He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the
knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the
saddle.
"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
hill.
"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!"
said the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to pass
the time."
"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.
In a
moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and
began loading.
"One!" came the command.
Number one jumped
briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening metallic roar, and a
whistling grenade flew above the heads of our troops below the hill and fell
far short of the enemy, a little smoke showing the spot where it
burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone
got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as
plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of
the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came
fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous
and spirited impression.
CHAPTER VII
Two of the
enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge, where there was a crush.
Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who had alighted from his horse and
whose big body was jammed against the railings. He looked back laughing to
the Cossack who stood a few steps behind him holding two horses by their
bridles. Each time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts
pushed him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he could
do was to smile.
"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack
to a convoy soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who
were crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!
You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"
But
the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted at the
soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to the left! Wait a
bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to shoulder, their bayonets
interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense mass. Looking down over the
rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which
rippling and eddying round the piles of the bridge chased each other along.
Looking on the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers,
shoulder straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,
under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless
tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered
the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like
a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and
with a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way
along; sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on
foot, an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry;
and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers' or
company's baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all
sides, moved across the bridge.
"It's as if a dam had burst," said the
Cossack hopelessly. "Are there many more of you to come?"
"A million
all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, with a wink, and
passed on followed by another, an old man.
"If he" (he meant the enemy)
"begins popping at the bridge now," said the old soldier dismally to a
comrade, "you'll forget to scratch yourself."
That soldier passed on,
and after him came another sitting on a cart.
"Where the devil have the
leg bands been shoved to?" said an orderly, running behind the cart and
fumbling in the back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then
came some merry soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
"And then,
old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt end of his gun..." a
soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said gaily, with a wide swing of
his arm.
"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a
loud laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who had
been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
"Bah! How
they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll all be killed," a
sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
"As it flies past me,
Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly
refraining from laughing, "I felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word,
I got that frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been
frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that
had gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German,
and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow
with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an
unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red
cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives
were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the
soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot
pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two young ones. Every face
bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the
women.
"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"
"Sell
me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German, who, angry and
frightened, strode energetically along with downcast eyes.
"See how smart
she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"
"There, Fedotov, you should be
quartered on them!"
"I have seen as much before now, mate!"
"Where
are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an apple, also half
smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
The German closed his eyes,
signifying that he did not understand.
"Take it if you like," said the
officer, giving the girl an apple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski
like the rest of the men on the bridge did not take his eyes off the women
till they had passed. When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers
followed, with the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often
happens, the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the
bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.
"And why are they stopping?
There's no proper order!" said the soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil
take you! Can't you wait? It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's
an officer jammed in too"-- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the
men looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the
bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge,
Nesvitski suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly
approaching... something big, that splashed into the water.
"Just see
where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly, looking round at the
sound.
"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another
uneasily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a
cannon ball.
"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there!
get out of the way! Make way!"
With great difficulty he managed to get
to his horse, and shouting continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed
themselves to make way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed
his leg, and those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves
pressed still harder from behind.
"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you
numskull!" came a hoarse voice from behind him.
Nesvitski looked round
and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated by the living mass of moving
infantry, Vaska Denisov, red and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his
black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
"Tell these
devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov evidently in a fit of
rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot whites glittering and rolling
as he waved his sheathed saber in a small bare hand as red as his
face.
"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with
you?"
"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his
white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white
foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs,
and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let him.
"What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the way!... Let
us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I'll hack you with
my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard
and flourishing it.
The soldiers crowded against one another with
terrified faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitski.
"How's it you're not
drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had ridden up to
him.
"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.
"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to
fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."
"What a dandy
you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's new cloak and
saddlecloth.
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief
that diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.
"Of
course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth, and scented
myself."
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and
the determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and
shouted frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside
the bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the
order, and having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way
Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge. Carelessly holding in his stallion
that was neighing and pawing the ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he
watched his squadron draw nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several
horses galloping, resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron,
officers in front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to
emerge on his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded
near the bridge in the trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of
ill-will, estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms
usually encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them
in regular order.
"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said
one.
"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked
another.
"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose
prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
"I'd like to
put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine cords would soon get
a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the mud off his face with his
sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more like a bird than a man."
"There
now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look fine," said a
corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the weight of his
knapsack.
"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"
the hussar shouted back.
CHAPTER VIII
The last of
the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing together as they
approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last the baggage wagons had
all crossed, the crush was less, and the last battalion came onto the bridge.
Only Denisov's squadron of hussars remained on the farther side of the bridge
facing the enemy, who could be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but
was not yet visible from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley
through which the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a
mile away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of
our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were
the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot.
All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they tried to talk
of other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what
was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the
patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy's troops.
The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending
brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and
at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be
heard from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the
enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven
hundred yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and
that stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which
separates two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.
"One step
beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from
the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is
there?--there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No
one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line,
and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find
out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the
other side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and
are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks,
or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that
feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to
everything that takes place at such moments.
On the high ground where
the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose, and a ball flew whistling over the
heads of the hussar squadron. The officers who had been standing together
rode off to their places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses.
Silence fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front
and at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a
third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but
the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the horsemen and
fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but at the
sound of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with
its rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while
the ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The
soldiers without turning their heads glanced at one another, curious to see
their comrades' impression. Every face, from Denisov's to that of the
bugler, showed one common expression of conflict, irritation, and
excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at
the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked
every time a ball flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his
Rook--a handsome horse despite its game leg--had the happy air of a
schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he
feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with
a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he
sat under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication
of something new and stern showed round the mouth.
"Who's that
curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! Look at me," cried Denisov
who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning his horse in front of the
squadron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his
whole short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he
was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds
when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his
good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the
saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a
hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten.
The staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to
meet him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, only
his eyes were brighter than usual.
"Well, what about it?" said he to
Denisov. "It won't come to a fight. You'll see--we shall retire."
"The
devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah, Wostov," he
cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it at last."
And
he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostov
felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge.
Denisov galloped up to him.
"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll
dwive them off."
"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice,
puckering up his face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you
stopping here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the
squadron back."
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range
of fire without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been
in the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the
farther side of the river.
The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed
the bridge, retired up the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl
Bogdanich Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not
far from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now
meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov,
feeling that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he
now admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from
the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his
red neck. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending not
to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet's
courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed
to him that Bogdanich rode so near in order to show him his courage.
Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate
attack just to punish him--Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the
attack, Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would
magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered
figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as he had but recently left
their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his dismissal from headquarters
Zherkov had not remained in the regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to
slave at the front when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the
staff, and had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the commander
of the rear guard.
"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an
air of gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an order
to stop and fire the bridge."
"An order to who?" asked the colonel
morosely.
"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious
tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the
hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"
Zherkov was
followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the colonel of hussars
with the same order. After him the stout Nesvitski came galloping up on a
Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his weight.
"How's this,
Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to fire the bridge, and
now someone has gone and blundered; they are all beside themselves over there
and one can't make anything out."
The colonel deliberately stopped the
regiment and turned to Nesvitski.
"You spoke to me of inflammable
material," said he, "but you said nothing about firing it."
"But, my
dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap and smoothing his
hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand, "wasn't I telling you to fire
the bridge, when inflammable material had been put in position?"
"I am
not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell me to burn the
bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders strictly to obey. You
said the bridge would be burned, but who would it burn, I could not know by
the holy spirit!"
"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave
of the hand. "How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.
"On
the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"
"You were
saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in an offended
tone.
"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be quick
or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."
The colonel
looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout staff officer, and
at Zherkov, and he frowned.
"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn
tone as if to announce that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to
endure he would still do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his
long muscular legs as if it were to blame for everything, the colonel moved
forward and ordered the second squadron, that in which Rostov was serving
under Denisov, to return to the bridge.
"There, it's just as I
thought," said Rostov to himself. "He wishes to test me!" His heart
contracted and the blood rushed to his face. "Let him see whether I am a
coward!" he thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the
serious expression appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov
watched his enemy, the colonel, closely--to find in his face confirmation of
his own conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and looked
as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word
of command.
"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around
him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling,
the hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The
men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the colonel, he
had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much
afraid that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse
into an orderly's charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with
a thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something.
Rostov saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs
catching and their sabers clattering.
"Stretchers!" shouted someone
behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he
ran on, trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge,
not looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,
stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
"At boss
zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who, having ridden ahead,
had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a triumphant, cheerful
face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy
and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front
the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing Rostov,
shouted to him:
"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To
the right! Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,
showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the
bridge:
"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he
said.
"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning
in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the
suite were standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the
small group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at what
was approaching in the distance from the opposite side--the blue
uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as
artillery.
"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first?
Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within
grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each man of the
troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself with
a sinking heart--watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright
evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
their bayonets and guns.
"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said
Nesvitski; "they are within grapeshot range now."
"He shouldn't have
taken so many men," said the officer of the suite.
"True enough,"
answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have done the job just as
well."
"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the
hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency! How you
look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir
medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron may
be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich knows
how things are done."
"There now!" said the officer of the suite,
"that's grapeshot."
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which
were being detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid
the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke appeared, then a second and a third
almost simultaneously, and at the moment when the first report was heard a
fourth was seen. Then two reports one after another, and a third.
"Oh!
Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer of the suite
by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!"
"Two, I
think."
"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning
away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their
blue uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again
but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto
the bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening
there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded
in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them,
no longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there
was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of
grapeshot before the hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected
and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group
of hussars and knocked three of them over.
Rostov, absorbed by his
relations with Bogdanich, had paused on the bridge not knowing what to do.
There was no one to hew down (as he had always imagined battles to himself),
nor could he help to fire the bridge because he had not brought any burning
straw with him like the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when
suddenly he heard a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the
hussar nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to
him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men seized
the hussar and began lifting him.
"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me
alone!" cried the wounded man, but still he was lifted and laid on the
stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for
something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,
and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how
deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter
the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the
faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges,
and the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was
peace and happiness... "I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only
I were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone and in that sunshine
there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and
this uncertainty and hurry... There--they are shouting again, and again
are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death,
is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never again
see the sun, this water, that gorge!..."
At that instant the sun began
to hide behind the clouds, and other stretchers came into view before Rostov.
And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life,
all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.
"O Lord God! Thou
who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect me!" Rostov
whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their
voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from
sight.
"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just
above his ear.
"It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!"
thought Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood
resting one foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
"Was that
grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.
"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You
worked like wegular bwicks and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work!
Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them
shooting at you like a target." |
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기