by Leo Tolstoy
The count seized the landlord by the scruff of his neck and ordered him to dance the Russian dance. The landlord refused. The count snatched up a bottle of champagne and having stood the landlord on his head and had him held in that position, amidst general laughter, slowly emptied the bottle over him.
It was beginning to dawn. Everyone looked pale and exhausted except the count.
‘Well, I must be starting for Moscow,’ said he, suddenly rising. ‘Come along, all of you! Come and see me off … and we’ll have some tea together.’
All agreed except the paterfamilias (who was left behind asleep), and crowding into three large sledges that stood at the door, they all drove off to the hotel.
VII
‘GET horses ready!’ cried the count as he entered the saloon of his hotel followed by the guests and gipsies. ‘Sáshka! – not gipsy Sáshka but my Sáshka – tell the superintendent I’ll thrash him if he gives me bad horses. And get us some tea. Zavalshévski, look after the tea: I’m going to have a look at Ilyín and see how he’s getting on …’ added Túrbin, and went along the passage towards the uhlan’s room.
Ilyín had just finished playing, and having lost his last kopék was lying face downwards on the sofa, pulling one hair after another from its torn horsehair cover, putting them in his mouth, biting them in two and spitting them out again.
Two tallow candles, one of which had burnt down to the paper in the socket, stood on the card-strewn table and feebly wrestled with the morning light that crept in through the window. There were no ideas in Ilyín’s head: a dense mist of gambling passion shrouded all his faculties, he did not even feel penitent. He made one attempt to think of what he should do now: how being penniless he could get away, how he could repay the fifteen thousand rubles of Crown money, what his regimental commander would say, what his mother and his comrades would say, and he felt such terror and disgust with himself that wishing to forget himself he rose and began pacing up and down the room trying to step only where the floorboards joined, and began, once more, vividly to recall every slightest detail of the course of play. He vividly imagined how he had begun to win back his money, how he withdrew a nine and placed the king of spades over two thousand rubles. A queen was dealt to the right, an ace to the left, then the king of diamonds to the right and all was lost; but if, say, a six had been dealt to the right and the king of diamonds to the left, he would have won everything back, would have played once more double or quits, would have won fifteen thousand rubles, and would then have bought himself an ambler from his regimental commander and another pair of horses besides, and a phaeton. Well, and what then? – Well it would have been a splendid, splendid thing!
And he lay down on the sofa again and began chewing the horsehair.
‘Why are they singing in No. 7?’ thought he. ‘There must be a spree on at Túrbin’s. Shall I go in and have a good drink?’
At this moment the count entered.
‘Well, old fellow, cleaned out, are you? Eh?’ cried he.
‘I’ll pretend to be asleep,’ thought Ilyín, ‘or else I shall have to speak to him, and I want to sleep.’
Túrbin, however, came up and stroked his head.
‘Well, my dear friend, cleaned out – lost everything? Tell me.’
Ilyín gave no answer.
The count pulled his arm.
‘I have lost. But what is that to you?’ muttered Ilyín in a sleepy, indifferent, discontented voice, without changing his position.
‘Everything?’
‘Well – yes. What of it? Everything. What is it to you?’
‘Listen. Tell me the truth as to a comrade,’ said the count, inclined to tenderness by the influence of the wine he had drunk and continuing to stroke Ilyín’s hair. ‘I have really taken a liking to you. Tell me the truth. If you have lost Crown money I’ll get you out of your scrape: it will soon be too late.… Had you Crown money?’
Ilyín jumped up from the sofa.
‘Well then, if you wish me to tell you, don’t speak to me, because … please don’t speak to me.… To shoot myself is the only thing!’ said Ilyín, with real despair, and his head fell on his hands and he burst into tears, though but a moment before he had been calmly thinking about amblers.
‘What pretty girlishness! Where’s the man who has not done the like? It’s not such a calamity; perhaps we can mend it. Wait for me here.’
The count left the room.
‘Where is Squire Lúkhnov’s room?’ he asked the boots.
The boots offered to show him the way. In spite of the valet’s remark that his master had only just returned and was undressing, the count went in. Lúkhnov was sitting at a table in his dressing-gown counting several packets of paper money that lay before him. A bottle of Rhine wine, of which he was very fond, stood on the table. After winning he permitted himself that pleasure. Lúkhnov looked coldly and sternly through his spectacles at the count as though not recognizing him.
‘You don’t recognize me, I think?’ said the count, resolutely stepping up to the table.
Lúkhnov made a gesture of recognition, and said: ‘What is it you want?’
‘I should like to play with you,’ said Túrbin, sitting down on the sofa.
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Another time with pleasure, Count! But now I am tired and am going to bed. Won’t you have a glass of wine? It is famous wine.’
‘But I want to play a little – now.’
‘I don’t intend to play any more to-night. Perhaps some of the other gentlemen will, but I won’t. You must please excuse me, Count.’
‘Then you won’t?’
Lúkhnov shrugged his shoulders to express his regret at his inability to comply with the count’s desire.
‘Not on any account?’
The same shrug.
‘But I particularly request it.… Well, will you play?’
Silence.
‘Will you play?’ the count asked again. ‘Mind!’
The same silence and a rapid glance over the spectacles at the count’s face which was beginning to frown.
‘Will you play?’ shouted the count very loud, striking the table with his hand so that the bottle toppled over and the wine was spilt. ‘You know you did not win fairly.… Will you play? I ask you for the third time.’
‘I said I would not. This is really strange, Count! And it is not at all proper to come and hold a knife to a man’s throat,’ remarked Lúkhnov, not raising his eyes. A momentary silence followed during which the count’s face grew paler and paler. Suddenly a terrible blow on the head stupefied Lúkhnov. He fell on the sofa trying to seize the money and uttered such a piercingly despairing cry as no one could have expected from so calm and imposing a person. Túrbin gathered up what money lay on the table, pushed aside the servant who ran in to his master’s assistance, and left the room with rapid strides.
‘If you want satisfaction I am at your service! I shall be in my room for another half-hour,’ said the count, returning to Lúkhnov’s door.
‘Thief! Robber! I’ll have the law on you …’ was all that was audible from the room.
Ilyín, who had paid no attention to the count’s promise to help him, still lay as before on the sofa in his room choking with tears of despair. Consciousness of what had really happened, which the count’s caresses and sympathy had evoked from behind the strange tangle of feelings, thoughts, and memories filling his soul, did not leave him. His youth, rich with hope, his honour, the respect of society, his dreams of love and friendship – all were utterly lost. The source of his tears began to run dry, a too passive feeling of hopelessness overcame him more and more, and thoughts of suicide, no longer arousing revulsion or horror, claimed his attention with increasing frequency. Just then the count’s firm footsteps were heard.
In Túrbin’s face traces of anger could still be seen, his hands shook a little, but his eyes beamed with kindly merriment and self-satisfaction.
‘Here you are, i
t’s won back!’ he said, throwing several bundles of paper money on the table. ‘See if it’s all there and then make haste and come into the saloon. I am just leaving,’ he added, as though not noticing the joy and gratitude and extreme agitation on Ilyín’s face, and whistling a gipsy song he left the room.
VIII
SÁSHKA, with a sash tied round his waist, announced that the horses were ready, but insisted that the count’s cloak, which, he said, with its fur collar was worth three hundred rubles, should be recovered, and the shabby blue one returned to the rascal who had changed it for the count’s at the Marshal’s; but Túrbin told him there was no need to look for the cloak, and went to his room to change his clothes.
The cavalryman kept hiccoughing as he sat silent beside his gipsy girl. The Captain of Police called for vodka, and invited everyone to come at once and have breakfast with him, promising that his wife would certainly dance with the gipsies. The handsome young man was profoundly explaining to Ilyúshka that there is more soulfulness in pianoforte music, and that it is not possible to play bémols on a guitar. The official sat in a corner sadly drinking his tea, and in the daylight seemed ashamed of his debauchery. The gipsies were disputing among themselves in their own tongue as to ‘hailing the guests’ again, which Stëshka opposed, saying that the baroráy (in gipsy language count or prince or, more literally, ‘great gentleman’) would be angry. In general the last embers of the debauch were dying down in everyone.
‘Well, one farewell song, and then off home!’ said the count, entering the parlour in travelling dress, fresh, merry, and handsomer than ever.
The gipsies again formed their circle and were just ready to begin when Ilyín entered with a packet of paper money in his hand and took the count aside.
‘I only had fifteen thousand rubles of Crown money and you have given me sixteen thousand three hundred,’ he said, ‘so this is yours.’
‘That’s a good thing. Give it here!’
Ilyín gave him the money and, looking timidly at the count, opened his lips to say something, but only blushed till tears came into his eyes and seizing the count’s hand began to press it.
‘You be off! … Ilyúshka! Listen! Here’s some money for you, but you must accompany me out of the town with songs!’ and he threw onto the guitar the thirteen hundred rubles Ilyín had brought him. But the count quite forgot to repay the hundred rubles he had borrowed of the cavalryman the day before.
It was already ten o’clock in the morning. The sun had risen above the roofs of the houses. People were moving about in the streets. The tradesmen had long since opened their shops. Noblemen and officials were driving through the streets and ladies were shopping in the bazaar, when the whole gipsy band, with the Captain of Police, the cavalryman, the handsome young man, Ilyín, and the count in the blue bearskin cloak, came out into the hotel porch.
It was a sunny day and a thaw had set in. The large post-sledges, each drawn by three horses with their tails tied up tight, drove up to the porch splashing through the mud and the whole lively party took their places. The count, Ilyín, Stëshka, and Ilyúshka, with Sáshka the count’s orderly, got into the first sledge. Blücher was beside himself, and wagged his tail, barking at the shaft-horse. The other gentlemen got into the two other sledges with the rest of the gipsy men and women. The tróykas got abreast as they left the hotel and the gipsies struck up in chorus.
The tróykas with their songs and bells – forcing every vehicle they met right onto the pavements – dashed through the whole town right to the town gates.
The tradesmen and passers-by who did not know them, and especially those who did, were not a little astonished when they saw the noblemen driving through the streets in broad daylight with gipsy girls and tipsy gipsy men, singing.
When they had passed the town gates the tróykas stopped and everyone began bidding the count farewell.
Ilyín, who had drunk a good deal at the leave-taking and had himself been driving the sledge all the way, suddenly became very sad, begged the count to stay another day, and when he found that this was not possible, rushed quite unexpectedly at his new friend, kissed him and promised with tears to try to exchange into the hussar regiment the count was serving in as soon as he got back. The count was particularly gay; he tumbled the cavalryman, who had become very familiar in the morning, into a snowdrift; set Blücher at the Captain of Police, took Stëshka in his arms and wished to carry her off to Moscow, and finally jumped into his sledge and made Blücher, who wanted to stand up in the middle, sit down by his side. Sáshka jumped on the box after having again asked the cavalryman to recover the count’s cloak from them, and to send it on. The count cried, ‘Go!’, took off his cap, waved it over his head, and whistled to the horses like a post-boy. The tróykas drove off in their different directions.
A monotonous snow-covered plain stretched far in front with a dirty yellowish road winding through it. The bright sunshine – playfully sparkling on the thawing snow which was coated with a transparent crust of ice – was pleasantly warm to one’s face and back. Steam rose thickly from the sweating horses. The bell tinkled merrily. A peasant, with a loaded sledge that kept gliding to the side of the road, got hurriedly out of the way, jerking his rope reins and plashing with his wet bast shoes as he ran along the thawing road. A fat red-faced peasant woman, with a baby wrapped in the bosom of her sheepskin cloak, sat in another laden sledge, urging on a thin-tailed, jaded white horse with the ends of the reins. The count suddenly thought of Anna Fëdorovna.
‘Turn back!’ he shouted.
The driver did not at once understand.
‘Turn back! Back to town! Be quick!’
The tróyka passed the town gates once more, and drove briskly up to the wooden porch of Anna Fëdorovna’s house. The count ran quickly up the steps, passed through the vestibule and the drawing-room, and having found the widow still asleep, took her in his arms, lifted her out of bed, kissed her sleepy eyes, and ran quickly back. Anna Fëdorovna, only half awake, licked her lips and asked, ‘What has happened?’ The count jumped into his sledge, shouted to the driver, and with no further delay and without even a thought of Lúkhnov, or the widow, or Stëshka, but only of what awaited him in Moscow, left the town of K— for ever.
* * *
IX
MORE than twenty years had gone by. Much water had flowed away, many people had died, many been born, many had grown up or grown old; still more ideas had been born and had died, much that was old and beautiful and much that was old and bad had perished; much that was beautiful and new had grown up and still more that was immature, monstrous, and new, had come into God’s world.
Count Fëdor Túrbin had been killed long ago in a duel by some foreigner he had horse-whipped in the street. His son, physically as like him as one drop of water to another, was a handsome young man already twenty-three years old and serving in the Horse Guards. But morally the young Túrbin did not in the least resemble his father. There was not a shade of the impetuous, passionate and, to speak frankly, depraved propensities of the past age. Together with his intelligence, culture, and the gifted nature he had inherited a love of propriety and the comforts of life; a practical way of looking at men and affairs, reasonableness and prudence were his distinguishing characteristics. The young count had got on well in the service and at twenty-three was already a lieutenant. At the commencement of the war he made up his mind that he would be more likely to secure promotion if he exchanged into the active army, and so he entered an hussar regiment as captain and was soon in command of a squadron.
In May 184819 the S— hussar regiment was marching to the campaign through the province of K—, and the very squadron young Count Túrbin commanded had to spend the night in the village of Morózovka, Anna Fëdorovna’s estate.
Anna Fëdorovna was still living, but was already so far from young that she did not even consider herself young, which means a good deal for a woman. She had grown very fat, which is said to make a woman look younger, but dee
p soft wrinkles were apparent on her white plumpness. She never went to town now, it was an effort for her even to get into her carriage, but she was still just as kind-hearted and as silly as ever (now that her beauty no longer biases one, the truth may be told). With her lived her twenty-three-year-old daughter Lisa, a Russian country belle, and her brother – our acquaintance the cavalryman – who had good-naturedly squandered the whole of his small fortune and had found a home for his old age with Anna Fëdorovna. His hair was quite grey and his upper lip had fallen in, but the moustache above it was still carefully blackened. His back was bent, and not only his forehead and cheeks but even his nose and neck were wrinkled, yet in the movements of his feeble crooked legs the manner of a cavalryman was still perceptible.
The family and household sat in the small drawing-room of the old house, with an open door leading out onto the verandah, and open windows overlooking the ancient star-shaped garden with its lime trees. Grey-haired Anna Fëdorovna, wearing a lilac jacket, sat on the sofa laying out cards on a round mahogany table. Her old brother in his clean white trousers and a blue coat had settled himself by the window and was plaiting a cord out of white cotton with the aid of a wooden fork – a pastime his niece had taught him and which he liked very much, as he could no longer do anything and his eyes were too weak for newspaper reading, his favourite occupation. Pímochka, Anna Fëdorovna’s ward, sat by him learning a lesson – Lisa helping her and at the same time making a goat’s-wool stocking for her uncle with wooden knitting needles. The last rays of the setting sun, as usual at that hour, shone through the lime-tree avenue and threw slanting gleams on the farthest window and the what-not standing near it. It was so quiet in the garden and the room that one could hear the swift flutter of a swallow’s wings outside the window, and Anna Fëdorovna’s soft sigh or the old man’s slight groan as he crossed his legs.