Rosenkranz asked him, through an interpreter, why he had not gone away with the others.
‘Where should I go?’ he answered, looking quietly away.
‘Where the others have gone,’ someone remarked.
‘The dzhigits have gone to fight the Russians, but I am an old man.’
‘Are you not afraid of the Russians?’
‘What will the Russians do to me? I am old,’ he repeated, again glancing carelessly round the circle that had formed about him.
Later, as I was returning, I saw that old man bareheaded, with his arms tied, being jolted along behind the saddle of a Cossack, and he was looking round with the same expression of indifference on his face. He was needed for the exchange of prisoners.
I climbed onto the roof and sat down beside the captain.
[A bugler who had vodka and provisions was sent for. The captain’s calmness and equanimity involuntarily produced an effect on me. We ate roasted pheasant and chatted, without at all reflecting that the owners of that hut had not merely no desire to see us there but could hardly have imagined our existence.]
‘There don’t seem to have been many of the enemy,’ I said, wishing to know his opinion of the action that had taken place.
‘The enemy?’ he repeated with surprise. ‘The enemy was not there at all! Do you call those the enemy?… Wait till the evening when we go back, and you will see how they will speed us on our way: what a lot of them will pour out from there,’ he said, pointing to a thicket we had passed in the morning.
‘What is that?’ I asked anxiously, interrupting the captain and pointing to a group of Don Cossacks who had collected round something not far from us.
A sound of something like a child’s cry came from there, and the words:
‘Stop … don’t hack it … you’ll be seen … Have you a knife, Evstignéich … Lend me a knife.
‘They are up to something, the scoundrels …’ replied the captain calmly.
But at that moment the young ensign, his comely face flushed and frightened, came suddenly running from behind a corner and rushed towards the Cossacks waving his arms.
‘Don’t touch it! Don’t kill it!’ he cried in a childish voice.
Seeing the officer, the Cossacks stepped apart and released a little white kid. The young ensign was quite abashed, muttered something, and stopped before us with a confused face. Seeing the captain and me on the roof he blushed still more and ran leaping towards us.
‘I thought they were killing a child,’ he said with a bashful smile.
Chapter X
THE general went ahead with the cavalry. The battalion with which I had come from Fort N. remained in the rear-guard. Captain Khlópov’s and Lieutenant Rosenkranz’s battalions retired together.
The captain’s prediction was fully justified. No sooner had we entered the narrow thicket he had mentioned, than on both sides of us we caught glimpses of hillsmen mounted and on foot, and so near were they that I could distinctly see how some of them ran stooping, rifle in hand, from one tree to another.
The captain took off his cap and piously crossed himself, some of the older soldiers did the same. From the wood were heard war-cries and the words ‘Iay giaour’, ‘Urus! iay!’ Sharp short rifle-shots, following one another fast, whizzed on both sides of us. Our men answered silently with a running fire, and only now and then remarks like the following were made in the ranks: ‘See where he15 fires from! It’s all right for him inside the wood. We ought to use cannon,’ and so forth.
Our ordnance was brought out, and after some grape-shot had been fired the enemy seemed to grow weaker, but a moment later and at every step taken by our troops, the enemy’s fire again grew hotter and the shouting louder.
We had hardly gone seven hundred yards from the village before enemy cannon-balls began whistling over our heads. I saw a soldier killed by one.… But why should I describe the details of that terrible picture which I would myself give much to be able to forget!
Lieutenant Rosenkranz kept firing, and incessantly shouted in a hoarse voice at the soldiers and galloped from one end of the cordon to the other. He was rather pale and this suited his martial countenance very well.
The good-looking young ensign was in raptures: his beautiful dark eyes shone with daring, his lips were slightly smiling, and he kept riding up to the captain and begging permission to charge.
‘We will repel them,’ he said persuasively, ‘we certainly will.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ replied the captain abruptly. ‘We must retreat.’
The captain’s company held the skirts of the wood, the men lying down and replying to the enemy’s fire. The captain in his shabby coat and shabby cap sat silent on his white horse, with loose reins, bent knees, his feet in the stirrups, and did not stir from his place. (The soldiers knew and did their work so well that there was no need to give them any orders.) Only at rare intervals he raised his voice to shout at those who exposed their heads. There was nothing at all martial about the captain’s appearance, but there was something so sincere and simple in it that I was unusually struck by it. ‘It is he who is really brave,’ I involuntarily said to myself.
He was just the same as I had always seen him: the same calm movements, the same guileless expression on his plain but frank face, only his eyes, which were brighter than usual, showed the concentration of one quietly engaged on his duties. ‘As I had always seen him’ is easily said, but how many different shades have I noticed in the behaviour of others; one wishing to appear quieter, another sterner, a third merrier, than usual, but the captain’s face showed that he did not even see why he should appear anything but what he was.
The Frenchman at Waterloo who said, ‘La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas,’16 and other, particularly French, heroes who uttered memorable sayings were brave, and really uttered remarkable words, but between their courage and the captain’s there was this difference, that even if a great saying had in any circumstance stirred in the soul of my hero, I am convinced that he would not have uttered it: first because by uttering a great saying he would have feared to spoil a great deed, and secondly because when a man feels within himself the capacity to perform a great deed no talk of any kind is needed. That, I think, is a peculiar and a lofty characteristic of Russian courage, and that being so, how can a Russian heart help aching when our young Russian warriors utter trivial French phrases intended to imitate antiquated French chivalry?
Suddenly from the side where our young ensign stood with his platoon we heard a not very hearty or loud ‘Hurrah!’ Looking round to where the shout came from, I saw some thirty soldiers with sacks on their shoulders and muskets in their hands managing with very great difficulty to run across a ploughed field. They kept stumbling, but nevertheless ran on and shouted. In front of them, sword in hand, galloped the young ensign.
They all disappeared into the wood.…
After a few minutes of whooping and clatter a frightened horse ran out of the wood, and soldiers appeared bringing back the dead and wounded. Among the latter was the young ensign. Two soldiers supported him under his arms. He was as pale as a sheet, and his pretty head, on which only a shadow remained of the warlike enthusiasm that had animated him a few minutes before, was dreadfully sunk between his shoulders and drooped on his chest. There was a small spot of blood on the white shirt beneath his unbuttoned coat.