“I can’t understand,” Ilagin went on, “how it is other sportsmen are so envious over game and dogs. I will tell you for myself, count. I enjoy hunting, as you know; the chase in such company…what could be more delightful” (he doffed his beaver cap again to Natasha); “but this reckoning up of the skins one has carried off—I don’t care about that.”
“Oh no!”
“Nor could I be chagrined at my dog’s being outdone by another man’s—all I care about is the chase itself, eh, count? And so I consider…”
“Oh,…ho…ho,” sounded at that moment in a prolonged call from one of the grooms. He was standing on a knoll in the stubble with his whip held up, and he called once more, “O…ho…aho!” (This call, and the lifted whip, meant that he saw a hare squatting before him.)
“Ah, he has started a hare, I fancy,” said Ilagin carelessly. “Well, let us course it, count!”
“Yes, we must…but what do you say, together?” answered Nikolay, looking intently at Yerza and the uncle’s red Rugay, the two rivals against whom he had never before had a chance of putting his dogs. “What if they outdo my Milka from the first?” he thought, riding by the uncle and Ilagin towards the hare.
“Is it full-grown?” asked Ilagin, going up to the groom who had started it, and looking about him with some excitement, as he whistled to his Yerza.… “And you, Mihail Nikanoritch?” he said to the uncle.
The uncle rode on, looking sullen.
“What’s the use of my competing with you? Why, your dogs—you have paid a village for each of them; they’re worth thousands. You try yours against each other, and I’ll look on!”
“Rugay! Hey, hey,” he shouted. “Rugayushka!” he added, involuntarily expressing his tenderness, and the hope he put in the red dog by this affectionate diminutive. Natasha saw and felt the emotion concealed by the two elderly men and by her brother, and was herself excited by it. The groom on the knoll was standing with his whip lifted; the gentlemen rode up to him at a walking pace; the pack were on the rim of the horizon, moving away from the hare; the rest of the hunting party too were riding away. Everything was done slowly and deliberately.
“Which way is its head?” asked Nikolay, after riding a hundred paces towards the groom. But before the groom had time to answer, the hare, who had been sniffing in the ground the frost coming next morning, leapt up from its squatting posture. The pack of hounds on leashes flew baying downhill after the hare; the harriers, who were not on leash, rushed from all sides towards the hounds or after the hare. The whippers-in, who had been moving so deliberately, galloped over the country getting the dogs together, with shouts of “stop!” while the huntsmen directed their course with shouts of “o … o … ahoy!” Nikolay, Natasha, and the uncle and Ilagin, who had been hitherto so composed, flew ahead, reckless of how or where they went, seeing nothing but the dogs and the hare, and afraid of nothing but losing sight for an instant of the course. The hare turned out to be a fleet and strong one. When he jumped up he did not at once race off, but cocked up his ears, listening to the shouts and tramp of hoofs, that came from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds not very swiftly, letting the dogs gain on him, but at last choosing his direction, and grasping his danger, he put his ears back, and dashed off at full speed. He had been crouching in the stubble, but the green field was in front of him, and there it was marshy ground. The two dogs of the groom who had started him were the nearest and the first to be on the scent after him. But they had not got near him, when Ilagin’s black and tan Yerza flew ahead of them, got within a yard, pounced on him with fearful swiftness, aiming at the hare’s tail, and rolled over, thinking she had hold of him. The hare arched his back, and bounded off more nimbly than ever. The broad-backed, black and tan Milka flew ahead of Yerza, and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
“Milashka! little mother!” Nikolay shouted triumphantly. Milka seemed on the point of pouncing on the hare, but she overtook him and flew beyond. The hare doubled back. Again the graceful Yerza dashed at him, and kept close to the hare’s tail, as though measuring the distance, so as not to miss getting hold of the hare, by the haunch this time.
“Yerzinka, little sister!” wailed Ilagin, in a voice unlike his own. Yerza did not heed his appeals. At the very moment when she seemed about to seize the hare, he doubled and darted away to the ditch between the stubble and the green field. Again Yerza and Milka, running side by side, like a pair of horses, flew after the hare; the hare was better off in the ditch, the dogs could not gain on him so quickly.
“Rugay! Rugayushka! Forward—quick march,” another voice shouted this time. And Rugay, the uncle’s red, broad-shouldered dog, stretching out and curving his back, caught up the two foremost dogs, pushed ahead of them, flung himself with complete self-abandonment right on the hare, turned him out of the ditch into the green field, flung himself still more viciously on him once more, sinking up to his knees in the swampy ground, and all that could be seen was the dog rolling over with the hare, covering his back with mud. The dogs formed a star-shaped figure round him. A moment later all the party pulled their horses up round the crowding dogs. The uncle alone dismounted in a rapture of delight, and cutting off the feet, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, he looked about him, his eyes restless with excitement, and his hands and legs moving nervously. He went on talking, regardless of what or to whom he spoke. “That’s something like, quick march … there’s a dog for you … he outstripped them all … if they cost a thousand or they cost a rouble … forward, quick march, and no mistake!” he kept saying, panting and looking wrathfully about him, as though he were abusing some one, as though they had all been his enemies, had insulted him, and he had only now at last succeeded in paying them out. “So much for your thousand rouble dogs—forward, quick march! Rugay, here’s the foot,” he said, dropping the dog the hare’s muddy foot, which he had just cut off; “you’ve deserved it—forward, quick march!”
“She wore herself out—ran it down three times all alone,” Nikolay was saying, listening to no one, and heedless whether he were heard or not.
“To be sure, cutting in sideways like that!” Ilagin’s groom was saying.
“Why, when it had been missed like that, and once down, any yard-dog could catch it of course,” said Ilagin, at the same moment, red and breathless from the gallop and the excitement. At the same time Natasha, without taking breath, gave vent to her delight and excitement in a shriek so shrill that it set every one’s ears tingling. In that shriek she expressed just what the others were expressing by talking all at once. And her shriek was so strange that she must have been ashamed of that wild scream, and the others must have been surprised at it at any other time. The uncle himself twisted up the hare, flung him neatly and smartly across his horse’s back, seeming to reproach them all by this gesture, and with an air of not caring to speak to any one, he mounted his bay and rode away. All but he, dispirited and disappointed, rode on, and it was some time before they could recover their previous affectation of indifference. For a long time after they stared at the red dog, Rugay, who with his round back spattered with mud, and clinking the rings of his leash, walked with the serene air of a conqueror behind the uncle’s horse.
“I’m like all the rest till it’s a question of coursing a hare; but then you had better look out!” was what Nikolay fancied the dog’s air expressed.
When the uncle rode up to Nikolay a good deal later, and addressed a remark to him, he felt flattered at the uncle’s deigning to speak to him after what had happened.
Chapter 7
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.
