Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?' she thought, and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second. 'Don't dare to think about it,' she said to herself, and sat down again smilingly beside 'Uncle,' begging him to play something more.
'Uncle' played another song and a valse; then after a pause he cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
As 'twas growing dark last night Fell the snow so soft and light...
'Uncle' sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natasha was in ecstasies over 'Uncle's' singing. She resolved to give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked 'Uncle' for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of the men.
Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. 'Uncle' wrapped Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.
'Good-by, dear niece,' his voice called out of the darkness--not the voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas growing dark last night.
In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a cheerful smell of smoke.
'What a darling Uncle is!' said Natasha, when they had come out onto the highroad.
'Yes,' returned Nicholas. 'You're not cold?'
'No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!' answered Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark last night--the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get and had at last caught.
'Got it?' said Nicholas.
'What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?' inquired Natasha.
They were fond of asking one another that question.
'I?' said Nicholas, trying to remember. 'Well, you see, first I thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... Well, and you?'
'I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No, nothing else.'
'I know, I expect you thought of him,' said Nicholas, smiling as Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
'No,' said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have liked 'Uncle.' 'And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How well Anisya carried herself, how well!'' And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. 'And do you know,' she suddenly said, 'I know that I shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now.'
'Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!' exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: 'How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive about together!'
'What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!' thought Natasha.
'Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!' she said, pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety darkness of the night.
CHAPTER VIII
Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which- spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them--he let himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a most profitable source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was--that (though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to
