XIII
After tea the old lady asked the visitors into the drawing-room, and again sat down in her old place.
“But would you not like to rest, Count?” she asked. “Then how could we entertain you, my dear guests?” she continued, after receiving an answer in the negative. “Do you play cards, Count? There now, brother, you should arrange something; make up a party—”
“But you yourself play Préférence,” answered the cavalryman. “Why not all play? Will you play, Count? Will you, too?”
The officers expressed their readiness to do anything their kind hosts desired. Lisa brought her old pack of cards, which she used for divining when her mother’s swollen face would be well, whether her uncle would return the same day when he went to town, whether one of the neighbours would call today, and so on. These cards, though she had used them for a couple of months, were cleaner than those Anna Fyódorovna used.
“But perhaps you won’t play for small stakes?” asked the uncle. “Anna Fyódorovna and I play for half-kopecks. … And even so she wins all our money.”
“Oh, any stakes you like—I shall be delighted,” replied the Count.
“Well then, one kopeck ‘assignations,’ just for once, in honour of our dear visitors! Let them beat me, an old woman!” said Anna Fyódorovna, spreading herself in her armchair and arranging her mantilla. “And maybe I’ll win a rouble or so from them,” thought Anna Fyódorovna, who had developed a slight passion for cards in her old age.
“If you like, I’ll teach you to play with ‘tables’ and ‘misère,’ ” 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 Fyódorovna could not understand it at all, and so long failed to understand it that at last she felt herself obliged, with a smile and a nod of approval, 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 Fyódorovna, holding ace and king blank, declared misère, and was left with six tricks. She even became confused, and began to smile shyly and to explain hurriedly that she had not got quite used to the new way. All the same they scored against her, especially as the Count, being used to play a careful game for high stakes, was cautious, skilfully played through his opponents’ hands, and would not at all understand the shoves the Cornet gave him under the table with his foot, nor the mistakes the latter made when they played as partners.
Lisa brought some more sweets, three kinds of jam, and some specially-prepared apples which 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 Fyódorovna, rather irritably outbidding the others, declared to make 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, mama, you will win it back!” smilingly remarked Lisa, wishful to help her mother out of the ridiculous situation. “Make uncle put on a remise of one trick, and then he will be caught.”
“If you would only help me, Lisa dear!” said Anna Fyódorovna, 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 very much that way, mama! There will be nothing left for Pímotchka’s new dress,” she added in jest.
“Yes, this way one may easily lose ten roubles silver,” said the Cornet, looking at Lisa, and anxious to enter into conversation with her.
“Are we not playing for ‘assignations’?” said Anna Fyódorovna, looking round at all present.
“I don’t know how we are playing, only I can’t reckon in ‘assignations,’ ” said the Count. “What is it? I mean, what are ‘assignations’?”
“Why, nowadays no one counts by ‘assignations’ any longer,” remarked the uncle, who had played very cautiously, and had been winning.
The old lady ordered some sparkling homemade 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 Fyódorovna’s wicked attempts to add to her own 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 roubles ‘assignations’?” asked Anna Fyódorovna 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 roubles “assignations,” 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 near which Lisa, setting the table for supper, was turning pickled mushrooms out of a jar on to a plate and arranging the zakoúska, and there quite quietly and simply did what the Cornet had all that evening so longed but failed to do—he entered into conversation with her about the weather.
Meanwhile the Cornet was in a very unpleasant position. In the absence of the Count, and especially of Lisa, who had been keeping her in good humour, Anna Fyódorovna became frankly angry.
“Really it is too bad that we have won from you in this way,” said Pólozof, in order to say something; “it is a real shame!”
“Well, of course, if you go and invent some kind of ‘tables’ and ‘misères’! I don’t know how to play them. … Well then, how much does it come to in ‘assignations’?” she asked.
“Thirty-two roubles, 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, hand it over.”
“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 Fyódorovna went off to her room, hurriedly swaying from side to side, and came back bringing nine roubles “assignations.” It was only on the old man’s insistent demand that she eventually paid the whole sum.
Pólozof was seized with fear lest Anna Fyódorovna 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 into 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 over the tops of the tall limes and more and more lit up the thin white clouds which veiled it at intervals. In the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon, was visible through the avenue, the frogs were croaking loudly. In a sweet-scented lilac-bush, whose dewy branches now and then swayed gently close to the window, some little birds fluttered slightly or lightly hopped from bough to bough.
“What wonderful weather!” the Count said, when he approached Lisa and sat down on the low windowsill. “You walk a good deal, I expect.”
“Yes,” said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the Count; “in the mornings about seven I see to what has to be attended to on the estate, and I take my mother’s ward, Pímotchka, with me for a walk.”
“It is pleasant to live in the country!” said the Count, putting his eyeglass to his eye, and looking now at the garden, now at Lisa. “And don’t you ever go out at night, by moonlight?”
“No. But two years ago uncle and I used to walk every moonlight night. He was troubled with a strange complaint—sleeplessness. When there was a full moon he could not sleep. His little room—that one—looks straight out into the garden, the window is low, but the moon shines straight into it.”
“How strange; why, I thought that was your room,” said the Count.
“No, I only sleep there tonight. You have my room.”
“Is it possible? Dear me, I shall never forgive myself for disturbing you in such a way!” said the Count, dropping the glass from his eye in proof of the sincerity of his feelings. “If I had known I was troubling you …”
“It’s no trouble! On the contrary, I am very glad: uncle’s is such a delightful room, so bright, and the window is so low; I shall sit there till I fall asleep, or else I shall get out into the garden and walk about a bit before going to bed.”
“What a splendid girl!” thought the Count, replacing his eyeglass and looking at her, and, while pretending to seat himself more comfortably on the windowsill, trying to touch her foot with his. “And how cunningly she has let me know that I can see her in the garden at the window if I like!” Lisa even lost most of her charm in his eyes, the conquest seemed so easy.
“And how delightful it must be,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the shady green walks, “to spend a night like this in the garden with a beloved one.”
Lisa was abashed by these words, and by the repeated, seemingly accidental, touch of his foot. Anxious to hide her confusion, she said without thinking, “Yes, it is nice to walk in the moonlight.” She was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. She had tied up the jar out of which she had taken the mushrooms, and was going away from the window, when the Cornet joined them, and she felt a wish to see what kind of man he was.
“What a lovely night!” he said.
“Why, they talk of nothing but the weather,” thought Lisa.
“What a wonderful view!” continued the Cornet. “But I suppose you are tired of it,” he added, having a curious propensity to say rather unpleasant things to people he liked very much.
“Why do you think so? The same kind of food, or the same dress, one may get tired of, but not of a beautiful garden if one is fond of walking—especially when the moon is still higher. From uncle’s window you can see the whole pond. I shall be seeing it tonight.”
“But I don’t think you have any nightingales?” said the Count, very dissatisfied that the Cornet had come and prevented his ascertaining more definitely the terms of the rendezvous.
“No, but there always were until last year, when some sportsmen caught one, and this year, only last week, one began to sing beautifully, but the police-officer came to see us and his carriage-bells frightened it away. Two years ago uncle and I used to sit in the covered alley and listen to them for two hours or more at a time.”
“What is this chatterbox telling you?” said her uncle, coming up to them. “Won’t you come and have something to eat?”
After supper, during which the Count, by praising the food and by his appetite, had somewhat dissipated the ill-humour of the hostess, the officers said good night and went into their room. The Count shook hands with the uncle, and, to Anna Fyódorovna’s surprise, shook her hand also without kissing it, and also shook Lisa’s, looking straight into her eyes the while and slightly smiling his pleasant smile. This look again abashed the girl.
“He is very good-looking,” she thought, “only he thinks too much of himself.”