“Who’s jostling me there? It made me miss my shot. Why can’t we have some room?”
Then the other went up to him, pale as a sheet, but quite self-possessed, and says so politely: —
“You ought first, sir, to apologize; you struck me,” says he.
“Catch me apologizing now! I should have won the game,” says he, “but now you have spoiled it for me.”
Then the other one says: —
“ You ought to apologize.”
“ Get out of my way ! I insist upon it, I won’t.”
And he turned away to look after his ball.
Nekhliudof went up to him, and took him by the arm.
“You ‘re a boor,” says he, “my dear sir.”
Though he was a slender young fellow, almost like a girl, still he was all ready for a quarrel. His eyes flashed fire; he looked as if he could eat him alive. The big guest was a strong, tremendous fellow, no match for Nekhliudof.
“Wha-at!” says he, “you call me a boor?”
Yelling out these words, he raises his hand to strike him.
Then everybody there rushed up, and seized them both by the arms, and separated them.
After much talk, Nekhliudof says: —
“Let him give me satisfaction; he has insulted me.”
“Not at all,” said the other. “I don’t care a whit about any satisfaction. He’s nothing but a boy, a mere nothing. I’ll pull his ears for him.”
“If you aren’t willing to give me satisfaction, then you are no gentleman.”
And, saying this, he almost cried.
“Well, and you, you are a little boy; nothing you say or do can offend me.”
Well, we separated them, — led them off, as the custom is, to different rooms. Nekhliudof and the prince had become friends.
“Go,” says the former; “for God’s sake make him listen to reason.”….
The prince went. The big man says: —
“I’m not afraid of any one,” says he. “I am not going,” says he, “to have any explanation with such a baby. I won’t do it, and that’s the end of it.”
Well, they talked and talked, and then the matter died out, only the “tall visitor” ceased to come to us any more.
As a result of this, — this row, I might call it, — he was regarded as quite the cock of the walk. He was quick to take offense, — I mean Nekhliudof; — as to so many other things, however, he was as unsophisticated as a new-born babe.
I remember once, the prince says to Nekhliudof, “Whom do you keep here?”
“No one,” says he.
“What do you mean, ‘no one’!”
“Why should I?” says Nekhliudof.
“How so, why should you?”
“I have always lived thus. Why shouldn’t I continue to live the same way?”
“You don’t say so! It is incredible!”
And saying this, the prince burst into a peal of laughter, and the mustached barin also roared. They couldn’t get over it.
“What, never?” they asked.
“Never!”
They were dying with laughter. Of course I understood well enough what they were laughing at him for.
I keep my eyes open. “What,” thinks I, “will come of it?”
“Come,” says the prince, “come with me now.”
“No; not for anything,” was his answer.
“Now, that is absurd,” says the prince. “Come along!”
They went out.
They came back at one o’clock. They sat down to supper; quite a crowd of them were assembled. Some of our very best customers, — Atanof , Prince Razin, Count Shustakh, Mirtsof. And all congratulated Nekhliudof, laughing as they did so. They called me in; I saw that they were pretty jolly.
“Congratulate the barin,” they shout.
“What on?” I ask.
How did he call it? His initiation or his enlightenment; I can’t remember exactly.
“I have the honor,” says I, “to congratulate you.”
And he sits there very red in the face, yet he smiles. Didn’t they have fun with him, though!
Well and good. They went afterward to the billiard-room, all very gay; and Nekhliudof went up to the billiard-table, leaned on his elbow, and said:
“It ‘s amusing to you, gentlemen,” says he, “but it’s sad for me. Why,” says he, “why did I do it? Prince,” says he, “I shall never forgive you or myself as long as I live.”
And he actually burst into tears. Evidently he did not know himself what he was saying. The prince went up to him with a smile.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” says he. “ Let ‘s go home, Anatoli.”
“I won’t go anywhere,” says the other. “ Why did I do that?”
And the tears poured down his cheeks. He would not leave the billiard-table, and that was the end of it. That’s what it means for a young and inexperienced man to…
In this way he used often to come to us. Once he came with the prince, and the mustached man who was the prince’s crony; the gentlemen always called him “Fedotka.”He had prominent cheek-bones, and was homely enough, to be sure; but he used to dress neatly and drove in a carriage. Why did the gentlemen like him so well? I really could not tell.
“Fedotka! Fedotka!” they’d call, and ask him to eat and to drink, and they’d spend their money paying up for him; but he was a thoroughgoing beat. If ever he lost, he would be sure not to pay; but if he won, you bet he wouldn’t fail to collect his money. Often, too, he came to grief; yet there he was, walking arm in arm with the prince.
“You are lost without me,” he would say to the prince.
“I am, Fedot,” says he; “but not a Fedot of that sort.”
And what jokes he used to crack, to be sure! Well, as I said, they had already arrived that time, and one of them says, “Let’s have the balls for three-handed pool.”
“All right,” says the other.
They began to play at three rubles a stake. Nekhliudof and the prince chat about all sorts of things.
“Ah!” says one of them, “you mind only what a neat little ankle she has.”
“Oh,” says the other, “her ankle is well enough; but what beautiful hair.”
Of course they paid no attention to the game, only kept on talking to one another.
As to Fedotka, that fellow was alive to his work; he played his very best, but they didn’t do themselves justice at all.
And so he won six rubles from each of them. God knows how many games he had won from the prince, yet I never knew them to pay each other any money; but Nekhliudof took out two greenbacks, and handed them over to him.
“No,” says he, “I don’t want to take your money. Let’s square it: play `quits or double,’ — either double or nothing.”
I set the balls. Fedotka began to play the first hand. Nekhliudof seemed to play only for fun; sometimes he would come very near winning a game, yet just fail of it. Says he, “It would be too easy a move, I won’t have it so.” But Fedotka did not forget what he was up to. Carelessly he proceeded with the game, and thus, as if it were unexpectedly, won.
“Let us play double stakes once more,” says he.
“All right,” says Nekhliudof.
Once more Fedotka won the game.
“Well,” says he, “it began with a mere trifle. I don’t wish to win much from you. Shall we make it once more or nothing?”
“Yes.”
Say what you may, but fifty rubles is a pretty sum, and Nekhliudof himself began to propose, “Let us make it double or quit.” So they played and played.
It kept growing worse and worse for Nekhliudof. Two hundred and eighty rubles were written up against him. As to Fedotka, he had his own method; he would lose a simple game, but when the stake was doubled, he would win sure.
But the prince sits by and looks on. He sees that the matter is growing serious.
“Enough!” says he, “hold on.”
My! they keep increasing the stake.
At last it went so far that Nekhliudof was in for more than five hundred rubles. Fedotka laid down his cue, and said:
“Aren’t you satisfied for to-day? I’m tired,” says he.
Yet I knew he was ready to play till dawn of day, provided there was money to be won. Stratagem, of course. And the other was all the more anxious to go on. “Come on! Come on!”
“No, — by God, I’m tired. Come,” says Fedot; “let’s go up-stairs; there you shall have your revanche.”
Up-stairs with us meant the place where the gentlemen used to play cards.
From that very day, Fedotka wound his net round him so that he began to come every day. He would play one or two games of billiards, and then proceed up-stairs, every day up-stairs.
What they used to do there, God only knows; but it is a fact that from that time he began to be an entirely different kind of man, and seemed hand in glove with Fedotka. Formerly he used to be stylish, neat in his dress, with his hair slightly curled even; but now it would be only in the morning that he would be anything like himself; but as soon as he had paid his visit up-stairs, he would not be at all like himself.
Once he came down from up-stairs with the prince, pale, his lips trembling, and talking excitedly.
“I cannot permit such a one as he is,” says he, “to say that I am not… “ How did he express himself? I cannot recollect, something like “not defined enough,” or what,— “and that he won’t play with me any more. I tell you I have paid him ten thousand, and I should think that he might be a little more considerate, before others, at least.”
“Oh, bother!” says the prince, “is it worth while to lose one’s
