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

always lived thus. Why shouldn’t I continue to live the same way?”

“You don’t say so? Did you ever!”

And saying this, the prince burst into a peal of laughter, and the whiskered bárin also roared. They couldn’t get over it.

“What, never?” they asked.

“Never!”

They were dying with laughter. Of course I understood well enough what they were laughing at him for. I keep my eyes open. “What,” thinks I, “will come of it?”

“Come,” says the prince, “come right off.”

“No; not for anything,” was his answer.

“Now, that is absurd,” says the prince. “Come along!”

They went out.

They came back at one o’clock. They sat down to supper; quite a crowd of them were assembled. Some of our very best customers⁠—Atánof, Prince Razin, Count Shustakh, Mirtsof. And all congratulate Nekhliudof, laughing as they do so. They call me in: I see that they are pretty jolly.

“Congratulate the bárin,” they shout.

“What on?” I ask.

How did he call it? His initiation or his enlightenment; I can’t remember exactly.

“I have the honor,” says I, “to congratulate you.”

And he sits there very red in the face, yet he smiles. Didn’t they have fun with him though!

Well and good. They went afterwards to the billiard-room, all very gay; and Nekhliudof went up to the billiard-table, leaned on his elbow, and said⁠—

“It’s amusing to you, gentlemen,” says he, “but it’s sad for me. Why,” says he, “did I do it? Prince,” says he, “I shall never forgive you or myself as long as I live.”

And he actually burst into tears. Evidently he did not know himself what he was saying. The prince went up to him with a smile.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” says he. “Let’s go home, Anatoli.”

“I won’t go anywhere,” says the other. “Why did I do that?”

And the tears poured down his cheeks. He would not leave the billiard-table, and that was the end of it. That’s what it means for a young and inexperienced man to⁠ ⁠…

In this way he used often to come to us. Once he came with the prince, and the whiskered man who was the prince’s crony; the gentlemen always called him “Fedotka.” He had prominent cheekbones, and was homely enough, to be sure; but he used to dress neatly and ride in a carriage. What was the reason that the gentlemen were so fond of him? I really could not tell.

“Fedotka! Fedotka!” they’d call, and ask him to eat and to drink, and they’d spend their money paying up for him; but he was a thoroughgoing beat. If ever he lost, he would be sure not to pay; but if he won, you bet he wouldn’t fail to collect his money. Often too he came to grief: yet there he was, walking arm in arm with the prince.

“You are lost without me,” he would say to the prince. “I am, Fedot,”22 says he; “but not a Fedot of that sort.”

And what jokes he used to crack, to be sure! Well, as I said, they had already arrived that time, and one of them says, “Let’s have the balls for three-handed pool.”

“All right,” says the other.

They began to play at three rubles a stake. Nekhliudof and the prince play, and chat about all sorts of things meantime.

“Ah!” says one of them, “you mind only what a neat little foot she has.”

“Oh,” says the other, “her foot is nothing; her beauty is her wealth of hair.”

Of course they paid no attention to the game, only kept on talking to one another.

As to Fedotka, that fellow was alive to his work; he played his very best, but they didn’t do themselves justice at all.

And so he won six rubles from each of them. God knows how many games he had won from the prince, yet I never knew them to pay each other any money; but Nekhliudof took out two greenbacks, and handed them over to him.

“No,” says he, “I don’t want to take your money. Let’s square it: play ‘quits or double,’23⁠—either double or nothing.”

I set the balls. Fedotka began to play the first hand. Nekhliudof seemed to play only for fun: sometimes he would come very near winning a game, yet just fail of it. Says he, “It would be too easy a move, I won’t have it so.” But Fedotka did not forget what he was up to. Carelessly he proceeded with the game, and thus, as if it were unexpectedly, won.

“Let us play double stakes once more,” says he.

“All right,” says Nekhliudof.

Once more Fedotka won the game.

“Well,” says he, “it began with a mere trifle. I don’t wish to win much from you. Shall we make it once more or nothing?”

“Yes.”

Say what you may, but fifty rubles is a pretty sum, and Nekhliudof himself began to propose, “Let us make it double or quit.” So they played and played.

It kept going worse and worse for Nekhliudof. Two hundred and eighty rubles were written up against him. As to Fedotka, he had his own method: he would lose a simple game, but when the stake was doubled, he would win sure.

As for the prince, he sits by and looks on. He sees that the matter is growing serious.

“Enough!”24 says he, “hold on.”

My! they keep increasing the stake.

At last it went so far that Nekhliudof was in for more than five hundred rubles. Fedotka laid down his cue, and said⁠—

“Aren’t you satisfied for today? I’m tired,” says he.

Yet I knew he was ready to play till dawn of day, provided there was money to be won. Stratagem, of course. And the other was all the more anxious to go on. “Come on! Come on!”

“No⁠—’pon my honor, I’m tired. Come,” says Fedot; “let’s go upstairs; there you shall have your revanche.”

Upstairs with us meant the place where the gentlemen used to play cards. From that very day, Fedotka wound his net round him so that he began to come every day. He would play one or two games of billiards, and then proceed upstairs⁠—every