War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [345]
An hour later all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The burnt cork mustaches and eyebrows were smeared over sweaty, flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired how well the costumes had been made, how they especially suited the young ladies, and thanked them all for entertaining her so well. The guests were invited for supper in the drawing room, and food was arranged for the servants in the reception room.
“No, fortune-telling in the bathhouse, that’s the scary thing!” an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs said over supper.
“Why so?” asked the eldest Melyukov daughter.
“You wouldn’t go, it takes courage…”
“I’d go,” said Sonya.
“Tell us what happened with that young lady?” the second Melyukov girl said.
“Here’s what,” said the old maid. “A girl once went, took a cock, set the table for two—all very proper—and sat down. She sat for a while, only suddenly she hears…harness bells, sleigh bells, a sleigh drives up; she hears him coming. He walks in, looking just like a man, like an officer, goes over, and sits down with her at the table.”
“Ah! Ah!…” Natasha cried, rolling her eyes in terror.
“But how was he, could he speak?”
“Yes, like a man, everything as it should be, and so he started, he started persuading her, and she should have kept him busy talking till cockcrow, but she got timid; she just got timid and covered her face with her hands. So he up and grabbed her. It’s a good thing the maids came running in right then…”
“Now, why go scaring them!” said Pelageya Danilovna.
“Mother, you did fortune-telling yourself…” said the daughter.
“And how do you tell fortunes in a barn?” asked Sonya.
“You could do it even now. You go to the barn and listen. If you hear banging or knocking, it’s bad; if you hear grain pouring, it’s good. But it also happens…”
“Mama, tell us what happened to you in the barn.”
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
“Why, I’ve forgotten by now…” she said. “None of you would go, would you?”
“No, I’ll go. Let me, Pelageya Danilovna, I’ll go,” said Sonya.
“All right, go, if you’re not afraid.”
“May I, Louisa Ivanovna?” asked Sonya.
Whether playing with the ring, the string, or the rouble coin, or talking as they were now, Nikolai never left Sonya’s side and looked at her with totally new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, for the first time, owing to that cork mustache, that he had known her fully. Indeed, that evening Sonya was merrier, livelier, and prettier than Nikolai had ever seen her before.
“So this is how she is, and I’m a fool!” he thought, looking at her shining eyes and happy, rapturous smile, such as he had never seen before, which made dimples on her cheeks under the mustache.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Sonya. “May I go now?” She got up. They told Sonya where the barn was, how she should stand silently and listen, and gave her her coat. She threw it over her head and glanced at Nikolai.
“What a lovely girl she is!” he thought. “And what have I been thinking about all this time!”
Sonya went out to the corridor, so as to go to the barn. Nikolai hastily went to the front porch, saying that he was hot. Indeed, it was stuffy in the house because of the crowd of people.
Outside there was the same immobile cold, the same moon, only it was still brighter. The light was so strong and there were so many stars on the snow, that one did not want to look at the sky, and the real stars went unnoticed. The sky was black and dull, the earth was merry.
“Fool, fool that I am! What have I been waiting for all this time?” thought Nikolai, and, running down from the porch, he went around the corner of the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya would pass that way. Halfway down the path there lay some stacked firewood; it was covered with snow and cast a shadow; the shadows of bare old lindens, intertwining, fell across and beside it on the snow and on the path. The path led to the barn. The log wall of the barn and the snow-covered