When Steska took a high note Ilyushka brought his guitar closer to her as if wishing to help her, and the handsome young man screamed with rapture, saying that now they were beginning the bemols.
When a dance was struck up and Dunyasha, advancing with quivering shoulders and bosom, twirled round in front of the count and glided onwards, Turbin leapt up, threw off his jacket, and in his red shirt stepped jauntily with her in precise and measured step, accomplishing such things with his legs that the gipsies smiled with approval and glanced at one another.
The Captain of Police sat down like a Turk, beat his breast with his fist and cried “Vivat!” and then, having caught hold of the count’s leg, began to tell him that of two thousand rubles he now had only five hundred left, but that he could do anything he liked if only the count would allow it. The elderly paterfamilias awoke and wished to go away but was not allowed to do so. The handsome young man began persuading a gipsy to waltz with him. The cavalryman, wishing to show off his intimacy with the count, rose and embraced Turbin. “Ah, my dear fellow,” he said, “why didst thou leave us, eh?” The count was silent, evidently thinking of something else. “Where did you go to? Ah, you rogue of a count, I know where you went to!”
For some reason this familiarity displeased Turbin. Without a smile he looked silently into the cavalryman’s face and suddenly launched at him such a terrible and rude abuse that the cavalryman was pained and for a while could not make up his mind whether to take the offence as a joke or seriously.
At last he decided to take it as a joke, smiled, and went back to his gipsy, assuring her that he would certainly marry her after Easter. They sang another song and another, danced again, and “hailed the guests,” and everyone continued to imagine that he was enjoying it. There was no end to the champagne. The count drank a great deal. His eyes seemed to grow moist, but he was not unsteady. He danced even better than before, spoke firmly, even joined in the chorus extremely well, and chimed in when Steshka sang “Friendship’s Tender Emotions.” In the midst of a dance the landlord came in to ask the guests to return to their homes as it was getting on for three in the morning.
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 the 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. “Sashka!-not gipsy Sashka but my Sashka-tell the superintendent I’ll thrash him if he gives me bad horses. And get us some tea. Zavalshevski, look after the tea: I’m going to have a look at Ilyin and see how he’s getting on . . . “ added Turbin and went along the passage towards the uhlan’s room.
Ilyin had just finished playing and having lost his last kopek 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 Ilyin’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 floor-boards 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 horse-hair.
“Why are they singing in No. 7?” thought he. “There must be a spree on at Turbin’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 Ilyin, “or else I shall have to speak to him, and I want to sleep.”
Turbin, however, came up and stroked his head.
“Well, my dear friend, cleaned out-lost everything? Tell me.”
Ilyin gave no answer.
The count pulled his arm.
“I have lost. But what is that to you?” muttered Ilyin 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 Ilyin’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?”
Ilyin 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 Ilyin, 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 Lukhnov’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. Lukhnov 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. Lukhnov 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.
“Lukhnov made a gesture of recognition, and said, “What is it you want?”
“I should like to play with you,” said Turbin, 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 tonight. Perhaps some of the other gentlemen will, but I won’t. You must please excuse me, Count.”
“Then you won’t?”
“Lukhnov 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
