Page 203 of 470
Her brother Ptya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
“Ptya! Ptya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”
Ptya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
“No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off his back she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull, Natsha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on the past.
Snya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natsha glanced at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the light falling through that crack once before and Snya passing with a glass in her hand. “Yes it was exactly the same,” thought Natsha.
“Snya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.
“Oh, you are there!” said Snya with a start, and came near and listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she ventured timidly, afraid of being wrong.
“There! That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling timidly when all this happened before,” thought Natsha, “and in just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her.”
“No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!” and Natsha sang the air of the chorus so that Snya should catch it. “Where were you going?” she asked.
“To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design.”
“You always find something to do, but I can’t,” said Natsha. “And where’s Nicholas?”
“Asleep, I think.”
“Snya, go and wake him,” said Natsha. “Tell him I want him to come and sing.”
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.
“Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing old—that’s the thing! There won’t then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it.” She rose, put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table—but Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.
“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natsha enter. “Well, sit down by me.” But Natsha stayed by her mother and glanced round as if looking for something.
“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly, quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!” thought Natsha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the same.
After tea, Nicholas, Snya, and Natsha went to the sitting room, to their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natsha to her brother, when they settled down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more to come—nothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?”
“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed...”
“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natsha interrupted him. “When I was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent—that was the chief thing,” said Natsha. “Do you remember?”
“I remember,” answered Nicholas. “I remember that I came to you afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?”
“And do you remember,” Natsha asked with a pensive smile, “how once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the study—that was in the old house—and it was dark—we went in and suddenly there stood...”
“A Negro,” chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. “Of course I remember. Even now I don’t know whether there really was a Negro, or if we only dreamed it or were told about him.”
“He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked at us....”
“Snya, do you remember?” asked Nicholas.
“Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Snya answered timidly.
“You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro,” said Natsha, “and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!”
“Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them.”
“How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like that.”
“And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?”
