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

well-educated man. I remember that I took part against Guskov in the dispute, and went to an extreme, even undertaking to show that intelligence and education were always in inverse ratio to bravery; and I remember how Guskov pleasantly and cleverly argued that bravery is an inevitable result of intelligence and of a certain degree of development; with which view (considering myself to be intelligent and well-educated) I could not help secretly agreeing. I remember also how, at the end of our conversation, Ivashin’s wife introduced us to one another, and how her brother, with a condescending smile, gave me his little hand, on which he had not quite finished drawing a kid-glove, and pressed mine in the same feeble and irresolute manner as he did now. Though prejudiced against Guskov, I could not then help doing him the justice of agreeing with his sister that he really was an intelligent and pleasant young man, who ought to succeed in society. He was exceedingly neat, elegantly dressed, fresh-looking, and had self-confidently modest manners and a very youthful, almost childlike, appearance, which made one unconsciously forgive the expression of self-satisfaction and of a desire to mitigate the degree of his superiority over you, which his intelligent face, and especially his smile, always showed. It was reported that he had great success among the Moscow ladies that winter. Meeting him at his sister’s, I could only infer the amount of truth in these reports from the expression of pleasure and satisfaction he always wore, and from the indiscreet stories he sometimes told. We met some half-dozen times and talked a good deal, or, rather, he talked a good deal and I listened. He usually spoke French, in a very correct, fluent, and ornamental style, and knew how, politely and gently, to interrupt others in conversation. In general he treated me, and everyone, rather condescendingly; and, as always happens to me with people who are firmly convinced that I ought to be treated with condescension, and whom I do not know well, I felt that he was quite right in so doing.

Now, when he sat down beside me and gave me his hand of his own accord, I vividly recalled his former supercilious expression, and thought that he, as one of inferior rank, was not making quite a fair use of the advantages of his position in questioning me, an officer, in an offhand manner, as to what I had been doing all this time and how I came to be here. Though I answered in Russian every time, he always began again in French, in which it was noticeable that he no longer expressed himself as easily as formerly. About himself he only told me in passing that after that unfortunate and stupid affair of his (I did not know what this affair was, and he did not tell me) he had been three months under arrest, and was afterwards sent to the Caucasus to the N⁠⸺ Regiment, and had now served three years as a private.

“You would not believe,” said he, in French, “what I have suffered at the hands of the officer sets! It was lucky I formerly knew this Adjutant we have just been talking about: he is really a good fellow,” he remarked condescendingly.

“I am living with him, and it is, after all, some mitigation. Oui, mon cher, les jours se suivent, mats ne se ressemblent pas,”82 he added, but suddenly became confused, blushed, and rose from his seat, having noticed that the Adjutant we had been talking about was approaching us.

“It is such a consolation to meet a man like you,” whispered Guskov as he was leaving my side; “there is very very much I should like to talk over with you.”

I told him I should be very glad, though I confess that, in reality, Guskov inspired me with an unsympathetic painful kind of pity.

I foresaw that I should feel uncomfortable when alone with him, but I wanted to hear a good many things from him, especially how it was that, while his father was so wealthy, he was poor, as his clothes and habits showed.

The Adjutant greeted us all except Guskov, and sat down beside me where the latter had been.

Paul Dmitrich, whom I had always known as a calm, deliberate, strong gambler and a moneyed man, was now very different from what he had been in the flourishing days of his card-playing. He seemed to be in a hurry, kept looking round at everybody, and before five minutes were over he, who always used to be reluctant to play, now proposed to Lieutenant O⁠⸺ that the latter should start a “bank.”

Lieutenant O⁠⸺ declined, under pretext of having his duties to attend to; his real reason being that, knowing how little money and how few things Paul Dmitrich still possessed, he considered it unwise to risk his three hundred rubles against the hundred or less he might win.

“Is it true, Paul Dmitrich,” said the Lieutenant, evidently wishing to avoid a repetition of the request, “that we are to leave here tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” replied Paul Dmitrich, “but the orders are, to be ready! But really we’d better have a game: I would stake my Kabarda83 horse.”

“No, today⁠ ⁠…”

“The grey one. Come what may! Or else, if you like, we’ll play for money. Well?”

“Oh, but I⁠—I would readily⁠—you must not think⁠—” began Lieutenant O⁠⸺, answering his own doubts, “but, you know, we may have an attack or a march before us tomorrow, and I want to have a good sleep.”

The Adjutant rose, and putting his hands in his pockets began pacing up and down. His face assumed the usual cold and somewhat proud expression which I liked in him.

“Won’t you have a glass of mulled wine?” I asked.

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, coming towards me.

But Guskov hurriedly took the tumbler out of my hand and carried it to the Adjutant, trying at the same time not to