【有声英语文学名著】战争与和平 Book 7（3）

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The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed¹ an earth saturated² by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs³ were beginning to scatter⁴, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent⁵ young sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were so jaded⁶ that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided⁷ to give them a three days’ rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove⁸ where there was an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast⁹ and it began to thaw¹⁰. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing¹¹ gown, looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic¹² particles of drizzling¹³ mist. The bare twigs¹⁴ in the garden were hung with transparent¹⁵ drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened¹⁶ like poppy seed and at a short distance merged¹⁷ into the dull, moist veil of mist. Nikolai went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched her hind¹⁸ legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching¹⁹ sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.

“O-hoy!” came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman’s call which unites the deepest bass²⁰ with the shrillest tenor²¹, and round the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long bent²² whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed²³ his Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive to his master. Nikolai knew that this Daniel, disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf and huntsman.

“Daniel!” Nikolai said timidly, conscious at the sight of the weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that irresistible²⁴ passion for sport which makes a man forget all his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.

“What orders, your excellency?” said the huntsman in his deep bass, deep as a proto-deacon’s and hoarse²⁵ with hallooing — and two flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who was silent. “Can you resist it?” those eyes seemed to be asking.

“It’s a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop²⁶, eh?” asked Nikolai, scratching Milka behind the ears.

Daniel did not answer, but winked²⁷ instead.

“I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen,” his bass boomed out after a minute’s pause. “He says she’s moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. They were howling there.” (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a mile and a half from the house.)

“We ought to go, don’t you think so?” said Nikolai. “Come to me with Uvarka.”

“As you please.”

“Then put off feeding them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing²⁸ in Nikolai’ big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for fear of breaking something in the master’s apartment, and he hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.

Having finished his inquiries²⁹ and extorted³⁰ from Daniel an opinion that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nikolai ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse’s big shawl wrapped round her. Petya ran in at the same time.

“You are going?” asked Natasha. “I knew you would! Sonya said you wouldn’t go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you couldn’t help going.”

“Yes, we are going,” replied Nikolai reluctantly, for today, as he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and Petya. “We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you.”

“You know it is my greatest pleasure,” said Natasha. “It’s not fair; you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said nothing to us about it.”

“‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’— we’ll go!” shouted Petya.

“But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nikolai to Natasha.

“Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natasha decisively. “Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs,” she added to the huntsman.

It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper³¹ to be in a room at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict³² any accidental injury on the young lady.

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