XIV

Silence fell. The countess looked at her guest with a polite smile, but without disguising the fact that she would now be not in the least offended if her guest were to get up and leave. The guest’s daughter was already adjusting her dress and glancing enquiringly at her mother, when suddenly from the next room there was the sound of several male and female feet running towards the door, the clatter of a stool dragged and overturned, and a thirteen-year-old girl with the skirt of her short muslin frock oddly tucked up came bursting into the room and stopped in the middle. She seemed to have misjudged her speed and galloped so far in by accident. That very same moment four figures appeared in the doorway: two young men – one a student with a crimson collar, the other a Guards officer – a fifteen-year-old girl and a fat, ruddy-cheeked boy in a child’s smock.

The count leapt up and, swaying on his feet, spread his arms wide around the girl who had run in.

“Ah, there she is!” he cried, laughing. “The name-day girl! Ma chère name-day girl!”

“My dear, there is a time for everything,” the countess said to her daughter, obviously merely in order to say something, because it was clear at a glance that her daughter was not the least bit afraid of her. “You’re always spoiling her,” she added, speaking to her husband.

“Hello, my dear, happy name-day to you,” said the guest. “What a charming child!” she added, addressing her flattery to the mother.

The black-eyed, large-mouthed and plain but lively little girl, with her childish, exposed little shoulders heaving and contracting in their bodice after the fast run, with her tangle of black curls swept backwards, thin little bare arms and fast little legs in little lacy pantaloons and little open shoes, was at that sweet age when the little girl is no longer a child, but the child is not yet a young woman. Twisting away from her father, quick and graceful and evidently unused to the drawing room, she ran across to her mother and, paying no attention to her rebuke, hid her flushed little face in the lacework of her mother’s mantilla and burst into laughter.

“Mama! We wanted to marry Boris … Ha, ha!… To the doll … Ha, ha! Yes … Ah … Mimi …” she said through her laughter. “And … Ah … He ran away.”

She pulled a large doll out from under her skirt and showed it to them: a black, broken-off nose, a cracked cardboard head and kidskin bottom, legs and arms that dangled loosely at the elbows and knees, but still with a fresh, elegant, carmine smile and thick-black, arching brows.

The countess had been acquainted for four years with this Mimi, Natasha’s inseparable friend, a gift from her godfather.

“You see?” And Natasha could not say any more (everything seemed funny to her). She fell down onto her mother and broke into such loud, resounding laughter that everybody, even the prim and proper guest, began laughing in spite of themselves. This laughter could even be heard in the footman’s room. The countess’s menservants exchanged smiling glances with the visiting liveried footman, who had been sitting glumly on his chair all the while.

“Now, off with you, you and your monster!” said the little girl’s mother, pushing her daughter away in feigned anger. “This is my youngest, a spoilt little girl, as you can see,” she said to the guest.

Tearing her little face away for a moment from her mother’s lacy shawl and glancing up at her, Natasha said quietly through her tears of laughter:

“I feel so embarrassed, mama!” And quick as could be, as if she were afraid of being caught, she hid her face again.

The guest, obliged to admire the family scene, felt it necessary to take some kind of part in it.

“Tell me, my dear,” she said, addressing Natasha, “who is this Mimi to you? Your daughter, I suppose?”

Natasha did not like this guest and the tone in which she condescended to make conversation with a child.

“No, madame, she’s not my daughter, she’s a doll,” she said, smiling boldly, got up off her mother and sat down beside her eldest sister, demonstrating in this way that she could behave like a big girl.

Meanwhile the entire young generation (Boris the officer, Anna Mikhailovna’s son; Nikolai the student, the count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece; and little Petrushka, the youngest son) had all distributed themselves round the drawing room as if they had suddenly been dropped into cold water and were clearly struggling to restrain within the limits of decorum the excitement and merriment that were still glowing in every feature of their faces. It was plain to see that out there, in the back rooms from which they had come running in so impetuously, their conversations had been more fun than the talk here of town scandals, the weather and Countess Apraksina.

The two young men, student and officer, were childhood friends, both the same age and both handsome, although they were quite unalike. Boris, a tall, fair-haired youth, had a long face with fine, regular features. A calm and thoughtful mind was expressed in his pleasant grey eyes, but in the corners of his still hairless lips there lurked a constantly mocking and slightly cunning smile, which instead of spoiling his expression, seemed in fact to add spice to his fresh, handsome face that was so obviously still untouched by either vice or grief. Nikolai was not very tall, with a broad chest and a very subtle, fine figure. His open face, with soft, wavy, light-brown hair surrounding a prominent, broad forehead, and the ecstatic gaze of his half-closed, prominent brown eyes, always expressed the impression of the moment. Little black hairs had already appeared on his upper lip, and impetuosity and enthusiasm were expressed in his every feature. Both young men bowed and took seats in the drawing room. Boris did this fluently and easily; Nikolai, on the contrary, with almost childish resentment. Nikolai glanced by turns at the guests and the door, evidently with no desire to conceal the fact that he was bored, and hardly even answered the questions put to him by the guests. Boris, on the contrary, immediately found the right tone and informed them with mock gravity that he had known this Mimi doll as a young girl when her nose was still perfect, that she had aged a lot in the five years he had known her, what with her head splitting open right across the skull. Then he enquired after the lady’s health. Everything he said was simple and decorous, neither too witty nor too foolish, but the smile playing about his lips indicated that even as he spoke he did not ascribe the slightest importance to his own words and was speaking purely out of a sense of decorum.

“Mama, what is he speaking like a grown-up for? I don’t want him to,” said Natasha, going up to her mother and pointing at Boris like a capricious child. Boris smiled at her.

“You just want to play dolls with him all the time,” replied Princess Anna Mikhailovna, patting Natasha’s bare shoulder, which shrank away nervously and withdrew into its bodice at the touch of her hand.

“I’m bored,” whispered Natasha. “Mama, nanny is asking if she can go visiting, can she? Can she?” she repeated, raising her voice, with that characteristic capacity of women for quick-wittedness in innocent deception. “She can, mama!” she shouted, barely able to restrain her laughter and, glancing at Boris, she curtseyed to the guests and walked as far as the door, but once outside it started running as fast as her little legs could carry her. Boris became pensive.

“I thought you wanted to go too, maman. Do you need the carriage?” he said, blushing as he addressed his mother.

“Yes, off you go now and tell them to get it ready,” she said, smiling. Boris went out quietly through the door and set off after Natasha; the fat boy in the smock ran behind him angrily, as if he were annoyed by some interruption to his studies.

XV

Of the young people, aside from the countess’s elder daughter, who was four years older than her sister and already behaved like a grown-up, and the young lady visitor, the only ones left in the drawing room were Nikolai and Sonya the niece, who sat there, with that rather artificial, festive smile that many adults believe they should wear when present at other people’s conversations, repeatedly casting tender glances at her cousin. Sonya was a slim, petite brunette with a gentle gaze shaded by long eyelashes, a thick black plait wound twice around her head and sallow skin on her face and especially on her bare, lean but graceful and sinewy arms and neck. With the smoothness of her movements, the gentle flexibility of her little limbs and her rather cunning and reticent manner she involuntarily reminded people of a beautiful but still immature kitten that would become a delightful cat. She evidently thought it proper to indicate her interest in the general conversation with her festive smile but, against her will, her eyes gazed out from under their long lashes at her cousin, who was leaving for the army, with such passionate girlish adoration, that her smile could not possibly have deceived anyone for even a moment, and it was clear that the little cat had only sat down in order to spring up even more energetically and start playing with her cousin just as soon as they got out of this drawing room.

“Yes, ma chère,” said the old count, addressing the guest and pointing to his Nikolai. “His friend Boris there has been appointed an officer, and out of friendship he does not want to be left behind, so he’s abandoning university and this old man and he’s going to join the army. And there was a place all ready for him in the archive and everything. How’s that for friendship!” the count queried.

“But after all, they do say that war has been declared,” said the guest.

“They’ve been saying that for a long time,” the count said, still speaking vaguely. “They’ll say it again a few times, and then again, and leave it at that. How’s that for friendship, then!” he repeated. “He’s joining the hussars.”

Not knowing what to say, the guest shook her head.

“It’s not out of friendship at all,” responded Nikolai, flaring up and speaking as if he were defending himself against a shameful slander. “It’s not at all out of friendship, it’s just that I feel a calling for military service.”

He glanced round at the young lady guest: the young lady was looking at him with a smile, approving the young man’s action.

“We have Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars Regiment, dining with us today. He’s been on leave here and is going to take him back with him. What can one do?” said the count, shrugging and speaking jocularly about a matter that evidently pained him a great deal.

For some reason Nikolai suddenly became angry.

“But I told you, papa, that if you don’t wish to let me go, I shall stay. I know I’m no good for anything but military service. I’m not a diplomat, I don’t know how to conceal what I feel,” he said, gesticulating too enthusiastically for his words and glancing all the time with the coquettishness of handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady guest.

The little cat, devouring him with her eyes, seemed ready at any second to launch into her game and demonstrate her full feline nature. The young lady continued to approve him with her smile.

“Perhaps something might just come of me,” he added, “but I am no good for anything here …”

“Well, well, all right!” said the old count. “He’s always getting worked up. Bonaparte has turned everyone’s heads: everyone thinks about how he rose from a corporal to an emperor. Well, then, if it pleases God …” he added, not noticing the guest’s mocking smile.

“Well, off you go, off you go, Nikolai, I can see you’re keen to be off,” said the countess.

“Not at all,” her son replied, but nonetheless a moment later he got up, bowed and left the room.

Sonya carried on sitting a little longer, smiling more and more falsely all the while, then got up, still with the same smile, and went out.

“How very transparent all these young people’s secrets are!” said Countess Anna Mikhailovna, pointing to Sonya and laughing. The guest laughed.

“Yes,” said the countess, after the ray of sunshine that this young generation had brought into the drawing room had disappeared, and as if she were answering a question that no one had asked her, but which was constantly on her mind. “So much suffering, so much worry,” she continued, “all borne so that we can rejoice in them now. But even now, truly, there is more fear than joy. You’re always afraid, always afraid! It’s the very age that holds so much danger for girls and for boys.”

“Everything depends on upbringing,” said the guest.

“Yes, you are right,” the countess continued. “So far, thank God, I have been my children’s friend and I have their complete trust,” she said, repeating the error of many parents who believe their children keep no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante and if Nikolenka, with his fiery character, should get up to mischief (boys will be boys), then it would be nothing like those Petersburg gentlemen.”

“Yes, they are splendid, splendid children,” agreed the count, who always resolved matters that he found complicated by finding everything splendid. “Just imagine! Decided to join the hussars! What about that, ma chère!”

“What a sweet creature your youngest is,” said the guest, glancing round reproachfully at her own daughter, as though impressing on her with this glance that that was how she ought to be in order to be liked, not the stiff doll that she was. “Full of fun!”

“Yes, full of fun,” said the count. “She takes after me! And what a voice, real talent! She may be my own daughter, but it’s no more than the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, another Salomini. We’ve engaged an Italian to teach her.”

“Is it not rather early? They do say it’s bad for the voice to train it at this age.”

“Oh no, not at all too early!” said the count.

“And what about our mothers getting married at twelve and thirteen?” added Countess Anna Mikhailovna.

“She’s already in love with Boris, how do you like that?” said the countess, smiling gently, glancing at Boris’s mother and, clearly replying to the thought that was always on her mind, she went on: “Well now, you see, if I were strict with her, if I forbade her … God knows what they would do in secret” (the countess meant that they would have kissed), “but as it is I know every word she says. She’ll come running to me this evening and tell me everything herself. Perhaps I do spoil her, but I really think that is best. I was strict with my elder daughter.”

“Yes, I was raised quite differently,” said the elder daughter, the beautiful Countess Vera, with a smile. But a smile did not adorn Vera’s face in the way it usually does: on the contrary, her face became unnatural and therefore unpleasant. The elder daughter Vera was good-looking, she was clever, she was well brought up. She had a pleasant voice. What she had said was just and apt but, strange to say, everyone, even the guest and the countess, glanced round at her as though they wondered why she had said it and felt uneasy.

“People always try to be clever with their oldest children, they want to make something exceptional of them,” said the guest.

“No point in pretending, ma chère! The little countess tried to be clever with Vera,” said the count. “But what of it? She still turned out splendid.”

And then, noticing with the intuition that is more perceptive than the intellect that Vera was feeling embarrassed, he went over to her and stroked her shoulder with his hand.

“Excuse me, I have a few things to see to. Do stay a bit longer,” he added, bowing and preparing to go out.

The guests stood up and left, promising to come to dinner.

“What a way to behave! Ugh, I thought they would never leave!” said the countess after she had seen the guests out.

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