‘No, but there always were until last year when some sportsman caught one, and this year one began to sing beautifully only last week but the police-officer came here and his carriage-bells frightened it away. Two years ago uncle and I used to sit in the covered alley and listen to them for two hours or more at a time.’
‘What is this chatterbox telling you?’ said her uncle coming up to them. ‘Won’t you come and have something to eat?’
After supper, during which the count by praising the food and by his appetite had somewhat dispelled the hostess’s ill humour, the officers said good-night and went into their room. The count shook hands with the uncle and to Anna Fëdorovna’s surprise shook her hand also without kissing it, and even shook Lisa’s looking straight into her eyes the while and slightly smiling his pleasant smile. This look again abashed the girl.
‘He is very good-looking,’ she thought, ‘but he thinks too much of himself.’
XIV
‘I SAY, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ said Pólozov when they were in their room. ‘I purposely tried to lose, and kept touching you under the table. Aren’t you ashamed? The old lady was quite upset, you know.’
The count laughed very heartily.
‘She was awfully funny, that old lady.… How offended she was!…’
And he again began laughing so merrily that even Johann, who stood in front of him, cast down his eyes and turned away with a slight smile.
‘And with the son of a friend of the family! Ha-ha-ha!…’ the count continued to laugh.
‘No, really it was too bad. I was quite sorry for her,’ said the cornet.
‘What nonsense! How young you still are! Why, did you wish me to lose? Why should one lose? I used to lose before I knew how to play! Ten rubles may come in useful, my dear fellow. You must look at life practically or you’ll always be left in the lurch.’
Pólozov was silenced; besides, he wished to be quiet and to think about Lisa who seemed to him an unusually pure and beautiful creature. He undressed and lay down in the soft clean bed prepared for him.
‘What nonsense all this military honour and glory is!’ he thought, looking at the window curtained by the shawl through which the white moonbeams stole in. ‘It would be happiness to live in a quiet nook with a dear, wise, simple-hearted wife – yes, that is true and lasting happiness!’
But for some reason he did not communicate these reflections to his friend and did not even refer to the country lass, though he was convinced that the count too was thinking of her.
‘Why don’t you undress?’ he asked the count who was walking up and down the room.
‘I don’t feel sleepy yet, somehow. You can put out the candle if you like. I shall lie down as I am.’
And he continued to pace up and down.
‘Don’t feel sleepy yet somehow,’ repeated Pólozov, who after this last evening felt more dissatisfied than ever with the count’s influence over him and was inclined to rebel against it. ‘I can imagine,’ he thought, addressing himself mentally to Túrbin, ‘what is now passing through that well-brushed head of yours! I saw how you admired her. But you are not capable of understanding such a simple honest creature: you want a Mina and a colonel’s epaulettes … I really must ask him how he liked her.’
And Pólozov turned towards him – but changed his mind. He felt he would not be able to hold his own with the count, if the latter’s opinion of Lisa were what he supposed it to be, and that he would even be unable to avoid agreeing with him so accustomed was he to bow to the count’s influence, which he felt more and more every day to be oppressive and unjust.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, when the count put on his cap and went to the door.
‘I’m going to see if things are all right in the stables.’
‘Strange!’ thought the cornet, but put out the candle and turned over on his other side, trying to drive away the absurdly jealous and hostile thoughts that crowded into his head concerning his former friend.
Anna Fëdorovna meanwhile, having as usual kissed her brother, daughter, and ward, and made the sign of the cross over each of them, had also retired to her room. It was long since the old lady had experienced so many strong impressions in one day and she could not even pray quietly: she could not rid herself of the sad and vivid memories of the deceased count and of the young dandy who had plundered her so unmercifully. However she undressed as usual, drank half a tumbler of kvas24 that stood ready for her on a little table by her bed, and lay down. Her favourite cat crept softly into the room. Anna Fëdorovna called her up and began to stroke her and listened to her purring, but could not fall asleep.
‘It’s the cat that keeps me awake,’ she thought and drove her away. The cat fell softly on the floor and gently moving her bushy tail leapt onto the stove. And now the maid, who always slept in Anna Fëdorovna’s room, came and spread the piece of felt that served her for a mattress, put out the candle, and lit the lamp before the icon. At last the maid began to snore, but still sleep would not come to soothe Anna Fëdorovna’s excited imagination. When she closed her eyes the hussar’s face appeared to her, and she seemed to see it in the room in various guises when she opened her eyes and by the dim light of the lamp looked at the chest of drawers, the table, or a white dress that was hanging up. Now she felt very hot on the feather bed, now her watch ticked unbearably on the little table, and the maid snored unendurably through her nose. She woke her up and told her not to snore. Again thoughts of her daughter, of the old count and the young one, and of the préférence, became curiously mixed in her head. Now she saw herself waltzing with the old count, saw her own round white shoulders, felt someone’s kisses on them, and then saw her daughter in the arms of the young count. Ustyúshka again began to snore.
‘No, people are not the same nowadays. The other one was ready to leap into the fire for me – and not without cause. But this one is sleeping like a fool, no fear, glad to have won – no love-making about him.… How the other one said on his knees, “What do you wish me to do? I’ll kill myself on the spot, or do anything you like!” And he would have killed himself had I told him to.’
Suddenly she heard a patter of bare feet in the passage and Lisa, with a shawl thrown over her, ran in pale and trembling and almost fell onto her mother’s bed.
After saying good-night to her mother that evening Lisa had gone alone to the room her uncle generally slept in. She put on a white dressing-jacket and covering her long thick plait with a kerchief, extinguished the candle, opened the window, and sat down on a chair, drawing her feet up and fixing her pensive eyes on the pond now all glittering in the silvery light.
All her accustomed occupations and interests suddenly appeared to her in a new light: her capricious old mother, uncritical love for whom had become part of her soul; her decrepit but amiable old uncle; the domestic and village serfs who worshipped their young mistress; the milch cows and the calves, and all this Nature which had died and been renewed so many times and amid which she had grown up loving and beloved – all this that had given such light and pleasant tranquillity to her soul suddenly seemed unsatisfactory; it seemed dull and unnecessary. It was as if someone had said to her: ‘Little fool, little fool, for twenty years you have been trifling, serving someone without knowing why, and without knowing what life and happiness are!’ As she gazed into the depths of the moonlit, motionless garden she thought this more intensely, far more intensely, than ever before. And what caused these thoughts? Not any sudden love for the count as one might have supposed. On the contrary she did not like him. She could have been interested in the cornet more easily, but he was plain, poor fellow, and silent. She kept involuntarily forgetting him and recalling the image of the count with anger and annoyance. ‘No, that’s not it,’ she said to herself. Her ideal had been so beautiful. It was an ideal that could have been loved on such a night amid this Nature without impairing its beauty – an ideal never abridged to fit it to some coarse reality.