Delésov flushed: he felt awkward, and hastily handed the musician the money that had been collected.
‘Thank you very much!’ said Albert, seizing the money. ‘Now let’s have some music. I’ll play for you as much as you like – only let me have a drink of something, a drink …’ he added, rising.
Delésov brought him some more wine and asked him to sit beside him.
‘Excuse me if I am frank with you,’ he said, ‘your talent interests me so much. It seems to me you are not in good circumstances.’
Albert looked now at Delésov and now at his hostess who had entered the room.
‘Allow me to offer you my services,’ continued Delésov. ‘If you are in need of anything I should be glad if you would stay with me for a time. I am living alone and could perhaps be of use to you.’
Albert smiled and made no reply.
‘Why don’t you thank him?’ said the hostess. ‘Of course it is a godsend for you. Only I should not advise you to,’ she continued, turning to Delésov and shaking her head disapprovingly.
‘I am very grateful to you!’ said Albert, pressing Delésov’s hand with his own moist ones – ‘Only let us have some music now, please.’
But the other visitors were preparing to leave, and despite Albert’s endeavours to persuade them to stay they went out into the hall.
Albert took leave of the hostess, put on his shabby broad-brimmed hat and old summer cloak, which was his only winter clothing, and went out into the porch with Delésov.
When Delésov had seated himself with his new acquaintance in his carriage, and became aware of the unpleasant odour of drunkenness and uncleanness which emanated so strongly from the musician, he began to repent of his action and blamed himself for childish soft-heartedness and imprudence. Besides, everything Albeit said was so stupid and trivial, and the fresh air suddenly made him so disgustingly drunk that Delésov was repelled. ‘What am I to do with him?’ he thought.
When they had driven for a quarter of an hour Albert grew silent, his hat fell down at his feet, and he himself tumbled into a corner of the carriage and began to snore. The wheels continued to creak monotonously over the frozen snow; the feeble light of dawn hardly penetrated the frozen windows.
Delésov turned and looked at his companion. The long body covered by the cloak lay lifelessly beside him. The long head with its big black nose seemed to sway on that body, but looking closer Delésov saw that what he had taken for nose and face was hair, and that the real face hung lower. He stooped and was able to distinguish Albert’s features. Then the beauty of the forehead and calmly closed lips struck him again.
Under the influence of tired nerves, restlessness from lack of sleep at that hour of the morning, and of the music he had heard, Delésov, looking at that face, let himself again be carried back to the blissful world into which he had glanced that night; he again recalled the happy and magnanimous days of his youth and no longer repented of what he had done. At that moment he was sincerely and warmly attached to Albert, and firmly resolved to be of use to him.
IV
NEXT morning when he was awakened to go to his office, Delésov with a feeling of unpleasant surprise saw around him his old screen, his old valet, and his watch lying on the small side-table. ‘But what did I expect to see if not what is always around me?’ he asked himself. Then he remembered the musician’s black eyes and happy smile, the motif of Mélancolie, and all the strange experiences of the previous night passed through his mind.
He had no time however to consider whether he had acted well or badly by taking the musician into his house. While dressing he mapped out the day, took his papers, gave the necessary household orders, and hurriedly put on his overcoat and overshoes. Passing the dining-room door he looked in. Albert, after tossing about, had sunk his face in the pillow, and lay in his dirty ragged shirt, dead asleep on the leather sofa where he had been deposited unconscious the night before. ‘There’s something wrong!’ thought Delésov involuntarily.
‘Please go to Boryuzóvski and ask him to lend me a violin for a couple of days,’ he said to his manservant. ‘When he wakes up, give him coffee and let him have some underclothing and old clothes of mine. In general, make him comfortable – please!’
On returning late in the evening Delésov was surprised not to find Albert.
‘Where is he?’ he asked his man.
‘He went away immediately after dinner,’ replied the servant. ‘He took the violin and went away. He promised to be back in an hour, but he’s not here yet.’
‘Tut, tut! How provoking!’ muttered Delésov. ‘Why did you let him go, Zakhár?’
Zakhár was a Petersburg valet who had been in Delésov’s service for eight years. Delésov, being a lonely bachelor, could not help confiding his intentions to him, and liked to know his opinion about all his undertakings.
‘How could I dare not to let him?’ Zakhár replied, toying with the fob of his watch. ‘If you had told me to keep him in I might have amused him at home. But you only spoke to me about clothes.’
‘Pshaw! How provoking! Well, and what was he doing here without me?’
Zakhár smiled.
‘One can well call him an “artist”,1 sir. As soon as he woke he asked for Madeira, and then he amused himself with the cook and with the neighbour’s manservant. He is so funny. However, he is good-natured. I gave him tea and brought him dinner. He would not eat anything himself, but kept inviting me to do so. But when it comes to playing the violin, even Izler has few artists like him. One may well befriend such a man. When he played Down the Little Mother Volga to us it was as if a man were weeping. It was too beautiful. Even the servants from all the flats came to our back-entrance to hear him.’
‘Well, and did you get him dressed?’ his master interrupted him.
‘Of course. I gave him a nightshirt of yours and put my own paletot on him. A man like that is worth helping – he really is a dear fellow!’ Zakhár smiled.
‘He kept asking me what your rank is, whether you have influential acquaintances, and how many serfs you own.’
‘Well, all right, but now he must be found, and in future don’t let him have anything to drink, or it’ll be worse for him.’
‘That’s true,’ Zakhár interjected. ‘He is evidently feeble; our old master had a clerk like that …’
But Delésov, who had long known the story of the clerk who took hopelessly to drink, did not let Zakhár finish, and telling him to get everything ready for the night, sent him out to find Albert and bring him back.
He then went to bed and put out the light, but could not fall asleep for a long time, thinking about Albert. ‘Though it may seem strange to many of my acquaintances,’ he thought, ‘yet one so seldom does anything for others that one ought to thank God when such an opportunity presents itself, and I will not miss it. I will do anything – positively anything in my power – to help him. He may not be mad at all, but only under the influence of drink. It won’t cost me very much. Where there’s enough for one there’s enough for two. Let him live with me a while, then we’ll find him a place or arrange a concert for him and pull him out of the shallows, and then see what happens.’
He experienced a pleasant feeling of self-satisfaction after this reflection.
‘Really I’m not altogether a bad fellow,’ he thought. ‘Not at all bad even – when I compare myself with others.’
He was already falling asleep when the sound of opening doors and of footsteps in the hall roused him.
‘Well, I’ll be stricter with him,’ he thought, ‘that will be best; and I must do it.’
He rang.
‘Have you brought him back?’ he asked when Zakhár entered.