Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

the guests were already making their preparations to depart; and as Albert did not address them, they came out into the anteroom.

Albert bade the hostess farewell; and having taken his worn hat with wide brim, and a last summer’s alma viva, which composed his only protection against the winter, he went with Delesof down the steps.

As soon as Delesof took his seat in his carriage with his new friend, and became conscious of that unpleasant odor of intoxication and filthiness exhaled by the musician, he began to repent of the step that he had taken, and to curse himself for his childish softness of heart and lack of reason. Moreover, all that Albert said was so foolish and in such bad taste, and he seemed so near a sudden state of beastly intoxication, that Delesof was disgusted. “What shall I do with him?” he asked himself.

After they had been driving for a quarter of an hour, Albert relapsed into silence, took off his hat, and laid it on his knee, then threw himself into a corner of the carriage, and began to snore.⁠ ⁠… The wheels crunched monotonously over the frozen snow, the feeble light of dawn scarcely made its way through the frosty windows.

Delesof glanced at his companion. His long body, wrapped in his mantle, lay almost lifeless near him. It seemed to him that a long head with large black nose was swaying on his trunk; but on examining more closely he perceived that what he took to be nose and face was the man’s hair, and that his actual face was lower down.

He bent over, and studied the features of Albert’s face. Then the beauty of his brow and of his peacefully closed mouth once more charmed him. Under the influence of nervous excitement caused by the sleepless hours of the long night and the music, Delesof, as he looked at that face, was once more carried back to the blessed world of which he had caught a glimpse once before that night; again he remembered the happy and magnanimous time of his youth, and he ceased to repent of his rashness. At that moment he loved Albert truly and warmly, and firmly resolved to be a benefactor to him.

IV

The next morning when Delesof was awakened to go to his office, he saw, with an unpleasant feeling of surprise, his old screen, his old servant, and his clock on the table.

“What did I expect to see if not the usual objects that surround me?” he asked himself.

Then he recollected the musician’s black eyes and happy smile; the motive of the Melancholie and all the strange experiences of the night came back into his consciousness. It was never his way, however, to reconsider whether he had done wisely or foolishly in taking the musician home with him. After he had dressed, he carefully laid out his plans for the day: he took some paper, wrote out some necessary directions for the house, and hastily put on his cloak and galoshes.

As he went by the dining-room he glanced in at the door. Albert, with his face buried in the pillow and lying at full length in his dirty, tattered shirt, was buried in the profoundest slumber on the saffron sofa, where in absolute unconsciousness he had been laid the night before.

Delesof felt that something was not right: it disturbed him. “Please go for me to Boriuzovsky, and borrow his violin for a day or two,” said he to his man; “and when he wakes up, bring him some coffee, and get him some clean linen and some old suit or other of mine. Fix him up as well as you can, please.”

When he returned home in the afternoon, Delesof, to his surprise, found that Albert was not there.

“Where is he?” he asked of his man.

“He went out immediately after dinner,” replied the servant. “He took the violin, and went out, saying that he would be back again in an hour; but since that time we have not seen him.”

“Ta, ta! how provoking!” said Delesof. “Why did you let him go, Zakhár?”

Zakhár was a Petersburg lackey, who had been in Delesof’s service for eight years. Delesof, as a single young bachelor, could not help entrusting him with his plans; and he liked to get his judgment in regard to each of his undertakings.

“How should I have ventured to detain him?” replied Zakhár, playing with his watch-charms. “If you had intimated, Dmitri Ivánovitch, that you wished me to keep him here, I might have kept him at home. But you only spoke of his wardrobe.”

“Ta! how vexatious! Well, what has he been doing while I was out?”

Zakhár smiled.

“Indeed, he’s a real artist, as you may say, Dmitri Ivánovitch. As soon as he woke up he asked for some madeira: then he began to keep the cook and me pretty busy. Such an absurd⁠ ⁠… However, he’s a very interesting character. I brought him some tea, got some dinner ready for him; but he would not eat alone, so he asked me to sit down with him. But when he began to play on the fiddle, then I knew that you would not find many such artists at Izler’s. One might well keep such a man. When he played ‘Down the Little Mother Volga’ for us, why, it was enough to make a man weep. It was too good for anything! The people from all the floors came down into our entry to listen.”

“Well, did you give him some clothes?” asked the bárin.

“Certainly I did: I gave him your dress-shirt, and I put on him an overcoat of mine. You want to help such a man as that, he’s a fine fellow.” Zakhár smiled. “He asked me what rank you were, and if you had had important acquaintances, and how many souls of peasantry you had.”

“Very good: but now we must send and find him; and henceforth don’t give him anything to drink, otherwise you’ll