Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of one small and slender animal, a thoroughbred black-and-tan bitch belonging to Ilagin, with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle and prominent black eyes. He had heard that Ilagin's dogs were a spirited lot, and in this handsome bitch he saw a rival to his Milka.
Ilagin started talking in a desultory way about this year's harvest, and in mid-conversation Nikolay pointed to the black-and-tan bitch.
'Nice bitch you have there!' he said casually. 'Is she a good mover?'
'That one? Oh yes, she's a good dog. Catches the odd hare,' Ilagin said in a voice that suggested indifference, though only a year ago he had given a neighbour three families of house serfs for Yerza, the black-and-tan bitch who was now his. 'So your people are none too pleased with the yield, then, Count,' he went on, resuming their previous conversation. And since it was only polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin had a good look at his dogs and settled on Milka, with her strikingly broad back.
'Now there's a splendid dog - the black-and-white one!' he said.
'Yes, she's all right. She can move,' answered Nikolay. ('I wouldn't mind seeing a good big hare run across that field, then I could show you what kind of dog she is!' he thought to himself.) Turning to his groom, he said he would give a rouble to the first man who could start up a hiding hare.
'What beats me,' Ilagin went on, 'is why some people are so jealous of each other when it comes to hunting and dogs. I'll tell you this, Count: I enjoy a good hunt, as you well know. Splendid company and all that . . . nothing better.' He doffed his beaver cap again to Natasha. 'But counting the kills and keeping score - I've no time for that sort of thing.'
'Certainly not!'
'Or getting worked up because somebody else's dog makes a kill and mine doesn't. All I'm interested in is the actual hunting. Are you with me, Count? I see it this way . . .'
At that moment a long drawn-out halloo, 'Over here! . . .', came from one of the dog-handlers. He was standing on a little rise amid the stubble with his whip held high, and he gave the call again, 'He's here! . . .' This cry, together with the raised whip, meant that he could see a hare squatting near by.
'I think he's spotted something,' said Ilagin casually. 'How about a little chase, Count?'
'Yes, we must get over there . . . Er, shall we go together?' answered Nikolay, with a close look at Yerza and 'Uncle's' red Rugay, the two rivals he had not yet a chance of competing against. 'What if they're miles faster than my Milka?' he thought, riding off with the two other men in the direction of the hare.
'Nice big one, is he?' called out Ilagin as they came towards the groom who had spotted the hare, and he looked round in some excitement, whistling to Yerza. 'Are you going to have a go, Mikhail Nikanorych?' he said to 'Uncle'. 'Uncle' scowled and rode on.
'I can't compete with you,' came the reply, 'Look at your dogs . . . Fair for the chase! . . . You've paid whole villages for your dogs . . . They're worth thousands. Run yours against each other - I'll watch!'
'Rugay! Here boy!' he shouted. 'Rugayushka!' he added, unwittingly conveying through this diminutive both his affection for the red dog and all the hope he was investing in him. Natasha could see and sense the hidden thrill of excitement affecting the two elderly men and her brother, and she felt it too. The groom was still standing on the rise with his whip in the air. The three gentlemen were riding towards him at walking pace; the other hounds were up on the skyline, wheeling away from the hare; the other huntsmen, the non-gentry, were also riding away. Everything was happening slowly and methodically.
'Where is he pointing?' asked Nikolay, after riding another hundred paces towards the groom. But there was no time for an answer: the hare, sensing tomorrow morning's frost, decided it had lain there long enough and was suddenly up and away. The hounds that were leashed together flew downhill in full cry after the hare, while the unleashed borzois sprinted from all directions towards the hounds or after the hare. The meandering group of huntsmen and whips who had been rounding the dogs up with shouts of 'Stay!' and the grooms who had been directing the dogs by shouting 'Over here!' now galloped off across the field. The imperturbable Ilagin, Nikolay, Natasha and 'Uncle' flew across the ground reckless of where and how they went as long as they could keep the dogs and the hare in view, anxious not to lose sight of the chase for a second. The hare turned out to be a seasoned courser. When he had jumped up he had not just raced away, he had pricked up his ears and listened to the cries and the thudding of paws and hooves coming at him from every side. Now he made off with a dozen bounds in his own good time, letting the dogs catch up a little, and then suddenly, fixing his direction and finally sensing the danger he was in, he put his ears back and was off like the wind. He had come from the stubble, but now open fields lay ahead, and on them marshy ground. The two dogs of the groom who had spotted him were the closest and the first to pick up his scent, but they weren't anywhere near to catching him when Ilagin's black-and-tan Yerza flew past, got within a yard, pounced with awesome speed, going for the hare's tail, and rolled over, thinking she had him. But the hare arched his back and bounded off more smartly than ever, only for the stocky black-and-white Milka to come out from behind Yerza and sprint off in pursuit, rapidly gaining on the hare.
'Milushka! Gorgeous girl!' shouted Nikolay with a ring of triumph in his voice. It seemed for a moment that Milka couldn't miss, but she overran the hare and went flying past. The hare dropped back. The splendid Yerza came at him again, hovering over the hare's tail as if careful calculation was needed to avoid any mistakes this time and grab him by his hind-leg.
'Yerzynka, come on, darling!' wailed Ilagin, his voice unrecognizable. Yerza did not respond. Poised and about to seize the hare, she could only watch as he swerved and darted away to the ridge between the stubble and the green field. Again Yerza and Milka, running side by side like horses in double harness, flew after the hare; he was better off up on the ridge, and the dogs were taking longer to close him down.
'Rugay! Rugayushka! Fair for the chase!' This time it was another voice. And it was Rugay, 'Uncle's' hunched-up red dog, reaching out to his full length and curving his back, who caught up with the two leading dogs, flashed past and flung himself with complete abandon on the hare, toppling him from the ridge down into the green field, and leapt at him again even more savagely, sinking knee-deep in the boggy ground until all you could see was a rolling mass of dog and hare and the dog's back covered with mud. The other dogs gathered round, their behinds sticking out again like the points of a star. Within a few moments the whole party had pulled up alongside the horde of dogs. A delighted 'Uncle' was the only one to dismount, cut off a hare's foot and shake the blood away. He stared about edgily, eyes dancing, hands and legs almost out of control. He carried on talking, blurting out the first thing that came into his head and to no one in particular. 'Nice chase that one . . . some dog! . . . outstripped the lot of them . . . one-rouble-dogs, thousand-rouble dogs . . . Fair for the chase!' he gabbled, gasping and glaring aggressively, fulminating against the world in general, and all those enemies who had insulted him, and now at last he had a chance to get his own back. 'Do what you want with your thousand-rouble dogs . . . Fair for the chase! Rugay, here's a nice little foot for you,' he said, dropping the hare's severed muddy foot for the dog. 'You've earned it . . . Fair for the chase!'
'She was finished. She had three goes on her own,' Nikolay was saying. He too wasn't listening to anyone else and didn't mind whether he was being heard or not.
'Oh yes, cutting across like that!' said one of Ilagin's grooms.
'Course, once he'd been run down and missed like that, any old mongrel could have caught him,' Ilagin was saying at the same moment, red in the face and struggling to get his breath back after all the galloping and excitement. And also at the same time Natasha, who wasn't even trying to get her breath back, shrieked with such rapturous excitement that her scream rang in everyone's ears. It was a scream that said what the others we
re saying just by chattering all at once. It was the kind of weird scream that she would have been ashamed of, and the others would have been amazed to hear, at any other time. 'Uncle', meanwhile, had flung the hare neatly and tidily across his horse's hind-quarters and strapped him to the saddle, taunting them all by the very gesture, and with a strong hint that he had no wish to speak to anyone he got on his bay and set off home. Everyone else rode away too, he being the only one not suffering from a sense of injury and unhappiness, and it took some time for the rest of them to regain their previous outward show of indifference. For some time after, they kept looking askance at red Rugay, who trotted along behind 'Uncle's' horse with mud all over his hunched-up back, jingling the fittings on his leash, with the serene air of a conqueror.
'Look, I'm just like any other dog till it comes to a chase, but then - watch out!' was what the dog's demeanour conveyed, or so it seemed to Nikolay.
When, a good deal later on, 'Uncle' rode up to Nikolay and spoke to him, Nikolay felt quite flattered they were still on speaking terms after all that had happened.
CHAPTER 7
When Ilagin took leave of them in the early evening Nikolay, realizing he was a long way from home, accepted 'Uncle's' invitation for the hunting party to stay the night with him in the village of Mikhaylovka.
'You should come to my place . . . Fair for the chase!' said 'Uncle'. 'Best thing all round. Look, it's wet, you could have a nice rest, and we could send the little countess home in a trap.' The invitation was accepted, a huntsman was dispatched to Otradnoye for a trap, and Nikolay, Natasha and Petya rode over to 'Uncle's' house.
Men servants large and small, half-a-dozen of them, came running out on to the front steps to meet their master, while the women, old, large and small, slipped out in dozens round the back to watch the arrival of the huntsmen. The presence of Natasha - a woman, nay, a lady, on horseback - roused the curiosity of 'Uncle's' house serfs to such a pitch that many of them lost all inhibitions and went straight up to her, staring her in the face and voicing their opinions about her, as though she were some kind of exhibit rather than a human being, some wondrous object incapable of hearing and understanding what was being said about her.
'Arinka, sithee, she be sittin' sideways! Sideways sittin', an' 'er skirt all danglin' down . . . And look at yon little horn!'
'Lor' bless 'e, an' a knife too!'
'Reminds me o'them Tatar womenfolk!'
' 'Ow can tha do it wi'out fallin' off?' said the cheekiest one, straight in Natasha's face.
'Uncle' got off his horse at the steps of his little wooden house with its overgrown garden, surveyed the servant body and told them in no uncertain terms what to do - anyone not required was to disappear while the rest did everything necessary for the reception of his guests and the hunt servants.
They scurried away in every direction. 'Uncle' helped Natasha down from her horse, and gave her his arm up the rickety wooden steps.
The inside of the house, with its unplastered timber walls, was not the last word in cleanliness; nothing suggested that the main aim of its inhabitants was to keep the place spotless, though there were no signs of real neglect. There was a smell of fresh apples as you entered, and the walls were hung with the skins of wolves and foxes.
'Uncle' led his guests through into a little hall furnished with a folding-table and red chairs, then into a drawing-room with a round birch-wood table and a sofa, and on into his study, with its shabby sofa, threadbare carpet and several portraits - of Suvorov, 'Uncle' in military uniform and his father and mother. The study reeked of tobacco and dogs.
Once in the study 'Uncle' invited his guests to sit down and make themselves at home, and then left the room. Rugay came in, his back still plastered with mud, and went to lie on the sofa, cleaning himself with tongue and teeth. There was a corridor leading from the study, where they could hear the sound of women laughing and hushed voices coming from behind a screen with ragged curtains. Natasha, Nikolay and Petya took off their outdoor clothes and sat down on the sofa. Petya leant on one elbow and promptly fell asleep. Natasha and Nikolay sat there and said nothing. Their faces were burning and they were ravenous, but they felt very bright and cheerful. They glanced at each other. (Now the hunt was over and they were indoors, Nikolay felt no further need to demonstrate his masculine superiority over his sister.) Natasha winked at her brother, their mutual glee was uncontainable and they broke out into a great roar of laughter before they could think of a reason for doing so.
After a brief interval in came 'Uncle' wearing a Cossack coat, blue breeches and low boots. This mode of dress had left Natasha shocked and amused when 'Uncle' had appeared in it at Otradnoye, but now it seemed exactly right and in no way inferior to morning dress and frock-coats. Like the pair of them 'Uncle' was also in high spirits. Far from taking exception to their laughter - it never occurred to him that they might be laughing at his life-style - he joined in with the brother and sister, revelling like them in inexplicable glee.
'Will you look at this young countess here? Fair for the chase! I've never seen anyone like her!' he said, offering Rostov a long-stemmed pipe while filling his own stubby one, with three practised fingers.
'Out riding all day - enough to tax any man - and still as fresh as a daisy!'
Soon after 'Uncle's' reappearance the door was opened by a serving woman who from the sound of it was walking on bare feet, and in padded a plump, red-cheeked, good-looking woman of forty or so, with a double chin and full red lips, carrying a large heavily laden tray. Her eyes radiated good will and her every gesture spoke of warm hospitality as she looked round all the guests and treated them to a broad smile and a polite curtsey.
For all her exceptional stoutness, which made her bosom and her belly stick out and her head tilt back, this woman ('Uncle's' house-keeper) moved with surprising elegance. She walked over to the table, put the tray down, and with a few skilful movements of her puffy white hands transferred bottles, dishes and snacks to the table-top. This done, she walked off and paused in the doorway for a moment with a smile on her face. 'Take a good look - it's me! Now can you understand how "Uncle" lives?' was what her expression seemed to say to Rostov. Who could have failed to understand? Not only Nikolay, but even Natasha understood 'Uncle' now, and what had been meant by that furrowed brow and that smug smile of contentment hovering around his pursed lips as Anisya Fyodorovna had come into the room. On the tray were a bottle of home-made wine, several different kinds of vodka, tiny mushrooms, little rye-cakes made with buttermilk, oozing honey-combs, still and sparkling mead, apples and all sorts of nuts, raw, roasted and steeped in honey. Then Anisya came back in bringing preserves made with honey and sugar, along with ham and a freshly roasted chicken.
All these delicacies had been grown, picked and prepared by Anisya herself. Every smell, taste and flavour seemed redolent of Anisya, redolent of her plumpness, cleanliness, whiteness and her broad welcoming smile.
'Please help yourself, little Lady-Countess,' she kept saying, offering something to Natasha and following it immediately with something else. Natasha sampled everything. Never in her life, she thought, had she seen or tasted buttermilk cakes like these, such delicious preserves, such nuts in honey, or a chicken like this one. Anisya withdrew.
Rostov and 'Uncle', as they downed their cherry-flavoured vodka after supper, talked of hunts past and future, Rugay and Ilagin's dogs. Natasha sat up straight on the sofa, drinking in all that they were saying with a glint in her eyes. Several times she made an attempt to wake Petya and give him something to eat, but he just mumbled a few nonsensical words, obviously reluctant to come round. Natasha felt so happy at heart, so much at home in these new surroundings, that her only fear was that the trap would come for her too soon. When the conversation broke down for a moment, as it almost always does when you have friends in for the first time, 'Uncle' responded to what was in his guests' minds by saying, 'So there you have it . . . me in my last days . . . Soon be dead . . . Fair for the c
hase! Nothing left after that. So what's wrong with a bit of living in sin?'
'Uncle's' face had a knowing even rather handsome look and even a touch of beauty as he uttered these words. As he spoke Rostov was forcibly reminded of the many good things he had heard about this man from his father and the neighbours. From one end of the district to the other 'Uncle' was thought of as an eccentric but also the noblest and most selfless of men. He was brought in to abitrate in family disputes and chosen as executor. People told him secrets. He was invited to serve as a justice, and in other similar posts, but he had refused all public offices point-blank, spending autumn and spring out in the fields on his bay horse, winter indoors and summer stretched out in his overgrown garden.
'Why don't you work in the service, Uncle?'
'I used to once, but I gave it up. It doesn't suit me. Fair for the chase. Can't make head nor tail of it. May be all right for you - but it's beyond me. Now, take hunting - that's a different thing. Fair for the chase! Open that door there, will you?' he yelled. 'Why have you shut it?' A door at the end of the corridor (which 'Uncle' called a 'collidor', like the peasants) led to the 'huntsman's corner', as the room for the hunt servants was called. Bare feet padded along at some speed and an unseen hand opened the door into the huntsman's corner. Down the corridor came the distinct strains of a balalaika in the hands of an obvious expert. Natasha had been listening to this for some time, and now she went down the corridor to hear the music more clearly.
'That's Mitka, my coachman . . . Bought him a decent balalaika. Very fond of it,' said 'Uncle'. He had built up a little tradition whereby every time he came home from the chase he liked to hear Mitka playing the balalaika in the huntsman's corner. This music was dear to his heart.
'He's good, isn't he? A really good player,' said Nikolay, with a touch of instinctive scorn in his voice, as if he was embarrassed to admit that this kind of music appealed to him.