“Ilyin!” he suddenly said in his usual voice, which quiet 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.
Lukhnov glanced at him.
“Abominable, quite abominable!” he repeated still louder, looking straight into Lukhnov’s eyes.
The game continued.
“It is not right!” Turbin remarked again, just as Lukhnov beat a heavily backed card of Ilyin’s.
“What is it you don’t like, Count?” inquired the banker with polite indifference.
“This!-that you let Ilyin win his simples and beat his corners. That’s what’s bad.”
Lukhnov made a slight movement with his brows and shoulders, expressing the advisability of submitting to fate in everything, and continued to play.
“Blucher!” shouted the count, rising and whistling to the dog. “At him!” he added quickly.
Blucher, 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 around at everyone and moving his tail as if asking, “Who is misbehaving here, eh?”
Lukhnov 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 Vasilich?” said Lukhnov to their host.
“Please don’t interfere with us, Count,” said Ilyin, turning to Turbin.
“Come here a minute,” said Turbin, taking Ilyin’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 Ilyin put down so many cards and so many of them were beaten that he lost a large amount.
Turbin put his hands in the middle of the table “Now stop it! Come along.”
“No, I can’t. Leave me alone, do!” said Ilyin, irritably shuffling some bent cards without looking at Turbin.
“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, Savalshevski.”
They went out. All remained silent and Lukhnov dealt no more cards until the sound of their steps and of Blucher’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 already, 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 Catherine’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 Zavalshevski 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 on which a Vladimir cross and an 1812 medal 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-Zavalshevski, 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 Zavalshevski 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 thought 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, 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 Zavalshevski’s sister, the little widow, who pleased him best. With her he danced a quadrille, and ecossaise, 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 of 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 naivete 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
