Towardsthe end of the month of August there was slowly moving along the stony Sebastopol road between Douvanka[E]and Baktchisaraï an officer’s carriage of peculiar form, unknown elsewhere, which held a middle place in construction between a basket-wagon, a Jewish britchka, and a Russian cart.
In this carriage a servant, dressed in linen, with a soft and shapeless officer’s cap on his head, held the reins. Seated behind him, on parcels and bags covered with a soldier’s overcoat, was an officer in a summer cloak, small in stature, as well as could be judged from the position he was in, who was less remarkable for the massive squareness of his shoulders than for the thickness of his body between his chest and his back. His neck from the nape to the shoulder washeavy and largely developed, and the muscles were firmly extended. What is commonly spoken of as a waist did not exist, nor the stomach either, although he was far from being fat; and his face, upon which was spread a layer of yellow and unhealthy sunburn, was noticeable by its thinness. It would have passed for an attractive one if it had not been for a certain bloating of the flesh and a skin furrowed by deep wrinkles, which, interweaving, distorted the features, took away all freshness, and gave a brutal expression. His small, brown, extraordinarily keen eyes had an almost impudent look. His very thick mustache, which he was in the habit of biting, did not extend much in breadth. His cheeks and his chin, which he had not shaved for two days, were covered with a black and thick beard. Wounded on the head by a piece of shell on the 10th of May, and still wearing a bandage, he felt, nevertheless, entirely cured, and left the hospital at Sympheropol to join his regiment, posted somewhere there in the direction where shots could be heard; but he had not been able to find out whether it was at Sebastopol itself or at Severnaïa or atInkerman. The cannonade was distinctly heard, and seemed very near when the hills did not cut off the sound which was brought by the wind. Occasionally a tremendous explosion shook the air and made you tremble in spite of yourself. Now and then less violent noises, like a drum-beat, followed each other at short intervals, intermingled with a deafening rumble; or perhaps all was confounded in a hubbub of prolonged rolls, like peals of thunder at the height of a storm when the rain begins to fall. Every one said, and indeed it could be heard, that the violence of the bombardment was terrible. The officer urged his servant to hasten. They met a line of carts driven by Russian peasants, who had carried provisions to Sebastopol, and who were on their way back, bringing sick and wounded soldiers in gray overcoats, sailors in black pilot-coats, volunteers in red fez caps, and bearded militiamen. The officer’s carriage was forced to stop, and he, grimacing and squinting his eyes in the impenetrable and motionless cloud of dust raised by the carts, which flew into the eyes and ears on all sides, examined the faces as they passed by.
“There is a sick soldier of our company,” said the servant, turning towards his master and pointing to a wounded man.
Seated sidewise on the front of his cart a Russian peasant, wearing his whole beard, a felt cap on his head, was tying a knot in an enormous whip, which he held by the handle under his elbow. He turned his back to four or five soldiers shaken and tossed about in the vehicle. One of them, his arm tied up, his overcoat thrown on over his shirt, seated erect and firm, although somewhat pale and thin, occupied the middle place. Perceiving the officer, he instinctively raised his hand to his cap, but remembering his wound, he made believe he wanted to scratch his head. Another one was lying down beside him on the bottom of the cart. All that could be seen of him was his two hands clinging to the wooden bars, and his two raised knees swinging nervelessly like two hempen dish-rags. A third, with swollen face, his head wrapped with a cloth on which was placed his soldier’s cap, seated sidewise, his legs hanging outside and grazing the wheel, was dozing, his hands resting on his knees.
“Doljikoff!” the traveller shouted at him.
“Present!” replied the latter, opening his eyes and taking off his cap. His bass voice was so full, so tremendous, that it seemed to come out of the chest of twenty soldiers together.
“When were you wounded?”
“Health to your Excellency!”[F]he cried with his strong voice, his glassy and swollen eyes growing animated at the sight of his superior officer.
“Where is the regiment?”
“At Sebastopol, your Excellency. They are thinking of going away from there Wednesday.”
“Where to?”
“They don’t know—to Severnaïa, no doubt, your Excellency. At present,” he continued, dragging his words, “heis firing straight through everything, especially with shells, even away into the bay.Heis firing in a frightful manner!—” And he added words which could not be understood; but from his face and from his position it couldbe guessed that, with a suffering man’s sense of injury, he was saying something of a not very consoling nature.
Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff, who had just asked these questions, was neither an officer of ordinary stamp nor among the number of those who live and act in a certain way because others live and act thus. His nature had been richly endowed with inferior qualities. He sang and played the guitar in an agreeable manner, he conversed well, and wrote with facility, especially official correspondence, of which he had got the trick during his service as battalion aide-de-camp. His energy was remarkable, but this energy only received its impulse from self-love, and although grafted on this second-rate capacity, it formed a salient and characteristic trait of his nature. That kind of self-love which is most commonly developed among men, especially among military men, was so filtered through his existence that he did not conceive a possible choice between “first or nothing.” Self-love was then the motive force of his most intimate enthusiasms. Even alone in his own presence he was fond of considering himself superior to those with whom he compared himself.
“Come! I am not going to be the one to listen to ‘Moscow’s’[G]chatter!” murmured the sub-lieutenant, whose thoughts had been troubled somewhat by meeting the train of wounded; and the soldier’s words, the importance of which was increased and confirmed at each step by the sound of the cannonade, weighed heavily on his heart.
“They are curious fellows these ‘Moscows’—Come, Nicolaïeff, forward! you are asleep, I think,” he angrily shouted at his servant, throwing back the lappels of his coat.
Nicolaïeff shook the reins, made a little encouraging sound with his lips, and the wagon went off at a trot.
“We will stop only to feed them,” said the officer, “and then on the road—forward!”
Just as he entered the street of Douvanka, where everything was in ruins, Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff was stopped by a wagon-train of cannon-balls and shells going towards Sebastopol, which was halted in the middle of the road.
Two infantrymen, seated in the dust on the stones of an overthrown wall, were eating bread and watermelon.
“Are you going far, fellow-countryman?” said one of them, chewing his mouthful. He was speaking to a soldier standing near them with a small knapsack on his shoulder.
“We are going to join our company; we have come from the country,” replied the soldier, turning his eyes from the watermelon and arranging his knapsack. “For three weeks we have been guarding the company’s hay, but now they have summoned everybody, and we don’t know where our regiment is to-day. They tell us that since last week our fellows have been at Korabelnaïa. Do you know anything about it, gentlemen?”
“It is in the city, brother, in the city,” replied an old soldier of the wagon-train, busy cutting with his pocket-knife the white meat of an unripe melon. “We just came from there. What a terrible business, brother!”
“What is that, gentlemen?”
“Don’t you hear how he is firing now? No shelter anywhere! It is frightful how many of our menhehas killed!” added the speaker, making a gesture, and straightening up his cap.
The soldier on his travels pensively shook his head, clacked his tongue, took his short pipe out of its box, stirred up the half-burned tobacco with his finger, lighted a bit of tinder from the pipe of a comrade who was smoking, and lifting his cap, said,
“There is no one but God, gentlemen. We say good-by to you;” and putting his knapsack in place, went his way.
“Ah! it is better worth while to wait,” said the watermelon eater, with tone of conviction.
“It is all the same,” murmured the soldier, settling the knapsack on his back, and worming his way between the wheels of the halted carts.
At the station for horses Koseltzoff found a crowd of people, and the first figure he perceived was the postmaster in person, very young and very thin, quarrelling with two officers.
“You will not only wait twenty-four hours but ten times twenty-four hours. Generals wait too,” he said, with the evident wish to stir them up in a lively manner. “And I am not going to hitch myself in, you understand!”
“If this is so, if there are no horses, they can’t be given to any one. Why, then, are they given to a servant who is carrying baggage?” shouted one of the two soldiers, holding a glass of tea in his hand.
Although he carefully avoided using personal pronouns, it could easily be guessed that he would have liked to say thee and thou to his interlocutor.
“I want you to understand, Mr. Postmaster,” hesitatingly said the other officer, “that we are not travelling for our pleasure. If we have been summoned it is because we are necessary. You can be sure I will tell the general, for it really seems as if you have no respect for the rank of officer.”
“You spoil my work every time, and you are in my way,” rejoined his comrade, half vexed. “Why do you talk to him about respect? You have to speak to him inanother manner. Horses!” he suddenly shouted, “horses, this instant!”
“I wouldn’t ask better than to give them to you, but where can I get them? I understand very well, my friend,” continued the postmaster, after a moment of silence, and warming up by degrees as he gesticulated, “but what do you want me to do? Let me just”—and the officers’ faces at once had a hopeful expression—“keep soul and body together to the end of the month, and then I won’t be seen any longer. I would rather go to the Malakoff than remain here, God knows! Do what you like—but I haven’t a single wagon in good condition, and for three days the horses haven’t seen a handful of hay.”
At these words he disappeared. Koseltzoff and the two officers entered the house.
“So!” said the elder to the younger with a calm tone, which strongly contrasted with his recent wrath. “We are already three months on the road. Let’s wait. It is no misfortune; there isn’t any hurry.”
Koseltzoff with difficulty found in the room of the post-house, all smoky, dirty, and filled with officers and trunks, an empty corner near the window. He sat down there, and, rolling a cigarette, began to examine faces and to listen to conversations. The chief group was placed on the right of the entrance door, around a shaky and greasy table on which two copper tea-urns, stained here and there with verdigris, were boiling; lump-sugar was strewn about in several paper wrappings. A young officer without a mustache, in a new Circassian coat, was pouring water into a teapot; four others of about his own age were scattered in different corners of the room. One of them, his head placed on a cloak which served him as a pillow, was sleeping on a divan; another, standing near a table, was cutting roast mutton into small mouthfuls for a one-armed comrade. Two officers, one in an aide-de-camp’s overcoat, the other in a fine cloth infantry overcoat, and carrying a saddle-bag, were sitting beside the stove; and it could be readily divined by the way they looked at the others, by the manner the one with the saddle-bag was smoking, that they were not officers of the line, and that they were very glad of it. Their manner did not betray scorn but a certain satisfaction withthemselves, founded partly on their relations with the generals, and on a feeling of superiority developed to such a point that they tried to conceal it from others. There was also in the place a doctor with fleshy lips, and an artilleryman with a German physiognomy, seated almost on the feet of the sleeper, busily counting money. Four men-servants, some dozing, some fumbling in the trunks and the packets heaped up near the door, completed the number of those present, among whom Koseltzoff found not a face he knew. The young officers pleased him. He guessed at once from their appearance that they had just come out of school, and this called to his mind that his young brother was also coming straight therefrom to serve in one of the Sebastopol batteries. On the other hand, the officer with the saddle-bag, whom he believed he had met somewhere, altogether displeased him. He found him to have an expression of face so antipathetic and so insolent that he was going to sit down on the large base of the stove, with the intention of putting him in his proper place if he happened to say anything disagreeable. In his quality of brave and honorable officer at the front he did not like the staff-officers, and for such he took these at the first glance.
“It is bad luck,” said one of the young fellows, “to be so near the end and not be able to get there. There will perhaps be a battle to-day, even, and we will not be in it.”
The sympathetic timidity of a young man who fears to say something out of place could be guessed from the slightly sharp sound of his voice, and from the youthful rosiness which spread in patches over his fresh face.
The one-armed officer looked at him with a smile.
“You will have time enough, believe me,” he said.
The young officer respectfully turning his eyes upon the thin face of the latter suddenly lighted up by a smile, continued to pour the tea in silence. And truly the figure, the position of the wounded man, and, above all, the fluttering sleeve of his uniform, gave him that appearance of calm indifference which seemed to reply to everything said and done about him, “All this is very well, but I know it all, and I could do it if I wanted to.”
“What shall we decide to do?” asked the young officer of his comrade with the Circassian coat. “Shall we pass the night here, or shall we push on with our single horse?
“Just think of it, captain,” he continued, when his companion had declined his suggestion (he spoke to the one-armed man, picking up a knife he had dropped), “since they told us that horses could not be had at Sebastopol at any price, we bought one out of the common purse at Sympheropol.”
“Did they skin you well?”
“I don’t know anything about it, captain. We paid for the whole thing, horse and wagon, ninety rubles. Is it very dear?” he added, addressing all who looked at him, Koseltzoff included.
“It isn’t too dear if the horse is young,” said the latter.
“Isn’t it? Nevertheless, we have been assured it was dear. He limps a little, it is true, but that will go off. They told us he was very strong.”
“What institution are you from?” Koseltzoff asked him, wishing to get news of his brother.
“We belonged to the regiment of the nobility. There are six of us who are going of our own accord to Sebastopol,” replied the loquacious little officer, “but we don’t exactly know where our battery is. Some say at Sebastopol, but this gentleman says it is at Odessa.”
“Wouldn’t you have been able to find out at Sympheropol?” asked Koseltzoff.
“They didn’t know anything there. Imagine it. They insulted one of our comrades who went to the government office for information! It was very disagreeable. Wouldn’t you like to have this cigarette, already rolled?” he continued, offering it to the one-armed officer, who was looking for his cigar-case.
The young man’s enthusiasm even entered into the little attentions he showered on him.
“You have also just come from Sebastopol?” he rejoined. “Heavens, how astonishing! At Petersburg we did nothing but think of you all, you heroes!” he added, turning to Koseltzoff with good-fellowship and respect.
“What if you are obliged to go back there?” asked the latter.
“That’s just what we are afraid of; for after having bought the horse and what we had to get—this coffee-pot, for example, and a few other trifles—we are left without a penny,” he said, in a lower tone, casting a look at his companion on the sly, “so that we don’t know how we are going to get out of it.”
“You haven’t received money on the road, then?” Koseltzoff asked him.
“No,” murmured the young man, “but they promised to give it to us here.”
“Have you the certificate?”
“I know the certificate is the chief thing. One of my uncles, a Senator at Moscow, could have given it to me, but I was assured I should receive it here without fail.”
“Doubtless.”
“I believe it also,” replied the young officer, in a tone which proved that after having repeated the same question in thirty different places, and having received different replies everywhere, he no longer believed any one.
“Who ordered beet soup?” shouted the house-keeper at this moment, a stout, slovenly dressed wench, about forty years old, who was bringing in a great earthen dish.
There was a general silence, and every eye was turned towards the woman. One of the officers even winked, exchanging with his comrade a look which plainly referred to the matron.
“But it was Koseltzoff who ordered it,” rejoined the young officer; “we must wake him up. Halloo! come and eat,” he added, approaching the sleeper and shaking him by the shoulder.
A youth of seventeen years, with black, lively, sparkling eyes and red cheeks, rose with a bound, and having involuntarily pushed against the doctor, said, “A thousand pardons!” rubbing his eyes and standing in the middle of the room.
Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff immediately recognized his younger brother and went up to him.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
“Oh, oh, what an astonishing thing!” cried the younger, embracing him.
Two kisses were heard, but just as they were about to give each other a third, as the custom is, they hesitated a moment. It might have been said that each asked himself why he must kiss three times.
“How glad I am to see you!” said the elder, leading his brother outside. “Let’s chat a bit.”
“Come, come! I don’t want any soup now. Eat it up, Féderson,” said the youth to his comrade.
“But you were hungry—”
“No, I don’t want it now.”
Once outside on the piazza, after the first joyous outbursts of the youth, who went on to ask his brother questions without speaking to him of that which concerned himself, the latter, profiting by a moment of silence, asked him why he had not gone into the guard, as they had expected him to do.
“Because I wanted to go to Sebastopol. If everything comes out all right, I shall gain more than if I had remained in the guard. In that branch of the service you have to count ten years to the rank of colonel, while here Todtleben has gone from lieutenant-colonel to general in two years. And if I am killed, well, then, what’s to be done?”
“How you do argue,” said the elder brother, with a smile.
“And then, that I have just told you is of no importance. The chief reason”—and he stopped, hesitating, smiling in his turn, and blushing as if he were going to say something very shameful—“the chief reason is that my conscience bothered me. I felt scruples at living in Petersburg while men are dying here for their country. I counted also on being with you,” he added, still more bashfully.
“You are a curious fellow,” said the brother, without looking at him, hunting for his cigar-case. “I am sorry we can’t stay together.”
“Come, pray tell me the truth about the bastions. Are they horribly frightful?”
“Yes, at first; then one gets used to it. You will see.”
“Tell me also, please, do you think Sebastopol will be taken? It seems to me that such a thing cannot happen.”
“God only knows!”
“Oh, if you only knew how annoyed I am! Imagine my misfortune. On the road I have been robbed of different things, among others my helmet, and I am in a fearful position. What will I do when I am presented to my chief?”
Vladimir Koseltzoff, the younger, looked very much like his brother Michael, at least as much as a half-open columbine can resemble one which has lost its flower. He had similar blond hair, but thicker, and curled around the temples; while one long lock strayed down the white and delicate back of his neck; a sign of happiness, as the old women say. Rich young blood suddenly tinged his habitually dull complexion at each impression of his soul; a veil of moisture often swept over his eyes, which were like his brother’s, but more open and more limpid; a fine blond down began to show on his cheeks and on his upper lip, which, purplish red in color, often extended in a timid smile, exposing teeth of dazzling whiteness. As he stood there in his unbuttoned coat, under which could be seen a red shirt with Russian collar; slender, broad-shouldered, a cigarette between his fingers, leaning against the balustrade of the piazza, his face lighted up by unaffected joy, his eyes fixed on his brother, he was really the most charming and most sympathetic youth possible to see, and one looked away from him reluctantly. Frankly happy to find his brother, whom he considered with pride and respect as a hero, he was, nevertheless, a little ashamed of him on account of his own more cultivated education, of his acquaintance with French, of his association with people in high places, and finding himself superior to him, he hoped to succeed in civilizing him. His impressions, his judgments, were formed at Petersburg under the influence of a woman who, having a weakness for pretty faces, made him pass his holidays in her house. Moscow had also contributed its part, for he had danced there at a great ball at the house of his uncle the Senator.
After having chatted so long as to prove, what often happens, that, while loving each other very much, they had few common interests, the brothers were silent for a moment or two.
“Come, get your traps and we’ll go,” said the elder.
The younger blushed and was confused.
“Straight away to Sebastopol?” he asked, at length.
“Of course. I don’t believe you have many things with you; we will find a place for them.”
“All right, we’ll go,” replied the younger, as he went into the house sighing.
Just as he was opening the door of the hall he stopped and held down his head.
“Go straight to Sebastopol,” he said to himself, “be exposed to shells—it is terrible! However, isn’t it all the same whether it is to-day or later? At least with my brother—”
To tell the truth, at the thought that the carriage would carry him as far as Sebastopol in a single trip, that no new incident would delay him longer on the road, he began to appreciate the danger he had come to meet, and the proximity of it profoundly moved him. Having succeeded in calming himself at last, he rejoined his comrades, and remained such a long time with them thathis brother, out of patience, opened the door to call him, and saw him standing before the officer, who was scolding him like a school-boy. At the sight of his brother his countenance fell.
“I’ll come at once,” he shouted, making a gesture with his hand; “wait for me, I’m coming!”
A moment later he went to find him.
“Just think,” he said, with a deep sigh, “I can’t go off with you.”
“Stuff and nonsense! Why not?”
“I am going to tell you the truth, Micha. We haven’t a penny; on the other hand, we owe money to that captain. It is horribly shameful!”
The elder brother scowled and kept silent.
“Do you owe much?” he asked at last, without looking at him.
“No, not much; but it worries me awfully. He paid three posts for me. I used his sugar, and then we played the game of preference, and I owe him a trifle on that.”
“That’s bad, Volodia! What would you have done if you hadn’t met me?” said the elder, in a stern tone, never looking at him.
“But you know I count on receiving mytravelling expenses at Sebastopol, and then I shall pay him. That can still be done; and so I had rather go there with him to-morrow.”
At this moment the elder brother took a purse out of his pocket, from which his trembling fingers drew two notes of ten rubles each and one of three.
“Here’s all I have,” said he. “How much do you want?” He exaggerated a little in saying that it was all his fortune, for he still had four gold-pieces sewn in the seams of his uniform, but he had promised himself not to touch them.
It was found, on adding up, that Koseltzoff owed only eight rubles—the loss on the game and the sugar together. The elder brother gave them to him, making the remark that one never ought to play when he had not the wherewithal to pay. The younger said nothing; for his brother’s remark seemed to throw a doubt on his honesty. Irritated, ashamed of having done something which could lead to suspicions or reflections on his character on the part of his brother, of whom he was fond, his sensitive nature was so violently agitated by it that, feeling it impossible to stifle the sobs which choked him, he took the note without a word and carried it to his comrade.
Nikolaïeff, after refreshing himself at Douvanka with two glasses of brandy which he bought from a soldier who was selling it on the bridge, shook the reins, and the carriage jolted over the stony road which, with spots of shadow at rare intervals, led along Belbek to Sebastopol; while the brothers, seated side by side, their legs knocking together, kept an obstinate silence, each thinking about the other.
“Why did he offend me?” thought the younger. “Does he really take me for a thief? He seems to be still angry. Here we have quarrelled for good, and yet we two, how happy we could have been at Sebastopol! Two brothers, intimate friends, and both fighting the enemy—the elder lacking cultivation a little, but a brave soldier, and the younger as brave as he, for at the end of a week I shall have proved to all that I am no longer so young. I sha’n’t blush any more; my face will be manly andmy mustache will have time to grow so far,” he thought, pinching the down which was visible at the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps we will get there to-day, even, and will take part in a battle. My brother must be very headstrong and very brave; he is one of those who talk little and do better than others. Is he continually pushing me on purpose towards the side of the carriage? He must see that it annoys me, and he makes believe he does not notice it. We will surely get there to-day,” he continued to himself, keeping close to the side of the carriage, fearing if he stirred that he would show his brother he was not well seated. “We go straight to the bastion—I with the artillery, my brother with his company. Suddenly the French throw themselves upon us. I fire on the spot, I kill a crowd of them, but they run just the same straight upon me. Impossible to fire—I am lost! but my brother dashes forward, sword in hand. I seize my musket and we run together; the soldiers follow us. The French throw themselves on my brother. I run up; I kill first one, then another, and I save Micha. I am wounded in the arm; I take my musket inthe other hand and run on. My brother is killed at my side by a bullet; I stop a moment, I look at him sadly, I rise and cry, ‘Forward with me! let us avenge him!’ I add, ‘I loved my brother above everything; I have lost him. Let us avenge ourselves, kill our enemies, or all die together!’ All follow me, shouting. But there is the whole French army, Pélissier at their head. We kill all of them, but I am wounded once, twice, and the third time mortally. They gather around me. Gortschakoff comes and asks what I wish for. I reply that I wish for nothing—I wish for only one thing, to be placed beside my brother and to die with him. They carry me and lay me down beside his bloody corpse. I raise myself up and say, ‘Yes, you could not appreciate two men who sincerely loved their country. They are killed—may God pardon you!’ and thereupon I die.”
Who could tell to what point these dreams were destined to be realized?
“Have you ever been in a hand-to-hand fight?” he suddenly asked his brother, entirely forgetting that he did not want to speak to him again.
“No, never. We have lost two thousand men in our regiment, but always in the works. I also was wounded there. War is not carried on as you imagine, Volodia.”
This familiar name softened the younger. He wished to explain himself to his brother, who did not imagine he had offended him.
“Are you angry with me, Micha?” he asked, after a few moments.
“Why?”
“Because—nothing. I thought there had been between us—”
“Not at all,” rejoined the elder, turning towards him and giving him a friendly tap on the knee.
“I ask pardon, Micha, if I have offended you,” said the younger, turning aside to hide the tears which filled his eyes.
“Is this really Sebastopol?” asked Volodia, when they had reached the top of the hill.
Before them appeared the bay with its forest of masts, the sea, with the hostile fleet in the distance, the white shore batteries, the barracks, the aqueducts, the docks,the buildings of the city. Clouds of white and pale lilac-colored smoke continually rose over the yellow hills that surrounded the city, and came out sharp against the clear blue sky, lighted by the rosy rays, brilliantly reflected by the waves; while at the horizon the sun was setting into the sombre sea.
It was without the least thrill of horror that Volodia looked upon this terrible place he had thought so much about. He experienced, on the contrary, an æsthetic joy, a feeling of heroic satisfaction at thinking that in half an hour he would be there himself, and it was with profound attention that he looked uninterruptedly, up to the very moment they arrived at Severnaïa, at this picture of such original charm. There was the baggage of his brother’s regiment, and there also he had to find out where his own regiment and his battery was.
The officer of the wagon-train lived near to what they called the new little town, composed of board shanties built by sailors’ families. In a tent adjoining a shed of considerable size, made of leafy oak branches which had not yet time to wither, the brothers found the officer sitting down in a shirt of dirty yellow color before a rather slovenly table, on which a cup of tea was cooling beside a plate and a decanter of brandy. A few crumbs of bread and of caviare had fallen here and there. He was carefully counting a package of notes. But before bringing him on the stage, we must necessarily examine closer the interior of his camp, his duties, and his mode of life. The new hut was large, solid, and conveniently built, provided with turf tables and seats, the same as they build for the generals; and in order to keep the leaves from falling, three rugs, in bad taste, although new, but probably very dear, were stretched on the walls and the ceiling of the building. On the iron bed placed under the principal rug, which represented the everlasting amazon, could be seen a red coverlid of shaggy stuff, a soiled torn pillow, and a cloak of cat-skin. On a table were, helter-skelter, a mirror in a silver frame, a brush of the same metal in a frightfully dirty state, a candlestick, a broken horn comb full of greasy hair, a bottle of liquor ornamented by an enormous red and gold label, a gold watch with the portrait of Peter theGreat, gilt pen-holders, boxes holding percussion-caps, a crust of bread, old cards thrown about in disorder, and finally, under the bed, bottles, some empty, others full. It was the duty of this officer to look out for the wagon-train and the forage for the horses. One of his friends, occupied with financial work, shared his dwelling, and was asleep in the tent at this moment, while he was making out the monthly accounts with Government money. He had an agreeable and martial appearance. He was distinguished by his great size, a large mustache, and a fair state of corpulence. But there were two unpleasant things in him which met the eye at once. First, a constant perspiration on his face, joined with a puffiness which almost hid his little gray eyes and gave him the look of a leather bottle full of porter, and, second, extreme slovenliness, which reached from his thin gray hair to his great naked feet, shod in ermine-trimmed slippers.
“What a lot of money!—heavens, what a lot of money!” said Koseltzoff the first, who, on entering, cast a hungry look on the notes. “If you would lend me half, Vassili Mikhaïlovitch!”
The officer of the wagon-train looked sour at the sight of the visitors, and gathering up the money, saluted them without rising.
“Oh, if it were mine, but it is money belonging to the Crown, brother! But whom have you there?”
He looked at Volodia while he piled up the papers and put them in an open chest beside him.
“It is my brother just out of school. We come to ask where the regiment is.”
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said, rising to go into the tent. “Can I offer you a little porter?”
“I agree to porter, Vassili Mikhaïlovitch.”
Volodia, on whom a profound impression was produced by the grand airs of the officer, as well as by his carelessness and by the respect his brother showed him, said to himself timidly, sitting on the edge of the lounge, “This officer, whom everybody respects, is doubtless a good fellow, hospitable, and probably very brave.”
“Where is our regiment, then?” asked the elder brother from the officer, who had disappeared in the tent.
“What do you say?” shouted the latter.
The other repeated his question.
“I saw Seifer to-day,” he replied; “he told me it was in the fifth bastion.”
“Is it, sure?”
“If I say so it is sure. However, devil take him! he lies cheaply enough! Say,” he added, “will you have some porter?”
“I would gladly take a drink,” replied Koseltzoff.
“And you, Ossip Ignatievitch,” continued the same voice in the tent, addressing the sleeping commissary, “will you have a drink? You have slept enough; it is almost five o’clock.”
“Enough of that old joke. You see well enough that I am not asleep,” replied a shrill and lazy voice.
“Get up, then, for I am tired of it,” and the officer rejoined his guests. “Give us some Sympheropol porter!” he shouted to his servant.
The latter, pushing against Volodia proudly, as it appeared to the young man, pulled out from under the bench a bottle of the porter called for.
The bottle had been empty some time, but the conversation was still going on, whenthe flap of the tent was put aside to let pass a small man in a blue dressing-gown with cord and tassel, and a cap trimmed with red braid and ornamented with a cockade.
With lowered eyes, and twisting his black mustache, he only replied to the officer’s salute by an imperceptible movement of the shoulders.
“Give me a glass,” he said, sitting down near the table. “Surely you have just come from Petersburg, young man?” he said, addressing Volodia with an amiable air.
“Yes, and I am going to Sebastopol.”
“Of your own accord?”
“Yes.”
“Why in the devil are you going, then? Gentlemen, really I don’t understand that,” continued the commissary. “It seems to me, if I could, I would go back to Petersburg on foot. I have had my bellyful of this cursed existence.”
“But what are you grumbling at?” asked the elder Koseltzoff. “You are leading a very enviable life here.”
The commissary, surprised, cast a look at him, turned around, and addressing Volodia, said, “This constant danger, these privations, for it is impossible to get anything—all that is terrible. I really cannot understand you, gentlemen. If you only got some advantage out of it! But is it agreeable, I ask you, to become at your age good-for-nothing for the rest of your days?”
“Some try to make money, some serve for honor,” replied Koseltzoff the elder, vexed.
“What is honor when there is nothing to eat?” rejoined the commissary, with a disdainful smile, turning towards the officer of the wagon-train, who followed his example. “Wind up the music-box,” he said, pointing to a box. “We’ll hear ‘Lucia;’ I like that.”
“Is this Vassili Mikhaïlovitch a brave man,” Volodia asked his brother, when, twilight having fallen, they rolled again along the Sebastopol road.
“Neither good nor bad, but a terribly miserly fellow. As to the commissary, I can’t bear to see even his picture. I shall knock him down some day.”
When they arrived, at nightfall, at the great bridge over the bay, Volodia was not exactly in bad humor, but a terrible weightlay on his heart. Everything he saw, everything he heard, harmonized so little with the last impressions that had been left in his mind by the great, light examination-hall with polished floor, the voices of his comrades and the gayety of their sympathetic bursts of laughter, his new uniform, the well-beloved Czar, whom he was accustomed to see during seven years, and who, taking leave of them with tears in his eyes, had called them “his children”—yes, everything he saw little harmonized with his rich dreams sparkling from a thousand facets.
“Here we are!” said his brother, getting out of the carriage in front of the M—— battery. “If they let us cross the bridge we will go straight to the Nicholas barracks. You will stop there until to-morrow morning. As for me, I shall go back to my regiment to find out where the battery is, and to-morrow I will go and hunt you up.”
“Why do that? rather let’s go together,” said Volodia. “I will go to the bastion with you; won’t that be the same thing? One must get accustomed to it. If you go there, why can’t I go?”
“You would do better not to go.”
“Let me go—please do. At least I will see what it is—”
“I advise you not to go there; but, nevertheless—”
The cloudless sky was sombre, the stars, and the flashes of the cannon, and the bombs flying in space, shone in the darkness. Thetête du pontand the great white pile of the battery came out sharply in the dark night. Every instant reports, explosions, shook the air, together or separately, ever louder, ever more distinct. The mournful murmur of the waves played an accompaniment to this incessant roll. A fresh breeze filled with moisture blew from the sea. The brothers approached the bridge. A soldier awkwardly shouldered arms and shouted,
“Who comes there?”
“A soldier.”
“You can’t pass.”
“Impossible—we must pass!”
“Ask the officer.”
The officer was taking a nap, seated on an anchor. He arose and gave the order to let them pass.
“You can go in, but you can’t come out. Attention! Where are you getting to alltogether?” he shouted to the wagons piled up with gabions, which were stopping at the entrance to the bridge.
On the first pontoon they met some soldiers talking in a loud voice.
“He has received his outfit; he has received it all.”
“Ah! friends,” said another voice, “when a fellow gets to Severnaïa he begins to revive. There is quite another air here, by heavens!”
“What nonsense are you talking there?” said the first. “The other day a cursed bomb-shell carried away the legs of two sailors. Oh! oh!”
The water in several places was dashing into the second pontoon, where the two brothers stopped to await their carriage. The wind, which had appeared light on land, blew here with violence and in gusts. The bridge swayed, and the waves, madly dashing against the beams, broke upon the anchors and the ropes and flooded the flooring. The sea roared with a hollow sound, forming a black, uniform, endless line, which separated it from the starry horizon, now lighted by a silvery glow. In the distancetwinkled the lights of the hostile fleet. On the left rose the dark mass of a sailing ship, against the sides of which the water dashed violently; on the right, a steamer coming from Severnaïa, noisily and swiftly advanced. A bomb-shell burst, and lighted up for a second the heaps of gabions, revealing two men standing on the deck of the ship, a third in shirt-sleeves, sitting with swinging legs, busy repairing the deck, and showing the white foam and the dashing waves with green reflections made by the steamer in motion.
The same lights continued to furrow the sky over Sebastopol, and the fear-inspiring sounds came nearer. A wave driven from the sea broke into foam on the right side of the bridge and wet Volodia’s feet. Two soldiers, noisily dragging their legs through the water, passed by. Suddenly something burst with a crash and lighted up before them the part of the bridge along which was passing a carriage, followed by a soldier on horseback. The pieces fell whistling into the water, which spouted up in jets.
“Ah, Mikhaïl Semenovitch!” said thehorseman, drawing up before Koseltzoff the elder, “here you are—well again?”
“Yes, as you see. Where in God’s name are you going?”
“To Severnaïa for cartridges. They send me in place of the aide-de-camp of the regiment. They are expecting an assault every moment.”
“And Martzeff, where’s he?”
“He lost a leg yesterday in the city; in his room. He was asleep. You know him, perhaps.”
“The regiment is in the fifth, isn’t it?”
“Yes; it relieved the M——. Stop at the field-hospital, you will find our fellows there; they will show you the way.”
“Have my quarters in the Morskaïa been kept?”
“Ah, brother, the shells destroyed them long since! You wouldn’t recognize Sebastopol any longer. There isn’t a soul there; neither women, nor band, nor eating-house. The last café closed yesterday. It is now so dismal! Good-by!” and the officer went away on the trot.
A terrible fear suddenly seized Volodia. It seemed to him that a shell was going tofall on him, and that a piece would surely strike him on the head. The moist darkness, the sinister sounds, the constant noise of the wrathful waves, all seemed to urge him to take not another step, and to tell him that no good awaited him there; that his foot would never touch the solid earth on the other side of the bay; that he would do well to turn back, to flee as quickly as possible this terrible place where death reigns. “Who knows? Perhaps it is too late. My lot is fixed.” He said this to himself, trembling at the thought, and also on account of the water which was running into his boots. He sighed deeply, and kept away from his brother a little.
“My God! shall I really be killed—I? Oh, my God, have mercy on me!” he murmured, making the sign of the cross.
“Now we will push on, Volodia,” said his companion, when their carriage had rejoined them. “Did you see the shell?”
Farther on they met more wagons carrying wounded men and gabions. One of them, filled with furniture, was driven by a woman. On the other side no one stopped their passage.
Instinctively hugging the wall of the Nicholas battery the two brothers silently went along it, with ears attentive to the noise of the shells which exploded over their heads and to the roar of the pieces thrown down from above; and at last they reached the part of the battery where the holy image was placed. There they learned that the Fifth Light Artillery Regiment, which Volodia was to join, was at Korabelnaïa. They consequently made up their minds in spite of the danger to go and sleep in the fifth bastion, and to go from there to their battery on the next day. Passing through the narrow passage, stepping over the soldiers who were sleeping along the wall, they at last reached the hospital.
Entering the first room, filled with beds on which the wounded were lying, they were struck by the heavy and nauseating odor which is peculiar to hospitals. Two Sisters of Charity came to meet them. One of them, about fifty years old, had a stern face; she held in her hands a bundle of bandages and lint, and was giving orders toa very young assistant-surgeon who was following her. The other, a pretty girl of twenty, had a blond, pale, and delicate face. She appeared particularly gentle and timid under her little white cap; she followed her companion with her hands in her apron-pockets, and it could be seen that she was afraid of stopping behind. Koseltzoff asked them to show him Martzeff, who had lost a leg the day before.
“Of the P—— regiment?” asked the elder of the two sisters. “Are you a relative?”
“No, a comrade.”
“Show them the way,” she said in French to the younger sister, and left them, accompanied by the assistant-surgeon, to go to a wounded man.
“Come, come, what are you looking like that for?” said Koseltzoff to Volodia, who had stopped with raised eyebrows, and whose eyes, full of painful sympathy, could not leave the wounded, whom he watched without ceasing, at the same time following his brother, and repeating, in spite of himself, “Oh, my God! my God!”
“He has just come in, has he not?” theyoung sister asked Koseltzoff, pointing to Volodia.
“Yes, he has just come.”
She looked at him again and burst into tears, despairingly repeating, “My God! my God! when will it end?”
They entered the officers’ room. Martzeff was there, lying on his back, his muscular arms bare to the elbow and held under his head. The expression on his yellow visage was that of a man who shuts his teeth tightly so as not to cry out with pain. His well leg, with a stocking on, stuck out from under the coverlid, and the toes worked convulsively.
“Well, how do you feel?” asked the young sister, raising the wounded man’s hot head and arranging his pillow with her thin fingers, on one of which Volodia espied a gold ring. “Here are your comrades come to see you.”
“I am suffering, you know,” he replied, with an irritated air. “Don’t touch me; it is well as it is,” and the toes in the stocking moved with a nervous action. “How do you do? What’s your name? Ah, pardon!” when Koseltzoff had told his name.“Here everything is forgotten. Nevertheless we lived together,” he added, without expressing the least joy, and looking at Volodia with a questioning air.
“It is my brother; he has just come from Petersburg.”
“Ah! and I have done with it, I believe. Heavens, how I am suffering! If that would only stop quicker!”
He pulled his leg in with a convulsive movement. His toes worked with double restlessness. He covered his face with both hands.
“He must be left in quiet; he is very ill,” the sister whispered to them. Her eyes were full of tears.
The brothers, who had decided to go to the fifth bastion, changed their minds on coming out of the hospital, and concluded, without telling each other the true reason, to separate, in order to not expose themselves to useless danger.
“Will you find your way, Volodia?” asked the elder. “However, Nikolaïeff will lead you to Korabelnaïa. Now I am going alone, and to-morrow I will be with you.”
That was all they said in this last interview.
The cannon roared with the same violence, but Ekatherinenskaïa Street, through which Volodia went, accompanied by Nikolaïeff, was empty and quiet. He could see in the darkness only the white walls standing in the midst of the great overthrown houses, and the stones of the sidewalk he was on. Sometimes he met soldiers and officers, and going along the left side, near the Admiralty, he noticed, by the bright light of a fire which burned behind a fence, a row of dark-leaved acacias, covered with dust, recently planted along the sidewalk and held up by green painted stakes. His steps and those of Nikolaïeff, who was loudly breathing, resounded alone in the silence. His thoughts were vague. The pretty Sister of Charity, Martzeff’s leg, with his toes moving convulsively in his stocking, the darkness, the shells, the different pictures of death, passed confusedly in his memory. His young and impressionable soul was irritated and wounded by his isolation, by the complete indifference of every one to his lot, although he was exposed to danger.“I shall suffer, I shall be killed, and no one will mourn me,” he said to himself. Where, then, was the life of the hero full of the energetic ardor and of the sympathies he had so often dreamed of? The shells shrieked and burst nearer and nearer, and Nikolaïeff sighed oftener without speaking. In crossing the bridge which led to Korabelnaïa he saw something two steps off plunge whistling into the gulf, illuminating for a second with a purple light the violet-tinted waves, and then bound off, throwing a shower of water into the air.
“Curse it! the villain is still alive,” murmured Nikolaïeff.
“Yes,” answered Volodia, in spite of himself, and surprised at the sound of his own voice, so shrill and harsh.
They now met wounded men carried on stretchers, carts filled with gabions, a regiment, men on horseback. One of the latter, an officer followed by a Cossack, stopped at the sight of Volodia, examined his face, then, turning away, hit his horse with his whip and continued on his way. “Alone, alone! whether I am alive or not, it is the same to all!” said the youth to himself, ready toburst into tears. Having passed a great white wall, he entered a street bordered with little, quite ruined houses, continually lighted up by the flash of the shells. A drunken woman in rags, followed by a sailor, came out of a small door and stumbled against him. “I beg pardon, your Excellency,” she murmured. The poor boy’s heart was more and more oppressed, while the flashes continually lit up the black horizon and the shells whistled and burst about him. Suddenly Nikolaïeff sighed, and spoke with a voice which seemed to Volodia to express a restrained terror.
“It was well worth while to hurry from home to come here! We went on and went on, and what was the use of hurrying?”
“But, thank the Lord! my brother is cured,” said Volodia, in order by talking to drive away the horrible feeling which had got possession of him.
“Finely cured, when he is in a bad way altogether! The well ones would find themselves much better off in the hospital in times like these. Do we, perchance, take any pleasure in being here? Now an armis lost, now a leg, and then—And yet it is better here in the city than in the bastion, Lord God! On the way a man has to say all his prayers. Ah, scoundrel! it just hummed in my ears,” he added, listening to the sound of a piece of shell which had passed close to him. “Now,” continued Nikolaïeff, “I was told to lead your Excellency, and I know I must do what I am ordered to, but our carriage is in the care of a comrade, and the bundles are undone. I was told to come, and I have come. But if any one of the things we have brought is lost, it is I, Nikolaïeff, who answers for it.”
A few steps farther on they came out on an open space.
“Here is your artillery, your Excellency,” he suddenly said. “Ask the sentinel, he will show you.”
Volodia went forward alone. No longer hearing behind him Nikolaïeff’s sighs, he felt himself abandoned for good and all. The feeling of this desertion in the presence of danger, of death, as he believed, oppressed his heart with the glacial weight of a stone. Halting in the middle of the place, he looked all about him to see if he was observed, and taking his head in both hands, he murmured, with a voice broken by terror, “My God! am I really a despicable poltroon, a coward? I who have lately dreamed of dying for my country, for my Czar, and that with joy! Yes, I am an unfortunate and despicable being!” he cried, in profound despair, and quite undeceived about himself. Having finally overcome his emotion, he asked the sentinel to show him the house of the commander of the battery.
The commander of the battery lived in a little two-story house. It was entered through a court-yard. In one of the windows, in which a pane was missing and was replaced by a sheet of paper, shone the feeble light of a candle. The servant, seated in the door-way, was smoking his pipe. Having announced Volodia to his master, he showed him into his room. There, between two windows, beside a broken mirror, was seen a table loaded with official papers, several chairs, an iron bed with clean linen and a rug before it. Near the door stood the sergeant-major, a fine man, with a splendid pair of mustaches, his sword in its belt. Onhis coat sparkled a cross and the medal of the Hungary campaign. The staff-officer, small in stature, with a swollen and bandaged cheek, walked up and down, dressed in a frock-coat of fine cloth which bore marks of long wear. He was decidedly corpulent, and appeared about forty years old. A bald spot was clearly marked on the top of his head; his thick mustache, hanging straight down, hid his mouth; his brown eyes had an agreeable expression; his hands were fine, white, a little fat; his feet, very much turned out, were put down with a certain assurance and a certain affectation which proved that bashfulness was not the weak side of the commander.
“I have the honor to present myself. I am attached to the Fifth Light Battery—Koseltzoff, the second-ensign,” said Volodia, who, entering the room, recited in one breath this lesson learned by heart.
The commander of the battery replied by a somewhat dry salute, and without offering him his hand begged him to be seated. Volodia then sat down timidly near the writing-table, and in his distraction getting hold of a pair of scissors, began to play with themmechanically. With hands behind his back and with bowed head, the commander of the battery continued his promenade in silence, casting his eyes from time to time on the fingers which continued to juggle with the scissors.
“Yes,” he said, stopping at last in front of the sergeant-major, “from to-morrow on we must give another measure of oats to the caisson horses; they are thin. What do you think of it?”
“Why not? It can be done, your High Excellency; oats are now cheaper,” replied the sergeant-major, his arms stuck to the side of his body and his fingers stirring—an habitual movement with which he usually accompanied his conversation.
“Then there is the forage-master, Frantzone, who wrote me a line yesterday, your High Excellency. He said we must buy axle-trees without fail; they are cheap. What are your orders?”
“Well, they must be bought; there is money,” answered the commander, continuing to walk. “Where are your traps?” he suddenly said, pausing before Volodia.
Poor Volodia, pursued by the thoughtthat he was a coward, saw in each look, in each word, the scorn he must inspire; and it seemed to him that his chief had already discovered his sad secret, and that he was jeering at him. Then he replied in confusion that his things were at Grafskaia, and that his brother would send them to him the following day.
“Where shall we put up the ensign?” the lieutenant-colonel asked the sergeant-major, without listening to the young man’s answer.
“The ensign?” repeated the sergeant-major. A rapid glance thrown on Volodia, and which seemed to say, “What sort of an ensign is that?” finished the disconcerting of the latter. “Down there, your Excellency, with the second-captain. Since the captain is in the bastion his bed is empty!”
“Will that do for you while you are waiting?” asked the commander of the battery. “You must be tired, I think. To-morrow it can be more conveniently arranged for you.”
Volodia arose and saluted.
“Will you have some tea?” added his superior officer. “The samovar can be heated.”
Volodia, who had already reached the door, turned around, saluted again, and went out.
The lieutenant-colonel’s servant conducted him down-stairs, and showed him into a bare and dirty room where different broken things were thrown aside as rubbish, and in which, in a corner, a man in a red shirt, whom Volodia took for a soldier, was sleeping on an iron bed without sheets or coverlid, wrapped in his overcoat.
“Peter Nikolaïevitch”—and the servant touched the sleeper’s shoulder—“get up; the ensign is going to sleep here. It’s Vlang, our yunker,” he added, turning to Volodia.
“Oh, don’t disturb yourself, I beg,” cried the latter, seeing the yunker, a tall and robust young man, with a fine face, but one entirely devoid of intelligence, rise, throw his overcoat over his shoulders, and drowsily go away, murmuring, “That’s nothing; I will go and sleep in the yard.”
Left alone with his thoughts, Volodia at first felt a return of the terror caused by thetrouble which agitated his soul. Counting upon sleep to be able to cease thinking of his surroundings and to forget himself, he blew out his candle and lay down, covering himself all up with his overcoat, even his head, for he had kept his fear of darkness since his childhood. But suddenly the idea came to him that a shell might fall through the roof and kill him. He listened. The commander of the battery was walking up and down over his head.
“It will begin by killing him first,” he said to himself, “then me. I shall not die alone!” This reflection calmed him, and he was going to sleep when this time the thought that Sebastopol might be taken that very night, that the French might burst in his door, and that he had no weapon to defend himself, completely waked him up again. He rose and walked the room. The fear of the real danger had stifled the mysterious terror of darkness. He hunted and found to hand only a saddle and a samovar. “I am a coward, a poltroon, a wretch,” he thought again, filled with disgust and scorn of himself. He lay down and tried to stop thinking; but then the impressions of the day passed again through his mind, and the continual sounds which shook the panes of his single window recalled to him the danger he was in. Visions followed. Now he saw the wounded covered with blood; now bursting shells, pieces of which flew into his room; now the pretty Sister of Charity who dressed his wounds weeping over his agony, or his mother, who, carrying him back to the provincial town, praying to God for him before a miraculous image, shed hot tears. Sleep eluded him; but suddenly the thought of an all-powerful Deity who sees everything and who hears every prayer flashed upon him distinct and clear in the midst of his reveries. He fell upon his knees, making the sign of the cross, and clasping his hands as he had been taught in his childhood. This simple gesture aroused in him a feeling of infinite, long-forgotten calm.
“If I am to die, it is because I am useless! Then, may Thy will be done, O Lord! and may it be done quickly. But if the courage and firmness which I lack are necessary to me, spare me the shame and the dishonor, which I cannot endure, and teachme what I must do to accomplish Thy will.”
His weak, childish, and terrified soul was fortified, was calmed at once, and entered new, broad, and luminous regions. He thought of a thousand things; he experienced a thousand sensations in the short duration of this feeling; then he quietly went to sleep, heedless of the dull roar of the bombardment and of the shaking windows.
Lord, Thou alone hast heard, Thou alone knowest the simple but ardent and despairing prayers of ignorance, the confused repentance asking for the cure of the body and the purification of the soul—the prayers which rise to Thee from these places where death resides; beginning with the general, who with terror feels a presentiment of approaching death, and a second after thinks only of wearing a cross of Saint George on his neck, and ending with the simple soldier prostrate on the bare earth of the Nicholas battery, supplicating Thee to grant him for his sufferings the recompense he unconsciously has a glimpse of.