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“Now, Snya!” 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, Natsha, 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 Densov followed her.
“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”
Natsha 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 and 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.
Natsha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously, mainly because Densov 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 Dlokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natsha, 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 Rostv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dlokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy....”
It was long since Rostv had felt such enjoyment from music as he did that day. But no sooner had Natsha finished her barcarolle than reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count came in from his club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him drive up, went to meet him.
“Well—had a good time?” said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly at his son.
Nicholas tried to say “Yes,” but could not: and he nearly burst into sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son’s condition.
“Ah, it can’t be avoided!” thought Nicholas, for the first and last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:
“Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I need some money.”
“Dear me!” said his father, who was in a specially good humor. “I told you it would not be enough. How much?”
“Very much,” said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, “I have lost a little, I mean a good deal, a great deal—forty three thousand.”
“What! To whom?... Nonsense!” cried the count, suddenly reddening with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
“I promised to pay tomorrow,” said Nicholas.
“Well!...” said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking helplessly on the sofa.
“It can’t be helped! It happens to everyone!” said the son, with a bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He longed to kiss his father’s hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!
The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s words and began bustlingly searching for something.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?”
And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count went out of the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all expected this.
“Papa! Pa-pa!” he called after him, sobbing, “forgive me!” And seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.
While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and daughter were having one not less important. Natsha came running to her mother, quite excited.
“Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me...”
“Made what?”
“Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!” she exclaimed.
The countess did not believe her ears. Densov had proposed. To whom? To this chit of a girl, Natsha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls and who was still having lessons.
“Don’t, Natsha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.
“Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natsha indignantly. “I come to ask you what to do, and you call it ‘nonsense!’”
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
“If it is true that Monsieur Densov has made you a proposal, tell him he is a fool, that’s all!”
“No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natsha indignantly and seriously.
