Many of the officers, too, were moved to tears.
And Butler, who did not know Kozlovsky well, was also unable to restrain himself.
He found it all exceptionally agreeable.
After this there were toasts to Baryatinsky, to Vorontsov, to the officers, to the other ranks, and finally the guests left, intoxicated by wine and the rapturous martial sentiment to which they were anyway specially inclined.
The weather was superb — sunny and calm, and the air fresh and invigorating.
On every side was the sound of campfires crackling and men singing.
Everyone seemed to be celebrating.
Butler went to call on Poltoratsky in the most happy and serene frame of mind.
Some of the officers were gathered there, a card-table had been set up and an aide-decamp had gone banker with a hundred rubles.
Twice Butler left the tent holding on to the purse in the pocket of his trousers, but in the end he succumbed and, despite the vow he had made to his brothers and to himself, began playing against the bank.
Before an hour was past Butler, flushed and sweating, covered with chalk, was sitting with his elbows on the table, writing down his bets beneath the crumpled cards.
He had lost so much that he was now afraid of counting what was scored against him.
He knew without reckoning that if he used all the pay he could get in advance and whatever his horse would fetch he could still not make up the whole of what he owed to this unknown aide-de-camp.
He would have gone on playing, but the aide-de-camp put down the cards with his clean white hands and began totting up the column of chalk entries under Butler’s name.
Butler with embarrassment apologized that he was unable to pay all his losses immediately and said he would send the money on; as he said it he saw they were all sorry for him and everyone, even Poltoratsky, avoided his gaze.
It was his last evening.
All he had to do was to avoid gambling and go to Vorontsov’s where he had been invited. Everything would have been fine, he thought.
But far from being fine, everything now was disastrous.
After saying good-bye to his comrades and friends, he left for home and on arriving went straight to bed and slept for eighteen hours at a stretch, as people usually do after losing heavily.
Marya Dmitrievna could tell he had lost everything by his request for fifty kopecks to tip his Cossack escort, by his melancholy look and terse replies, and she set on Ivan Matveevich for giving him leave.
It was after eleven when Butler woke on the following day and when he recalled the situation he was in he would have liked to sink back into the oblivion from which he had just emerged, but this could not be done.
He had to take steps to repay the 470 rubles which he owed to this total stranger.
One step was to write a letter to his brother, repenting for his misdeed and begging him to send for the last time 500 rubles on account of his share in the mill which they still owned jointly.
Then he wrote to a skinflint relative begging her to let him have 500 rubles, too, at whatever interest she wanted.
Then he went to see Ivan Matveevich and knowing that he, or rather Marya Dmitrievna, had money, asked for a loan of 500 rubles.
‘I’d be glad to: I’d let you have it like a shot, but Masha wouldn’t part with it.
These damned womenfolk are that tight-fisted.
But you’ve got to get off the hook somehow.
What about that sutler, hasn’t he got any money?’
But there was no point even trying to borrow from the sutler, so Butler’s only source of salvation was his brother or the skinflint relative.
Chapter XXII
Having failed to achieve his purpose in Chechnia, Hadji Murad returned to Tiflis. He went daily to see Vorontsov, and when Vorontsov received him he begged him to collect the mountaineers held captive and exchange them for his family.
He repeated again that unless this were done he was tied and could not, as he wished, serve the Russians and destroy Shamil.
Vorontsov promised in general terms to do what he could, but deferred giving a decision until General Argutinsky arrived in Tiflis and he could discuss it with him.
Hadji Murad then asked Vorontsov’s permission to go for a time to Nukha, a small town in Transcaucasia where he thought it would be easier to conduct negotiations about his family with Shamil and his supporters.
Besides that, Nukha was a Muslim town with a mosque and it would be easier for him there to perform the prayers required by Muslim law.
Vorontsov wrote to St Petersburg about this, and meanwhile allowed Hadji Murad to go to Nukha.
The story of Hadji Murad was regarded by Vorontsov, by the authorities in St Petersburg and by the majority of Russians who knew of it either as a lucky turn in the course of the war in the Caucasus or simply as an interesting episode. But for Hadji Murad, especially more recently, it was a drastic turning-point in his life.
He had fled from the mountains partly to save his life and partly because of his hatred for Shamil. Despite all difficulties, he had succeeded in escaping, and initially he had been delighted with his success and actually considered his plans for attacking Shamil.
But getting his family out, which he had supposed would be easy, had proved harder than he thought.
Shamil had seized his family and now held them captive, promising to dispatch the women into the villages and to kill or blind his son.
Now Hadji Murad was going to Nukha to try with the help of his supporters in Daghestan by guile or force to rescue his family from Shamil.
The last scout to call on him at Nukha told him that the Avars who were loyal to him were going to carry off his family and bring them over to the Russians, but as they were short of men ready to undertake this they were reluctant to attempt it in Vedeno where the family was held and would only do it if they were moved from Vedeno to some other place.
They would then take action while they were being moved.
Hadji Murad ordered him to tell his friends that he would give 3,000 rubles for the release of his family.
At Nukha Hadji Murad was allotted a small house with five rooms not far from the mosque and the khan’s palace.
Living in the same house were the officers and interpreter attached to him and his nukers.
Hadji Murad spent his time waiting for and receiving the scouts who came in from the mountains and in going for the rides he was allowed to take in the neighbor hood of Nukha.
On 8 April when he returned from riding Hadji Murad learnt that in his absence an official had arrived from Tiflis.
Despite his anxiety to find out what news the official brought him, Hadji Murad did not go at once to the room where the official and the local commissioner were waiting, but went first to his own room to say his midday prayers.