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Page 32
Now, as he sat with me, and gave me his hand, I keenly recalled in him
that same old haughtiness of expression; and it seemed to me that he did
not properly appreciate his position of official inferiority, as, in the
presence of the officers, he asked me what I had been doing in all that
time, and how I happened to be there. In spite of the fact that I
invariably made my replies in Russian, he kept putting his questions in
French, expressing himself as before in remarkably correct language.
About himself he said fluently that after his unhappy, wretched story
(what the story was, I did not know, and he had not yet told me), he had
been three months under arrest, and then had been sent to the Caucasus
to the N. regiment, and now had been serving three years as a soldier in
that regiment.
"You would not believe," said he to me in French, "how much I have to
suffer in these regiments from the society of the officers. Still it is
a pleasure to me, that I used to know the adjutant of whom we were just
speaking: he is a good man--it's a fact," he remarked condescendingly.
"I live with him, and that's something of a relief for me. Yes, my dear,
the days fly by, but they aren't all alike," [Footnote: OUI, MON CHER,
LES JOURS SE SUIVENT, MAIS NE SE RESSEMBLENT PAS: in French in the
original.] he added; and suddenly hesitated, reddened, and stood up, as
he caught sight of the adjutant himself coming toward us.
"It is such a pleasure to meet such a man as you," said Guskof to me in
a whisper as he turned from me. "I should like very, very much, to have
a long talk with you."
I said that I should be very happy to talk with him, but in reality I
confess that Guskof excited in me a sort of dull pity that was not akin
to sympathy.
I had a presentiment that I should feel a constraint in a private
conversation with him; but still I was anxious to learn from him several
things, and, above all, why it was, when his father had been so rich,
that he was in poverty, as was evident by his dress and appearance.
The adjutant greeted us all, including Guskof, and sat down by me in the
seat which the cashiered officer had just vacated. Pavel Dmitrievitch,
who had always been calm and leisurely, a genuine gambler, and a man of
means, was now very different from what he had been in the flowery days
of his success; he seemed to be in haste to go somewhere, kept
constantly glancing at everybody, and it was not five minutes before he
proposed to Lieutenant O., who had sworn off from playing, to set up a
small faro-bank. Lieutenant O. refused, under the pretext of having to
attend to his duties, but in reality because, as he knew that the
adjutant had few possessions and little money left, he did not feel
himself justified in risking his three hundred rubles against a hundred
or even less which the adjutant might stake.
"Well, Pavel Dmitrievitch," said the lieutenant, anxious to avoid a
repetition of the invitation, "is it true, what they tell us, that we
return to-morrow?"
"I don't know," replied the adjutant. "Orders came to be in readiness;
but if it's true, then you'd better play a game. I would wager my
Kabarda cloak."
"No, to-day already" . . .
"It's a gray one, never been worn; but if you prefer, play for money.
How is that?"
"Yes, but . . . I should be willing--pray don't think that" . . . said
Lieutenant O., answering the implied suspicion; "but as there may be a
raid or some movement, I must go to bed early."
The adjutant stood up, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets,
started to go across the grounds. His face assumed its ordinary
expression of coldness and pride, which I admired in him.
"Won't you have a glass of mulled wine?" I asked him.
"That might be acceptable," and he came back to me; but Guskof politely
took the glass from me, and handed it to the adjutant, striving at the
same time not to look at him. But as he did not notice the tent-rope, he
stumbled over it, and fell on his hand, dropping the glass.
"What a bungler!" exclaimed the adjutant, still holding out his hand for
the glass. Everybody burst out laughing, not excepting Guskof, who was
rubbing his hand on his sore knee, which he had somehow struck as he
fell. "That's the way the bear waited on the hermit," continued the
adjutant. "It's the way he waits on me every day. He has pulled up all
the tent-pins; he's always tripping up."
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