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“Dear me! Then what are you up to now?”
“Now?” repeated Natsha, and a happy smile lit up her face. “Have you seen Duport?”
“No.”
“Not seen Duport—the famous dancer? Well then, you won’t understand. That’s what I’m up to.”
Curving her arms, Natsha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
“See, I’m standing! See!” she said, but could not maintain herself on her toes any longer. “So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll never marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell anyone.”
Rostv laughed so loud and merrily that Densov, in his bedroom, felt envious and Natsha could not help joining in.
“No, but don’t you think it’s nice?” she kept repeating.
“Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Bors?”
Natsha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell him so when I see him!”
“Dear me!” said Rostv.
“But that’s all rubbish,” Natsha chattered on. “And is Densov nice?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed!”
“Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, Densov?”
“Why terrible?” asked Nicholas. “No, Vska is a splendid fellow.”
“You call him Vska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?”
“Very.”
“Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.”
And Natsha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When Rostv met Snya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you—Snya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by Natsha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her, for that would be impossible.
“How strange it is,” said Vra, selecting a moment when all were silent, “that Snya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet like strangers.”
Vra’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only Snya, Nicholas, and Natsha, but even the old countess, who—dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant match—blushed like a girl.
Densov, to Rostv’s surprise, appeared in the drawing room with pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the ladies and gentlemen than Rostv had ever expected to see him.
On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostv was welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling Niklenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
The Rostvs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas, acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs, passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from Gavrl to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Snya on the sly—he now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind. Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at the Arkhrovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kmenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a colonel of forty to whom Densov had introduced him.
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of as the “angel incarnate.”
During Rostv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did not draw closer to Snya, but rather drifted away from her. She was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he thought of Snya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, “Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I want to, but now I have no time.” Besides, it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club, sprees with Densov, and visits to a certain house—that was another matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ily Rostv was very busy arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagratin at the English Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktst, the club’s head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of the club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagratin, for few men knew so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing several thousand rubles.
