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

“Come along. Well, what’s happened?”

“The lodgments have been attacked⁠—and occupied⁠—the French brought up tremendous reserves⁠—attacked us⁠—we had only two battalions,” said the officer, panting. He was the same officer who had been there that evening, but though he was now out of breath, he walked with full self-possession to the door.

“Well, have we retreated?” asked Kaloúgin.

“No,” angrily replied the officer; “another battalion came up in time⁠—we drove them back, but the Colonel is killed and many officers. I have orders to ask for reinforcements.”

And, saying this, he went with Kaloúgin to the General’s, where we shall not follow him.

Five minutes later Kaloúgin was already on his Cossack horse (again in the semi-Cossack manner which I have noticed that all Adjutants, for some reason, seem to consider the proper thing), and rode off at a trot towards the bastion to deliver some orders and await the final result of the affair. Prince Gáltsin, under the influence of that oppressive excitement usually produced in a spectator by proximity to an action in which he is not engaged, went out and began aimlessly pacing up and down the street.

Soldiers passed, carrying the wounded on stretchers or leading them under their arms. It was quite dark in the streets; only here and there one saw lights, in the hospital windows or where some officers were sitting up. From the bastions still came the thunder of cannon and the rattle of muskets,42 and the lights continued to flash in the dark sky as before. From time to time you heard trampling hoofs as an orderly galloped past, or the groans of a wounded man, the steps and voices of stretcher-bearers, or the words of some frightened women who had come out into their porches to watch the cannonade.

Among the spectators were our friend Nikíta, the old sailor’s widow, with whom he had again made friends, and her ten-year-old daughter.

“O Lord God! Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said the old woman, sighing, as she looked at the bombs that kept flying across from side to side like balls of fire; “what horrors! what horrors! Ah, ah! oh, oh! Even at the first bandagement it wasn’t like that. Look now, where the cursed thing has burst, just over our house in the suburb.”

“No, that’s further, they keep tumbling into Aunt Irena’s garden,” said the girl.

“And where, where is master now?” drawled Nikíta, who was not quite sober yet. “Oh! how I love that ’ere master of mine even I myself don’t know. I love him so that, should he be killed in a sinful way, which God forbid, then, would you believe it, granny, after that I myself don’t know what I wouldn’t do to myself! S’elp me, I don’t!⁠ ⁠… My master is that sort, there’s only one word for it. Could one change him for such as them there, playing cards? What are they? Ugh! there’s only one word for it!” concluded Nikíta, pointing to the lighted window of his master’s room, to which, in the absence of the Lieutenant-Captain, the Junker Zhvadchévsky had invited Sublieutenants Ougróvich and Nepshisétsky (whose face was swollen), and was having a spree in honour of a medal he had received.

“Look at the stars, look at ’em, how they’re rolling!” The little girl broke the silence that followed Nikíta’s words. She stood gazing at the sky. “Here’s another rolled down. What is it a sign of, eh, mother?”

“They’ll smash up our hut altogether,” said the old woman with a sigh, leaving her daughter unanswered.

“As we went there today with uncle, mother,” continued, in a singsong tone, the little girl, who had become talkative, “there was such a b⁠—i⁠—g cannonball inside the room, close to the cupboard. A’spose it had smashed in through the passage, and right into the room, such a big one⁠—you couldn’t lift it.”

“Those who had husbands and money all moved away,” said the old woman, “and there’s the hut, all that was left me, and that’s been smashed. Just look at him blazing away! The fiend!⁠ ⁠… O Lord, O Lord!”

“And just as we were going out, comes a bomb fly⁠—ing, and goes and bur⁠—sts and co⁠—o⁠—vers us with dust. A bit of it nearly hit me and uncle.”

More and more wounded, carried on stretchers, or walking supported by others and talking loudly, passed Prince Gáltsin.

“Up they sprang, friends,” said the bass voice of a tall soldier, carrying two guns over his shoulder, “up they sprang, shouting ‘Allah! Allah!’43 and just climbing one over another. You kill one, and another’s there, you couldn’t do anything; no end of ’em⁠—”

But at this point in the story Gáltsin interrupted him.

“You are from the bastion?”

“Just so, y’r honour!”

“Well, what happened, tell me?”

“What happened? Well, y’r honour, such a force of ’em poured down on us over the rampart, it was all up. They quite overpowered us, y’r honour!”

“Overpowered?⁠ ⁠… but you repulsed them?”

“How’s one to repulse ’em, when his whole force came on, killed all our men, and no re’forcements are given?”

The soldier was mistaken, the trench remained ours; but it is a curious fact, which anyone may notice, that a soldier wounded in action always thinks the affair lost, and imagines it to have been a very bloody fight.

“How is that? I was told they had been repulsed,” said Gáltsin irritably. “Perhaps they were driven back after you left? Is it long since you came away?”

“I am straight from there, y’r honour!” answered the soldier; “it is hardly possible; they must have kept the trench, he overpowered us quite.”

“How are you not ashamed to have lost the trench? It’s awful!” said Gáltsin, provoked at such indifference.

“What if he’d the force?” muttered the soldier.

“Ah, y’r honour,” began a soldier from a stretcher which had just come up to them, “how could we help giving it up when he had killed almost all our men? If we had the force we wouldn’t have given it up, not