"Isn't that too much?" I ask.
He made no reply. We played the game. Once more it was mine. "Four hundred
and eighty against four hundred and eighty?"
I says, "Well, sir, I don't want to wrong you. Let us make it a hundred
rubles that you owe me, and call it square."
You ought to have heard how he yelled at this, and yet he was not a proud
man at all. "Either play, or don't play!" says he.
Well, I see there's nothing to be done. "Three hundred and eighty, then, if
you please," says I.
I really wanted to lose. I allowed him forty points in advance. He stood
fifty-two to my thirty-six. He began to cut the yellow one, and missed
eighteen points; and I was standing just at the turning-point. I made a
stroke so as to knock the ball off of the billiard-table. No--so luck would
have it. Do what I might, he even missed the doublet. I had won again.
"Listen," says he. "Peter,"--he did not call me _Petrushka_ then,--"I can't
pay you the whole right away. In a couple of months I could pay three
thousand even, if it were necessary."
And there he stood just as red, and his voice kind of trembled.
"Very good, sir," says I.
With this he laid down the cue. Then he began to walk up and down, up and
down, the perspiration running down his face.
"Peter," says he, "let's try it again, double or quit."
And he almost burst into tears.
"What, sir, what! would you play against such luck?"
"Oh, let us play, I beg of you." And he brings the cue, and puts it in my
hand.
I took the cue, and I threw the balls on the table so that they bounced
over on to the floor; I could not help showing off a little, naturally. I
say, "All right, sir."
But he was in such a hurry that he went and picked up the balls himself,
and I thinks to myself, "Anyway, I'll never be able to get the seven
hundred rubles from him, so I can lose them to him all the same." I began
to play carelessly on purpose. But no--he won't have it so. "Why," says he,
"you are playing badly on purpose."
But his hands trembled, and when the ball went towards a pocket, his
fingers would spread out and his mouth would screw up to one side, as if he
could by any means force the ball into the pocket. Even I couldn't stand
it, and I say, "That won't do any good, sir."
Very well. As he won this game I says, "This will make it one hundred and
eighty rubles you owe me, and fifty games; and now I must go and get my
supper." So I laid down my cue, and went off.
I went and sat down all by myself, at a small table opposite the door; and
I look in and see, and wonder what he will do. Well, what would you think?
He began to walk up and down, up and down, probably thinking that no one's
looking at him; and then he would give a pull at his hair, and then walk up
and down again, and keep muttering to himself; and then he would pull his
hair again.
After that he wasn't seen for a week. Once he came into the dining-room as
gloomy as could be, but he didn't enter the billiard-room. The prince
caught sight of him.
"Come," says he, "let's have a game."
"No," says the other, "I am not going to play any more."
"Nonsense! come along."
"No," says he, "I won't come, I tell you. For you it's all one whether I go
or not, yet for me it's no good to come here."
And so he did not come for ten days more. And then, it being the holidays,
he came dressed up in a dress suit: he'd evidently been into company. And
he was here all day long; he kept playing, and he came the next day, and
the third....
And it began to go in the old style, and I thought it would be fine to have
another trial with him.
"No," says he, "I'm not going to play with you; and as to the one hundred
and eighty rubles that I owe you, if you'll come at the end of a month, you
shall have it."
Very good. So I went to him at the end of a month.
"By God," says he, "I can't give it to you; but come back on Thursday."
Well, I went on Thursday. I found that he had a splendid suite of
apartments.
"Well," says I, "is he at home?"
"He hasn't got up yet," I was told.
"Very good, I will wait."
For a body-servant he had one of his own serfs, such a gray-haired old man!
That servant was perfectly single-minded, he didn't know any thing about
beating about the bush. So we got into conversation.
"Well," says he, "what is the use of our living here, master and I? He's
squandered all his property, and it's mighty little honor or good that we
get out of this Petersburg of yours. As we started from the country, I
thought it would be as it was with the last bárin (may his soul rest in
peace!), we would go about with princes and counts and generals; he thought
to himself, 'I'll find a countess for a sweetheart, and she'll have a big
dowry, and we'll live on a big scale.' But it's quite a different thing
from what he expected; here we are, running about from one tavern to
another as bad off as we could be! The Princess Rtishcheva, you know, is
his own aunt, and Prince Borotintsef is his godfather. What do you think?
He went to see them only once, that was at Christmas-time; he never shows
his nose there. Yes, and even their people laugh about it to me. 'Why,'
says they, 'your bárin is not a bit like his father!' And once I take it
upon myself to say to him,--
"'Why wouldn't you go, sir, and visit your aunt? They are feeling bad
because you haven't been for so long.'
"'It's stupid there, Demyánitch,' says he. Just to think, he found his only
amusement here in the saloon! If he only would enter the service! yet, no:
he has got entangled with cards and all the rest of it. When men get going
that way, there's no good in any thing; nothing comes to any good....
_E-ekh!_ we are going to the dogs, and no mistake.... The late mistress
(may her soul rest in peace!) left us a rich inheritance: no less than a
thousand souls, and about three hundred thousand rubles worth of
timber-lands. He has mortgaged it all, sold the timber, let the estate go
to rack and ruin, and still no money on hand. When the master is away, of
course, the overseer is more than the master. What does he care? He only
cares to stuff his own pockets.
"A few days ago, a couple of peasants brought complaints from the whole
estate. 'He has wasted the last of the property,' they say. What do you
think? he pondered over the complaints, and gave the peasants ten rubles
apiece. Says he, 'I'll be there very soon. I shall have some money, and I
will settle all accounts when I come,' says he.
"But how can he settle accounts when we are getting into debt all the time?
Money or no money, yet the winter here has cost eighty thousand rubles, and
now there isn't a silver ruble in the house. And all owing to his
kind-heartedness. You see, he's such a simple bárin that it would be hard
to find his equal: that's the very reason that he's going to ruin,--going
to ruin, all for nothing." And the old man almost wept.
Nekhliudof woke up about eleven, and called me in.
"They haven't sent me any money yet," says he. "But it isn't my fault. Shut
the door," says he.