War And Peace

While the couples were taking up their places and the band tuned up, Pierre sat down with his little lady. Natasha’s happiness was complete. She was going to dance with a grown-up and with someone who had just come home from abroad. She sat there for all to see and talked to him like a grown-up lady. In one hand she held a fan, which a lady had given her to hold. Posing, like a real society lady – heaven knows where and when she learnt all this – she spoke to her champion with much fluttering of the fan and many a glance over it.

‘What is she doing? Just look at her!’ said the old countess, striding across the hall and pointing to Natasha. Her daughter blushed a little and gave a laugh.

‘Well, Mama? Why are you looking at me like that? What’s so surprising?’

Half-way through the third écossaise there was a scraping of chairs in the sitting-room, where the count and Marya Dmitriyevna had been playing cards with the more distinguished and older guests, and most of them stood up to stretch after sitting for so long, before putting away their pocket-books and purses and walking through to the ballroom. Marya Dmitriyevna and the count led the way, both looking very jolly. With flamboyant politeness and mincing like a ballet-dancer, the count crooked his arm and offered it to Marya Dmitriyevna. Then he drew himself up, a dashing figure with a clever smile on his face, and as the écossaise came to an end he clapped his hands to the gallery musicians and called up to the leader, ‘Semyon! Can you play a Daniel Cooper?’ This had been his favourite dance since the days of his youth, though properly speaking the Daniel Cooper was one movement in the anglaise.³³

‘Watch Papa dance!’ Natasha shouted to the whole ballroom, completely forgetting that her partner was a grown-up, and her laughter rang through the room as her curly head went down to her knees. Everyone was indeed enjoying the sight of the jolly old gentleman with his rather taller partner, the majestic Marya Dmitriyevna, as he linked arms with her to the rhythm of the music, put back his shoulders, tapped the floor with his turned-out toes, beaming ever more benevolently at his audience and whetting their appetite for what was to come. By the time the band struck up with the rousing strains of the Daniel Cooper, a merry country dance in all but name, every doorway into the ballroom had become filled with the smiling faces of servants, men on one side and women on the other, as they piled in to watch the master enjoying himself.

In one doorway stood the old nurse applauding the master in the traditional peasant manner, calling him ‘Our little father!’ and ‘Our eagle!’³⁴

The count was a good dancer and he knew it, but his lady couldn’t dance at all, and didn’t want to. Her great big body stood stiffly, and her sturdy arms dangled (she had handed her evening-bag to the countess). The only thing about her that did any dancing was her face, a nice mixture of grimness and beauty. Whereas the count performed with the whole of his rotund form, Marya Dmitriyevna did so with nothing more than a broadening smile and a slight quivering of the nose. The count may have enchanted the audience with his ever-increasing energy, his amazingly nimble and gentle prancing and capering, but Marya Dmitriyevna made no less impact with a mere twitch of the shoulders or the curving of an arm as they turned or halted to mark time, and her contribution was greatly admired, in view of her stout figure and legendary dourness. Their dancing became more and more hectic. The opposite couple couldn’t make any impression, nor did they try to. All eyes were on the count and Marya Dmitriyevna. Natasha tugged at every sleeve and gown, urging everyone to watch Papa dancing, though that’s what they were already doing. In any brief pauses the count gasped for breath and waved to the band, shouting to them to speed things up. Faster and faster he whirled, faster and nimbler than ever, rising on tiptoes, crashing down on his heels, swirling around his partner and finally swinging her back into her place with one last flourish and a leg kicked up neatly behind him. Now he bowed a perspiring head, beamed at the company and gave a huge sweep of his right arm to thunderous applause and much laughter, especially from Natasha. Both partners stood there, getting their breath back and mopping their faces with fine cambric handkerchiefs.

‘That’s the way we danced in our day, my dear,’ said the count.

‘Good for Daniel Cooper!’ said Marya Dmitriyevna, taking a long, deep breath and tucking back her sleeves.

CHAPTER 18