Again Anna Fëdorovna, rather irritably outbidding the others, declared seven tricks, made only four, and was fined accordingly, and having very clumsily noted down, on her brother’s demand, the points she had lost, became quite confused and fluttered.
‘Never mind, mamma, you’ll win it back!’ smilingly remarked Lisa, wishing to help her mother out of the ridiculous situation. ‘Let uncle make a forfeit, and then he’ll be caught.’
‘If you would only help me, Lisa dear!’ said Anna Fëdorovna, with a frightened glance at her daughter. ‘I don’t know how this is …’
‘But I don’t know this way either,’ Lisa answered, mentally reckoning up her mother’s losses. ‘You will lose a lot that way, mamma! There will be nothing left for Pímochka’s new dress,’ she added in jest.
‘Yes, this way one may easily lose ten silver rubles,’ said the cornet looking at Lisa and anxious to enter into conversation with her.
‘Aren’t we playing for “assignats”?’ said Anna Fëdorovna, looking round at them all.
‘I don’t know how we are playing, but I can’t reckon in “assignats”,’ said the count. ‘What is it? I mean, what are “assignats”?’
‘Why, nowadays nobody counts in “assignats” any longer,’ remarked the uncle who had played very cautiously and had been winning.
The old lady ordered some sparkling home-made wine to be brought, drank two glasses, became very red, and seemed to resign herself to any fate. A lock of her grey hair escaped from under her cap and she did not even put it right. No doubt it seemed to her as if she had lost millions and it was all up with her. The cornet touched the count with his foot more and more often. The count scored down the old lady’s losses. At last the game ended, and in spite of Anna Fëdorovna’s wicked attempts to add to her score by pretending to make mistakes in adding it up, in spite of her horror at the amount of her losses, it turned out at last that she had lost 920 points. ‘That’s nine “assignats”?’ she asked several times, and did not comprehend the full extent of her loss until her brother told her, to her horror, that she had lost more than thirty-two ‘assignats’ and that she must certainly pay.
The count did not even add up his winnings, but rose immediately the game was over, went over to the window at which Lisa was arranging the zakúshka and turning pickled mushrooms out of a jar onto a plate for supper, and there quite quietly and simply did what the cornet had all that evening so longed, but failed, to do – entered into conversation with her about the weather.
Meanwhile the cornet was in a very unpleasant position. In the absence of the count, and more especially of Lisa, who had been keeping her in good humour, Anna Fëdorovna became frankly angry.
‘Really, it’s too bad that we should win from you like this,’ said Pólozov in order to say something. ‘It is a real shame!’
‘Well, of course, if you go and invent some kind of “tables” and “misères” and I don’t know how to play them.… Well then, how much does it come to in “assignats”?’ she asked.
‘Thirty-two rubles, thirty-two and a quarter,’ repeated the cavalryman who under the influence of his success was in a playful mood. ‘Hand over the money, sister; pay up!’
‘I’ll pay it all, but you won’t catch me again. No! … I shall not win this back as long as I live.’
And Anna Fëdorovna went off to her room, hurriedly swaying from side to side, and came back bringing nine ‘assignats’. It was only on the old man’s insistent demand that she eventually paid the whole amount.
Pólozov was seized with fear lest Anna Fëdorovna should scold him if he spoke to her. He silently and quietly left her and joined the count and Lisa who were talking at the open window.
On the table spread for supper stood two tallow candles. Now and then the soft fresh breath of the May night caused the flames to flicker. Outside the window, which opened onto the garden, it was also light but it was a quite different light. The moon, which was almost full and already losing its golden tinge, floated above the tops of the tall lindens and more and more lit up the thin white clouds which veiled it at intervals. Frogs were croaking loudly by the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon, was visible through the avenue. Some little birds fluttered slightly or lightly hopped from bough to bough in a sweet-scented lilac-bush whose dewy branches occasionally swayed gently close to the window.
‘What wonderful weather!’ the count said as he approached Lisa and sat down on the low window-sill. ‘I suppose you walk a good deal?’
‘Yes,’ said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the count. ‘In the morning about seven o’clock I look after what has to be attended to on the estate and take my mother’s ward, Pímochka, with me for a walk.’
‘It is pleasant to live in the country!’ said the count, putting his eye-glass to his eye and looking now at the garden now at Lisa. ‘And don’t you ever go out at night, by moonlight?’
‘No. But two years ago uncle and I used to walk every moonlight night. He was troubled with a strange complaint – insomnia. When there was a full moon he could not fall asleep. His little room – that one – looks straight out into the garden, the window is low but the moon shines straight into it.’
‘That’s strange: I thought that was your room,’ said the count.
‘No, I only sleep there to-night. You have my room.’
‘Is it possible? Dear me, I shall never forgive myself for having disturbed you in such a way!’ said the count letting the monocle fall from his eye in proof of the sincerity of his feelings. ‘If I had known that I was troubling you …’
‘It’s no trouble! On the contrary I am very glad: uncle’s is such a charming room, so bright, and the window is so low. I shall sit there till I fall asleep, or else I shall climb out into the garden and walk about a bit before going to bed.’
‘What a splendid girl!’ thought the count, replacing his eyeglass and looking at her and trying to touch her foot with his own while pretending to seat himself more comfortably on the window-sill. ‘And how cleverly she has let me know that I may see her in the garden at the window if I like!’ Lisa even lost much of her charm in his eyes – the conquest seemed so easy.
‘And how delightful it must be,’ he said, looking thoughtfully at the dark avenue of trees, ‘to spend a night like this in the garden with a beloved one.’
Lisa was embarrassed by these words and by the repeated, seemingly accidental, touch of his foot. Anxious to hide her confusion she said without thinking: ‘Yes, it is nice to walk in the moonlight.’ She was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. She had tied up the jar out of which she had taken the mushrooms, and was going away from the window, when the cornet joined them and she felt a wish to see what kind of man he was.
‘What a lovely night!’ he said.
‘Why, they talk of nothing but the weather,’ thought Lisa.
‘What a wonderful view!’ continued the cornet. ‘But I suppose you are tired of it,’ he added, having a curious propensity to say rather unpleasant things to people he liked very much.
‘Why do you think so? The same kind of food or the same dress one may get tired of, but not of a beautiful garden if one is fond of walking – especially when the moon is still higher. From uncle’s window the whole pond can be seen. I shall look at it to-night.’
‘But I don’t think you have any nightingales?’ said the count, much dissatisfied that the cornet had come and prevented his ascertaining more definitely the terms of the rendezvous.