"Well, now, aren't you ashamed?" exclaimed Polózof, when the two officers
had reached the privacy of their chamber. "I tried to lose, and I kept
nudging you under the table. Now aren't you really ashamed? The poor old
lady was quite beside herself."
The count burst into a terrible fit of laughter.
"A most amusing dame! How abused she felt!"
And again he began to laugh so heartily that even Johann, who was standing
in front of him, cast down his eyes to conceal a smile. "And here is the
son of an old family friend! Ha, ha, ha!" continued the count in a gale of
laughter.
"No, indeed, it is not right. I felt really sorry for her," said the
cornet.
"What rubbish! How young you are! What! did you think that I was going to
lose? Why should I lose? I only lose when I don't know any better. Ten
rubles, brother, will come in handy. You must look on life in a practical
way, or else you will always be a fool."
Polózof made no answer: in the first place, he wanted to think by himself
about Liza, who seemed to him to be an extraordinarily pure and beautiful
creature.
He undressed, and lay down on the clean soft bed which had been made ready
for him.
"How absurd all these honors and the glory of war!" he thought to himself,
gazing at the window shaded by the shawl, through the interstices of which
crept the pale rays of the moon. "Here is happiness--to live in a quiet
nook, with a gentle, bright, simple-hearted wife; that is enduring, true
happiness."
But somehow he did not communicate these imaginations to his friend; and he
did not even speak of the rustic maiden, though he felt sure that the count
was also thinking about her.
"Why don't you undress?" he demanded of the count, who was walking up and
down the room.
"Oh, I don't feel like sleeping! Put out the candle if you like," said he.
"I can undress in the dark."
And he continued to walk up and down.
"He does not feel sleepy," repeated Polózof, who after the evening's
experiences felt more than ever dissatisfied with the count's influence
upon him, and disposed to revolt against it. "I imagine," he reasoned,
mentally addressing Turbin, "what thoughts are now trooping through that
well-combed head of yours. And I saw how she pleased you. But you are not
the kind to appreciate that simple-hearted, pure-minded creature. Mina is
the one for you, you want the epaulets of a colonel.--Indeed, I have a mind
to ask him how he liked her."
And Polózof was about to address him, but he deliberated: he felt that not
only he was not in the right frame of mind to discuss with him if the
count's glance at Liza was what he interpreted it to be, but that he should
not have the force of mind necessary for him to disagree with him, so
accustomed was he to submit to an influence which for him grew each day
more burdensome and unrighteous.
"Where are you going?" he asked, as the count took his cap and went to the
door.
"I am going to the stable; I wish to see if every thing is all right."
"Strange!" thought the cornet; but he blew out the candle, and, trying to
dispel the absurdly jealous and hostile thoughts that arose against his
former friend, he turned over on the other side.
Anna Fedorovna meantime, having crossed herself, and kissed her brother,
her daughter, and her _protégée_, as affectionately as usual, also retired
to her room.
Long had it been since the old lady had experienced in a single day so many
powerful sensations. She could not even say her prayers in tranquillity;
all the melancholy but vivid remembrances of the late count, and of this
young dandy who had so ruthlessly taken advantage of her, kept coming up in
her mind.
Nevertheless she undressed as usual, and drank a half glass of kvas which
stood ready on the little table near the bed, and lay down. Her beloved cat
came softly into the room. Anna Fedorovna called her, and began to stroke
her fur, and listen to her purring; but still she could not go to sleep.
"It is the cat that disturbs me," she said to herself, and pushed her away.
The cat fell to the floor softly, and, slowly waving her bushy tail, got
upon the oven;[87] and then the maid, who slept in the room on the floor,
brought her felt, and put out the candle, after lighting the night-lamp.
[Footnote 87: The _lezhanka_, a part of the oven built out as a sort of
couch.]
At last the maid began to snore; but sleep still refused to come to Anna
Fedorovna, and calm her excited imagination. The face of the hussar
constantly arose before her mental vision, when she shut her eyes; and it
seemed to her that it appeared in various strange guises in her room, when
she opened her eyes and looked at the commode, at the table, and her white
raiment hanging up in the feeble light of the night-lamp. Then it seemed
hot to her in the feather-bed, and the ticking of the watch on the table
seemed unendurable; exasperating to the last degree, the snoring of the
maid. She wakened her, and bade her cease snoring.
Again the thoughts of the old count and of the young count, and of the game
of _préférence_, became strangely mixed in her mind. Now she seemed to see
herself waltzing with the former count; she saw her own round white
shoulders, she felt on them some one's kisses, and then she saw her
daughter in the young count's embrace.
Once more Ustiushka began to snore....
"No, it's somehow different now, the men aren't the same. _He_ was ready to
fling himself into the fire for my sake. Yes, I was worth doing it for! But
this one, have no fear, is sound asleep like a goose, instead of wooing.
How his father fell on his knees, and said, 'Whatever you desire I will do,
I could kill myself in a moment; what do you desire?' And he would have
killed himself, if I had bade him!"...
Suddenly the sound of bare feet was heard in the corridor; and Liza with a
shawl thrown over her came in pale and trembling, and almost fell on her
mother's bed....
After saying good-night to her mother, Liza had gone alone to the room that
had been her uncle's. Putting on a white jacket, throwing a handkerchief
round her thick long braids, she put out the light, opened the window, and
curled up in a chair, turning her dreamy eyes to the pond which was now all
shining with silver brilliancy.
All her ordinary occupations and interests came up before her now in an
entirely different light. Her capricious old mother, unreasoning love for
whom had become a part of her very soul, her feeble but amiable old uncle,
the domestics, the peasants who worshipped their young mistress, the milch
cows and the calves; all this nature which was forever the same in its
continual death and resurrection, amid which she had grown up, with love
for others, and with the love of others for her,--all this that gave her
that gentle, agreeable peace of mind,--suddenly seemed to her something
different; it all seemed to her dismal, superfluous.
It was as though some one said to her, "Fool, fool! For twenty years you
have been occupied in trivialities, you have been serving others without
reason, and you have not known what life, what happiness, were!"
This was what she thought now as she gazed down into the depths of the
motionless moonlit garden, and the thought came over her with vastly more
force than ever before. And what was it that induced this train of thought?
It was not in the least a sudden love for the count, as might easily be
supposed. On the contrary, he did not please her. It might rather have been
the cornet of whom she was thinking; but he was homely, poor, and taciturn.
"No, it isn't that," she said to herself.
Her ideal was so charming! It was an ideal which might have been loved in
the midst of this night, in the midst of this nature, without infringing
its supernal beauty; an ideal not in the least circumscribed by the
necessity of reducing it to coarse reality.
In days gone by, her lonely situation, and the absence of people who might
have attracted her, caused that all the strength of the love which
Providence has implanted impartially in the hearts of each one of us, was
still intact and potential in her soul. But now she had been living too
long with the pathetic happiness of feeling that she possessed in her heart
this something, and occasionally opening the mysterious chalice of her
heart, of rejoicing in the contemplation of its riches, ready to pour out
without stint on some one all that it contained.
God grant that she may not have to take this melancholy delight with her to
the tomb! But who knows if there be any better and more powerful delight,
or if it is not the only true and possible one?
"O Father in heaven," she thought, "is it possible that I have lost my
youth and my happiness, and that they will never return?... Will they never
return again? is it really true?"
She gazed in the direction of the moon at the bright far-off sky, studded
with white wavy clouds, which, as they swept on toward the moon, blotted
out the little stars.
"If the moon should seize that little cloud above it, then it means that it
is true," she thought. A thin smoke-like strip of cloud passed over the
lower half of the brilliant orb, and gradually the light grew fainter on
the turf, on the linden tops, on the pond: the black shadows of the trees
grew less distinct. And as though to harmonize with the gloomy shade which
was enveloping nature, a gentle breeze stirred through the leaves, and
brought to the window the dewy fragrance of the leaves, the moist earth,
and the blooming lilacs.
"No, it is not true!" she said, trying to console herself; "but if the
nightingale should sing this night, then I should take it to mean that all
my forebodings are nonsense, and that there is no need of losing hope."
And long she sat in silence, as though expecting some one, while once more
all grew bright and full of life; and then again and again the clouds
passed over the moon, and all became sombre.
She was even beginning to grow drowsy, as she sat there by the window, when
she was aroused by the nightingale's melodious trills clearly echoing
across the pond. The rustic maiden opened her eyes. Once more, with a new
enjoyment, her whole soul was dedicated to that mysterious union with the
nature which so calmly and serenely spread out before her.
She leaned on both elbows. A certain haunting sensation of gentle
melancholy oppressed her heart; and tears of pure, deep love, burning for
satisfaction, good consoling tears, sprang to her eyes.
She leaned her arms on the window-sill, and rested her head upon them. Her
favorite prayer seemed of its own accord to arise in her soul, and thus she
fell asleep with moist eyes.
The pressure of some one's hand awakened her. She started up. But the touch
was gentle and pleasant. The hand squeezed hers with a stronger pressure.
Suddenly she realized the true state of things, screamed, tore herself
away; and trying to make herself believe that it was not the count who,
bathed in the brilliant moonlight, was standing in front of her window, she
hastened from the room.