“What shall we sing?” she asked.
“‘The Spring,’”36 replied Nikolai.
“Well, let’s be quick about it. Boris, come here,” said Natasha. “But where’s Sonya?”
She looked around and, seeing that her friend was not in the room, ran to look for her.
Running into Sonya’s room and not finding her friend there, Natasha ran to the nursery—Sonya was not there either. Natasha realized that Sonya was in the corridor on the chest. The chest in the corridor was the place of sorrows for the young female generation of the Rostov house. Indeed, Sonya, in her airy pink dress, crushing it, was lying face down on the nanny’s dirty striped featherbed, on the chest, and, covering her face with her fingers, was sobbing, her bare little shoulders twitching. Natasha’s face, animated and festive all day, suddenly changed: her eyes stared, then her broad neck shuddered, and the corners of her mouth drooped.
“Sonya! what is it?…What, what’s the matter with you? Wa-a-a!…”
And Natasha, spreading her big mouth and looking perfectly ugly, started howling like a baby, not knowing the reason why, only because Sonya was crying. Sonya wanted to raise her head and reply, but could not and buried herself still more. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue featherbed and embracing her friend. Gathering her forces, Sonya sat up and began wiping away her tears and telling her story.
“Nikolenka’s leaving in a week, his…papers…are ready…he told me himself…But all the same I wouldn’t be crying” (she held up the paper she had in her hand: it was verses written by Nikolai) “…all the same I wouldn’t be crying, but you can’t…nobody can understand…what a soul he has.”
And again she began to cry, because his soul was so good.
“It’s all right for you…I’m not envious…I love you, and Boris, too,” she said, gathering her forces a little, “he’s nice…there are no obstacles for you. But Nikolai’s my cousin…we need…the metropolitan himself37…even then it’s impossible. And then, if mama” (Sonya considered and called the countess her mother) “…she’ll say that I’m ruining Nikolai’s career, that I have no heart, that I’m ungrateful, and really…I swear to God” (she crossed herself) “…I love her and all of you so much, only Vera…Why? What have I done to her? I’m so grateful to you that I’d be glad to sacrifice everything I have, but I don’t have anything…”
Sonya could not speak any more and again hid her head in her hands and in the featherbed. Natasha began to calm down, but it was clear from her face that she realized all the importance of her friend’s grief.
“Sonya!” she said suddenly, as if guessing the real reason for her cousin’s distress. “Vera must have talked with you after dinner? Did she?”
“Yes, Nikolai himself wrote out these verses, and I wrote down some others; she found them on my desk and said she’d show them to mama, and she also said I was ungrateful, that mama would never let him marry me, and that he’d marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her the whole day…Natasha! Why?…”
And again she burst out crying more bitterly than before. Natasha pulled her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began to reassure her.
“Sonya, don’t believe her, dear heart, don’t believe her. Remember how we and Nikolenka, the three of us, talked in the sitting room—remember, after supper? We decided how everything was going to be. I don’t remember how anymore, but remember how good and possible it all was? Why, Uncle Shinshin’s brother married his first cousin, and we’re just second cousins. And Boris said it was very possible. You know, I told him everything. And he’s so intelligent and so nice,” Natasha went on saying “…so don’t cry, Sonya, dearest, darling Sonya.” And she kissed her, laughing. “Vera’s wicked, God help her! But everything will be all right, and she won’t tell mama; Nikolenka will tell her himself, and he never gave a thought to Julie.”
And she kissed her on the head. Sonya got up, the kitten revived, its eyes sparkled, and it seemed ready to raise its tail any moment, spring up on its soft paws, and play with a ball of yarn, as a kitten ought to do.
“Do you think so? Really? Swear to God?” she said, quickly straightening her dress and hair.
“Really! Swear to God!” replied Natasha, straightening a strand of stiff hair that had come loose from her friend’s braid.
And the two girls laughed.
“So, let’s go and sing ‘The Spring.’”
“Yes, let’s.”
“You know, that fat Pierre, who sat across from me, is so funny!” Natasha said suddenly, stopping. “I feel so merry!”
And Natasha went running down the corridor.
Sonya, brushing off feathers, and hiding the verses in her bosom, near her neck with its protruding collarbones, her face flushed, went running after Natasha with light, merry steps down the corridor to the sitting room. At the request of the guests, the young people sang the quartet “The Spring,” which everyone liked very much. Then Nikolai sang a song he had just learned:38
On a pleasant night beneath the moon
How happy is the reverie
That in this world there still is one
Whose thoughts do ever turn to thee!
And as her lovely hand, which she
Lets wander o’er the harp’s bright strings,
Plays in impassioned harmony,
So she to thee her summons sings!
One day, two days, then paradise…
But ah! thy friend is cold as ice!
And he had not finished singing the last words before the young people in the ballroom began preparing to dance, and the musicians began stamping their feet and coughing in the gallery.
Pierre was sitting in the drawing room, where Shinshin, knowing he had come from abroad, had started a boring political conversation with him, in which other people joined. When the music began to play, Natasha came into the drawing room and, going straight up to Pierre, blushing and with laughing eyes, said:
“Mama told me to ask you to dance.”
“I’m afraid I’ll confuse the figures,” said Pierre, “but if you’d like to be my teacher…”
And, lowering his fat arm, he offered it to the slender girl.
While the couples were being placed and the musicians were tuning up, Pierre sat with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy: she was dancing with a grown-up who had come from abroad. She sat in full view of everyone and talked to him like a grown-up. In her hand was a fan which a young lady had given her to hold. And, assuming a most worldly pose (God knows where and when she had learned it), fanning herself and smiling through the fan, she talked with her partner.
“Look at her! Just look at her!” said the old countess, walking through the room and pointing at Natasha.
Natasha blushed and laughed.
“Well, what is it, mama? What are you getting at? What’s so surprising?”
In the middle of the third écossaise, chairs began moving in the drawing room where the count and Marya Dmitrievna were playing, and the greater part of the honored guests and old folk, stretching after sitting so long and putting their wallets and purses in their pockets, came to the door of the ballroom. At their head came Marya Dmitrievna and the count—both with merry faces. The count, with jocular politeness, somehow in a ballet-like fashion, offered his rounded arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up and his face brightened with a special dashingly sly smile, and as soon as the last figures of the écossaise came to an end, he clapped his hands and called out to the musicians in the gallery, addressing the first fiddle:
“Semyon! Do you know ‘Daniel Cooper’?”
That was the count’s favorite dance, which he used to dance while still in his youth. (“Daniel Cooper” was in fact one of the figures of the anglaise.)