And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
“It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Boris also,” she went on, gaining a little strength; “he is nice... there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can’t be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma” (Sonya looked upon the countess as her mother and called her so) “that I am spoiling Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness,” and she made the sign of the cross, “I love her so much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing....”
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that she understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.
“Sonya,” she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason of her friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Vera has 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.”
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 o’er the lea,
It is for thee thus swells her heart,
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.
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 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 serfs—the men on one side and the women on the other—who 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