“Natasha！ now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” called the voice of the countess. “Why are you sitting there so quietly, like conspirators？”
“Mamma, I don’t want to a bit！” said Natasha, but she got up as she said it.
None of them, not even Dimmler, who was not young, wanted to break off the conversation, and come out of the corner of the divan-room; but Natasha stood up; and Nikolay sat down to the clavichord. Standing, as she always did, in the middle of the room, and choosing the place where the resonance was greatest, Natasha began singing her mother’s favourite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung, and long before she sang again as she sang that evening. Count Ilya Andreitch listened to her singing from his study, where he was talking to Mitenka, and like a schoolboy in haste to finish his lesson and run out to play, he blundered in his orders to the steward, and at last paused, and Mitenka stood silent and smiling before him, listening too. Nikolay never took his eyes off his sister, and drew his breath when she did. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the vast difference between her and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be in ever so slight a degree fascinating like her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful, but mournful smile, and tears in her eyes, and now and then she shook her head. She, too, was thinking of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something terrible and unnatural in Natasha’s marrying Prince Andrey.
Dimmler, sitting by the countess, listened with closed eyes. “No, countess,” he said, at last, “that’s a European talent; she has no need of teaching： that softness, tenderness, strength…”
“Ah, I’m afraid for her, I’m afraid,” said the countess, not remembering with whom she was speaking. Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her being happy.
Natasha had not finished singing when fourteen-year-old Petya ran in great excitement into the room to announce the arrival of the mummers.
Natasha stopped abruptly.
“Idiot！” she screamed at her brother. She ran to a chair, sank into it, and broke into such violent sobbing that it was a long while before she could stop.
“It’s nothing, mamma, it’s nothing really, it’s all right; Petya startled me,” she said, trying to smile; but the tears still flowed, and the sobs still choked her.
The mummers—house-serfs dressed up as bears, Turks, tavern-keepers, and ladies—awe-inspiring or comic figures, at first huddled shyly together in the vestibule, bringing in with them the freshness of the cold outside, and a feeling of gaiety. Then, hiding behind one another, they crowded together in the big hall; and at first with constraint, but afterwards with more liveliness and unanimity, they started singing songs, and performing dances, and songs with dancing, and playing Christmas games. The countess after identifying them, and laughing at their costumes, went away to the drawing-room. Count Ilya Andreitch sat with a beaming smile in the big hall, praising their performances. The young people had disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared in the hall among the other mummers an old lady in a crinoline—this was Nikolay. Petya was a Turkish lady, Dimmler was a clown, Natasha a hussar, and Sonya a Circassian with eyebrows and moustaches smudged with burnt cork.
After those of the household who were not dressed up had expressed condescending wonder and approval, and had failed to recognise them, the young people began to think their costumes so good that they must display them to some one else.
Nikolay, who wanted to drive them all in his sledge, as the road was in capital condition, proposed to drive to their so-called uncle’s, taking about a dozen of the house-serfs in their mummer-dress with them.
“No; why should you disturb the old fellow？” said the countess. “Besides you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, let it be to the Melyukovs’.”
Madame Melyukov was a widow with a family of children of various ages, and a number of tutors and governesses living in her house, four versts from the Rostovs’.
“That’s a good idea, my love,” the old count assented, beginning to be aroused. “Only let me dress up and I’ll go with you. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.”
But the countess would not agree to the count’s going; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Luisa Ivanovna （Madame Schoss） would go with them, the young ladies might go to Madame Melyukov’s. Sonya, usually so shy and reticent, was more urgent than any in persuading Luisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
Sonya’s disguise was the best of all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming to her. Every one told her she looked very pretty, and she was in a mood of eager energy unlike her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be sealed, and in her masculine attire she seemed quite another person. Luisa Ivanovna consented to go; and half an hour later four sledges with bells drove up to the steps, their runners crunching, with a clanging sound, over the frozen snow.
Natasha was foremost in setting the tone of holiday gaiety; and that gaiety, reflected from one to another, grew wilder and wilder, and reached its climax when they all went out into the frost, and talking, and calling to one another, laughing and shouting, got into the sledges.