After tea, the old lady invited her guests into the other room, and again
sat down in her usual place. "But perhaps you would like to rest, count?"
she asked. "Well, then, what would you like to amuse yourselves with, my
dear guests?" she proceeded to ask after she had been assured to the
contrary. "You play cards, do you not, count?--Here, brother, you might
take a hand in some game or other."...
"Why, you yourself can play _préférence_," replied the cavalryman. "You had
better take a hand, then. The count will play, will he not? And you?"
The officers were agreeable to every thing that might satisfy their amiable
hosts.
Liza brought from her room her old cards which she used for divining
whether her mother would speedily recover of a cold, or whether her uncle
would return on such and such a day from the city if he chanced to have
gone there, or whether her neighbor would be in during the day, and other
like things. These cards, though they had been in use for two months, were
less soiled than those which Anna Fedorovna used for the same purpose.
"Perhaps you are not accustomed to playing for small stakes," suggested the
uncle. "Anna Fedorovna and I play for half-kopeks, and then she always gets
the better of all of us."
"Ah! make your own arrangements. I shall be perfectly satisfied," said the
count.
"Well, then, be it in paper kopeks for the sake of our dear guests; only
let me gain, as I am old," said Anna Fedorovna, settling herself in her
chair, and adjusting her mantilla. "Maybe I shall win a ruble of them,"
thought Anna Fedorovna, who in her old age felt a little passion for cards.
"If you would like, I will teach you to play with tablets," said the count,
"and with the _miséries_. It is very jolly."
Everybody was delighted with this new Petersburg fashion. The uncle went so
far as to assert that he knew it, and that it was just the same thing as
_boston_, but that he had forgotten somewhat about it.
Anna Fedorovna did not comprehend it at all; and it took her so long to get
into it, that she felt under the necessity of smiling and nodding her head
assuringly, to give the impression that she now understood, and that now it
was all perfectly clear to her. But there was no little amusement created
when in the midst of the game Anna Fedorovna, with ace and king blank,
called "_misérie_," and remained with the six. She even began to grow
confused, smiled timidly, and hastened to assure them that she had not as
yet become accustomed to the new way.
Nevertheless they put down the points against her, and many of them too;
the more because the count, through his practice of playing on large
stakes, played carefully, led very prudently, and never at all understood
what the cornet meant by sundry raps with his foot under the table, or why
he made such stupid blunders in playing.
Liza brought in more jelly-cakes, three kinds of preserves, and apples
cooked in some manner with port-wine; and then, standing behind her
mother's chair, she looked on at the game, and occasionally watched the
officers, and especially the count's white hands with their delicate long
finger-nails, as he with such skill, assurance, and grace, threw the cards,
and took the tricks.
Once more Anna Fedorovna, with some show of temper going beyond the others,
bid as high as seven, and lost three points; and when, at her brother's
instigation, she tried to make some calculation, she found herself utterly
confused and off the track.
"It's nothing, mamasha; you'll win it back again," said Liza, with a smile,
anxious to rescue her mother from her ridiculous position. "Some time
you'll put a fine on uncle: then he will be caught."
"But you might help me, Lízotchka," cried Anna Fedorovna, looking with an
expression of dismay at her daughter; "I don't know how this"....
"But I don't know how to play this either," rejoined Liza, carefully
calculating her mother's losses. "But if you go on at this rate, mamasha,
you will lose a good deal, and Pímotchka will not have her new dress," she
added in jest.
"Yes, in this way it is quite possible to lose ten silver rubles," said the
cornet, looking at Liza, and anxious to draw her into conversation.
"Aren't we playing for paper money?" asked Anna Fedorovna, gazing round at
the rest.
"I don't know, I am sure," replied the count. "But I don't know how to
reckon in bank-notes. What are they? what do you mean by bank-notes?"[84]
[Footnote 84: _Assignatsii._]
"Why, no one nowadays reckons in bank-notes," explained the cavalryman, who
was playing like a hero and was on the winning side.
The old lady ordered some sparkling wine, drank two glasses herself, grew
quite flushed, and seemed to abandon all hope. One braid of her gray hair
escaped from under her cap, and she did not even put it up. It was evident
that she thought herself losing millions, and that she was entirely ruined.
The cornet kept nudging the count's leg more and more emphatically. The
count was noting down the old lady's losses.
At last the game came to an end. In spite of Anna Fedorovna's efforts to
bring her reckoning higher than it should be, and to pretend that she had
been cheated in her account, and that it could not be correct, in spite of
her dismay at the magnitude of her losses, at last the account was made
out, and she was found to have lost nine hundred and twenty points.
"Isn't that equal to nine paper rubles?" she asked again and again; and she
did not begin to realize how great her forfeit was, until her brother, to
her horror, explained that she was "out" thirty-two and a half paper
rubles, and that it was absolutely necessary for her to pay it.
The count did not even sum up his gains, but, as soon as the game was over,
arose and went over to the window where Liza was arranging the lunch, and
putting potted mushrooms on a plate. There he did with perfect calmness and
naturalness what the cornet had been anxious and yet unable to effect all
the evening,--he engaged her in conversation about the weather.
The cornet at this time was brought into a thoroughly unpleasant
predicament. Anna Fedorovna, in the absence of the count and Liza, who had
managed to keep her in a jovial frame of mind, became really angry.
"Indeed, it is too bad that we have caused you to lose so heavily," said
Polózof, in order to say something. "It is simply shameful."
"I should think these tablets and _miséries_ were something of your own
invention. I don't know any thing about them. How many paper rubles does
the whole amount to?" she demanded.
"Thirty-two rubles, thirty-two and a half," insisted the cavalryman, who,
from the effect of having been on the winning side, was in a very waggish
frame of mind. "Give him the money, sister.... Give it to him."
"I will give all I owe, only you must not ask for any more. No, I shall
never win it back in my life."
And Anna Fedorovna went to her room, all in excitement, hurried back, and
brought nine paper rubles. Only on the old man's strenuous insistence she
was induced to pay the whole sum. Polózof had some fear that the old lady
would pour out on him the vials of her wrath if he entered into
conversation with her. He silently, without attracting attention, turned
away, and rejoined the count and Liza, who were talking at the open window.
On the table, which was now spread for the supper, stood two tallow
candles, whose flame occasionally flickered in the gentle breeze of the
mild May night. Through the window opening into the garden came a very
different light from that which filled the room. The moon, almost at its
full, already beginning to lose its golden radiance, was pouring over the
tops of the lofty lindens, and making brighter and brighter the delicate
fleecy clouds that occasionally overcast it.
From the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon,
could be seen through the trees, came the voices of the frogs. In the
sweet-scented lilac-bush under the very window, which from time to time
slowly shook its heavy-laden blossoms, birds were darting and fluttering.
"What marvellous weather!" said the count, as he joined Liza, and sat down
in the low window-seat. "I suppose you go to walk a good deal, don't you?"
"Yes," rejoined Liza, not experiencing the slightest embarrassment in the
count's company. "Every morning, at seven o'clock, I make the tour of the
estate, and sometimes I take a walk with Pímotchka,--mamma's _protégée_."
"It's pleasant living in the country," cried the count, putting his monocle
to his eye, and gazing first at the garden, and then at Liza. "But don't
you like to take a walk on moonlight nights?"
"No. Three years ago my uncle and I used to go out walking every moonlight
night. He had some sort of strange illness,--insomnia. Whenever there was a
full moon, he could not sleep. His room like this opens into the garden,
and the window is low. The moon shines right into it."
"Strange," remarked the count. "Then this is your room."
"No, I only sleep there for this one night. You occupy my room."
"Is it possible? ... oh, good heavens![85] I shall never in the world
forgive myself for the trouble that I have caused," said the count, casting
the monocle from his eye as a sign of sincerity.... "If I had only known
that I was going to"....
[Footnote 85: _Akh! Bozhe moï!_]
"How much trouble was it? On the contrary, I am very glad. My uncle's room
is so nice and jolly: there's a low window there. I shall sit down in it
before I go to bed, or perhaps I shall go down, out into the garden, and
take a little walk."
"What a glorious girl!" said the count to himself, replacing the monocle,
and staring at her, and while pretending to change his seat in the window,
trying to touch her foot with his. "And how shrewdly she gave me to
understand that I might meet her in the garden at the window, if I would
come down!"
Liza even lost in the count's eyes a large share of her charm, so easy did
the conquest of her seem to him.
"And how blissful it must be," said the count dreamily, gazing into the
shadow-haunted alley, "to spend such a night in the garden with the object
of one's love!"
Liza was somewhat abashed by these words, and by a second evidently
deliberate pressure upon her foot. Before she thought, she made some reply
for the sake of dissimulating her embarrassment.