War and Peace
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.
CHAPTER XII
When they all drove back from Pelagéya Danílovna’s, Natásha, who
always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss
should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sónya with Nicholas and
the maids.
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and
kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya’s
face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and
his present Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again.
He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sónya, and
being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss,
inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in
fairyland.
“Sónya, is it well with thee?” he asked from time to time.
“Yes!” she replied. “And with thee?”
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for
a moment to Natásha’s sleigh and stood on its wing.
“Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my
mind about Sónya?”
“Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with
joy.
“Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natásha—are you glad?”
“I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did
not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she
has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy
while Sónya was not,” continued Natásha. “Now I am so glad! Well,
run back to her.”
“No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and
bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha,
it’s magical, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You have done splendidly.”
“Had I seen her before as she is now,” thought Nicholas, “I should
long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,
and all would have been well.”
“So you are glad and I have done right?”
“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I
nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sónya, for there is nothing but good in her.”
“Then it’s all right?” said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
expression of his sister’s face to see if she was in earnest. Then he
jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh.
The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes
looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that
Circassian was Sónya, and that Sónya was certainly his future happy
and loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
evening at the Melyukóvs’, the girls went to their bedroom. When they
had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live
when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how
happy they would be. On Natásha’s table stood two looking glasses
which Dunyásha had prepared beforehand.
“Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!” said Natásha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
“Sit down, Natásha; perhaps you’ll see him,” said Sónya.
Natásha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
glasses, and sat down.
“I see someone with a mustache,” said Natásha, seeing her own face.
“You mustn’t laugh, Miss,” said Dunyásha.
With Sónya’s help and the maid’s, Natásha got the glass she held
into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from
tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that
last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take the
smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing.
She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.
“Why is it others see things and I don’t?” she said. “You sit
down now, Sónya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I
feel so frightened!”
Sónya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.
“Now, Miss Sónya is sure to see something,” whispered Dunyásha;
“while you do nothing but laugh.”
Sónya heard this and Natásha’s whisper:
“I know she will. She saw something last year.”
For about three minutes all were silent.
“Of course she will!” whispered Natásha, but did not finish...
suddenly Sónya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her
eyes with her hand.
“Oh, Natásha!” she cried.
“Did you see? Did you? What was it?” exclaimed Natásha, holding up
the looking glass.
Sónya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get
up when she heard Natásha say, “Of course she will!” She did not
wish to disappoint either Dunyásha or Natásha, but it was hard to sit
still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her
when she covered her eyes.
“You saw him?” urged Natásha, seizing her hand.
“Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,” Sónya could not help saying, not
yet knowing whom Natásha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
“But why shouldn’t I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
can tell whether I saw anything or not?” flashed through Sónya’s
mind.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said.
“How? Standing or lying?”