“Oh no, that’s what he looks but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who abducted Migunova? He. It was he who killed Sablin. It was he who dropped Matnev out of the window by his legs. It was he who won three hundred thousand rubles from Prince Nestorov. He is a regular dare-devil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar-a real jewel. The rumors 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 Lebedyani 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 Belevski regiment and retired as soon as ever he became ensign. But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyani 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 Lebedyani, 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 Turbin. “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.”
“Sashka, feed Blucher!” shouted the count.
Sashka, 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 Blucher!”
“He won’t starve anyway: see how sleek he is!” answered Sashka, 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 Sashka has had a bite today! Yes, beat me if you think more of a dog than of a man,” muttered Sashka.
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 Sashka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand while with the other he scratched the back of Blucher, who was licking himself. “He’s knocked my teeth out, Bluchy, but still he’s my count and I’d go through fire for him-I would! Because he-is my count. Do you understand, Bluchy? 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 today. 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 Kolkov, 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 chap, that the Ilyushin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Streshka 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. Lukhnov plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyin, 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 Ilyin 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, Ilyin, 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 Turbin 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.
Ilyin 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, Lukhnov 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
