Ryabovich looked indifferently ahead and behind him, at the backs of heads and at faces; at any other time he would have been half asleep, but now he was entirely absorbed in his new agreeable thoughts. At first when the brigade was setting off on the march he tried to persuade himself that the incident of the kiss could only be interesting as a mysterious little adven- ture, that it was in reality trivial, and to think of it seriously, to say the least, was stupid; but now he bade farewell to logic and gave himself up to dreams. . . . At one moment he imagined himself in von Rabbeck's drawing-room beside a girl who was like the young lady in lilac and the blonde in black; then he would close his eyes and see himself with another, entirely un- known girl, whose features were very vague. In his imagination he talked, caressed her, leaned over her shoulder, pictured war, separation, then meeting again, supper with his wife, children. . . .
"Brakes on!" The word of command rang out every time they went downhill.
He, too, shouted "Brakes on!" and was afraid this shout would disturb his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .
As they passed by some landowner's estate Ryabo- vich looked over the fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler, strewn with yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met his eyes. . . . With the eagerness of a man who indulges in daydream- ing, he pictured to himself little feminine feet tripping along yellow sand, and quite unexpectedly had a clear vision in his imagination of her who had kissed him and whom he had succeeded in picturing to himself the evening before at supper. This image remained in his brain and did not desert him again.
At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:
"Attention! Eyes to the left! Officers!"
The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage drawn by a pair of white horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted something which no one understood. Several officers, among them Ryabovich, galloped up to him.
"Well? How goes it?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Are there any sick?"
Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed, thought for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:
"One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard and hung it on the fore part of the cannon, the rascal. Reprimand him."
He raised his eyes to Ryabovich and went on: "It seems to me your breeching is too long." Making a few other tedious remarks, the general looked at Lobytko and grinned.
"You look very melancholy today, Lieutenant Lo- bytko," he said. "Are you pining for Madame Lopuhova? Eh? Gentlemen, he is pining for Madame Lopuhova."
Madame Lopuhova was a very stout and very tall lady long past forty. The general, who had a predilec- tion for large women, whatever their ages, suspected a similar taste in his officers. The officers smiled respect- fully. The general, delighted at having said something very amusing and biting, laughed loudly, touched his coachman's back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on. . . .
"All I am dreaming about now which seems to me so impossible and unearthly is really quite an ordinary thing," thought Ryabovich, looking at the clouds of dust racing after the general's carriage. "It's all very ordinary, and everyone goes through it. . . . That gen- eral, for instance, was in love at one time; now he is married and has children. Captain Wachter, too, is married and loved, though the nape of his neck is very red and ugly and he has no waist. . . . Salmanov is coarse and too much of a Tartar, but he had a love afair that has ended in marriage. . . . I am the same as every- one else, and I, too, shall have the same experience as everyone else, sooner or later. . . ."
And the thought that he was an ordinary person and that his life was ordinary delighted him and gave him courage. He pictured her and his happiness boldly, just as he liked. . . .
When the brigade reached their halting-place in the evening, and the officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovich, Merzlyakov, and Lobytko were sitting round a chest having supper. Merzlyakov ate without haste and, as he munched deliberately, read The Messenger of Europe, which he held on his knees. Lobytko talked incessantly and kept filling up his glass with beer, and Ryabovich, whose head was confused from dreaming all day long, drank and said nothing. After three glasses lie got a little drunk, felt weak, and had an iresistible desire to relate his new sensations to his comrades.
"A strange thing happened to me at those von Rab- becks'," he began, trying to impart an indifferent and ironical tone to his voice. "You know I went into the billiard-room. . .
He began describing very minutely the incident of the kiss, and a moment later relapsed into silence. . . . In the course of that moment he had told everything, and it surprised him dreadfully to find how short a time it took him to tell it. He had imagined that he could have been telling the story of the kiss till next morning. Listening to him, Lobytko, who was a great liar and consequently believed no one, looked at him skeptically and laughed. Merzlyakov twitched his eyebrows and, without removing his eyes from The Messenger of Europe, said:
"That's an odd thing! How strange! . . . throws her- self on a man's neck, without addressing him by name. . . . She must have been some sort of lunatic."
"Yes, she must," Ryabovich agreed.
"A similar thing once happened to me," said Lobytko, assuming a scared expression. "I was going last year to
Kovno. ... I took a second-class ticket. The train was crammed, and it was impossible to sleep. I gave the guard half a ruble; he took my luggage and led me to another compartment. . . . I lay down and covered myself with a blanket. . . . It was dark, you understand. Suddenly I felt someone touch me on the shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a movement with my hand and felt somebody's elbow. ... I opened my eyes and only imagine—a woman. Black eyes, lips red as a prime salmon, nostrils breathing passionately—a bosom like a buffer. . . ."
"Excuse me," Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, "I un- derstand about the bosom, but how could you see th-e lips if it was dark?"
Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laugh- ing at Merzlyakov's being so dull-witted. It made Ryabo- vich wince. He walked away from the chest, got into bed, and vowed never to confi.de again.
Camp life began. . . . The days flowed by, one very much like another. All those days Ryabovich felt, thought, and behaved as though he were in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him what he needed for washing, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he recalled that there was something warm and delight- ful in his life.
In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women, he would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of a soldier listening to the description of a battle in which he has taken part. And on the evenings when the officers, out on a spree with the setter Lobytko at their head, made Don-Juanesque raids on the neighboring "suburb," and Ryabovich took part in such excursions, he always was sad, felt profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged her forgiveness. . . . In hours of leisure or on sleepless nights when he felt moved to recall his childhood, his father and mother—every- thing near and dear, in fact, he invariably thought of Mes- techki, the queer horse, von Rabbeck, his wife who re- sembled Empress Eugcnie, the dark room, the light in the crack of the door. . . .