War and Peace

he old count went home, and Natásha and Pétya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday
they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.

Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone
in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed
before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltórn, giving tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A
moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been
found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine
toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.

He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.

The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed
in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with
tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up
to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.

“What’s this?” thought Nicholas. “Where’s that huntsman from?
He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.”

The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping
it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood
near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their
arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of
a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.

“That’s Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said
Nicholas’ groom.

Nicholas sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya to him, and rode at a
footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.

Nicholas dismounted, and with Natásha and Pétya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of
the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward
his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black,
but he probably was not even aware of it.

“What has happened?” asked Nicholas.

“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
of this?...” said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
imagining himself still speaking to his foe.

Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Pétya
to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’s,
hunting party was.

The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.

The facts were that Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and
were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs,
and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the
Rostóvs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had
chased.

Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilágin, with his usual absence
of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
enemy.

Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in
a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.

Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilágin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count’s
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilágin raised his beaver
cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the
man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone
else’s borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count
and invited him to draw his covert.

Natásha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly
greetings, she rode up to them. Ilágin lifted his beaver cap still
higher to Natásha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young
countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her
beauty, of which he had heard much.

To expiate his huntsman’s offense, Ilágin pressed the Rostóvs to
come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for
himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the
hunt, now doubled, moved on.

The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The hunt servants
fell into line. The masters rode together. “Uncle,” Rostóv, and
Ilágin kept stealthily glancing at one another’s dogs, trying not
to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to
their own borzois.

Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
red-spotted bitch on Ilágin’s leash, slender but with muscles like
steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of
the swiftness of Ilágin’s borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a
rival to his own Mílka.

In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin about the
year’s harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.

“A fine little bitch, that!” said he in a careless tone. “Is she
swift?”

“That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s after,”
answered Ilágin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, for
which, a year before, he had given a neighbor three families of house
serfs. “So in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of,
Count?” he went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And
considering it polite to return the young count’s compliment, Ilágin
looked at his borzois and picked out Mílka who attracted his attention
by her breadth. “That black-spotted one of yours is fine—well
shaped!” said he.

“Yes, she’s fast enough,” replied Nicholas, and thought: “If
only a full-grown hare would cross the field now I’d show you what
sort of borzoi she is,” and turning to his groom, he said he would
give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.

“I don’t understand,” continued Ilágin, “how some sportsmen can
be so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count,
I enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?” (he
again raised his cap to Natásha) “but as for counting skins and what
one takes, I don’t care about that.”

“Of course not!”

“Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so,
Count? For I consider that...”

“A-tu!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,
who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip
aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, “A-tu!” (This call and
the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)

“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we
must ride up.... Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing
in Erzá and “Uncle’s” red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had
a chance of pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they outdo
my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin
toward the hare.

“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who
had sighted the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and
whistled to Erzá.

“And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”

The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.

“How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each of your
borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I’ll look on!”

“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added,
involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes
he placed on this red borzoi. Natásha saw and felt the agitation the
two elderly men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself
excited by it.

The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off
on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the
gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.

“How is it pointing?” asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward
the whip who had sighted the hare.

But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed
downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that
were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt,
who had been moving slowly, shouted, “Stop!” calling in the hounds,
while the borzoi whips, with a cry of “A-tu!” galloped across the
field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilágin, Nicholas,
Natásha, and “Uncle” flew, reckless of where and how they went,
seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even
for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and
swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his
ears listening to the shouting and trampling that resounded from all
sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the
borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen his direction and
realized his danger, laid back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had
been lying in the stubble, but in front of him was the autumn sowing
where the ground was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had
sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue
him, but they had not gone far before Ilágin’s red-spotted Erzá
passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with terrible
swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had seized him, rolled
over like a ball. The hare arched his back and bounded off yet more
swiftly. From behind Erzá rushed the broad-haunched, black-spotted
Mílka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.

“Miláshka, dear!” rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked as if
Mílka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and
flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erzá reached him,
but when close to the hare’s scut paused as if measuring the distance,
so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.

“Erzá, darling!” Ilágin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erzá
did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have
seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the
winter rye and the stubble. Again Erzá and Mílka were abreast, running
like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but
it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not
overtake him so quickly.

“Rugáy, Rugáyushka! That’s it, come on!” came a third voice just
then, and “Uncle’s” red borzoi, straining and curving its back,
caught up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless
of the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off
the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois
surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd
of dogs. Only the delighted “Uncle” dismounted, and cut off a pad,
shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round
with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without
himself knowing whom to or what about. “That’s it, come on! That’s
a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as
the one-ruble borzois. That’s it, come on!” said he, panting and
looking wrathfully around as if he were abusing someone, as if they
were all his enemies and had insulted him, and only now had he at
last succeeded in justifying himself. “There are your thousand-ruble
ones.... That’s it, come on!...”

“Rugáy, here’s a pad for you!” he said, throwing down the
hare’s muddy pad. “You’ve deserved it, that’s it, come on!”

“She’d tired herself out, she’d run it down three times by
herself,” said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless
of whether he were heard or not.

“But what is there in running across it like that?” said Ilágin’s
groom.

“Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take
it,” Ilágin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop
and his excitement. At the same moment Natásha, without drawing
breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
everyone’s ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others
expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that she must
herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have
been amazed at it at any other time. “Uncle” himself twisted up the
hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse’s back as if by
that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not
wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The others all
followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much later were they able
to regain their former affectation of indifference. For a long time they
continued to look at red Rugáy who, his arched back spattered with
mud and clanking the ring of his leash, walked along just behind
“Uncle’s” horse with the serene air of a conqueror.

“Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!” his appearance seemed to
Nicholas to be saying.

When, much later, “Uncle” rode up to Nicholas and began talking
to him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, “Uncle”
deigned to speak to him.