“If you want satisfaction I am at your service! I shall be in my room for another half-hour,” said the count, returning to Lukhnov’s door.
“Thief! Robber! I’ll have the law on you . . . “ was all that was audible from the room.
Ilyin, who had paid no attention to the count’s promise to help him, still lay as before on the sofa in his room choking with tears of despair. Consciousness of what had really happened, which the count’s caresses and sympathy had evoked from behind the strange tangle of feelings, thoughts, and memories filling his soul, did not leave him. His youth, rich with hope, his honour, the respect of society, his dreams of love and friendship-all were utterly lost. The source of his tears began to run dry, a too passive feeling of hopelessness overcame him more and more, and thoughts of suicide, no longer arousing revulsion or horror, claimed his attention with increasing frequency. Just then the count’s firm footsteps were heard.
In Turbin’s face traces of anger could still be seen, his hands shook a little, but his eyes beamed with kindly merriment and self-satisfaction.
“Here you are, it’s won back!” he said, throwing several bundles of paper money on the table. “See if it’s all there and then make haste and come into the saloon. I am just leaving,” he added, as though not noticing the joy and gratitude and extreme agitation on Ilyin’s face, and whistling a gipsy song he left the room.
VIII
Sashka, with a sash tied round his waist, announced that the horses were ready but insisted that the count’s cloak, which, he said, with its fur collar was worth three hundred rubles, should be recovered, and the shabby blue one returned to the rascal who had changed it for the count’s at the Marshal’s; but Turbin told him there was no need to look for the cloak, and went to his room to change his clothes.
The cavalryman kept hiccoughing as he sat silent beside his gipsy girl. The Captain of Police called for vodka and invited everyone to come at once and have breakfast with him, promising that his wife would certainly dance with the gipsies. The handsome young man was profoundly explaining to Ilyushka that there is more soulfulness in pianoforte music and that it is not possible to play bemols on a guitar. The official sat in a corner sadly drinking his tea and in the daylight seemed ashamed of his debauchery. The gipsies were disputing among themselves in their own tongue as to “hailing the guests” again, which Steshka opposed, saying that the baroray (in gipsy language, count or prince or, more literally, “great gentleman”) would be angry. In general the last embers of the debauch were dying down in everyone.
“Well, one farewell song, and then off home!” said the count, entering the parlour in travelling dress, fresh, merry, and handsomer than ever.
The gipsies again formed their circle and were just ready to begin when Ilyin entered with a packet of paper money in his hand and took the count aside.
“I had only fifteen thousand rubles of Crown money and you have given me sixteen thousand three hundred,” he said, “so this is yours.”
“That’s a good thing. Give it here!”
Ilyin gave him the money and, looking timidly at the count, opened his lips to say something, but only blushed till tears came into his eyes and seizing the count’s hand began to press it.
“you be off! . . . Ilyushka! Here’s some money for you, but you must accompany me out of the town with songs!” and he threw onto the guitar the thirteen hundred rubles Ilyin had brought him. But the count quite forgot to repay the hundred rubles he had borrowed of the cavalryman the day before.
It was already ten o’clock in the morning. The sun had risen above the roofs of the houses. People were moving about in the streets. The tradesmen had long since opened their shops. Noblemen and officials were driving through the streets and ladies were shopping in the bazaar, when the whole gipsy band, with the Captain of Police, the cavalryman, the handsome young man, Ilyin, and the count in the blue bearskin cloak came out into the hotel porch.
It was a sunny day and a thaw had set in. The large post-sledges, each drawn by three horses with their tails tied up tight, drove up to the porch splashing through the mud and the whole lively Party took their places. The count, Ilyin, Steshka, and Ilyushka, with Sashka the count’s orderly, got into the first sledge. Blucher was beside himself and wagged his tail, barking at the shaft-horse. The other gentlemen got into the two other sledges with the rest of the gipsy men and women. The troykas got abreast as they left the hotel and the gipsies struck up in chorus. The troykas with their songs and bells-forcing every vehicle they met right onto the pavements-dashed through the whole town right to the town gates.
The tradesmen and passers-by who did not know them, and especially those who did, were not a little astonished when they saw the noblemen driving through the streets in broad daylight with gipsy girls and tipsy gipsy men, singing.
When they had passed the town gates the troykas stopped and everyone began bidding the count farewell.
Ilyin, who had drunk a good deal at the leave-taking and had himself been driving the sledge all the way, suddenly became very sad, begged the count to stay another day, and, when he found that this was not possible, rushed quite unexpectedly at his new friend, kissed him, and promised with tears to try to exchange into the hussar regiment the count was serving in as soon as he got back. The count was Particularly gay; he tumbled the cavalryman, who had become very familiar in the morning, into a snowdrift, set Blucher at the Captain of Police, took Steshka in his arms and wished to carry her off to Moscow, and finally jumped into his sledge and made Blucher, who wanted to stand up in the middle, sit down by his side. Sashka jumped on the box after having again asked the cavalryman to recover the count’s cloak from them and to send it on. The count cried, “Go!,” took off his cap, waved it over his head, and whistled to the horses like a post-boy. The troykas drove off in their different directions.
A monotonous snow-covered plain stretched far in front with a dirty yellowish road winding through it. The bright sunshine-playfully sparkling on the thawing snow which was coated with a transparent crust of ice-was pleasantly warm to one’s face and back. Steam rose thickly from the sweating horses. The bell tinkled merrily. A peasant, with a loaded sledge that kept gliding to the side of the road, got hurriedly out of the way, jerking his rope reins and plashing with his wet bast shoes as he ran along the thawing road. A fat red-faced peasant woman, with a baby wrapped in the bosom of her sheepskin cloak, sat in another laden sledge, urging on a thin-tailed, jaded white horse with the ends of the reins. The count suddenly thought of Anna Fedorovna.
“Turn back!” he shouted.
The driver did not at once understand.
“Turn back! Back to town! Be quick!”
The troyka passed the town gates once more, and drove briskly up to the wooden porch of Anna Fedorovna’s house. The count ran quickly up the steps, passed through the vestibule and the drawing-room, and having found the widow still asleep, took her in his arms, lifted her out of bed, kissed her sleepy eyes, and ran quickly back. Anna Fedorovna, only half awake, licked her lips and asked, “What has happened?” The count jumped into his sledge, shouted to the driver, and with no further delay and without even a thought of Lukhnov, or the widow, or Steshka, but only of what awaited him in Moscow, left the town of K — forever.
IX
More than twenty years had gone by. Much water had flowed away, many people had died, many been born, many had grown up or grown old; still more ideas had been born and had died, much that was old and beautiful and much that was old and bad had perished; much that was beautiful and new had grown up and still more that was immature, monstrous, and new, had come into God’s world.
Count Fedor Turbin had been killed long ago in a duel by some foreigner he had horse-whipped in the street. His son, physically as like him as one drop of water to another, was a handsome young man already twenty-three years old and serving in the Horse Guards. But morally the young Turbin did not in the least resemble his father. There was not a shade of the impetuous, passionate, and, to speak frankly, depraved propensities of the past age. Together with his intelligence, culture, and the gifted
