《War And Peace》Book7 CHAPTER VI

《War And Peace》　Book7 　CHAPTER VI
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

THE OLD COUNT went home. Natasha and Petya promised to follow immediately.
The hunting party went on further as it was still early. In the middle of the
day they set the hounds into a ravine covered with thickly growing young copse.
Nikolay, standing on the stubble land above, could see all his party.

Facing Nikolay on the opposite side was a field of GREen corn, and there
stood his huntsman, alone in a hollow behind a nut bush. As soon as they loosed
the hounds, Nikolay heard a hound he knew—Voltorn—give tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined him, pausing now and then, and taking up the cry again. A
moment later he heard from the ravine the cry that they were on the scent of a
fox, and all the pack joining together made for the opening towards the green
corn away from Nikolay.

He saw the whippers-in in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
overgrown ravine; he could see the dogs even, and was every instant expecting
the fox to come into sight on the further side among the GREen corn.

The huntsman standing in the hollow started off and let his dogs go, and
Nikolay saw the red, uncouth-looking fox hurrying along close to the ground,
with its bushy tail, through the GREen corn. The dogs bore down on it. And now
they were getting close, and now the fox was beginning to wind in circles
between them, making the circles more and more rapidly, and sweeping its bushy
brush around it, when all of a sudden a strange white dog flew down upon it, and
was followed by a black one, and everything was confusion, and the dogs formed a
star-shaped figure round it, scarcely moving, with their heads together, and
their tails out. Two huntsmen galloped down to the dogs; one in a red cap, the
other, a stranger, in a green coat.

“What's the meaning of it?” wondered Nikolay. “Where did that huntsman spring
from? That's not uncle's man.”

The huntsmen got the fox, and remained a long while standing on foot there,
without hanging the fox on the saddle.

He could see the horses with their snaffles jutting up standing close by the
huntsmen, and the dogs lying down. The huntsmen were waving their arms and doing
something with the fox. A horn was sounded—the signal aGREed upon in case of a
dispute.

“That's Ilagin's huntsman getting up a row of some sort with our Ivan,” said
Nikolay's groom.

Nikolay sent the groom to call his sister and Petya to come to him, and rode
at a walking pace towards the spot where the whippers-in were getting the hounds
together. Several of the party galloped to the scene of the squabble.

Nikolay dismounted, and, with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden up, he stood
by the hounds waiting to hear how the difficulty was settled. The huntsman who
had been quarrelling came riding out of the bushes with the fox on the crupper,
and rode towards his young master. He took off his cap a long way off and tried
as he came up to speak respectfully. But he was pale and gasping for breath, and
his face was wrathful. One of his eyes was blackened, but he was probably not
aware of it.

“What was the matter over there?” asked Nikolay.

“Why, he was going to kill the fox right under our hounds' noses! And my
bitch it was—the mouse-coloured one—that had got hold of it. You can go and have
me up for it! Snatching hold of the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is
on my saddle. Is it a taste of this you want?” said the huntsman, pointing to
his hunting-knife and apparently imagining that he was still talking to his
enemy.

Nikolay did not waste words on the man, but asking his sister and Petya to
wait for him, rode over to where the hounds and the men of the enemy, Ilagin,
were gathered together.

The victorious huntsman rode off to join his fellows, and there, the centre
of a sympathetic and inquisitive crowd, he recounted his exploit.

The point was that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had some quarrel and were
engaged in a lawsuit, was hunting over places that by old custom belonged to the
Rostovs, and now, as though of design, had sent his men to the ravine where the
Rostovs were, and had allowed his man to snatch a fox under a stranger's
dogs.

Nikolay had never seen Ilagin, but he had heard of the quarrelsomeness and
obstinacy of their neighbour; and rushing, as he always did, to an extreme in
his judgments and feelings, he cordially detested him, and looked upon him as
his bitterest foe. Excited and angry, he rode up to him now, grasping his whip
in his hand, fully prepared to take the most energetic and desperate measures in
dealing with the enemy.

He had scarcely ridden beyond the ridge of the copse when he saw a stout
gentleman in a beaver cap riding towards him on a handsome raven horse,
accompanied by two grooms.

Instead of an enemy Nikolay found in Ilagin a courteous gentleman of imposing
appearance, who was particularly anxious to make the young count's acquaintance.
Ilagin took off his beaver cap as he approached Rostov, and said that he GREatly
regretted what had occurred, that he would have the man punished, that he begged
the count to let them be better acquainted, and offered him the use of his
preserves for hunting.

Natasha had ridden up not far behind her brother, in some excitement, fearing
he might do something awful. Seeing that the opponents were exchanging affable
GREetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver cap higher than ever to
Natasha, and, smiling agreeably, said that the countess was indeed a Diana both
in her passion for the chase and her beauty, of which he had heard so
much.

Ilagin, to efface the impression of his huntsman's crime, insisted on Rostov
coming to his upland a verst away, which he preserved for his own shooting, and
described as teeming with hares. Nikolay aGREed, and the whole party, its
numbers now doubled, moved on. They had to ride through the fields to get there.
The huntsmen moved in a line, and the gentry rode together. The uncle, Rostov,
and Ilagin glanced stealthily at each other's dogs, trying not to be observed by
the others, and looking uneasily for rivals likely to excel their own
dogs.

Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small thoroughbred,
slender, black and tan bitch of Ilagin's, with muscles like steel, a delicate
nose, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the sporting qualities of
Ilagin's dogs, and in that handsome bitch he saw a rival of his Milka.

In the middle of a sedate conversation about the crops of the year, started
by Ilagin, Nikolay pointed out the black and tan bitch.

“You have a fine bitch there!” he said, in a careless tone. “Is she
clever?”

“That one? Yes, she's a good beast—she can catch a hare,” Ilagin said
indifferently of his black and tan Yerza, a bitch for whom he had a year before
given a neighbour three families of house-serfs. “So they don't brag of their
thrashing, count,” he went on, taking up their previous conversation. And
feeling it only polite to repay the young count's compliment, Ilagin scanned his
dogs, and pitched on Milka, whose broad back caught his eye.

“That's a good black and tan you have there—a fine one!” he said.

“Yes, she's all right, she can run,” answered Nikolay. “Oh, if only a good
big hare would run into the field, I would show you what she's like!” he
thought, and turning to his groom, he said he would give a rouble to any one who
would unearth a hare.

“I can't understand,” Ilagin went on, “how it is other sportsmen are so
envious over game and dogs. I will tell you for myself, count. I enjoy hunting,
as you know; the chase in such company…what could be more delightful” (he doffed
his beaver cap again to Natasha); “but this reckoning up of the skins one has
carried off—I don't care about that.”

“Oh no!”

“Nor could I be chagrined at my dog's being outdone by another man's—all I
care about is the chase itself, eh, count? And so I consider…”

“Oh,…ho…ho,” sounded at that moment in a prolonged call from one of the
grooms. He was standing on a knoll in the stubble with his whip held up, and he
called once more, “O…ho…aho!” (This call, and the lifted whip, meant that he saw
a hare squatting before him.)

“Ah, he has started a hare, I fancy,” said Ilagin carelessly. “Well, let us
course it, count!”

“Yes, we must…but what do you say, together?” answered Nikolay, looking
intently at Yerza and the uncle's red Rugay, the two rivals against whom he had
never before had a chance of putting his dogs. “What if they outdo my Milka from
the first?” he thought, riding by the uncle and Ilagin towards the hare.

“Is it full-grown?” asked Ilagin, going up to the groom who had started it,
and looking about him with some excitement, as he whistled to his Yerza.… “And
you, Mihail Nikanoritch?” he said to the uncle.

The uncle rode on, looking sullen.

“What's the use of my competing with you? Why, your dogs—you have paid a
village for each of them; they're worth thousands. You try yours against each
other, and I'll look on!”

“Rugay! Hey, hey,” he shouted. “Rugayushka!” he added, involuntarily
expressing his tenderness, and the hope he put in the red dog by this
affectionate diminutive. Natasha saw and felt the emotion concealed by the two
elderly men and by her brother, and was herself excited by it. The groom on the
knoll was standing with his whip lifted; the gentlemen rode up to him at a
walking pace; the pack were on the rim of the horizon, moving away from the
hare; the rest of the hunting party too were riding away. Everything was done
slowly and deliberately.

“Which way is its head?” asked Nikolay, after riding a hundred paces towards
the groom. But before the groom had time to answer, the hare, who had been
sniffing in the ground the frost coming next morning, leapt up from its
squatting posture. The pack of hounds on leashes flew baying downhill after the
hare; the harriers, who were not on leash, rushed from all sides towards the
hounds or after the hare. The whippers-in, who had been moving so deliberately,
galloped over the country getting the dogs together, with shouts of “stop!”
while the huntsmen directed their course with shouts of “o … o … ahoy!” Nikolay,
Natasha, and the uncle and Ilagin, who had been hitherto so composed, flew
ahead, reckless of how or where they went, seeing nothing but the dogs and the
hare, and afraid of nothing but losing sight for an instant of the course. The
hare turned out to be a fleet and strong one. When he jumped up he did not at
once race off, but cocked up his ears, listening to the shouts and tramp of
hoofs, that came from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds not very
swiftly, letting the dogs gain on him, but at last choosing his direction, and
grasping his danger, he put his ears back, and dashed off at full speed. He had
been crouching in the stubble, but the GREen field was in front of him, and
there it was marshy ground. The two dogs of the groom who had started him were
the nearest and the first to be on the scent after him. But they had not got
near him, when Ilagin's black and tan Yerza flew ahead of them, got within a
yard, pounced on him with fearful swiftness, aiming at the hare's tail, and
rolled over, thinking she had hold of him. The hare arched his back, and bounded
off more nimbly than ever. The broad-backed, black and tan Milka flew ahead of
Yerza, and began rapidly gaining on the hare.

“Milashka! little mother!” Nikolay shouted triumphantly. Milka seemed on the
point of pouncing on the hare, but she overtook him and flew beyond. The hare
doubled back. Again the graceful Yerza dashed at him, and kept close to the
hare's tail, as though measuring the distance, so as not to miss getting hold of
the hare, by the haunch this time.

“Yerzinka, little sister!” wailed Ilagin, in a voice unlike his own. Yerza
did not heed his appeals. At the very moment when she seemed about to seize the
hare, he doubled and darted away to the ditch between the stubble and the GREen
field. Again Yerza and Milka, running side by side, like a pair of horses, flew
after the hare; the hare was better off in the ditch, the dogs could not gain on
him so quickly.

“Rugay! Rugayushka! Forward—quick march,” another voice shouted this time.
And Rugay, the uncle's red, broad-shouldered dog, stretching out and curving his
back, caught up the two foremost dogs, pushed ahead of them, flung himself with
complete self-abandonment right on the hare, turned him out of the ditch into
the GREen field, flung himself still more viciously on him once more, sinking up
to his knees in the swampy ground, and all that could be seen was the dog
rolling over with the hare, covering his back with mud. The dogs formed a
star-shaped figure round him. A moment later all the party pulled their horses
up round the crowding dogs. The uncle alone dismounted in a rapture of delight,
and cutting off the feet, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, he looked
about him, his eyes restless with excitement, and his hands and legs moving
nervously. He went on talking, regardless of what or to whom he spoke. “That's
something like, quick march … there's a dog for you … he outstripped them all …
if they cost a thousand or they cost a rouble … forward, quick march, and no
mistake!” he kept saying, panting and looking wrathfully about him, as though he
were abusing some one, as though they had all been his enemies, had insulted
him, and he had only now at last succeeded in paying them out. “So much for your
thousand rouble dogs—forward, quick march! Rugay, here's the foot,” he said,
dropping the dog the hare's muddy foot, which he had just cut off; “you've
deserved it—forward, quick march!”

“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.