“How can you find it?”
“That is not your business. In order to see you everything is possible. . . . It’s agreed?”
“Agreed.”
The ecossaise ended. After that they danced a mazurka and the count was quite wonderful: catching handkerchiefs, kneeling on one knee, striking his spurs together in a quite special Warsaw manner, so that all the old people left their game of boston and flocked into the ball-room to see, and the cavalryman, their best dancer, confessed himself eclipsed. Then they had supper after which they danced the “Grandfather,” and the ball began to break up. The count never took his eyes off the little widow. It was not pretence when he said he was ready to jump through a hole in the ice for her sake. Whether it was whim, or love, or obstinacy, all his mental powers that even ing were concentrated on the one desire-to meet and love her. As soon as he noticed that Anna Fedorovna was taking leave of her hostess he ran out to the footmen’s room, and thence-without his fur cloak-into the courtyard to the place where the carriages stood.
“Anna Fedorovna Zaytseva’s carriage!” he shouted.
A high four-seated closed carriage with lamps burning moved from its place and approached the porch.
“Stop!” he called to the coachman and plunging knee-deep into the snow ran to the carriage.
“What do you want?” said the coachman.
“I want to get into the carriage,” replied the count, opening the door and trying to get in while the carriage was moving. “Stop, I tell you, you fool!”
“Stop, Vaska!” shouted the coachman to the postilion and pulled up the horses. “What are you getting into other people’s carriages for? This carriage belongs to my mistress, to Anna Fedorovna, and not to your honour.”
“Shut up, you blockhead! Here’s a ruble for you; get down and close the door,” said the count. But as the coachman did not stir he lifted the steps himself and, lowering the window, managed somehow to close the door. In the carriage, as in all old carriages, especially in those in which yellow galloon is used, there was a musty odour something like the smell of decayed and burnt bristles. The count’s legs were wet with snow up to the knees and felt very cold in his thin boots and riding-breeches; in fact the winter cold penetrated his whole body. The coachman grumbled on the box and seemed to be preparing to get down. But the count neither heard nor felt anything. His face was aflame and his heart beat fast. In his nervous tension he seized the yellow window strap and leant out of the side window, and all his being merged into one feeling of expectation.
This expectancy did not last long. Someone called from the porch: “Zaytseva’s carriage!” The coachman shook the reins, the body of the carriage swayed on its high springs, and the illuminated windows of the house ran one after another past the carriage windows.
“Mind, fellow,” said the count to the coachman, putting his head out of the front window, “if you tell the footman I’m here, I’ll thrash you, but hold your tongue and you shall have another ten rubles.”
Hardly had he time to close the window before the body of the carriage shook more violently and then stopped. He pressed close into the corner, held his breath, and even shut his eyes, so terrified was he lest anything should balk his passionate expectation. The door opened, the carriage steps fell noisily one after the other, he heard the rustle of a woman’s dress, a smell of frangipane perfume filled the musty carriage, quick little feet ran up the carriage steps, and Anna Fedorovna, brushing the count’s leg with the skirt of her cloak which had come open, sank silently onto the seat behind him breathing heavily.
Whether she saw him or not no one could tell, not even Anna Fedorovna herself, but when he took her hand and said, “Well, now I will kiss your little hand,” she showed very little fear, gave no reply, but yielded her arm to him, which he covered much higher than the top of her glove with kisses. The carriage started.
“Say something! Art thou angry?” he said.
She silently pressed into her corner, but suddenly something caused her to burst into tears and of her own accord she let her head fall on his breast.
VI
The newly elected Captain of Police and his guests the cavalryman and other nobles had long been listening to the gipsies and drinking in the new restaurant when the count, wearing a blue cloth cloak lined with bearskin which had belonged to Anna Fedorovna’s late husband, joined them.
“Sure, your excellency, we have been awaiting you impatiently!” said a dark cross-eyed gipsy, showing his white teeth, as he met the count at the very entrance and rushed to help him off with his cloak. “We have not seen you since the fair at Lebedyani . . . Steshka is quite pining away for you.”
Steshka, a young, graceful little gipsy with a brick-red glow on her brown face and deep, sparkling black eyes shaded by long lashes, also ran out to meet him.
“Ah, little Count! Dearest! Jewel! This is a joy!” she murmured between her teeth, smiling merrily.
Ilyushka himself ran out to greet him, pretending to be very glad to see him. The old women, matrons, and maids jumped from their places and surrounded the guest, some claiming him as a fellow godfather, some as brother by baptism.
Turbin kissed all the young gipsy girls on their lips; the old women and the men kissed him on his shoulder or hand. The noblemen were also glad of their visitor’s arrival, especially as the carousal, having reached its zenith, was beginning to flag, and everyone was beginning to feel satiated. The wine having lost its stimulating effect on the nerves merely weighed on the stomach. Each one had already let off his store of swagger, and they were getting tired of one another; the songs had all been sung and had got mixed in everyone’s head, leaving a noisy, dissolute impression behind. No matter what strange or dashing thing anyone did, it began to occur to everyone that there was nothing agreeable or funny in it. The Captain of Police who lay in a shocking state on the floor at the feet of an old woman, began wriggling his legs and shouting: “Champagne . . . The Count’s come! . . . Champagne! . . . He’s come . . . now then, champagne! . . . I’ll have a champagne bath and bathe in it! Noble gentlemen! . . . I love the society of our brave old nobility . . . Steshka, sing ‘The Pathway’.”
The cavalryman was also rather tipsy, but in another way. He sat on a sofa in the corner very close to a tall handsome gipsy girl, Lyubasha; and feeling this eyes misty with drink he kept blinking and shaking his head and, repeating the same words over and over again in a whisper, besought the gypsy to fly with him somewhere. Lyubasha, smiling and listening as if what he said were very amusing and yet rather sad, glanced occasionally at her husband-the cross-eyed Sashka who was standing behind the chair opposite her-and in reply to the cavalryman’s declarations of love, stooped and whispering his he ear asked him to buy her some scent and ribbons on the quiet so that the others should not notice.
“Hurrah!” cried the cavalryman when the count entered.
The handsome young man was pacing up and down the room with laboriously steady steps and a careworn expression on his face, warbling an air from Il Seraglio.
An elderly paterfamilias, who had been tempted by the persistent entreaties of the nobles to come and hear the gipsies, as they said that without him the thing would be worthless and it would be better not to go at all, was lying on a sofa where he had sunk as soon as he arrived, and no one was taking any notice of him. Some official or other who was also there had taken off his swallow-tail coat and was sitting up on the table, feet and all, ruffling his hair, and thereby showing that he was very much on the spree. As soon as the count entered, this official unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and got still farther onto the table. In general, on Turbin’s arrival the carousal revived.
The gipsy girls, who had been wandering about the room, again gathered and sat down in a circle. The count took Steshka, the leading singer, on his knee, and ordered more champagne.
Ilyushka came and stood in front of Steshka with his guitar, and the “dance” commenced-that is, the gipsy songs, “When you go along the Street,” “O Hussars!,” “Do you hear, do you know?,” and so on in a definite order. Steshka sang admirably. The flexible sonorous contralto that flowed from her very chest, her smiles while singing, her laughing passionate eyes, and her foot that moved involuntarily in measure with the song, her wild shriek at the commencement of the chorus-all touched some powerful but rarely-reached chord. It was evident that she lived only in the song she was singing.
Ilyushka accompanied her on the guitar-his back, legs, smile, and whole being expressing sympathy with the song-and eagerly watching her, raised and lowered his head as attentive and engrossed as though he heard the song for the first time. Then the last melodious note he suddenly drew himself up and, as if
