by Leo Tolstoy
Two minutes later my sledge scraped over the boards before the clean-swept entrance of the station house, and Ignát turned to me his snow-covered merry face, smelling of frost.
‘We’ve got you here after all, sir!’ he said.
1 A tróyka is a three-horse sledge, or, more correctly, a team of three horses.
2 An artél was a voluntary association of workers, which had a manager, contracted as a unit, and divided its earnings among its members.
3 The women take their clothes to rinse in lakes or streams, where they beat them with wooden beetles.
4 At that time about sixpence.
TWO HUSSARS
A STORY
‘Jomini and Jomini –
Not half a word of vodka.’ – D. DAVÝDOV.1
1 From The Song of an old Hussar, in which the great days of the past are contrasted with the trivial present. D. V. Davýdov is referred to in War and Peace.
EARLY in the nineteenth century, when there were as yet no railways or macadamized roads, no gaslight, no stearine candles, no low couches with sprung cushions, no unvarnished furniture, no disillusioned youths with eye-glasses, no liberalizing women philosophers, nor any charming dames aux camélias of whom there are so many in our times, in those naïve days, when leaving Moscow for Petersburg in a coach or carriage provided with a kitchenful of home-made provisions one travelled for eight days along a soft, dusty, or muddy road and believed in chopped cutlets, sledge-bells, and plain rolls; when in the long autumn evenings the tallow candles, around which family groups of twenty or thirty people gathered, had to be snuffed; when ball-rooms were illuminated by candelabra with wax or spermaceti candles, when furniture was arranged symmetrically, when our fathers were still young and proved it not only by the absence of wrinkles and grey hair but by fighting duels for the sake of a woman and rushing from the opposite corner of a room to pick up a bit of a handkerchief purposely or accidentally dropped; when our mothers wore short-waisted dresses and enormous sleeves and decided family affairs by drawing lots, when the charming dames aux camélias hid from the light of day – in those naïve days of Masonic lodges,1 Martinists,2 and Tugendbunds,3 the days of Milorádoviches4 and Davýdovs5 and Púshkins – a meeting of landed proprietors was held in the Government town of K—, and the nobility elections6 were being concluded.
I
‘WELL, never mind, the saloon will do,’ said a young officer in a fur cloak and hussar’s cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K—.
‘The assembly, your Excellency, is enormous,’ said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the orderly that the hussar’s name was Count Túrbin, and therefore addressed him as ‘your Excellency’.
‘The proprietress of Afrémovo with her daughters has said she is leaving this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go,’ continued the boots, stepping softly before the count along the passage and continually looking round.
In the general saloon at a little table under the dingy full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander the First, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, while at another side of the room sat some travellers – tradesmen in blue, fur-lined cloaks.
Entering the room and calling in Blücher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoar-frost, called for vodka, sat down at the table in his blue satin Cossack jacket, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen there.
The handsome open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour and they offered him a glass of champagne. The count first drank a glass of vodka and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.
‘Sáshka!’ shouted the count. ‘Give him something!’
The driver went out with Sáshka but came back again with the money in his hand.
‘Look here, y’r ‘xcelence, haven’t I done my very best for y’r honour? Didn’t you promise me half a ruble, and he’s only given me a quarter!’
‘Give him a ruble, Sáshka.’
Sáshka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver’s feet.
‘He’s had enough!’ he said, in a bass voice. ‘And besides, I have no more money.’
The count drew from his pocket-book the two five-ruble notes which were all it contained, and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.
‘I’ve run it pretty close!’ said the count. ‘These are my last five rubles.’
‘Real hussar fashion, Count,’ said one of the nobles who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about his legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. ‘Are you staying here some time, Count?’
‘I must get some money. I shouldn’t have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this accursed pub.’
‘Permit me, Count,’ said the cavalryman. ‘Will you not join me? My room is No. 7 …. If you do not mind, just for the night. And then you’ll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the Maréchal de la Noblesse is giving a ball to-night. You would make him very happy by going.’
‘Yes, Count, do stay,’ said another, a handsome young man. ‘You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years – the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!’
‘Sáshka, get my clean linen ready. I am going to the bath,’7 said the count, rising, ‘and from there perhaps I may look in at the Marshal’s.’
Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him to which the latter replied with a smile, ‘That can all be arranged,’ he went out.8
‘So I’ll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow,’ shouted the count from the passage.
‘Please do, I shall be most happy,’ replied the cavalryman, running to the door. ‘No. 7 – don’t forget.’
When the count’s footsteps could no longer be heard the cavalryman returned to his place and sitting close to one of the group – a Government official – and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, said:
‘It is the very man, you know!’
‘No!’
‘I tell you it is! It is the very same duellist hussar – the famous Túrbin. He knew me – I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyáni9 for remounts. There was one thing he and I did together.… He’s a fine fellow, eh?’
‘A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner! Doesn’t show a grain of – what d’you call it?’ answered the handsome young man. ‘How quickly we became intimate.… He’s not more than twenty-five, is he?’
‘Oh no, that’s what he looks but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who abducted Migúnova? He. It was he who killed Sáblin. It was he who dropped Matnëv out of the window by his legs. It was he who won three hundred thousand rubles from Prince Néstorov. He is a regular dare-devil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar – a real jewel. The rumours that are afloat about us are nothing to the reality – if anyone knew what a true hussar is! Ah yes, those were times!’
And the cavalryman told his interlocutor of such a spree with the count in Lebedyáni as not only never had, but never even could have, taken place.
It could not have done so, first because he had never seen the count till that day and had left the army two years before the count entered it; and secondly because the cavalryman had never really served in the cavalry at all, but had for four years been the humblest of cadets in the Belévski regiment, and retired as soon as ever he became ensign. But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyáni where he squandered seven hundred rubles with some officers who were there buying remounts. He had even gone so far as to have an uhlan uniform made with orange facings
, meaning to enter an uhlan regiment. This desire to enter the cavalry, and the three weeks spent with the remount officers at Lebedyáni, remained the brightest and happiest memories of his life, so he transformed the desire first into a reality and then into a reminiscence and came to believe firmly in his past as a cavalry officer – all of which did not prevent his being, as to gentleness and honesty, a most worthy man.
‘Yes, those who have never served in the cavalry will never understand us fellows.’
He sat astride a chair and thrusting out his lower jaw began to speak in a bass voice. ‘You ride at the head of your squadron, not a horse but the devil incarnate prancing about under you, and you just sit in devil-may-care style. The squadron commander rides up to review: “Lieutenant,” he says. “We can’t get on without you – please lead the squadron to parade.” “All right,” you say, and there you are: you turn round, shout to your moustached fellows.… Ah, devil take it, those were times!’
The count returned from the bath-house very red and with wet hair, and went straight to No. 7, where the cavalryman was already sitting in his dressing-gown smoking a pipe and considering with pleasure, and not without some apprehension, the happiness that had befallen him of sharing a room with the celebrated Túrbin. ‘Now suppose,’ he thought, ‘that he suddenly takes me, strips me naked, drives me to the town gates and sets me in the snow, or … tars me, or simply.… But no,’ he consoled himself, ‘he wouldn’t do that to a comrade.’
‘Sáshka, feed Blücher!’ shouted the count.
Sáshka, who had taken a tumbler of vodka to refresh himself after the journey and was decidedly tipsy, came in.
‘What, already! You’ve been drinking, you rascal!… Feed Blücher!’
‘He won’t starve anyway: see how sleek he is!’ answered Sáshka, stroking the dog.
‘Silence! Be off and feed him!’
‘You want the dog to be fed, but when a man drinks a glass you reproach him.’
‘Hey! I’ll thrash you!’ shouted the count in a voice that made the window-panes rattle and even frightened the cavalryman a bit.
‘You should ask if Sáshka has had a bite to-day! Yes, beat me if you think more of a dog than of a man,’ muttered Sáshka.
But here he received such a terrible blow in the face from the count’s fist that he fell, knocked his head against the partition, and clutching his nose fled from the room and fell on a settee in the passage.
‘He’s knocked my teeth out,’ grunted Sáshka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand while with the other he scratched the back of Blücher, who was licking himself. ‘He’s knocked my teeth out, Blüchy, but still he’s my count and I’d go through fire for him – I would! Because he – is my count. Do you understand, Blüchy? Want your dinner, eh?’
After lying still for a while he rose, fed the dog, and then, almost sobered, went in to wait on his count and to offer him some tea.
‘I shall really feel hurt,’ the cavalryman was saying meekly, as he stood before the count who was lying on the other’s bed with his legs up against the partition. ‘You see I also am an old army man and, if I may say so, a comrade. Why should you borrow from anyone else when I shall be delighted to lend you a couple of hundred rubles? I haven’t got them just now – only a hundred rubles – but I’ll get the rest to-day. You would really hurt my feelings, Count.’
‘Thank you, old man,’ said the count, instantly discerning what kind of relations had to be established between them, and slapping the cavalryman on the shoulder: ‘Thanks! Well then, we’ll go to the ball if it must be so. But what are we to do now? Tell me what you have in your town. What pretty girls? What men fit for a spree? What gaming?’
The cavalryman explained that there would be an abundance of pretty creatures at the ball, that Kólkov, who had been re-elected Captain of Police, was the best hand at a spree, only he lacked the true hussar go – otherwise he was a good sort of a chap: that the Ilyúshin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Stëshka leading, and that everybody meant to go to hear them after leaving the Marshal’s that evening.
‘And there’s a devilish lot of card-playing too,’ he went on. ‘Lúkhnov plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyín, an uhlan cornet who has room No. 8, has lost a lot. They have already begun in his room. They play every evening. And what a fine fellow that Ilyín is! I tell you, Count, he’s not mean – he’ll let his last shirt go.’
‘Well then, let us go to his room. Let’s see what sort of people they are,’ said the count.
‘Yes do – pray do. They’ll be devilish glad.’
II
THE uhlan cornet, Ilyín, had not long been awake. The evening before he had sat down to cards at eight o’clock and had lost pretty steadily for fifteen hours on end – till eleven in the morning. He had lost a considerable sum, but did not know exactly how much, because he had about three thousand rubles of his own, and fifteen thousand of Crown money which had long since got mixed up with his own, and he feared to count lest his fears that some of the Crown money was already gone should be confirmed. It was nearly noon when he fell asleep and he had slept that heavy dreamless sleep which only very young men sleep after a heavy loss. Waking at six o’clock (just when Count Túrbin arrived at the hotel), and seeing the floor all around strewn with cards and bits of chalk, and the chalk-marked tables in the middle of the room, he recalled with horror last night’s play, and the last card – a knave on which he lost five hundred rubles; but not yet quite convinced of the reality of all this, he drew his money from under the pillow and began to count it. He recognized some notes which had passed from hand to hand several times with ‘corners’ and ‘transports’, and he recalled the whole course of the game. He had none of his own three thousand rubles left, and some two thousand five hundred of the Government money was also gone.
Ilyín had been playing for four nights running.
He had come from Moscow where the Crown money had been entrusted to him, and at K— had been detained by the superintendent of the post-house on the pretext that there were no horses, but really because the superintendent had an agreement with the hotel-keeper to detain all travellers for a day. The uhlan, a bright young lad who had just received three thousand rubles from his parents in Moscow for his equipment on entering his regiment, was glad to spend a few days in the town of K— during the elections, and hoped to enjoy himself thoroughly. He knew one of the landed gentry there who had a family, and he was thinking of looking them up and flirting with the daughters, when the cavalryman turned up to make his acquaintance. Without any evil intention the cavalryman introduced him that same evening, in the general saloon or common room of the hotel, to his acquaintances, Lúkhnov and other gamblers. And ever since then the uhlan had been playing cards, not asking at the post-station for horses, much less going to visit his acquaintance the landed proprietor, and not even leaving his room for four days on end.
Having dressed and drunk tea he went to the window. He felt that he would like to go for a stroll to get rid of the recollections that haunted him, and he put on his cloak and went out into the street. The sun was already hidden behind the white houses with their red roofs and it was getting dusk. It was warm for winter. Large wet snowflakes were falling slowly into the muddy street. Suddenly at the thought that he had slept all through the day now ending, a feeling of intolerable sadness overcame him.
‘This day, now past, can never be recovered,’ he thought.
‘I have ruined my youth!’ he suddenly said to himself, not because he really thought he had ruined his youth – he did not even think about it – but because the phrase happened to occur to him.
‘And what am I to do now?’ thought he. ‘Borrow from someone and go away?’ A lady passed him along the pavement. ‘There’s a stupid woman,’ thought he for some reason. ‘There’s no one to borrow from … I have ruined my youth!’ He came to the bazaar. A tradesman in a fox-fur cloak stood at the door of his sho
p touting for customers. ‘If I had not withdrawn that eight I should have recovered my losses.’ An old beggar-woman followed him whimpering. ‘There’s no one to borrow from.’ A man drove past in a bearskin cloak; a policeman was standing at his post. ‘What unusual thing could I do? Fire at them? No, it’s dull … I have ruined my youth!… Ah, those are fine horse-collars and trappings hanging there! Ah, if only I could drive in a tróyka: Gee-up, beauties!… I’ll go back. Lúkhnov will come soon, and we’ll play.’
He returned to the hotel and again counted his money. No, he had made no mistake the first time: there were still two thousand five hundred rubles of Crown money missing. ‘I’ll stake twenty-five rubles, then make a “corner” … seven-fold it, fifteen-fold, thirty, sixty … three thousand rubles. Then I’ll buy the horse-collars and be off. He won’t let me, the rascal! I have ruined my youth!’
That is what was going on in the uhlan’s head when Lúkhnov actually entered the room.
‘Have you been up long, Michael Vasílich?’ asked Lúkhnov slowly removing the gold spectacles from his skinny nose and carefully wiping them with a red silk handkerchief.
‘No, I’ve only just got up – I slept uncommonly well.’
‘Some hussar or other has arrived. He has put up with Zavalshévski – had you heard?’