Authors: Leo Tolstoy
Dolohov was holding the Englishman’s hand and explaining distinctly the terms of the bet, addressing himself principally to Anatole and Pierre.
Dolohov was a man of medium height, with curly hair and clear blue eyes. He was five-and-twenty. Like all infantry officers he wore no moustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature in his face, was not concealed. The lines of that mouth were extremely delicately chiselled. The upper lip closed vigorously in a sharp wedge-shape on the firm lower one, and at the corners the mouth always formed something like two smiles, one at each side, and altogether, especially in conjunction with the resolute, insolent, shrewd look of his eyes, made such an impression that it was impossible to overlook his face. Dolohov was a man of small means and no connections. And yet though Anatole was spending ten thousand a year, Dolohov lived with him and succeeded in so regulating the position that Anatole and all who knew them respected Dolohov more than Anatole. Dolohov played at every sort of game, and almost always won. However much he drank, his brain never lost its clearness. Both Kuragin and Dolohov were at that time notorious figures in the fast and dissipated world in Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought: the window-frame, which hindered any one sitting on the outside sill of the window, was being broken out by two footmen, obviously flurried and intimidated by the shouts and directions given by the gentlemen around them.
Anatole with his swaggering air came up to the window. He was longing to break something. He shoved the footmen aside and pulled at the frame, but the frame did not give. He smashed a pane.
“Now then, you’re the strong man,” he turned to Pierre. Pierre took hold of the cross beam, tugged, and with a crash wrenched the oak frame out.
“All out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dolohov.
“The Englishman’s bragging … it’s a fine feat … eh?” said Anatole.
“Fine,” said Pierre, looking at Dolohov, who with the bottle in his hand had gone up to the window, from which the light of the sky could be seen and the glow of morning and of evening melting into it. Dolohov jumped up on to the window, holding the bottle of rum in his hand. “Listen!” he shouted, standing on the sill and facing the room. Every one was silent.
“I take a bet” (he spoke in French that the Englishman might hear him, and spoke it none too well) … “I take a bet for fifty imperials—like to make it a hundred?” he added, turning to the Englishman.
“No, fifty,” said the Englishman.
“Good, for fifty imperials, that I’ll drink off a whole bottle of rum without taking it from my lips. I’ll drink it sitting outside the window, here on this place” (he bent down and pointed to the sloping projection of the wall outside the window) … “and without holding on to anything.… That right?”
“All right,” said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by the button of his coat, and looking down at him (the Englishman was a short man), he began repeating the terms of the wager in English.
“Wait a minute!” shouted Dolohov, striking the bottle on the window to call attention. “Wait a minute, Kuragin; listen: if any one does the same thing, I’ll pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?”
The Englishman nodded without making it plain whether be intended to take this new bet or not.
Anatole persisted in keeping hold of the Englishman, and although the latter, nodding, gave him to understand that he comprehended fully, Anatole translated Dolohov’s words into English. A thin, youthful hussar, who had been losing at cards that evening, slipped up to the window, poked his head out and looked down.
“Oo!… oo!… oo!” he said looking out of the window at the pavement below.
“Shut up!” cried Dolohov, and he pushed the officer away, so that, tripping over his spurs, he went skipping awkwardly into the room.
Setting the bottle on the window-sill, so as to have it within reach,
Dolohov climbed slowly and carefully into the window. Lowering his legs over, with both hands spread open on the window-ledge, he tried the position, seated himself, let his hands go, moved a little to the right, and then to the left, and took the bottle. Anatole brought two candles, and set them on the window-ledge, so that it was quite light. Dolohov’s back in his white shirt and his curly head were lighted up on both sides. All crowded round the window. The Englishman stood in front. Pierre smiled, and said nothing. One of the party, rather older than the rest, suddenly came forward with a scared and angry face, and tried to clutch Dolohov by his shirt.
“Gentlemen, this is idiocy; he’ll be killed,” said this more sensible man.
Anatole stopped him.
“Don’t touch him; you’ll startle him and he’ll be killed. Eh?… What then, eh?”
Dolohov turned, balancing himself, and again spreading his hands out.
“If any one takes hold of me again,” he said, letting his words drop one by one through his thin, tightly compressed lips, “I’ll throw him down from here. Now …”
Saying “now,” he turned again, let his hands drop, took the bottle and put it to his lips, bent his head back and held his disengaged hand upwards to keep his balance. One of the footmen who had begun clearing away the broken glass, stopped still in a stooping posture, his eyes fixed on the window and Dolohov’s back. Anatole stood upright, with wide-open eyes. The Englishman stared from one side, pursing up his lips. The man who had tried to stop it, had retreated to the corner of the room, and lay on the sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, and a smile strayed forgotten upon it, though it was full of terror and fear. All were silent. Pierre took his hands from his eyes; Dolohov was still sitting in the same position, only his head was so far bent back that his curls touched his shirt collar, and the hand with the bottle rose higher and higher, trembling with evident effort. Evidently the bottle was nearly empty, and so was tipped higher, throwing the head back. “Why is it so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had passed. Suddenly Dolohov made a backward movement of the spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this was enough to displace his whole body as he sat on the sloping projection. He moved all over, and his arm and head trembled still more violently with the strain.
One hand rose to clutch at the window-ledge, but it dropped again. Pierre shut his eyes once more, and said to himself that he would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a general stir about him. He glanced up, Dolohov was standing on the window-ledge, his face was pale and full of merriment.
“Empty!”
He tossed the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolohov jumped down from the window. He smelt very strongly of rum.
“Capital! Bravo! That’s something like a bet. You’re a devil of a fellow!” came shouts from all sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and counted out the money. Dolohov frowned and did not speak. Pierre dashed up to the window.
“Gentlemen. Who’ll take a bet with me? I’ll do the same!” he shouted suddenly. “I don’t care about betting; see here, tell them to give me a bottle. I’ll do it.… Tell them to give it here.”
“Let him, let him!” said Dolohov, smiling.
“What, are you mad? No one would let you. Why, you turn giddy going downstairs,” various persons protested.
“I’ll drink it; give me the bottle of rum,” roared Pierre, striking the table with a resolute, drunken gesture, and he climbed into the window. They clutched at his arms; but he was so strong that he shoved every one far away who came near him.
“No, there’s no managing him like that,” said Anatole. “Wait a bit, I’ll get round him.… Listen, I’ll take your bet, but for to-morrow, for we’re all going on now to …”
“Yes, come along,” shouted Pierre, “come along.… And take Mishka with us.” … And he caught hold of the bear, and embracing it and lifting it up, began waltzing round the room with it.
Prince Vassily kept the promise he had made at Anna Pavlovna’s
soirée
to Princess Drubetskoy, who had petitioned him in favour of her only son Boris. His case had been laid before the Emperor, and though it was not to be a precedent for others, he received a commission as sub-lieutenant in the Guards of the Semenovsky regiment. But the post of an adjutant or
attaché
in Kutuzov’s service was not to be obtained for Boris by all Anna Mihalovna’s efforts and entreaties. Shortly after the gathering
at Anna Pavlovna’s, Anna Mihalovna went back to Moscow to her rich relatives the Rostovs, with whom she stayed in Moscow. It was with these relations that her adored Borinka, who had only recently entered a regiment of the line, and was now at once transferred to the Guards as a sub-lieutenant, had been educated from childhood and had lived for years. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the 10th of August, and her son, who was remaining in Moscow to get his equipment, was to overtake them on the road to Radzivilov.
The Rostovs were keeping the name-day of the mother and the younger daughter, both called Natalya. Ever since the morning, coaches with six horses had been incessantly driving to and from the Countess Rostov’s big house in Povarsky, which was known to all Moscow. The countess and her handsomest eldest daughter were sitting in the drawing-room with their visitors, who came in continual succession to present their congratulations to the elder lady.
The countess was a woman with a thin face of Oriental cast, forty-five years old, and obviously exhausted by child-bearing. She had had twelve children. The deliberate slowness of her movements and conversation, arising from weak health, gave her an air of dignity which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mihalovna Drubetskoy, as an intimate friend of the family, sat with them assisting in the work of receiving and entertaining their guests. The younger members of the family were in the back rooms, not seeing fit to take part in receiving visitors. The count met his visitors and escorted them to the door, inviting all of them to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful to you,
mon cher
” or “
ma chère
,” he said to every one without exception (making not the slightest distinction between persons of higher or of lower standing than his own), “for myself and my two dear ones whose name-day we are keeping. Mind you come to dinner. I shall be offended if you don’t,
mon cher
. I beg you most sincerely from all the family, my dear.” These words, invariably accompanied by the same expression on his full, good-humoured, clean-shaven face, and the same warm pressure of the hand, and repeated short bows, he said to all without exception or variation. When he had escorted one guest to the hall, the count returned to the gentleman or lady who was still in the drawing-room. Moving up a chair, and with the air of a man fond of society and at home in it, he would sit down, his legs jauntily apart, and his hands on his knees, and sway to and fro with dignity as he proffered surmises upon the weather, gave advice about health, sometimes
in Russian, sometimes in very bad but complacent French. Then again he would get up, and with the air of a man weary but resolute in the performance of his duty, he would escort guests out, stroking up his grey hair over his bald patch, and again he would urge them to come to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the hall, he would pass through the conservatory and the butler’s room into a big room with a marble floor, where they were setting a table for eighty guests; and looking at the waiters who were bringing in the silver and china, setting out tables and unfolding damask tablecloths, he would call up Dmitry Vassilyevitch, a young man of good family, who performed the duties of a steward in his household, and would say: “Now then, Mitenka, mind everything’s right. That’s it, that’s it,” he would say, looking round with pleasure at the immense table opened out to its full extent; “the great thing is the service. So, so.” … And he went off again with a sigh of satisfaction to the drawing-room.
“Marya Lvovna Karagin and her daughter,” the countess’s huge footman announced in a deep bass at the drawing-room door. The countess thought a moment, and took a pinch from a golden snuff-box with her husband’s portrait on it.
“I’m worn out with these callers,” she said; “well, this is the last one I’ll see. She’s so affected. Show her up,” she said in a dejected tone, as though she were saying, “Very well, finish me off entirely!”
A tall, stout, haughty-looking lady and her round-faced, smiling daughter walked with rustling skirts into the drawing-room.
“Dear countess, it is such a long time … she has been laid up, poor child … at the Razumovskys’ ball, and the Countess Apraxin … I was so glad,” feminine voices chattered briskly, interrupting one another and mingling with the sound of rustling skirts and the scraping of chairs. Conversation began of the sort which is kept up just long enough for the caller to get up at the first pause, rustling her skirts and with a murmur of “I am so charmed; mamma’s health … and the Countess Apraxin …” walk out again with the same rustle to the hall to put on cloak or overcoat and drive away. The conversation touched on the chief items of news in the town, on the illness of the wealthy old Count Bezuhov, a man who had been renowned for his personal beauty in the days of Catherine, and on his illegitimate son, Pierre, who had behaved so improperly at a
soirée
at Anna Pavlovna’s. “I am very sorry for the poor count,” declared the visitor; “his health in such a precarious state, and now this distress caused him by his son; it will be the death of him!”
“Why, what has happened?” asked the countess, as though she did not know what was meant, though she had heard about the cause of Count Bezuhov’s distress fifteen times already.
“This is what comes of modern education! When he was abroad,” the visitor pursued, “this young man was left to his own devices, and now in Petersburg, they say, he has been doing such atrocious things that he has been sent away under police escort.”
“Really!” said the countess.
“He has made a bad choice of his companions,” put in Princess Anna Mihalovna. “Prince Vassily’s son—he and a young man called Dolohov, they say—God only knows the dreadful things they’ve been doing. And both have suffered for it. Dolohov has been degraded to the rank of a common soldier, while Bezuhov’s son has been banished to Moscow. As to Anatole Kuragin … his father managed to hush it up somehow. But he has been sent out of Petersburg too.”