I
“Well, never mind, the saloon will do,” said a young officer wearing a fur cloak and hussar’s cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K⸺.
“The meeting, your excellency, is enormous,” said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the Orderly that the hussar’s name was Count Toúrbin, and therefore addressed him as “your excellency.”
“The proprietress of Afrémovo with her daughters has said she will leave this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go,” continued the boots, stepping softly before the Count along the passage, and continually looking back.
In the general saloon, at a little table under the blackened full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander I, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, and at one side sat some travellers: tradesmen in blue, fur-lined cloaks.
Entering the room and calling in Blücher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the Count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoarfrost, called for vodka, sat down in his blue satin Cossack jacket at the table, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen sitting there.
The handsome, open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour, and they offered him a glass of champagne. The Count first drank a glass of vodka, and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.
“Sáshka!” shouted the Count, “give him something.”
The driver went out with Sáshka, but came back again with the money in his hand.
“Look here, y’r ’xelence, haven’t I done my very best for y’r honour? Didn’t you promise me half a rouble, and he’s only given me a quarter!”
“Sáshka, give him a rouble.”
Sáshka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver’s feet.
“He’s had enough!” he said, in a bass voice. “And besides, I have no more money.”
The Count drew from his pocketbook the two five-rouble notes which were all that was in it, and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.
“I’ve run it pretty close!” said the Count. “These are my last five roubles.”
“Real hussar fashion, Count,” said one of the nobles, who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about the legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. “Are you staying here some time, Count?”
“I must get some money. I should not have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this cursed pub.”
“Permit me, Count,” said the cavalryman, “will you not join me? My room is No. 7. … If you do not mind, just for the night. And then you’ll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the Maréchal de la Noblesse is just giving a ball tonight. You would make him very happy by going.”
“Yes, Count, do stay,” said another, a handsome young man. “You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years—the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!”
“Sáshka, get my clean linen ready; I am going to the bath,” said the Count, rising, “and from there perhaps I may run in to the Marshal’s.”
Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him, to which the latter answered with a smile, “That can all be managed,” he went out.
“So I’ll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow,” shouted the Count from the passage.
“Please do, I shall be most happy,” replied the cavalryman, running to the door; “No. 7—don’t forget.”
When the Count’s footsteps could no longer be heard, the cavalryman returned to his place, and sitting close to one of the group, a Government official, and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, he said—
“It is the very man, you know.”
“No?”
“I tell you it is; it is the very same duellist hussar—the famous Toúrbin. He knew me—I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyáni for remounts. There was one thing—he and I did together. … He’s a fine fellow, eh?”
“A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner! Doesn’t show a grain of—what d’you call it?” answered the handsome young man. “How quickly we became intimate. … He’s not more than twenty-five, is he?”
“Oh no, that’s what he looks, but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who eloped with Migoúnova? He. It was he killed Sáblin. It was he dropped Matnyóf out of the window by the legs. He won 300,000 roubles of Prince Néstorof. He is a regular daredevil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar—a real jewel. The rumours that are afloat about us are nothing—if anyone knew what a true hussar is! Ah yes, those were times!”
And the cavalryman told his interlocutor of such a spree with the Count in Lebedyáni, as not only never had, but never even could have taken place.
It could not have done so, first because he had never seen the Count till that day, and had left the army two years before the Count entered it; and secondly, because the cavalryman had never really served in the cavalry at all, but had for four years been the humblest of cadets in the Beléfsky Regiment, and had retired as soon as ever he became ensign. But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyáni, where he squandered 700 roubles with some officers who were there for remounts. He had even gone so far as to have an Uhlan uniform with orange facings made, meaning to enter an Uhlan regiment. This desire to enter the cavalry, and the three weeks spent with the remount officers at Lebedyáni, remained the brightest and happiest memories of his life; so that he transformed the desire, first into a reality and then into a reminiscence, and came to believe firmly in his past as a cavalry officer—all of which did not hinder him from being, both as to gentleness and honesty, a most worthy man.
“Yes, those who have never served in the cavalry will never understand us fellows.”
He sat down astride a chair, and thrusting out his lower jaw began to speak in a bass voice. “One used to ride at the head of one’s squadron: under you not a horse, but the devil incarnate, prancing all about, and you just sit in devil-me-care style. The squadron commander rides up to review: ‘Lieutenant,’ he says, ‘if you please, we can’t get on without you—lead the squadron to parade.’ ‘All right,’ you say, and there you are; you turn round, shout to your moustached fellows. … Ah, devil take it, those were times!”
The Count returned from the bath very red and with wet hair, and went straight to No. 7, where the cavalryman was already sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a pipe and considering with pleasure, and not without some apprehension, the happiness that had befallen him of sharing a room with the celebrated Toúrbin. “Now, supposing,” he thought, “that he suddenly takes me, strips me naked, drives with me to the town gates and puts me in the snow, or … tars me, or simply … But no,” he consoled himself, “he won’t do it to a comrade.”
“Sáshka, feed Blücher!” shouted the Count.
Sáshka, who had taken a tumbler of vodka to refresh himself after the journey, and was decidedly tipsy, came in.
“What, already! You’ve been drinking, rascal! … Feed Blücher!”
“He won’t starve anyhow; see how sleek he is!” answered Sáshka, stroking the dog.
“Silence! Be off and feed him!”
“You want the dog to be fed, but when a man drinks a glass you reproach him.”
“Hey! I’ll thrash you!” shouted the Count, in a voice that made the window panes rattle and frightened even the cavalryman a bit.
“You should ask if Sáshka has yet had a bite today! Yes, beat me, if you think more of a dog than of a man,” muttered Sáshka.
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 Sáshka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand, while with the other he scratched the back of Blücher, 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,” said the cavalryman meekly, as he stood before the Count, who was lying on the cavalryman’s bed with his legs up against the partition. “You see, I also am an old army man, and, I may say, a comrade. Why should you borrow from anyone else when I shall be delighted to lend you a couple of hundred roubles? I have not got them just now, only a hundred roubles, 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 us what you have in your town. What pretty girls? What men game for a spree? What gaming?”
The cavalryman explained that there would be an abundance of pretty creatures at the ball, that Kólhof, who had been reelected 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 Ilúshkin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Styóshka leading, and that everybody meant to go to hear them after leaving the Marshal’s that evening.
“And there is a devilish lot of card-playing too,” he went on; “Loúhnof plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyín, 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 Ilyín 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 us see what sort of people they are,” said the Count.
“Yes, do, pray do. They will be devilish glad.”