weary of it, and still longed to hear it again and

again. Anisya Fyodorovna came in and stood with her portly person leaning

against the doorpost.

“You are pleased to listen!” she said to Natasha, with a smile

extra-ordinarily like the uncle's smile. “He does play nicely,” she said.

“That part he never plays right,” the uncle said suddenly with a vigorous

gesture. “It ought to be taken more at a run—forward, quick march! … to be

played lightly.”

“Why, can you do it?” asked Natasha.

The uncle smiled, and did not answer.

“Just you look, Anisyushka, whether the strings are all right on the guitar,

eh? It's a long while since I have handled it. I had quite given it up!”

Anisya Fyodorovna went very readily with her light step to do her master's

bidding, and brought him his guitar. Without looking at any one the uncle blew

the dust off it, tapped on the case with his bony fingers, tuned it, and settled

himself in a low chair. Arching his left elbow with a rather theatrical gesture,

he held the guitar above the finger-board, and winking at Anisya Fyodorovna, he

played, not the first notes of “My Lady,” but a single pure musical chord, and

then smoothly, quietly, but confidently began playing in very slow time the

well-known song, “As along the high road.” The air of the song thrilled in

Nikolay's and Natasha's hearts in time, in tune with it, with the same sober

gaiety—the same gaiety as was manifest in the whole personality of Anisya

Fyodorovna. Anisya Fyodorovna flushed, and hiding her face in her kerchief, went

laughing out of the room. The uncle still went on playing the song carefully,

correctly, and vigorously, gazing with a transformed, inspired face at the spot

where Anisya Fyodorovna had stood. Laughter came gradually into his face on one

side under his grey moustache, and it grew stronger as the song went on, as the

time quickened, and breaks came after a flourish.

“Splendid, splendid, uncle! Again, again!” cried Natasha, as soon as he had

finished. She jumped up from her place and kissed and hugged the uncle.

“Nikolenka, Nikolenka!” she said, looking round at her brother as though to ask,

“What do you say to it?”

Nikolay, too, was much pleased by the uncle's playing. He played the song a

second time. The smiling face of Anisya Fyodorovna appeared again in the doorway

and other faces behind her.… “For the water from the well, a maiden calls to him

to stay!” played the uncle. He made another dexterous flourish and broke off,

twitching his shoulders.

“Oh, oh, uncle darling!” wailed Natasha, in a voice as imploring as though

her life depended on it. The uncle got up, and there seemed to be two men in him

at that moment—one smiled seriously at the antics of the merry player, while the

merry player na

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