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

now to what they had been on the boulevard. There was none of the absurd arrogance and haughtiness which they had shown towards the infantry officers; here among themselves they were natural, and Kaloúgin and Prince Gáltsin in particular showed themselves very nice, merry, and good-natured young fellows. Their conversation was about their Petersburg fellow-officers and acquaintances.

“What of Máslofsky?”

“Which one?⁠—the Leib-Uhlan or the Horse Guard?”

“I know them both. The one in the Horse Guards I knew when he was a boy just out of school. But the eldest⁠—is he a captain yet?”

“Oh yes, long ago.”

“Is he still fussing about with his gipsy?”

“No, he has dropped her.⁠ ⁠…” And so on, in the same strain.

Later on Prince Gáltsin went to the piano, and sang a gipsy song capitally. Praskoúhin, chiming in, put in a second unasked, and did it so well that he was invited to continue, and this delighted him.

A servant brought tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver tray.

“Serve the Prince,” said Kaloúgin.

“Is it not strange to think,” said Gáltsin, taking his tea to the window, “that we’re in a besieged town, and here’s a pi-aner-forty, tea with cream, and a house such as I should really be glad to have in Petersburg?”

“Why, if we had not even that,” said the old, always dissatisfied Lieutenant-Colonel, “the continual uncertainty we are living in⁠—seeing people killed day after day, and no end to it, would be intolerable. And to have dirt and discomfort added to it⁠—”

“But our infantry officers,” said Kaloúgin, “they live at the bastions with their men in the bombproofs, and eat soldiers’ soup⁠—what of them?”

“What of them? Well, though it’s true they wear the same shirt for ten days at a time, they are heroes all the same⁠—wonderful men.”

Just then an infantry officer entered the room.

“I⁠ ⁠… I have orders⁠ ⁠… may I see the Gen⁠ ⁠… his Excellency? I have come with a message from General N⁠⸺,” he said, bowing shyly.

Kaloúgin rose, and, not returning the officer’s bow, asked with an offensive, affected official smile if he would not have the goodness to wait; and without asking him to sit down or taking any further notice of him, turned to Gáltsin and began talking French, so that the poor officer, left alone in the middle of the room, did not in the least know what to do with himself.

“It is a matter of the utmost urgency, sir,” said the officer, after a short silence.

“Ah! well, then, come if you please,” said Kaloúgin, putting on his cloak, and accompanying the officer to the door.

“Eh bien, messieurs, je crois, que cela chauffera cette nuit,”39 said Kaloúgin, when he returned from the General’s.

“Ah! what is it?⁠—a sortie?” asked the others.

“That I don’t know; you will see for yourselves,” replied Kaloúgin, with a mysterious smile.

“And my commander is at the bastion, so I suppose I must go too,” said Praskoúhin, buckling on his sabre.

No one replied; it was his business to know whether he had to go or not.

Praskoúhin and Nefyórdof left, to go to their appointed posts.

“Goodbye, gentlemen. Au revoir! We’ll meet again before the night is over,” shouted Kaloúgin from the window, as Praskoúhin and Nefyórdof, stooping in their Cossack saddles, trotted past. The tramp of their Cossack horses soon died away in the dark street.

“Non, dites moi, est-ce qu’il y aura véritablement quelque chose cette nuit?”40 said Gáltsin, as he lounged in the windowsill beside Kaloúgin, and watched the bombs that rose above the bastions.

“I can tell you, you see⁠ ⁠… you have been to the bastions? (Gáltsin nodded, though he had only once been to the Fourth Bastion.) You remember just in front of our lunette there is a trench,”⁠ ⁠… and Kaloúgin, with the air of one who without being a specialist considers his military judgment very sound, began somewhat confusedly, and misusing the technical terms, to explain the position of the enemy and of our own works, and the plan of the intended action.

“But, I say, they’re banging away at the lodgments. Oho! I wonder if that is ours or his?⁠ ⁠… Now it’s burst,” said they, as they lounged on the windowsill looking at the fiery trails of the bombs crossing one another in the air, at flashes that for a moment lit up the dark sky, at the puffs of white smoke, and listened to the more and more frequent reports of the firing.

“Quel charmant coup d’œil! a?”41 said Kaloúgin, drawing his guest’s attention to the really beautiful sight. “Do you know, you sometimes can’t distinguish a bomb from a star.”

“Yes, I thought that was a star just now, and then saw it fall⁠ ⁠… there! it’s burst. And that big star⁠—what do you call it?⁠—looks just like a bomb.”

“Do you know, I am so used to these bombs that I am sure when I’m back in Russia I shall think I see bombs every starlight night⁠—one gets so used to them.”

“But had not I better join this sortie?” said Prince Gáltsin, after a moment’s pause.

“Humbug! my dear fellow! don’t think of such a thing! Besides, I won’t let you,” answered Kaloúgin. “You will have plenty of opportunities later on!”

“Really? You think I need not go, eh?”

At that moment, from the direction in which these gentlemen were looking, amid the boom of the cannon came the terrible rattle of musketry, and thousands of little fires, flaming up in quick succession, flashed all along the line.

“There! now it’s the real thing!” said Kaloúgin. “I can’t keep cool when I hear the noise of muskets; it seems, you know, to seize one’s very soul. There’s an hurrah!” he added, listening intently to the distant and prolonged roar of hundreds of voices, “Ah⁠—ah⁠—ah,” which came from the bastions.

“Whose hurrah was it? theirs or ours?”

“I don’t know, but it’s hand-to-hand fighting now, for the firing has ceased.”

At that moment an officer, followed by a Cossack, galloped under the window and alighted from his horse at the porch.

“Where from?”

“From the bastion.