Late at night I was sitting with the Count. As usual, we were
drinking. The Count was quite drunk, I only slightly.
“To-day I was allowed accidentally to touch her waist,” he mumbled.
“To-morrow, therefore, we can begin to go further.”
“Well, and Nadia? How do things stand with Nadia?”
“We are progressing! I've only begun with her as yet. So far, we are
passing through the period of conversations with the eyes. I love to
read in her sad black eyes, brother. Something is written there that
words are unable to express, that only the soul can understand. Let's
have another drink!”
“It seems that you please her since she has the patience to listen to
you for hours at a time. You also please her papa!”
“Her papa? Are you talking about that blockhead? Ha, ha! The simpleton
suspects me of honourable intentions.”
The Count coughed and drank.
“He thinks I'll marry her! To say nothing of my not being able to
marry, when one considers the question honestly it would be more
honest in me to seduce a girl than to marry her. . . . An eternal life
with a drunken, coughing, semi-old man . . . br‑r‑r! My wife would
pine away, or she would run away the next day. . . . What noise is
that?”
The Count and I jumped up. . . . Several doors were slammed to, and
almost at the same moment Olga rushed into the room. She was as white
as snow, and trembled like a chord that had been struck violently. Her
hair was falling loose around her. The pupils of her eyes were
dilated. She was out of breath and was crumpling in her hand the front
pleats of her dressing-gown.
“Olga, what is the matter with you?” I asked, seizing her by the hand
and turning pale.
The Count ought to have been surprised at this familiar form of
address, but he did not hear it. His whole person was turned into one
large note of interrogation, and with open mouth and staring eyes he
stood looking at Olga as if she were an apparition.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“He beats me!” Olga said, and fell sobbing on to an armchair. “He
beats me!”
“Who is he?”
“My husband! I can't live with him! I have left him!”
“This is revolting!” the Count exclaimed, and he struck the table with
his fist. “What right has he? This is tyranny! This . . . the devil
only knows what it is! To beat his wife? To beat! What did he do it
for?”
“For nothing, for nothing at all,” Olga said, wiping away her tears.
“I pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket, and the letter you sent me
yesterday fell on the floor. . . . He seized it and read it . . . and
began to beat me. . . . He clutched my hand and crushed it—look, there
are still red spots on it—and demanded an explanation. . . . Instead
of explaining, I ran here. . . . Can't you defend me? He has not the
right to treat his wife so roughly! I'm no cook! I'm a noblewoman!”
The Count paced about the room and jabbered with his drunken, muddling
tongue some sort of nonsense which when rendered into sober language
was intended to mean “of the status of women in Russia.”
“This is barbarous! This is New Zealand! Does this muzhik also think
that at his funeral his wife will have her throat cut? Savages when
they go into the next world take their wives with them!”
I could not recover from my surprise. . . . How was this sudden visit
of Olga's in a nightdress to be understood? What was I to think—what
to decide? If she had been beaten, if her dignity had been wounded,
why had she not run away to her father or to the housekeeper? . . .
Lastly why not to me, who was certainly near to her? And had she
really been insulted? My heart told me of the innocence of
simple-minded Urbenin, and understanding the truth, it sank with the
pain that the stupefied husband must have been feeling at that time.
Without asking any questions, not knowing where to commence, I began
to soothe Olga and offered her wine.
“What a mistake I made! What a mistake!” she sighed between her tears,
lifting the wineglass to her lips. “What sanctimoniousness he feigned
when he was courting me! I thought he was an angel and not a man!”
“So you wanted him to be pleased with the letter that fell out of your
pocket?” I asked. “You wanted him to burst out laughing?”
“Don't let us talk about it!” the Count interrupted. “Whatever might
have been, his action was dastardly all the same! Women are not
treated in that way. I'll challenge him! I'll teach him! Olga
Nikolaevna, believe me he'll have to suffer for this!”
The Count gobbled like a young turkey cock, although he had no
authority to come between husband and wife. I kept silent and did not
contradict him, because I knew that to take vengeance for another
man's wife was limited to drunken ebullitions of words between four
walls, and that everything about the duel would be forgotten the next
day. But why was Olga silent? . . . I did not wish to think that she
was not loth to have the proposed service rendered her by the Count. I
did not wish to think that this silly, beautiful cat had so little
dignity, that she would willingly consent to the drunken Count being
judge between man and wife.
“I'll mix him with the dirt!” piped this newly-fledged knight-errant.
“I'll end by boxing his ears! I'll do it to-morrow!”
And she did not stop the mouth of that blackguard, who in his drunken
mood was insulting a man whose only blame was that he had made a
mistake and was now being duped. Urbenin had seized and pressed her
hand very roughly, and this had caused her scandalous flight to the
Count's house, and now, when before her eyes this drunken and morally
degenerate creature was defaming the honest name and pouring filthy
slops on a man, who at that time must have been languishing in
melancholy and uncertainty, knowing that he was deceived, she did not
even move a hair of her eyebrows!
While the Count was pouring out his wrath and Olga was wiping her
eyes, the manservant brought in some roast partridges. The Count put
half a partridge on his guest's plate. She shook her head negatively
and then mechanically took up her knife and fork and began to eat. The
partridge was followed by a large glass of wine, and soon there were
no more signs of tears with the exception of red spots near the eyes
and occasional deep sighs.
Soon we heard laughter. . . . Olga laughed like a consoled child who
had forgotten its injury. And the Count looking at her laughed too.
“Do you know what I have thought of?” he began, sitting down next to
her. “I want to arrange private theatricals. We shall act plays in
which there are good women's parts. Eh? What do you say to that?”
They began to talk about the private theatricals. How ill this silly
chatter accorded with the terror that had but lately been depicted on
Olga's face, when only an hour before she had rushed into the room,
pale and weeping, with flowing hair! How cheap were those terrors,
those tears!
Meanwhile time went on. The clock struck twelve. Respectable women go
to bed at that time. Olga ought to have gone away long since. But the
clock struck half-past twelve; it struck one, and she was still
sitting there chatting with the Count.
“It's time to go to bed,” I said, looking at my watch. “I'm off! . . .
Olga Nikolaevna, will you permit me to escort you?”
Olga looked at me and then at the Count.
“Where am I to go?” she murmured. “I can't go to him!”
“Yes, yes; of course, you can't go to him,” the Count said. “Who can
answer for his not beating you again? No, no!”
I walked about the room. All was quiet. I paced from corner to corner
and my friend and my mistress followed my steps with their eyes. I
seemed to understand this quiet and these glances. There was something
expectant and impatient in them. I put my hat on the table and sat
down on the sofa.
“So, sir,” the Count mumbled and rubbed his hands impatiently. “So,
sir. . . . Things are like this. . . .”
The clock struck half-past one. The Count looked quickly at the clock,
frowned and began to walk about the room. I could see by the glances
he cast on me that he wanted to say something, something important but
ticklish and unpleasant.
“I say, Serezha!” he at last picked up courage, sat down next to me,
and whispered in my ear. “Golubchek, don't be offended. . . . Of
course, you will understand my position, and you won't find my request
strange or rude.”
“Tell me quickly. No need to mince matters!”
“You see how things stand . . . how . . . Go away, golubchek! You
are interfering with _us_. . . . She will remain with me. . . .
Forgive me for sending you away, but . . . you will understand my
impatience!”
“All right!”
My friend was loathsome. If I had not been fastidious, perhaps I would
have crushed him like a beetle, when he, shivering as if with fever,
asked me to leave him alone with Urbenin's wife. He, the debilitated
anchorite, steeped through and through with spirits and disease,
wanted to take the poetic “girl in red” who dreamed of an effective
death and had been nurtured by the forests and the angry lake! No, she
must be miles away from him!