““Hey! I’ll thrash you!” shouted the count in a voice that made the window-panes rattle and even frightened the cavalryman a bit.
“You should ask if Sashka has had a bite today! Yes, beat me if you think more of a dog than of a man,” muttered Sashka.
But here he received such a terrible blow in the face from the count’s fist that he fell, knocked his head against the Partition, and clutching his nose fled from the room and fell on a settee in the passage.
“He’s knocked my teeth out,” grunted Sashka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand while with the other he scratched the back of Blucher, who was licking himself. “He’s knocked my teeth out, Bluchy, but still he’s my count and I’d go through fire for him-I would! Because he-is my count. Do you understand, Bluchy? Want your dinner, eh?”
After lying still for a while he rose, fed the dog and then, almost sobered, went in to wait on his count and to offer him some tea.
“I shall really feel hurt,” the cavalryman was saying meekly, as he stood before the count who was lying on the other’s bed with his legs up against the Partition. “You see I also am an old army man and, if I may say so, a comrade. Why should you borrow from anyone else when I shall be delighted to lend you a couple of hundred rubles? I haven’t got them just now-only a hundred rubles-but I’ll get the rest today. You would really hurt my feelings, Count.”
“Thank you, old man,” said the count, instantly discerning what kind of relations had to be established between them, and slapping the cavalryman on the shoulder. “Thanks! Well then, we’ll go to the ball if it must be so. But what are we to do now? Tell me what you have in your town. What pretty girls? What men fit for a spree? What gaming?”
The cavalryman explained that there would be an abundance of pretty creatures at the ball, that Kolkov, who had been re-elected captain of police, was the best hand at a spree, only he lacked the true hussar go-otherwise he was a good sort of chap, that the Ilyushin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Streshka leading, and that everybody meant to go to hear them after leaving the marshal’s that evening.
“And there’s a devilish lot of card-playing too,” he went on. Lukhnov plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyin, an uhlan cornet who has room No. 8, has lost a lot. They have already begun in his room. They play every evening. And what a fine fellow that Ilyin is! I tell you, Count, he’s not mean-he’ll let his last shirt go.”
“Well then, let us go to his room. Let’s see what sort of people they are,” said the count.
“Yes do-pray do. They’ll be devilish glad.”
II
The uhlan cornet, Ilyin, had not long been awake. The evening before he had sat down to cards at eight o’clock and had lost pretty steadily for fifteen hours on end-till eleven in the morning. He had lost a considerable sum but did not know exactly how much, because he had about three thousand rubles of his own, and fifteen thousand of Crown money which had long since got mixed up with his own, and he feared to count lest his fears that some of the Crown money was already gone should be confirmed. It was nearly noon when he fell asleep and he had slept that heavy dreamless sleep which only very young men sleep after a heavy loss. Waking at six o’clock (just when Count Turbin arrived at the hotel), and seeing the floor all around strewn with cards and bits of chalk, and the chalk-marked tables in the middle of the room, he recalled with horror last night’s play, and the last card-a knave on which he lost five hundred rubles; but not yet quite convinced of the reality of all this, he drew his money from under the pillow and began to count it. He recognized some notes which had passed from hand to hand several times with “corners” and “transports” and he recalled the whole course of the game. He had none of his own three thousand rubles left, and some two thousand five hundred of the government money was also gone.
Ilyin had been playing for four nights running.
He had come from Moscow where the crown money had been entrusted to him and at K — had been detained by the superintendent of the post-house on the pretext that there were no horses, but really because the superintendent had an agreement with the hotel-keeper to detain all travellers for a day. The uhlan, a bright young lad who had just received three thousand rubles from his parents in Moscow for his equipment on entering his regiment, was glad to spend a few days in the town of K — during the elections and hoped to enjoy himself thoroughly. He knew one of the landed gentry there who had a family, and he was thinking of looking them up and flirting with the daughters, when the cavalryman turned up to make his acquaintance. Without any evil intention the cavalryman introduced him that same evening, in the general saloon or common room of the hotel, to his acquaintances, Lukhnov and other gamblers. And ever since then the uhlan had been playing cards, not asking at the post-station for horses, much less going to visit his acquaintance the landed proprietor, and not even leaving his room for four days on end.
Having dressed and drunk tea he went to the window. He felt that he would like to go for a stroll to get rid of the recollections that haunted him, and he put on his cloak and went out into the street. The sun was already hidden behind the white houses with the red roofs and it was getting dusk. It was warm for winter. Large wet snowflakes were falling slowly into the muddy street. Suddenly at the thought that he had slept all through the day now ending, a feeling of intolerable sadness overcame him.
“This day, now past, can never be recovered,” he thought.
“I have ruined my youth!” he suddenly said to himself, not because he really thought he had ruined his youth-he did not even think about it-but because the phrase happened to occcur to him.
“And what am I to do now?” thought he. “Borrow from someone and go away?” A lady passed him along the pavement. “There’s a stupid woman,” thought he for some reason. “There’s no one to borrow from . . . I have ruined my youth!” He came to the bazaar. A tradesman in a fox-fur cloak stood at the door of his shop touting for customers. “If I had not withdrawn that eight I should have recovered my losses.” An old beggar-woman followed him whimpering. “There’s no one to borrow from.” A man drove past in a bearskin cloak; a policeman was standing at his post. “What unusual thing could I do? Fire at them? No, it’s dull . . . I have ruined my youth! . . . Ah, if only I could drive in a troyka: Gee-up, beauties! . . . I’ll go back. Lukhnov will come soon, and we’ll play.”
He returned to the hotel and again counted his money. No, he had made no mistake the first time: there were still two thousand five hundred rubles of Crown money missing. I’ll stake twenty-five rubles, than make a ‘corner’ . . . seven-fold it, fifteen-fold thirty, sixty . . . three thousand rubles. Then I’ll buy the horse-collars and be off. He won’t let me, the rascal! I have ruined my youth!”
That is what was going on in the uhlan’s head when Lukhnov actually entered the room.
“Have you been up long, Michael Vasilich?” asked Lukhnov, slowly removing the gold spectacles from his skinny nose and carefully wiping them with a red silk handkerchief.
“No, I’ve only just got up-I slept uncommonly well.”
“Some hussar or other has arrived. He has put up with Zavalshevski-had you heard?”
“No, I hadn’t. But how is it no one else is here yet?”
“They must have gone to Pryakhin’s. They’ll be here directly.”
And sure enough a little later there came into the room a garrison officer who always accompanied Lukhnov, a Greek merchant with an enormous brown hooked nose and sunken black eyes, and a fat puffy landowner, the proprietor of a distillery, who played whole nights, always staking “simples” of half a ruble each. Everybody wished to begin playing as soon as possible, but the principal gamesters, especially Lukhnov who was telling about a robbery in Moscow in an exceedingly calm manner, did not refer to the subject.
“Just fancy,” he said, “a city like Moscow, the historic capital, a metropolis, and men dressed up as devils go about there with crooks, frighten stupid people, and rob the passers-by-and that’s the end of it! What are the police about? That’s the question.”
The uhlan listened attentively to the story about the robbers, but when a pause came he rose and quietly ordered cards to be brought. The fat landowner was the first to speak out.
“Well, gentlemen, why lose precious time? If we mean business let’s begin.”
“Yes, you walked off with a pile of half-rubles last night soyou like it,” said the Greek.
“I think we might start,” said the garrison officer.
Ilyin looked at Lukhnov. Lukhnov looking him in the eye quietly continued his story about robbers dressed
