Chapter 7

“She wore herself out—ran it down three times all alone,” Nikolay was saying, listening to no one, and heedless whether he were heard or not. “To be sure, cutting in sideways like that!” Ilagin’s groom was saying. “Why, when it had been missed like that, and once down, any yard-dog could catch it of course,” said Ilagin, at the same moment, red and breathless from the gallop and the excitement. At the same time Natasha, without taking breath, gave vent to her delight and excitement in a shriek so shrill that it set every one’s ears tingling. In that shriek she expressed just what the others were expressing by talking all at once. And her shriek was so strange that she must have been ashamed of that wild scream, and the others must have been surprised at it at any other time. The uncle himself twisted up the hare, flung him neatly and smartly across his horse’s back, seeming to reproach them all by this gesture, and with an air of not caring to speak to any one, he mounted his bay and rode away. All but he, dispirited and disappointed, rode on, and it was some time before they could recover their previous affectation of indifference. For a long time after they stared at the red dog, Rugay, who with his round back spattered with mud, and clinking the rings of his leash, walked with the serene air of a conqueror behind the uncle’s horse. “I’m like all the rest till it’s a question of coursing a hare; but then you had better look out!” was what Nikolay fancied the dog’s air expressed. When the uncle rode up to Nikolay a good deal later, and addressed a remark to him, he felt flattered at the uncle’s deigning to speak to him after what had happened. Chapter 7 WHEN ILAGIN TOOK LEAVE of them in the evening, Nikolay found himself so great a distance from home that he accepted the uncle’s invitation to stop hunting and to stay the night at the uncle’s little place, Mihailovka. “And if you all come to me—forward, quick march!” said the uncle, “it would be even better; you see, the weather’s damp, you could rest, and the little countess could be driven back in a trap.” The invitation was accepted; a huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a trap, and Nikolay, Natasha, and Petya rode to the uncle’s house. Five men servants—little and big—ran out on to the front steps to meet their master. Dozens of women, old and big and little, popped out at the back entrance to have a look at the huntsmen as they arrived. The presence of Natasha—a woman, a lady, on horseback—excited the curiosity of the uncle’s house-serfs to such a pitch that many of them went up to her, stared her in the face, and, unrestrained by her presence, made remarks about her, as though she were some prodigy on show, not a human being, and not capable of hearing and understanding what was said about her. “Arinka, look-ée, she sits sideways! Sits on so, while her skirt flies about.… And look at the little horn!” “Sakes alive! and the knife too.…” “A regular Tatar woman!”