Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

had hardly gone seven hundred yards from the village before enemy cannonballs began whistling over our heads. I saw a soldier killed by a ball.⁠ ⁠… But why should I describe the details of that terrible picture, which I myself would give much to be able to forget! Lieutenant Rosenkranz kept firing his musket 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 was very becoming to his warrior countenance.

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,” abruptly replied the Captain. “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 very martial about the Captain’s appearance, but there was something so true and simple in it, that I was extremely 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 lighter 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 variations 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 who said at Waterloo, “La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas,” 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 the soul of my hero, I am convinced 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, if that is 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 bonny 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. Before 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 which had animated it a few minutes before, was sunk in a dreadful way between his shoulders and drooped on his chest. There was a small spot of blood on the white shirt beneath his unbuttoned coat.

“Ah, what a pity,” I said, involuntarily turning away from this sad spectacle.

“Of course it’s a pity,” said an old soldier, who stood leaning on his musket beside me with a gloomy expression on his face. “He’s not afraid of anything; how can one do such things?” he added, looking intently at the wounded lad. “Young and still foolish, and now he has paid for it!”

“And you?” I asked, “Are you afraid?”

“What do you expect?”

XI

Four soldiers were carrying the Ensign on a stretcher, and behind them an ambulance soldier led a thin broken-winded horse with two green boxes containing surgical appliances on its back. They waited for the doctor. Officers rode up to the stretcher, and tried to cheer up and comfort the wounded lad.

“Well, friend Alanin, it will be some time before you will dance again with castanets,” said Lieutenant Rosenkranz, riding up to the stretcher with a smile.

He probably imagined that these words would keep up the young Ensign’s spirits, but, as far as one could judge by the latter’s coldly sad look, the words had not the desired effect.

The Captain rode up too. He looked intently at the wounded man, and his usually calm and cold face expressed sincere sympathy. “Well my dear Anatol Ivanich,” said he, in a voice of tender sympathy such as I never expected from him, “evidently it is God’s will.”

The wounded lad looked round, and his pale face lit up with a sad smile, “Yes, I disobeyed you.”

“Say rather, it was the will of God,” repeated the Captain.

The doctor arrived, and, having taken from his assistant bandages, a probe, and another implement, rolled up his sleeves and stepped up to the Ensign with an encouraging smile. “So it seems they have made a hole in a sound spot, for you too,” he said in a carelessly playful tone. “Let me see.”

The Ensign obeyed, but the look which he gave the merry doctor expressed astonishment and