| 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. |
