CHAPTER XI

Pelagéya Danílovna Melyukóva, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing
spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded by her
daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were quietly
dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the wax figures
would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and voices of new
arrivals in the vestibule.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their throats
and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule, came into the
ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown—Dimmler—and
the lady—Nicholas—started a dance. Surrounded by the screaming
children the mummers, covering their faces and disguising their voices,
bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves about the room.

“Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natásha! See whom she looks
like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler—isn’t he
good! I didn’t know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there’s a Circassian.
Really, how becoming it is to dear Sónya. And who is that? Well, you have
cheered us up! Nikíta and Vanya—clear away the tables! And we were
sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!… The hussar, the hussar! Just like a
boy! And the legs!… I can’t look at him…” different voices were
saying.

Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ favorite, disappeared with them into the
back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments were
called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from behind
the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukóvs joined the mummers.

Pelagéya Danílovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering into
their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of them.
It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostóvs she failed to recognize, she did
not even recognize her own daughters, or her late husband’s, dressing
gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.

“And who is this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of her
own daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one of the
Rostóvs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?” she asked
Natásha. “Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!” 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.