Lisa silently filled the tumblers, which she did not give into the visitors’ hands but placed on the table near them, not having quite recovered from her excitement, and she listened eagerly to the count’s remarks. His stories, which were not very deep, and the hesitation in his speech gradually calmed her. She did not hear from him the very clever things she had expected, nor did she see that elegance in everything which she had vaguely expected to find in him. At the third glass of tea, after her bashful eyes had once met his and he had not looked down but had continued to look at her too quietly and with a slight smile, she even felt rather inimically disposed towards him and soon found that not only was there nothing especial about him but that he was in no wise different from other people she had met, that there was no need to be afraid of him though his nails were long and clean, and there was not even any special beauty in him. Lisa suddenly relinquished her dream, not without some inward pain, and grew calmer, and only the gaze of the taciturn cornet which she felt fixed upon her, disquieted her.
“Perhaps it’s not this one, but that one!” she thought.
XIII
After tea the old lady asked the visitors into the drawing-room and again sat down in her old place.
“But wouldn’t you like to rest, Count?” she asked, and after receiving an answer in the negative continued, “What can I do to entertain our dear guests? Do you play cards, Count? There now, brother, you should arrange something; arrange a set-”
“But you yourself play preference,” answered the cavalryman. “Why not all play? Will you play, Count? And you too?”
The officers expressed their readiness to do whatever their kind hosts desired.
Lisa brought her old pack of cards which she used for divining when her mother’s swollen face would get well, whether her uncle would return the same day when he went to town, whether a neighbour would call today, and so on. These cards, though she had used them for a couple of months, were cleaner than those Anna Fedorovna used to tell fortunes.
“But perhaps you won’t play for small stakes?” inquired the uncle. “Anna Fedorovna and I play for half-kopeks. . . . And even so she wins all our money.”
“Oh, any stakes you like-I shall be delighted,” replied the count.
“Well then, one-kopek ‘assignats’ just for once, in honour of our dear visitors! Let them beat me, an old woman!” said Anna Fedorovna, settling down in her armchair and arranging her mantilla. “And perhaps I’ll win a ruble or so from them,” thought she, having developed a slight passion for cards in her old age.
“If you like, I’ll teach you to play with ‘tables’ and misere,” said the count. “It is capital.”
Everyone liked the new Petersburg way. The uncle was even sure he knew it; it was just the same as “boston” used to be, only he had forgotten it a bit. But Anna Fedorovna could not understand it at all and failed to understand it for so long that at last, with a smile and nod of approval, she felt herself obliged to assert that now she understood it and that all was quite clear to her. There was not a little laughter during the game when Anna Fedorovna, holding ace and king blank, declared misere and was left with six tricks. She even became confused and began to smile shyly and hurriedly explain that she had not got quite used to the new way. But they scored against her all the same, especially as the count, being used to playing a careful game for high stakes, was cautious, skillfully played through his opponents’ hands, and refused to understand the shoves the cornet gave him under the table with his foot or the mistakes the latter made when they were Partners.
Lisa brought more sweets, three kinds of jam, and some specially prepared apples that had been kept since last season and stood behind her mother’s back watching the game and occasionally looking at the officers and especially at the count’s white hands with their rosy well-kept nails which threw the cards and took up the tricks in so practised, assured, and elegant a manner.
Again Anna Fedorovna, rather irritably outbidding the others, declared seven tricks, made only four, and was fined accordingly, and having very clumsily noted down, on her brother’s demand, the points she had lost, became quite confused and fluttered.
“Never mind, mamma, you’ll win it back!” smilingly remarked Lisa, wishing to help her mother out of the ridiculous situation. “Let uncle make a forfeit, and then he’ll be caught.”
“If you would only help me, Lisa dear!” said Anna Fedorovna, with a frightened glance at her daughter. “I don’t know how this is … “
“But I don’t know this way either,” Lisa answered, mentally reckoning up her mother’s losses. “You will lose a lot that way, mamma! There will be nothing left for Pimochka’s new dress,” she added in just.
“Yes, this way one may easily lose ten silver rubles,” said the cornet looking at Lisa and anxious to enter into conversation with her.
“Aren’t we playing for assignats?” said Anna Fedorovna, looking round at them all.
“I don’t know how we are playing, but I can’t reckon in assignats,” said the count. “What is it? I mean, what are assignats?”
“Why nowadays nobody counts in assignats any longer,” remarked the uncle, who had played very cautiously and had been winning.
The old lady ordered some sparkling home-made wine to be brought, drank two glasses, became very red, and seemed to resign herself to any fate. A lock of her grey hair escaped from under her cap and she did not even put it right. No doubt it seemed to her as if she had lost millions and it was all up with her. The cornet touched the count with his foot more and more often. The count scored down the old lady’s losses. At last the game ended, and in spite of Anna Fedorovna’s attempts to add to her score by pretending to make mistakes in adding it up, in spite of her horror at the amount of her losses, it turned out at last that she had lost 920 points. “That’s nine assignats?” she asked several times and did not comprehend the full extent of her loss until her brother told her, to her horror, that she had lost more than thirty-two assignats and that she must certainly pay.
The count did not even add up his winnings but rose immediately the game was over, went over to the window at which Lisa was arranging the
zakushka* and turning pickled mushrooms out of a jar onto a plate for
supper, and there quite quietly and simply did what the cornet had all that evening so longed, but failed, to do-entered into conversation with her about the weather.
Meanwhile the cornet was in a very unpleasant position. In the absence of the count, and more especially of Lisa, who had been keeping her in good humour, Anna Fedorovna became frankly angry.
“Really, it’s too bad that we should win from you like this,” said Polozov in order to say something. “It is a real shame!”
“Well, of course, if you go and invent some kind of ‘tables’ and ‘miseres’ and I don’t know how to play them. … Well then, how much does it come to in assignats?” she asked.
“Thirty-two rubles, thirty-two and a quarter,” repeated the cavalryman, who under the influence of his success was in a playful mood. “Hand over the money, sister; pay up!”
“I’ll pay it all, but you won’t catch me again. No! … I shall not win this back as long as I live.”
And Anna Fedorovna went off to her room, hurriedly swaying from side to side, and came back bringing nine assignats. It was only on the old man’s insistent demand that she eventually paid the whole amount.
Polozov was seized with fear lest Anna Fedorovna should scold him if he spoke to her. He silently and quietly left her and joined the count and Lisa who were talking at the open window.
On the table spread for supper stood two tallow candles. Now and then the soft fresh breath of the May night caused the flames to flicker. Outside the window, which opened onto the garden, it was also light but it was a quite different light. The moon, which was almost full and already losing its golden tinge, floated above the tops of the tall lindens and more and more lit up the thin white clouds which veiled it at intervals. Frogs were croaking loudly by the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon, was visible through the avenue. Some little birds fluttered slightly or lightly hopped from bough to bough in a sweet-scented lilac-bush whose dewy branches occasionally swayed gently close to the window.
“What wonderful weather!” the count said as he approached Lisa and sat down on the low window-sill. “I suppose you walk a good deal?”
“Yes,” said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the count. “In the morning about seven o’clock I look after what has to be attended to on the estate and take my mother’s ward, Pimochka, with me for a walk.”
“It is pleasant to live in the country!” said the count, putting his eye-glass to his eye
