Chapter 14

“I say, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” said Polozov 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.”

Polozov 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 honor 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 Polozov, 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 Turbin, “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 epaulets.... I really must ask him how he liked her.”

And Polozov 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 Fedorovna 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 kvas that stood ready for her on a little table by her bed, and lay down. Her favorite cat crept softly into the room. Anna Fedorovna called her up and began to stroke her and listen 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 leaped onto the stove. And now the maid, who always slept in Anna Fedorovna’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 Fedorovna’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

• preference*, 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. Ustyushka 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, 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 covered 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 worshiped 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 tranquility 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.

Formerly, solitude and the absence of anyone who might have attracted her attention had caused the power of love, which Providence has given impartially to each of us, to rest intact and tranquil in her bosom, and now she had lived too long in the melancholy happiness of feeling within her the presence of this something, and of now and again opening the secret chalice of her heart to contemplate its riches, to be able to lavish its contents thoughtlessly on anyone. God grant she may enjoy to her grave this chary bliss! Who knows whether it be not the best and strongest, and whether it is not the only true and possible happiness?

“O Lord my God,” she thought, “can it be that I have lost my youth and happiness in vain and that it will never be ... never be? Can that be true?” And she looked into the depths of the sky lit up by the moon and covered by light fleecy clouds that, veiling the stars, crept nearer to the moon. “If that highest white cloudlet touches the moon it will be a sign that it is true,” thought she. The mist-like smoky strip ran across the bottom half of the bright disk and little by little the light on the grass, on the tops of the limes, and on the pond, grew dimmer and the black shadows of the trees grew less distinct. As if to harmonize with the gloomy shadows that spread over the world outside, a light wind ran through the leaves and brought to the window the odor of dewy leaves, of moist earth, and of blooming lilacs.

“But it is not true,” she consoled herself. “There now, if the nightingale sings tonight it will be a sign that what I’m thinking is all nonsense, and that I need not despair,” thought she. And she sat a long while in silence waiting for something, while again all became bright and full of life and again and again the cloudlets ran across the moon making everything dim. She was beginning to fall asleep as she sat by the window, when the quivering trills of a nightingale came ringing from below across the pond and awoke her. The country maiden opened her eyes. And once more her soul was renewed with fresh joy by its mysterious union with Nature which spread out so calmly and brightly before her. She leant on both arms. A sweet, languid sensation of sadness oppressed her heart, and tears of pure wide- spreading love, thirsting to be satisfied — good comforting tears — filled her eyes. She folded her arms on the window-sill and laid her head on them. Her favorite prayer rose to her mind and she fell asleep with her eyes still moist.

The touch of someone’s hand aroused her. She awoke. But the touch was light and pleasant. The hand pressed hers more closely. Suddenly she became alive to reality, screamed, jumped up, and trying to persuade herself that she had not recognized the count who was standing under the window bathed in the moonlight, she ran out of the room....