“Ah! you’re at it again,” Viatkin remarked severely.
“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I really couldn’t—ha, ha, ha!
I happened to think of a tragi-comic scene that was enacted in the 17th Regiment.
Sub-Ensign Krause on one occasion had a row with some one in an aristocratic club.
The steward, to prevent further mischief, seized him so violently by the shoulder-knot that the latter was torn off, whereupon Krause drew his revolver and put a bullet through the steward’s skull.
A little lawyer who incautiously mixed himself up in the game shared the same fate.
The rest of the party rushed out of the room like so many frightened hens.
But Krause quietly proceeded to the camp, and was then challenged by the sentry. ‘Who goes there?’ shouted the sentry.
‘Sub-Ensign Krause, who is coming to die by the colours of his regiment’; whereupon he walked straight up to the colours, laid himself down on the ground, and fired a bullet through his left arm.
The court afterwards acquitted him.”
“That was a fine fellow,” exclaimed Biek-Agamalov.
Then began the young officers’ usual favourite conversation on duels, fights, and other sanguinary scenes, whereupon it was stated with great satisfaction that such transgressions of law and municipal order always went unpunished.
Then, for instance, a story was told about how a drunken, beardless cornet had drawn his sword at random on a small crowd of Jews who were returning from keeping the Passover; how a sub-lieutenant in the infantry had, at a dancing-hall, stabbed to death an undergraduate who happened to elbow him at the buffet, how an officer at St. Petersburg or Moscow shot down like a dog a civilian who dared to make the impertinent observation that decent people were not in the habit of accosting ladies with whom they are not acquainted.
Romashov, who, up to now, had been a silent listener to these piquant stories, now joined in the conversation; but he did so with every sign of reluctance and embarrassment. He cleared his throat, slowly adjusted his eyeglass, though that was not absolutely necessary then, and finally, in an uncertain voice, spoke as follows—
“Gentlemen, allow me to submit to you this question: In a dispute of that sort it might happen, you know, that the civilian chanced to be a respectable man, even perhaps a person of noble birth.
Might it not, in that case, be more correct to demand of him an explanation or satisfaction?
We should both belong to the cultured class, so to speak.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Romashov,” interrupted Viatkin.
“If you want satisfaction from such scum you’ll most certainly get the following answer, which is little gratifying:
‘Ah, well, my good sir, I do not give satisfaction.
That is contrary to my principles. I loathe duels and bloodshed—and besides, you can have recourse, you know, to the Justice of the Peace, in the event of your feeling yourself wronged.’ And then, for the whole of your life, you must carry the delightful recollection of an unavenged box on the ears from a civilian.”
Biek-Agamalov smiled in approbation, and with more than his usual generosity showed his whole row of gleaming white teeth.
“Hark you, Viatkin, you ought really to take some interest in this sabre-cutting.
With us at our home in the Caucasus we practise it from childhood—on bundles of wattles, on water-spouts, the bodies of sheep.”
“And men’s bodies,” remarked Lbov.
“And on men’s bodies,” repeated Agamalov with unruffled calm.
“And such strokes, too!
In a twinkling they cleave a fellow from his shoulder to the hip.”
“Biek, can you perform a test of strength like that?”
Biek-Agamalov sighed regretfully.
“No, alas! A sheep, or a calf; I can say I could cleave to the neck by a single stroke, but to cut a full-grown man down to the waist is beyond my power.
To my father it would be a trifle.”
“Come, gentlemen, and let us try our strength and sabres on that scarecrow,” said Lbov, in a determined tone and with flashing eyes.
“Biek, my dear boy, come with us.”
The officers went up to the clay figure that had been erected a little way off.
Viatkin was the first to attack it.
After endeavouring to impart to his innocent, prosaic face an expression of wild-beast ferocity, he struck the clay man with all his might and with an unnecessarily big flourish of his sabre.
At the same time he uttered the characteristic sound “Khryass!” which a butcher makes when he is cutting up beef.
The weapon entered about a quarter of an inch into the clay, and Viatkin had some trouble to extricate his brave sabre.
“Wretchedly done,” exclaimed Agamalov, shaking his head.
“Now, Romashov, it’s your turn.”
Romashov drew his sabre from its sheath, and adjusted his eyeglass with a hesitating movement.
He was of medium height, lean, and fairly strong in proportion to his build, but through constitutional timidity and lack of interest not much accustomed to handling the weapon.
Even as a pupil at the Military Academy he was a bad swordsman, and after a year and a half’s service in the regiment he had almost completely forgotten the art.
He raised his sabre high above his head, but stretched out, simultaneously and instinctively, his left arm and hand.
“Mind your hand!” shouted Agamalov.
But it was too late then.
The point of the sabre only made a slight scratch on the clay, and Romashov, to his astonishment, who had mis-reckoned on a strong resistance to the steel entering the clay, lost his balance and stumbled forward, whereupon the blade of the sabre caught his outstretched hand and tore off a portion of skin at the lower part of his little finger, so that the blood oozed.
“There!
See what you’ve done!” cried Biek angrily as he dismounted from his charger.