by Leo Tolstoy
and were very ugly. None of them arrested my attention. They talked in
shrill tones as they took off their cloaks and boas, and laughed as they
bustled about--probably at the fact that there were so many of them!
Etienne was a boy of fifteen, tall and plump, with a sharp face,
deep-set bluish eyes, and very large hands and feet for his age.
Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice.
Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my
opinion, a boy who could well bear being beaten with rods.
For a long time we confronted one another without speaking as we took
stock of each other. When the flood of dresses had swept past I made
shift to begin a conversation by asking him whether it had not been very
close in the carriage.
"I don't know," he answered indifferently. "I never ride inside it, for
it makes me feel sick directly, and Mamma knows that. Whenever we are
driving anywhere at night-time I always sit on the box. I like that, for
then one sees everything. Philip gives me the reins, and sometimes the
whip too, and then the people inside get a regular--well, you know," he
added with a significant gesture "It's splendid then."
"Master Etienne," said a footman, entering the hall, "Philip wishes me
to ask you where you put the whip."
"Where I put it? Why, I gave it back to him."
"But he says that you did not."
"Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!"
"No, sir, he says that you did not do that either. You had better
confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds. I suppose poor Philip
will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket." The footman
(who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair,
and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip's behalf.
Out of delicacy I pretended to notice nothing and turned aside, but the
other footmen present gathered round and looked approvingly at the old
servant.
"Hm--well, I DID tear it in pieces," at length confessed Etienne,
shrinking from further explanations. "However, I will pay for it. Did
you ever hear anything so absurd?" he added to me as he drew me towards
the drawing-room.
"But excuse me, sir; HOW are you going to pay for it? I know your ways
of paying. You have owed Maria Valericana twenty copecks these eight
months now, and you have owed me something for two years, and Peter
for--"
"Hold your tongue, will you!" shouted the young fellow, pale with rage,
"I shall report you for this."
"Oh, you may do so," said the footman. "Yet it is not fair, your
highness," he added, with a peculiar stress on the title, as he departed
with the ladies' wraps to the cloak-room. We ourselves entered the
salon.
"Quite right, footman," remarked someone approvingly from the ball
behind us.
Grandmamma had a peculiar way of employing, now the second person
singular, now the second person plural, in order to indicate her opinion
of people. When the young Prince Etienne went up to her she addressed
him as "YOU," and altogether looked at him with such an expression
of contempt that, had I been in his place, I should have been utterly
crestfallen. Etienne, however, was evidently not a boy of that sort,
for he not only took no notice of her reception of him, but none of her
person either. In fact, he bowed to the company at large in a way which,
though not graceful, was at least free from embarrassment.
Sonetchka now claimed my whole attention. I remember that, as I stood
in the salon with Etienne and Woloda, at a spot whence we could both
see and be seen by Sonetchka, I took great pleasure in talking very loud
(and all my utterances seemed to me both bold and comical) and glancing
towards the door of the drawing-room, but that, as soon as ever we
happened to move to another spot whence we could neither see nor be seen
by her, I became dumb, and thought the conversation had ceased to be
enjoyable. The rooms were now full of people--among them (as at all
children's parties) a number of elder children who wished to dance and
enjoy themselves very much, but who pretended to do everything merely in
order to give pleasure to the mistress of the house.
When the Iwins arrived I found that, instead of being as delighted as
usual to meet Seriosha, I felt a kind of vexation that he should see and
be seen by Sonetchka.
XXI -- BEFORE THE MAZURKA
"HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night," said Seriosha,
issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his pocket a brand new
pair of gloves. "I suppose it IS necessary to put on gloves?"
"Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves," I thought to myself.
"I must go upstairs and search about." Yet though I rummaged in every
drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green travelling mittens, and,
in another, a single lilac-coloured glove, a thing which could be of no
use to me, firstly, because it was very old and dirty, secondly, because
it was much too large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the
middle finger was wanting--Karl having long ago cut it off to wear over
a sore nail.
However, I put it on--not without some diffident contemplation of the
blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges round the
vacant space.
"If only Natalia Savishna had been here," I reflected, "we should
certainly have found some gloves. I can't go downstairs in this
condition. Yet, if they ask me why I am not dancing, what am I to say?
However, I can't remain here either, or they will be sending upstairs to
fetch me. What on earth am I to do?" and I wrung my hands.
"What are you up to here?" asked Woloda as he burst into the room. "Go
and engage a partner. The dancing will be beginning directly."
"Woloda," I said despairingly, as I showed him my hand with two fingers
thrust into a single finger of the dirty glove, "Woloda, you, never
thought of this."
"Of what?" he said impatiently. "Oh, of gloves," he added with a
careless glance at my hand. "That's nothing. We can ask Grandmamma what
she thinks about it," and without further ado he departed downstairs. I
felt a trifle relieved by the coolness with which he had met a situation
which seemed to me so grave, and hastened back to the drawing-room,
completely forgetful of the unfortunate glove which still adorned my
left hand.
Cautiously approaching Grandmamma's arm-chair, I asked her in a whisper:
"Grandmamma, what are we to do? We have no gloves."
"What, my love?"
"We have no gloves," I repeated, at the same time bending over towards
her and laying both hands on the arm of her chair.
"But what is that?" she cried as she caught hold of my left hand.
"Look, my dear!" she continued, turning to Madame Valakhin. "See how
smart this young man has made himself to dance with your daughter!"
As Grandmamma persisted in retaining hold of my hand and gazing with a
mock air of gravity and interrogation at all around her, curiosity was
soon aroused, an
d a general roar of laughter ensued.
I should have been infuriated at the thought that Seriosha was present
to see this, as I scowled with embarrassment and struggled hard to free
my hand, had it not been that somehow Sonetchka's laughter (and she was
laughing to such a degree that the tears were standing in her eyes
and the curls dancing about her lovely face) took away my feeling
of humiliation. I felt that her laughter was not satirical, but only
natural and free; so that, as we laughed together and looked at one
another, there seemed to begin a kind of sympathy between us. Instead
of turning out badly, therefore, the episode of the glove served only
to set me at my ease among the dreaded circle of guests, and to make
me cease to feel oppressed with shyness. The sufferings of shy people
proceed only from the doubts which they feel concerning the opinions
of their fellows. No sooner are those opinions expressed (whether
flattering or the reverse) than the agony disappears.
How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as my
vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How
charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How
gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how
naively she executed the jete assemble with her little feet!
In the fifth figure, when my partner had to leave me for the other
side and I, counting the beats, was getting ready to dance my solo, she
pursed her lips gravely and looked in another direction; but her fears
for me were groundless. Boldly I performed the chasse en avant and
chasse en arriere glissade, until, when it came to my turn to move
towards her and I, with a comic gesture, showed her the poor glove with
its crumpled fingers, she laughed heartily, and seemed to move her tiny
feet more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.
How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without
withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose with
her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I hear the
quadrille from "The Maids of the Danube" to which we danced that night.
The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when we went
to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome with shyness
and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my silence had lasted
so long that I began to be afraid that she would think me a stupid boy,
I decided at all hazards to counteract such a notion.
"Vous etes une habitante de Moscou?" I began, and, on receiving an
affirmative answer, continued. "Et moi, je n'ai encore jamais frequente
la capitale" (with a particular emphasis on the word "frequente"). Yet I
felt that, brilliant though this introduction might be as evidence of my
profound knowledge of the French language, I could not long keep up the
conversation in that manner. Our turn for dancing had not yet arrived,
and silence again ensued between us. I kept looking anxiously at her in
the hope both of discerning what impression I had produced and of her
coming to my aid.
"Where did you get that ridiculous glove of yours?" she asked me all of
a sudden, and the question afforded me immense satisfaction and relief.
I replied that the glove belonged to Karl Ivanitch, and then went on
to speak ironically of his appearance, and to describe how comical he
looked in his red cap, and how he and his green coat had once fallen
plump off a horse into a pond.
The quadrille was soon over. Yet why had I spoken ironically of poor
Karl Ivanitch? Should I, forsooth, have sunk in Sonetchka's esteem if,
on the contrary, I had spoken of him with the love and respect which I
undoubtedly bore him?
The quadrille ended, Sonetchka said, "Thank you," with as lovely an
expression on her face as though I had really conferred, upon her a
favour. I was delighted. In fact I hardly knew myself for joy and could
not think whence I derived such case and confidence and even daring.
"Nothing in the world can abash me now," I thought as I wandered
carelessly about the salon. "I am ready for anything."
Just then Seriosha came and requested me to be his vis-a-vis.
"Very well," I said. "I have no partner as yet, but I can soon find
one."
Glancing round the salon with a confident eye, I saw that every lady was
engaged save one--a tall girl standing near the drawing-room door. Yet a
grown-up young man was approaching her-probably for the same purpose as
myself! He was but two steps from her, while I was at the further end
of the salon. Doing a glissade over the polished floor, I covered the
intervening space, and in a brave, firm voice asked the favour of her
hand in the quadrille. Smiling with a protecting air, the young lady
accorded me her hand, and the tall young man was left without a partner.
I felt so conscious of my strength that I paid no attention to his
irritation, though I learnt later that he had asked somebody who the
awkward, untidy boy was who, had taken away his lady from him.
XXII -- THE MAZURKA
AFTERWARDS the same young man formed one of the first couple in a
mazurka. He sprang to his feet, took his partner's hand, and then,
instead of executing the pas de Basques which Mimi had taught us, glided
forward till he arrived at a corner of the room, stopped, divided his
feet, turned on his heels, and, with a spring, glided back again. I, who
had found no partner for this particular dance and was sitting on the
arm of Grandmamma's chair, thought to myself:
"What on earth is he doing? That is not what Mimi taught us. And there
are the Iwins and Etienne all dancing in the same way-without the pas de
Basques! Ah! and there is Woloda too! He too is adopting the new style,
and not so badly either. And there is Sonetchka, the lovely one! Yes,
there she comes!" I felt immensely happy at that moment.
The mazurka came to an end, and already some of the guests were saying
good-bye to Grandmamma. She was evidently tired, yet she assured them
that she felt vexed at their early departure. Servants were gliding
about with plates and trays among the dancers, and the musicians were
carelessly playing the same tune for about the thirteenth time in
succession, when the young lady whom I had danced with before, and who
was just about to join in another mazurka, caught sight of me, and, with
a kindly smile, led me to Sonetchka. And one of the innumerable Kornakoff
princesses, at the same time asking me, "Rose or Hortie?"
"Ah, so it's YOU!" said Grandmamma as she turned round in her armchair.
"Go and dance, then, my boy."
Although I would fain have taken refuge behind the armchair rather than
leave its shelter, I could not refuse; so I got up, said, "Rose," and
looked at Sonetchka. Before I had time to realise it, however, a hand in
a white glove laid itself on mine, and the Kornakoff girl stepped forth
with a pleased smile and evidently no suspicion that I was ignorant of
the steps of the dance. I only knew that the pas de Basques (the only
figure of it which I h
ad been taught) would be out of place. However,
the strains of the mazurka falling upon my ears, and imparting their
usual impulse to my acoustic nerves (which, in their turn, imparted
their usual impulse to my feet), I involuntarily, and to the amazement
of the spectators, began executing on tiptoe the sole (and fatal) pas
which I had been taught.
So long as we went straight ahead I kept fairly right, but when it came
to turning I saw that I must make preparations to arrest my course.
Accordingly, to avoid any appearance of awkwardness, I stopped short,
with the intention of imitating the "wheel about" which I had seen the
young man perform so neatly.
Unfortunately, just as I divided my feet and prepared to make a spring,
the Princess Kornakoff looked sharply round at my legs with such an
expression of stupefied amazement and curiosity that the glance undid
me. Instead of continuing to dance, I remained moving my legs up and
down on the same spot, in a sort of extraordinary fashion which bore
no relation whatever either to form or rhythm. At last I stopped
altogether. Every-one was looking at me--some with curiosity, some with
astonishment, some with disdain, and some with compassion, Grandmamma
alone seemed unmoved.
"You should not dance if you don't know the step," said Papa's angry
voice in my ear as, pushing me gently aside, he took my partner's hand,
completed the figures with her to the admiration of every one, and
finally led her back to, her place. The mazurka was at an end.
Ah me! What had I done to be punished so heavily?
*****