by Leo Tolstoy
‘No, I hadn’t. But how is it no one else is here yet?’
‘They must have gone to Pryákhin’s. They’ll be here directly.’
And sure enough a little later there came into the room a garrison officer who always accompanied Lúkhnov; a Greek merchant with an enormous brown hooked nose and sunken black eyes; and a fat puffy landowner, the proprietor of a distillery, who played whole nights, always staking ‘simples’ of half a ruble each. Everybody wished to begin playing as soon as possible, but the principal gamesters, especially Lúkhnov who was telling about a robbery in Moscow in an exceedingly calm manner, did not refer to the subject.
‘Just fancy,’ he said, ‘a city like Moscow, the historic capital, a metropolis, and men dressed up as devils go about there with crooks, frighten stupid people and rob the passers-by – and that’s the end of it! What are the police about? That’s the question.’
The uhlan listened attentively to the story about the robbers, but when a pause came he rose and quietly ordered cards to be brought. The fat landowner was the first to speak out.
‘Well, gentlemen, why lose precious time? If we mean business let’s begin.’
‘Yes, you walked off with a pile of half-rubles last night so you like it,’ said the Greek.
‘I think we might start,’ said the garrison officer.
Ilyín looked at Lúkhnov. Lúkhnov looking him in the eye quietly continued his story about robbers dressed up like devils with claws.
‘Will you keep the bank?’ asked the uhlan.
‘Isn’t it too early?’
‘Belóv!’ shouted the uhlan, blushing for some unknown reason, ‘bring me some dinner – I haven’t had anything to eat yet, gentlemen – and a bottle of champagne and some cards.’
At this moment the count and Zavalshévski entered the room. It turned out that Túrbin and Ilyín belonged to the same division. They took to one another at once, clinked glasses, drank champagne together, and were on intimate terms in five minutes. The count seemed to like Ilyín very much; he looked smilingly at him and teased him about his youth.
‘There’s an uhlan of the right sort!’ he said. ‘What moustaches! Dear me, what moustaches!’
Even what little down there was on Ilyín’s lip was quite white.
‘I suppose you are going to play?’ said the count: ‘Well, I wish you luck, Ilyín! I should think you are a master at it,’ he added with a smile.
‘Yes, they mean to start,’ said Lúkhnov, tearing open a bundle of a dozen packs of cards, ‘and you’ll join in too, Count, won’t you?’
‘No, not to-day. I should clear you all out if I did. When I begin “cornering” in earnest the bank begins to crack! But I have nothing to play with – I was cleaned out at a station near Volochók. I met some infantry fellow there with rings on his fingers – a sharper I should think – and he plucked me clean.’
‘Why, did you stay at that station long?’ asked Ilyín.
‘I sat there for twenty-two hours. I shan’t forget that accursed station! And the superintendent won’t forget me either …’
‘How’s that?’
‘I drive up, you know; out rushes the superintendent looking a regular brigand. “No horses!” says he. Now I must tell you that it’s my rule, if there are no horses I don’t take off my fur cloak but go into the superintendent’s own room – not into the public room but into his private room – and I have all the doors and windows opened on the ground that it’s smoky. Well, that’s just what I did there. You remember what frosts we had last month? About twenty degrees!10 The superintendent began to argue, I punched his head. There was an old woman there, and girls and other women; they kicked up a row, snatched up their pots and pans and were rushing off to the village.… I went to the door and said, “Let me have horses and I’ll be off. If not, no one shall go out: I’ll freeze you all!” ’
‘That’s an infernally good plan!’ said the puffy squire, rolling with laughter. ‘It’s the way they freeze out cockroaches …’
‘But I didn’t watch carefully enough and the superintendent got away with the women. Only one old woman remained in pawn on the top of the stove; she kept sneezing and saying her prayers. Afterwards we began negotiating: the superintendent came and from a distance began persuading me to let the old woman go, but I set Blücher at him a bit. Blücher’s splendid at tackling superintendents! But still the rascal didn’t let me have horses until the next morning. Meanwhile that infantry fellow came along. I joined him in another room, and we began to play. You have seen Blücher?… Blücher!…’ and he gave a whistle.
Blücher rushed in, and the players condescendingly paid some attention to him though it was evident that they wished to attend to quite other matters.
‘But why don’t you play, gentlemen? Please don’t let me prevent you. I am a chatterbox, you see,’ said Túrbin. ‘Play is play whether one likes it or not.’
III
LÚKHNOV drew two candles nearer to him, took out a large brown pocket-book full of paper money, and slowly, as if performing some rite, opened it on the table, took out two one-hundred ruble notes and placed them under the cards.
‘Two hundred for the bank, the same as yesterday,’ said he, adjusting his spectacles and opening a pack of cards.
‘Very well,’ said Ilyín, continuing his conversation with Túrbin without looking at Lúknov.
The game11 started. Lúkhnov dealt the cards with machine-like precision, stopping now and then and deliberately jotting something down, or looking sternly over his spectacles and saying in low tones, ‘Pass up!’ The fat landowner spoke louder than anyone else, audibly deliberating with himself and wetting his plump fingers when he turned down the corner of a card. The garrison officer silently and neatly noted the amount of his stake on his card and bent down small corners under the table. The Greek sat beside the banker watching the game attentively with his sunken black eyes, and seemed to be waiting for something. Zavalshévski standing by the table would suddenly begin to fidget all over, take a red or blue bank-note12 out of his trouser pocket, lay a card on it, slap it with his palm and say: ‘Little seven, pull me through!’ Then he would bite his moustache, shift from foot to foot, and keep fidgeting till his card was dealt. Ilyín sat eating veal and pickled cucumbers, which were placed beside him on the horsehair sofa, and hastily wiping his hands on his coat laid down one card after another. Túrbin, who at first was sitting on the sofa, quickly saw how matters stood. Lúkhnov did not look at or speak to Ilyín, only now and then his spectacles would turn for a moment towards the latter’s hand, but most of Ilyín’s cards lost.
‘There now, I’d like to beat that card,’ said Lúkhnov of a card the fat landowner, who was staking half-rubles, had put down.
‘You beat Ilyín’s, never mind me!’ remarked the squire.
And indeed Ilyín’s cards lost more often than any of the others. He would tear up the losing card nervously under the table and choose another with trembling fingers. Túrbin rose from the sofa and asked the Greek to let him sit by the banker. The Greek moved to another place, the count took his chair and began watching Lúkhnov’s hands attentively, not taking his eyes off them.
‘Ilyín!’ he suddenly said in his usual voice, which quite unintentionally drowned all the others. ‘Why do you keep to a routine? You don’t know how to play.’
‘It’s all the same how one plays.’
‘But you’re sure to lose that way. Let me play for you.’
‘No, please excuse me. I always do it myself. Play for yourself if you like.’
‘I said I should not play for myself, but I should like to play for you. I am vexed that you are losing.’
‘I suppose it’s my fate.’
The count was silent, but leaning on his elbows he again gazed intently at the banker’s hands.
‘Abominable!’ he suddenly said in a loud, long-drawn tone.
Lúkhnov glanced at him.
‘Abominable, quite abominable!’ he repeated st
ill louder, looking straight into Lúkhnov’s eyes.
The game continued.
‘It is not right!’ Túrbin remarked again, just as Lúkhnov beat a heavily-backed card of Ilyín’s.
‘What is it you don’t like, Count?’ inquired the banker with polite indifference.
‘This! – that you let Ilyín win his simples and beat his corners. That’s what’s bad.’
Lúkhnov made a slight movement with his brows and shoulders, expressing the advisability of submitting to fate in everything, and continued to play.
‘Blücher!’ shouted the count, rising and whistling to the dog. ‘At him!’ he added quickly.
Blücher, bumping his back against the sofa as he leapt from under it and nearly upsetting the garrison officer, ran to his master and growled, looking round at everyone and moving his tail as if asking, ‘Who is misbehaving here, eh?’
Lúkhnov put down his cards and moved his chair to one side.
‘One can’t play like that,’ he said. ‘I hate dogs. What kind of a game is it when you bring a whole pack of hounds in here?’
‘Especially a dog like that. I believe they are called “leeches”,’ chimed in the garrison officer.
‘Well, are we going to play or not, Michael Vasílich?’ said Lúkhnov to their host.
‘Please don’t interfere with us, Count,’ said Ilyín, turning to Túrbin.
‘Come here a minute,’ said Túrbin, taking Ilyín’s arm and going behind the partition with him.
The count’s words, spoken in his usual tone, were distinctly audible from there. His voice always carried across three rooms.
‘Are you daft, eh? Don’t you see that that gentleman in spectacles is a sharper of the first water?’
‘Come now, enough! What are you saying?’
‘No enough about it! Stop playing, I tell you. It’s nothing to me. Another time I’d pluck you myself, but somehow I’m sorry to see you fleeced. And maybe you have Crown money too?’
‘No … why do you imagine such things?’
‘Ah, my lad, I’ve been that way myself so I know all those sharpers’ tricks. I tell you the one in spectacles is a sharper. Stop playing! I ask you as a comrade.’
‘Well then, I’ll only finish this one deal.’
‘I know what “one deal” means. Well, we’ll see.’
They went back. In that one deal Ilyín put down so many cards and so many of them were beaten that he lost a large amount.
Túrbin put his hands in the middle of the table. ‘Now stop it! Come along.’
‘No, I can’t. Leave me alone, do!’ said Ilyín, irritably shuffling some bent cards without looking at Túrbin.
‘Well, go to the devil! Go on losing for certain, if that pleases you. It’s time for me to be off. Let’s go to the Marshal’s, Zavalshévski.’
They went out. All remained silent and Lúkhnov dealt no more cards until the sound of their steps and of Blücher’s claws on the passage floor had died away.
‘What a devil of a fellow!’ said the landowner laughing.
‘Well, he won’t interfere now,’ remarked the garrison officer hastily, and still in a whisper.
And the play continued.
IV
THE band, composed of some of the Marshal’s serfs standing in the pantry – which had been cleared out for the occasion – with their coat-sleeves turned up ready, had at a given signal struck up the old polonaise, ‘Alexander, ‘Lizabeth’, and under the bright soft light of the wax-candles a Governor-General of Catharine’s days, with a star on his breast, arm-in-arm with the Marshal’s skinny wife, and the rest of the local grandees with their partners, had begun slowly gliding over the parquet floor of the large dancing-room in various combinations and variations, when Zavalshévski entered, wearing stockings and pumps and a blue swallow-tail coat with an immense and padded collar, and exhaling a strong smell of the frangipane with which the facings of his coat, his handkerchief, and his moustaches, were abundantly sprinkled. The handsome hussar who came with him wore tight-fitting light-blue riding-breeches and a gold-embroidered scarlet coat on which a Vladímir cross and an 1812 medal13 were fastened. The count was not tall but remarkably well built. His clear blue and exceedingly brilliant eyes, and thick, closely curling, dark-brown hair, gave a remarkable character to his beauty. His arrival at the ball was expected, for the handsome young man who had seen him at the hotel had already prepared the Marshal for it. Various impressions had been produced by the news, for the most part not altogether pleasant.
‘It’s not unlikely that this youngster will hold us up to ridicule,’ was the opinion of the men and of the older women. ‘What if he should run away with me?’ was more or less in the minds of the younger ladies, married or unmarried.
As soon as the polonaise was over and the couples after bowing to one another had separated – the women into one group and the men into another – Zavalshévski, proud and happy, introduced the count to their hostess.
The Marshal’s wife, feeling an inner trepidation lest this hussar should treat her in some scandalous manner before everybody, turned away haughtily and contemptuously as she said: ‘Very pleased, I hope you will dance,’ and then gave him a distrustful look that said, ‘Now, if you offend a woman it will show me that you are a perfect villain.’ The count however soon conquered her prejudices by his amiability, attentive manner, and handsome gay appearance, so that five minutes later the expression on the face of the Marshal’s wife told the company: ‘I know how to manage such gentlemen. He immediately understood with whom he had to deal, and now he’ll be charming to me for the rest of the evening.’ Moreover at that moment the governor of the town, who had known the count’s father, came up to him and very affably took him aside for a talk, which still further calmed the provincial public and raised the count in its estimation. After that Zavalshévski introduced the count to his sister, a plump young widow whose large black eyes had not left the count from the moment he entered. The count asked her to dance the waltz the band had just commenced, and the general prejudice was finally dispersed by the masterly way in which he danced.
‘What a splendid dancer!’ said a fat landed proprietress, watching his legs in their blue riding-breeches as they flitted across the room, and mentally counting ‘one, two, three – one, two, three – splendid!’
‘There he goes – jig, jig, jig,’ said another, a visitor in the town whom local society did not consider genteel. ‘How does he manage not to entangle his spurs? Wonderfully clever!’
The count’s artistic dancing eclipsed the three best dancers of the province: the tall fair-haired adjutant of the governor, noted for the rapidity with which he danced and for holding his partner very close to him; the cavalryman, famous for the graceful swaying motion with which he waltzed and for the frequent but light tapping of his heels; and a civilian, of whom everybody said that though he was not very intellectual he was a first-rate dancer and the soul of every ball. In fact, from its very commencement this civilian would ask all the ladies in turn to dance, in the order in which they were sitting,14 and never stopped for a moment except occasionally to wipe the perspiration from his weary but cheerful face with a very wet cambric handkerchief. The count eclipsed them all and danced with the three principal ladies: the tall one, rich, handsome, stupid; the one of middle height, thin and not very pretty but splendidly dressed; and the little one, who was plain but very clever. He danced with others too – with all the pretty ones, and there were many of these – but it was Zavalshévski’s sister, the little widow, who pleased him best. With her he danced a quadrille, an écossaise, and a mazurka. When they were sitting down during the quadrille he began paying her many compliments; comparing her to Venus and Diana, to a rose, and to some other flower. But all these compliments only made the widow bend her white neck, lower her eyes and look at her white muslin dress, or pass her fan from hand to hand. But when she said: ‘Don’t, you’re only joking, Count,’ and other words to that effect, there was a note o
f such naïve simplicity and amusing silliness in her slightly guttural voice, that looking at her it really seemed that this was not a woman but a flower, and not a rose, but some gorgeous scentless rosy-white wild flower that had grown all alone out of a snowdrift in some very remote land.
This combination of naïveté and unconventionality with her fresh beauty created such a peculiar impression on the count that several times during the intervals of conversation, when gazing silently into her eyes or at the beautiful outline of her neck and arms, the desire to seize her in his arms and cover her with kisses assailed him with such force that he had to make a serious effort to resist it. The widow noticed with pleasure the effect she was producing, yet something in the count’s behaviour began to frighten and excite her, though the young hussar, despite his insinuating amiability, was respectful to a degree that in our days would be considered cloying. He ran to fetch almond-milk for her, picked up her handkerchief, snatched a chair from the hands of a scrofulous young squire who danced attendance on her, to hand it her more quickly, and so forth.
When he noticed that the society attentions of the day had little effect on the lady he tried to amuse her by telling her funny stories and assured her that he was ready to stand on his head, to crow like a cock, to jump out of the window or plunge into the water through a hole in the ice, if she ordered him to do so. This proved quite a success. The widow brightened up and burst into peals of laughter, showing lovely white teeth, and was quite satisfied with her cavalier. The count liked her more and more every minute, so that by the end of the quadrille he was seriously in love with her.
When, after the quadrille, her eighteen-year-old adorer of long standing came up to the widow (he was the same scrofulous young man from whom Túrbin had snatched the chair – a son of the richest local landed proprietor and not yet in government service) she received him with extreme coolness and did not show one-tenth of the confusion she had experienced with the count.
‘Well, you are a fine fellow!’ she said, looking all the time at Túrbin’s back and unconsciously considering how many yards of gold cord it had taken to embroider his whole jacket. ‘You are a good one! You promised to call and fetch me for a drive and bring me some comfits.’