Here came the news of the demand for vodka, light refreshments, and sherry.
‘There now, brother, you never do the right thing; you should have ordered supper,’ began Anna Fëdorovna. ‘Lisa, see to it, dear!’
Lisa ran to the larder to get some pickled mushrooms and fresh butter, and the cook was ordered to make rissoles.
‘But how about sherry? Have you any left, brother?’
‘No, sister, I never had any.’
‘How’s that? Why, what is it you take with your tea?’
‘That’s rum, Anna Fëdorovna.’
‘Isn’t it all the same? Give them some of that – it’s all the same. But wouldn’t it after all be best to ask them in here, brother? You know all about it – I don’t think they would take offence.’
The cavalryman declared he would warrant that the count was too good-natured to refuse and that he would certainly fetch them. Anna Fëdorovna went and put on a silk dress and a new cap for some reason, but Lisa was so busy that she had no time to change her pink gingham dress with the wide sleeves. Besides, she was terribly excited; she felt as if something wonderful was awaiting her and as if a low black cloud hung over her soul. It seemed to her that this handsome hussar count must be a perfectly new, incomprehensible, but beautiful being. His character, his habits, his speech, must all be so unusual, so different from anything she had ever met. All he thinks or says must be wise and right, all he does must be honourable, his whole appearance must be beautiful. She never doubted that. Had he asked not merely for refreshments and sherry, but for a bath of sage-brandy and perfume, she would not have been surprised and would not have blamed him, but would have been firmly convinced that it was right and necessary.
The count at once agreed when the cavalryman informed them of his sister’s wish. He brushed his hair, put on his uniform, and took his cigar-case.
‘Come along,’ he said to Pólozov.
‘Really it would be better not to go,’ answered the cornet. ‘Ils feront des frais pour nous recevoir.’20
‘Nonsense, they will be only too happy! Besides, I have made some inquiries: there is a pretty daughter.… Come along!’ said the count, speaking in French.
‘Je vous en prie, messieurs!’21 said the cavalryman, merely to make the officers feel that he also knew French and had understood what they had said.
XII
LISA, afraid to look at the officers, blushed and cast down her eyes and pretended to be busy filling the teapot when they entered the room. Anna Fëdorovna on the contrary jumped up hurriedly, bowed, and not taking her eyes off the count, began talking to him – now saying how unusually like his father he was, now introducing her daughter to him, now offering him tea, jam, or home-made sweetmeats. No one paid any attention to the cornet because of his modest appearance, and he was very glad of it, for he was, as far as propriety allowed, gazing at Lisa and minutely examining her beauty which evidently took him by surprise. The uncle, listening to his sister’s conversation with the count, awaited, with the words ready on his lips, an opportunity to narrate his cavalry reminiscences. During tea the count lit a cigar and Lisa found it difficult to prevent herself from coughing. He was very talkative and amiable, at first slipping his stories into the intervals of Anna Fëdorovna’s ever-flowing speech, but at last monopolizing the conversation. One thing struck his hearers as strange; in his stories he often used words not considered improper in the society he belonged to, but which here sounded rather too bold and somewhat frightened Anna Fëdorovna and made Lisa blush to her ears; but the count did not notice it and remained calmly natural and amiable.
Lisa silently filled the tumblers, which she did not give into the visitors’ hands but placed on the table near them, not having quite recovered from her excitement, and she listened eagerly to the count’s remarks. His stories, which were not very deep, and the hesitation in his speech gradually calmed her. She did not hear from him the very clever things she had expected, nor did she see that elegance in everything which she had vaguely expected to find in him. At the third glass of tea, after her bashful eyes had once met his and he had not looked down but had continued to look at her too quietly and with a slight smile, she even felt rather inimically disposed towards him, and soon found that not only was there nothing especial about him but that he was in no wise different from other people she had met, that there was no need to be afraid of him though his nails were long and clean, and that there was not even any special beauty in him. Lisa suddenly relinquished her dream, not without some inward pain, and grew calmer, and only the gaze of the taciturn cornet which she felt fixed upon her, disquieted her.
‘Perhaps it’s not this one, but that one!’ she thought.
XIII
AFTER tea the old lady asked the visitors into the drawing-room and again sat down in her old place.
‘But wouldn’t you like to rest, Count?’ she asked, and after receiving an answer in the negative continued: ‘What can I do to entertain our dear guests? Do you play cards, Count? There now, brother, you should arrange something; arrange a set —’
‘But you yourself play préférence,’22 answered the cavalryman. ‘Why not all play? Will you play, Count? And you too?’
The officers expressed their readiness to do whatever their kind hosts desired.
Lisa brought her old pack of cards which she used for divining when her mother’s swollen face would get well, whether her uncle would return the same day when he went to town, whether a neighbour would call to-day, and so on. These cards, though she had used them for a couple of months, were cleaner than those Anna Fëdorovna used to tell fortunes.
‘But perhaps you won’t play for small stakes?’ inquired the uncle. ‘Anna Fëdorovna and I play for half-kopeks.… And even so she wins all our money.’
‘Oh, any stakes you like – I shall be delighted,’ replied the count.
‘Well then, one kopek “assignats”23 just for once, in honour of our dear visitors! Let them beat me, an old woman!’ said Anna Fëdorovna, settling down in her arm-chair and arranging her mantilla. ‘And perhaps I’ll win a ruble or so from them,’ thought she, having developed a slight passion for cards in her old age.
‘If you like, I’ll teach you to play with “tables” and “misère”,’ said the count. ‘It is capital.’
Everyone liked the new Petersburg way. The uncle was even sure he knew it; it was just the same as ‘boston’ used to be, only he had forgotten it a bit. But Anna Fëdorovna could not understand it at all, and failed to understand it for so long that at last, with a smile and a nod of approval, she felt herself obliged to assert that now she understood it and that all was quite clear to her. There was not a little laughter during the game when Anna Fëdorovna, holding ace and king blank, declared misère, and was left with six tricks. She even became confused and began to smile shyly and hurriedly explain that she had not got quite used to the new way. But they scored against her all the same, especially as the count, being used to playing a careful game for high stakes, was cautious, skilfully played through his opponents’ hands, and refused to understand the shoves the cornet gave him under the table with his foot, or the mistakes the latter made when they were partners.
Lisa brought more sweets, three kinds of jam, and some specially prepared apples that had been kept since last season, and stood behind her mother’s back watching the game and occasionally looking at the officers and especially at the count’s white hands with their rosy well-kept nails, which threw the cards and took up the tricks in so practised, assured, and elegant a manner.