‘Hurrah!’ cried the cavalryman when the count entered.
The handsome young man was pacing up and down the room with laboriously steady steps and a careworn expression on his face, warbling an air from Il Seraglio.
An elderly paterfamilias, who had been tempted by the persistent entreaties of the nobles to come and hear the gipsies, as they said that without him the thing would be worthless and it would be better not to go at all, was lying on a sofa where he had sunk as soon as he arrived, and no one was taking any notice of him. Some official or other who was also there had taken off his swallow-tail coat and was sitting up on the table, feet and all, ruffling his hair, and thereby showing that he was very much on the spree. As soon as the count entered, this official unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and got still farther onto the table. In general on Túrbin’s arrival the carousal revived.
The gipsy girls, who had been wandering about the room, again gathered and sat down in a circle. The count took Stëshka, the leading singer, on his knee, and ordered more champagne.
Ilyúshka came and stood in front of Stëshka with his guitar, and the ‘dance’ commenced, i.e. the gipsy songs, When you go along the Street, O Hussars!, Do you hear, do you know?, and so on in a definite order. Stëshka sang admirably. The flexible sonorous contralto that flowed from her very chest, her smiles while singing, her laughing passionate eyes, and her foot that moved involuntarily in measure with the song, her wild shriek at the commencement of the chorus – all touched some powerful but rarely-reached chord. It was evident that she lived only in the song she was singing. Ilyúshka accompanied her on the guitar – his back, legs, smile, and whole being, expressing sympathy with the song – and eagerly watching her, raised and lowered his head as attentive and engrossed as though he heard the song for the first time. Then at the last melodious note he suddenly drew himself up, and as if feeling himself superior to everyone in the world, proudly and resolutely threw up his guitar with his foot, twirled it about, stamped, tossed back his hair, and looked round at the choir with a frown. His whole body from neck to heels began dancing in every muscle – and twenty energetic, powerful voices each trying to chime in more strongly and more strangely than the rest, rang through the air. The old women bobbed up and down on their chairs waving their handkerchiefs, showing their teeth, and vying with one another in their harmonious and measured shouts. The basses with strained necks and heads bent to one side boomed while standing behind the chairs.
When Stëshka took a high note Ilyúshka brought his guitar closer to her as if wishing to help her, and the handsome young man screamed with rapture, saying that now they were beginning the bémols.18
When a dance was struck up and Dunyásha, advancing with quivering shoulders and bosom, twirled round in front of the count and glided onwards, Túrbin leapt up, threw off his jacket, and in his red shirt stepped jauntily with her in precise and measured step, accomplishing such things with his legs that the gipsies smiled with approval and glanced at one another.
The Captain of Police sat down like a Turk, beat his breast with his fist, and cried ‘vivat!’ and then, having caught hold of the count’s leg, began to tell him that of two thousand rubles he now had only five hundred left, but that he could do anything he liked if only the count would allow it. The elderly paterfamilias awoke and wished to go away, but was not allowed to do so. The handsome young man began persuading a gipsy to waltz with him. The cavalryman, wishing to show off his intimacy with the count, rose and embraced Túrbin. ‘Ah, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘why didst thou leave us, eh?’ The count was silent, evidently thinking of something else. ‘Where did you go to? Ah, you rogue of a count, I know where you went to!’
For some reason this familiarity displeased Túrbin. Without a smile he looked silently into the cavalryman’s face and suddenly launched at him such terrible and rude abuse that the cavalryman was pained, and for a while could not make up his mind whether to take the offence as a joke or seriously. At last he decided to take it as a joke, smiled, and went back to his gipsy, assuring her that he would certainly marry her after Easter. They sang another song and another, danced again, and ‘hailed the guests’, and everyone continued to imagine that he was enjoying it. There was no end to the champagne. The count drank a great deal. His eyes seemed to grow moist, but he was not unsteady. He danced even better than before, spoke firmly, even joined in the chorus extremely well, and chimed in when Stëshka sang Friendship’s Tender Emotions. In the midst of a dance the landlord came in to ask the guests to return to their homes as it was getting on for three in the morning.
The count seized the landlord by the scruff of his neck and ordered him to dance the Russian dance. The landlord refused. The count snatched up a bottle of champagne and having stood the landlord on his head and had him held in that position, amidst general laughter, slowly emptied the bottle over him.
It was beginning to dawn. Everyone looked pale and exhausted except the count.
‘Well, I must be starting for Moscow,’ said he, suddenly rising. ‘Come along, all of you! Come and see me off … and we’ll have some tea together.’
All agreed except the paterfamilias (who was left behind asleep), and crowding into three large sledges that stood at the door, they all drove off to the hotel.
VII
‘GET horses ready!’ cried the count as he entered the saloon of his hotel followed by the guests and gipsies. ‘Sáshka! – not gipsy Sáshka but my Sáshka – tell the superintendent I’ll thrash him if he gives me bad horses. And get us some tea. Zavalshévski, look after the tea: I’m going to have a look at Ilyín and see how he’s getting on …’ added Túrbin, and went along the passage towards the uhlan’s room.
Ilyín had just finished playing, and having lost his last kopék was lying face downwards on the sofa, pulling one hair after another from its torn horsehair cover, putting them in his mouth, biting them in two and spitting them out again.
Two tallow candles, one of which had burnt down to the paper in the socket, stood on the card-strewn table and feebly wrestled with the morning light that crept in through the window. There were no ideas in Ilyín’s head: a dense mist of gambling passion shrouded all his faculties, he did not even feel penitent. He made one attempt to think of what he should do now: how being penniless he could get away, how he could repay the fifteen thousand rubles of Crown money, what his regimental commander would say, what his mother and his comrades would say, and he felt such terror and disgust with himself that wishing to forget himself he rose and began pacing up and down the room trying to step only where the floorboards joined, and began, once more, vividly to recall every slightest detail of the course of play. He vividly imagined how he had begun to win back his money, how he withdrew a nine and placed the king of spades over two thousand rubles. A queen was dealt to the right, an ace to the left, then the king of diamonds to the right and all was lost; but if, say, a six had been dealt to the right and the king of diamonds to the left, he would have won everything back, would have played once more double or quits, would have won fifteen thousand rubles, and would then have bought himself an ambler from his regimental commander and another pair of horses besides, and a phaeton. Well, and what then? – Well it would have been a splendid, splendid thing!