‘Well, really, my dear, that was a splendid bit of fun,’ said the count, and noticing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. ‘That policeman. What a picture! I can just see him.’
And acting out the role of a policeman waving his arms, he boomed out his rich bass laughter, his whole body shaking with mirth, as people do after a good meal, and more so after a good drink. ‘Oh, please, you must come to dinner with us,’ he said.
CHAPTER 8
For a while nobody spoke. The countess was smiling pleasantly at her lady guest without disguising the fact that she would not be greatly put out if she were to get up and go. The visiting daughter was fidgeting with her gown and looking inquiringly at her mother when suddenly they all heard a racket from the next room as several boys and girls ran to the door, bumping into a chair and knocking it over with a bang, and a girl of thirteen dashed in with something tucked into her short muslin frock. She came to a halt in the middle of the room, evidently having misjudged everything, gone too far and burst in on them. And there behind her in the doorway stood a student with a crimson collar on his coat, a young guards officer, a fifteen-year-old girl and a fat little boy with rosy cheeks, dressed in a child’s smock.
The count jumped up, swayed a little from one side to the other, held his arms out wide and put them right round the little girl who had run in.
‘Here she is!’ he cried, laughing. ‘A happy name-day, darling!’
‘My dear child, there is a time for everything,’ said the countess, pretending to be firm. ‘You do spoil that child, Ilya,’ she added to her husband.
‘Good morning, my dear. Many happy returns,’ said the visitor. ‘What a delightful child!’ she added, turning to the mother.
The dark-eyed young girl was not pretty – her mouth was too big – but she was full of life, and with her childish uncovered shoulders and her bodice slipping down from all that running, her curly black hair tossed back, her slender bare arms and little legs in lace-trimmed drawers and open slippers on her feet, she was at that charming age when the girl is no longer a child, and the child is not yet a young girl. She wriggled free from her father, ran across to her mother, ignoring her rebuke, hid her flushed face in her mother’s lace veil and laughed. She was laughing at nothing and she burbled something about her doll, pulling it out from the folds of her frock.
‘See? . . . Dolly . . . Mimi . . . You see?’ And Natasha found the whole thing irresistibly amusing. She fell upon her mother, and laughed and laughed, so loudly that everybody joined in, even the starchy visitor – they couldn’t help it.
‘Come on, off you go, you and your little monster!’ said her mother, pushing her daughter away and pretending to be annoyed. ‘This is my younger daughter,’ she said to the visitor. Natasha, looked out from her mother’s lace veil for a minute, peeped up at her through tears of laughter, and buried her face again.
The visiting lady, compelled to admire this domestic scene, felt obliged to take some part in it. She turned to Natasha and said, ‘Tell me, my dear – who is Mimi? Is she your baby?’ Natasha didn’t like this patronizing baby-talk from the visiting lady. She stared at her morosely and said nothing.
By now all the younger generation – Boris, the officer, Anna Mikhaylovna’s son; Nikolay, the count’s eldest son, a student; Sonya, the count’s niece, fifteen years old; and little Petya, his younger son – had spread themselves across the drawing-room, and were all too obviously trying to contain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and glee which still showed in their features. Out there in the back rooms where they had been before they had come rushing in, the conversation had obviously been much more fun than the small-talk in here, nothing but scandal, the weather and Countess Apraksin. Once or twice they glanced at each another and could hardly contain their laughter.