War and peace ( Constance Garnett-1900)

Meanwhile all the younger generation, Boris, the officer, Anna Mihal- ovna’s son; Nikolay, the student, the count’s elder son; Sonya, the count’s niece; and little Petya, his younger son, had all placed themselves about the drawing-room, and were obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth which was brimming over in their faces. Clearly in the back part of the house, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the small-talk in the drawing-room of the scandal of the town, the weather, and Countess Apraxin. Now and then they glanced at one another and could hardly suppress their laughter.

The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood, were of the same age, and both good-looking, but not like each other. Boris was a tall, fair-haired lad with delicate, regular features, and a look of composure on his handsome face. Nikolay was a curly-headed youth, not tall, with an open expression. On his upper lip there were already signs of a black moustache coming, and his whole face expressed impulsiveness and enthusiasm. Nikolay flushed red as he came into the drawingroom. He was unmistakably trying to find something to say, and unable to find anything. Boris, on the contrary, was at home immediately and talked easily and playfully of the doll Mimi, saying that he had known her as a young girl before her nose was broken, and she had grown older during the five years he remembered her, and how her head was cracked right across the skull. As he said this he looked at Natasha. Natasha turned away from him, glanced at her younger brother, who, with a scowl on his face, was shaking with noiseless laughter, and unable to restrain herself, she skipped up and flew out of the room as quickly as her swift little legs could carry her. Boris did not laugh.

‘You were meaning to go out, mamma, weren’t you? Do you want the carriage?’ he said, addressing his mother with a smile.

‘Yes, go along and tell them to get it ready,’ she said, smiling. Boris walked slowly to the door and went after Natasha. The stout boy ran wrathfully after them, as though resenting the interruption of his pursuits.

IX

Of the young people, not reckoning the countess’s elder daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved quite like a grown-up person) and the young lady visitor, there were left in the drawing-room Nikolay and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender, miniature brunette, with soft eyes shaded by long lashes, thick black hair twisted in two coils round her head, and a skin of a somewhat sallow tint, particularly marked on her bare, thin, but shapely, muscular arms and neck. The smoothness of her movements, the softness and flexibility of her little limbs, and some-

thing of slyness and reserve in her manner, suggested a lovely half-grown kitten, which would one day be a charming cat. Apparently she thought it only proper to show an interest in the general conversation and to smile. But against her own will, her eyes turned under their thick, long lashes to her cousin, who was going away into the army, with such girlish, passionate adoration, that her smile could not for one moment impose upon any one, and it was clear that the kitten had only perched there to skip off more energetically than ever and to play with her cousin as soon as they could, like Boris and Natasha, get out of the drawing-room.

‘Yes, ma chere,’ said the old count, addressing the visitor and pointing to his Nikolay; ‘here his friend Boris has received his commission as an officer, and he’s so fond of him he doesn’t want to be left behind, and is giving up the university and his poor old father to go into the army, ma chere. And there was a place all ready for him in the archives department, and all. Isn’t that friendship now?’ said the count interrogatively.

‘But they do say that war has been declared, you know,’ said the visitor.

‘They’ve been saying so a long while,’ said the count. ‘They’ll say so again and again, and so it will remain. There’s friendship for you, via chere!’ he repeated. ‘He’s going into the hussars.’

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.

‘It’s not from friendship at all,’ answered Nikolay, flushing hotfy, and denying it as though it were some disgraceful imputation. ‘Not friendship at all, but simply I feel drawn to the military service.’

He looked round at his cousin and the young lady visitor; both looked at him with a smile of approval.

‘Schubert’s dining with us to-night, the colonel of the Pavologradsky regiment of hussars. He has been here on leave, and is taking him with i him. There’s no help for it,’ said the count, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of what evidently was a source of much distress to him.