________________________________________________
_ To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word
of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round
the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that
poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that
winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed
to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a
thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had
worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing
by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with
Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return
of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old
gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and
ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with
his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"
which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his
sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.
"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she
said, without noticing Nicholas.
"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,
glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother
with the old lady.
"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.
"Is Papa at home?" he asked.
"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We
are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my
sake! Did you know?"
"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.
"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old
countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently
at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the
dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to
persuade Natasha to sing.
"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making
excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!"
The countess glanced at her silent son.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"
"I expect so."
"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!
Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing
room where the clavichord stood.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.
Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's
nothing to be happy about!" thought he.
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my
brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on.
"Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!"
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the
girls and avoiding their eyes.
"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,
had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed
it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my
enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to
herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
I am."
"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,
where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as
ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her
toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
which Denisov followed her.
"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
you and make you weep.
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She
no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that
comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;
but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her
said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be
trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had
finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect
breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs
said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In
her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her
own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled
with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that
voice could be altered without spoiling it.
"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And
suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided
into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,
two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...
One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this
misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all
nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!
Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank
God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did
I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was
finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from
everything else in the world and above everything in the world.
"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All
nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..." _
Read next: Book Four : 1806: Chapter 16
Read previous: Book Four : 1806: Chapter 14
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