The Duel - Aleksandr Kuprin (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📗

At last, after much noise and fun, they were all seated in the carriages. Romashov had kept his word, and sat stowed away between the two Michin girls. Only Staff-Captain Lieschtschenko, whose presence Romashov now noticed for the first time, kept wandering here and there among the carriages with a countenance more doleful and woebegone than ever. All avoided him like the plague. At last Romashov took pity and called to him, and offered him a place on the box-seat of his trap. The Staff-Captain thankfully accepted the invitation, fixed on Romashov a long, grateful look from sad, moist dog’s eyes, and climbed up with a sigh to the box.

They started. At their head rode Olisár on his lazy old horse, repeatedly performing clown tricks, and bawling out a hackneyed operetta air: “Up on the roof of the omnibus,” etc.

“Quick⁠—march!” rang Osadchi’s stentorian voice. The cavalcade increased its pace, and was gradually lost sight of amidst the dust of the high road.

The picnic gave no promise of being anything like so pleasant and cheerful as one might have expected from the party’s high spirits at the start. After driving three versts, they halted and got out at Dubetschnaia. By this name was designated a piece of ground hardly fifteen dessyatins in extent, which, sparsely covered with proud, century-old oaks, slowly slanted down towards the strand of a little river. Close thickets of bushes were arrayed beside the mighty trees, and these, here and there, formed a charming frame for the small open spaces covered by the fresh and delicate greenery of spring. In a similar idyllic spot in the oak-woods, servants and footmen, sent on in advance, waited with samovars and baskets.

The company assembled around the white tablecloths spread on the grass. The ladies produced plates and cold meat, and the gentlemen helped them, amidst jokes and flirtations. Olisár dressed himself up as a cook by putting on a couple of serviettes as cap and apron. After much fun and ceremony, the difficult problem of placing the guests was solved, in which entered the indispensable condition that the ladies should have a gentleman on each side. The guests half-reclined or half-sat in rather uncomfortable positions, which was appreciated by all as being something new and interesting, and which finally caused the ever-silent Lieschtschenko to astonish those present, amidst general laughter, by the following famous utterance: “Here we lie, just like the old Greek Romans.”

Shurochka had on one side Taliman, on the other side Romashov. She was unusually cheerful and talkative, nay, sometimes in such high spirits that the attention of many was called to it. Romashov had never found her so bewitching before. He thought he noticed in her something new, something emotional and passionate, which feverishly sought an outlet. Sometimes she turned without a word to Romashov and gazed at him intently for half a second longer than was strictly proper, and he felt then that a force, mysterious, consuming, and overpowering, gleamed from her eyes.

Osadchi, who sat by himself at the end of the improvised table, got on his knees. After tapping his knife against the glass and requesting silence, he said, in a deep bass voice, the heavy waves of sound from which vibrated in the pure woodland air⁠—

“Gentlemen, let us quaff the first beaker in honour of our fair hostess, whose name-day it is. May God vouchsafe her every good⁠—and the rank of a General’s consort.”

And after he had raised the great glass, he shouted with all the force of his powerful voice⁠—

“Hurrah!”

It seemed as if all the trees in the vicinity sighed and drooped under this deafening howl, which resembled the thunder’s boom and the lion’s roar, and the echo of which died away between the oaks’ thick trunks. Andrusevich, who sat next to Osadchi, fell backwards with a comic expression of terror, and pretended to be slightly deaf during the remainder of the banquet. The gentlemen got up and clinked their glasses with Shurochka’s. Romashov purposely waited to the last, and she observed it. Whilst Shurochka turned towards him, she, silently and with a passionate smile, held forward her glass of white wine. In that moment her eyes grew wider and darker, and her lips moved noiselessly, just as if she had clearly uttered a certain word; but, directly afterwards, she turned round laughing to Taliman, and began an animated conversation with him. “What did she say?” thought Romashov. “What word was it that she would not or dared not say aloud?” He felt nervous and agitated, and, secretly, he made an attempt to give his lips the same form and expression as he had just observed with Shurochka, in order, by that means, to guess what she said; but it was fruitless. “Romochka?” “Beloved?” “I love?” No, that wasn’t it. Only one thing he knew for certain, viz., that the mysterious word had three syllables.

After that he drank with Nikoläiev, and wished him success on the General Staff, as if it were a matter of course that Nikoläiev would pass his examination. Then came the usual, inevitable toasts of “the ladies present,” of “women in general,” the “glorious colours of the regiment,” of the “ever-victorious Russian Army,” etc.

Now up sprang Taliman, who was already very elevated, and screamed in his hoarse, broken falsetto, “Gentlemen, I propose the health of our beloved, idolized sovereign, for whom we are all ready at any time to sacrifice our lives to the last drop of our blood.”

At the last words his voice failed him completely. The bandit look in his dark brown, gipsy eyes faded, and tears moistened his brown cheeks.

“The hymn to the Tsar,” shouted little fat Madame Andrusevich. All arose. The officers raised their hands to the peaks of their caps. Discordant, untrained, exultant voices rang over the neighbourhood, but worse and more out of tune than all the rest screamed the sentimental Staff-Captain Lieschtschenko, whose expression was