VI
The troops were to march at ten in the evening. At half-past eight I mounted and rode to the general’s, but, thinking that he and his adjutant were busy, I tied my horse to the fence and sat down on an earth-bank, intending to catch the general as soon as he came out.
The heat and glare of the sun were now replaced by the coolness of night and the soft light of the young moon, which had formed a pale glimmering semicircle around itself on the deep blue of the starry sky, and was already setting. Lights appeared in the windows of the houses, and shone through cracks in the shutters of the dugouts. The stately poplars, beyond the white moonlit dugouts, with their cane-thatched roofs, looked darker and taller than ever against the horizon. The long shadows of the houses, the trees and the fences, stretched out daintily on the dusty road. From the river came the ringing sounds of frogs; along the street came the sound of hurried steps and voices talking, or the galloping of a horse, and from the suburb the tones of a barrel-organ now playing “The winds are blowing,” now some “Aurora Waltz.”
I will not say what meditations I was absorbed in; first, because I should be ashamed to confess the gloomy waves of thought that insistently flooded my soul while around me I noticed nothing but gaiety and joy; and secondly, because it would not suit my story. I was so deep in thought that I did not even notice the bell strike eleven, and the general with his suite ride past me.
The rearguard was still within the fortress. I had great difficulty in making my way across the bridge among the guns, ammunition wagons, the carts of the different companies, and the officers noisily giving orders. Once outside the fortress gates, I passed at a trot the troops, who, stretched out over nearly three-quarters of a mile, were moving silently on through the darkness, and I overtook the general.
As I rode past the guns drawn out in single file, and the officers who rode between the guns, I was hurt, as by a discord in the quiet and solemn harmony, by the German accents of a voice shouting, “You devil, a linstock!” and the voice of a soldier hurriedly calling, “Shevchenko, the lieutenant wants a light!”
The greater part of the sky was now overcast with long strips of dark grey clouds; only here and there a few stars twinkled dimly among them. The moon had already sunk behind the near horizon of the black hills, visible to the right, and threw a faint trembling light on their peaks in sharp contrast to the impenetrable darkness which enveloped their base. The air was so warm and still that it seemed as if not one blade of grass, not one cloudlet, were moving. It was so dark that even objects close at hand could not be distinguished. On the sides of the road I seemed to see now rocks, now animals, now some strange kind of men, and I discovered that they were merely bushes only when I heard them rustle, or felt the dew with which they were sprinkled. In front of me I saw a dense heaving wall, followed by some dark moving spots: these were the cavalry vanguard, and the general with his suite. Another similar dark mass, only lower, moved beside us—that was the infantry. The silence that reigned over the whole division was so great that all the mingling sounds of night, with their mysterious charm, were distinctly audible: the far-off, mournful howling of jackals, now like agonized weeping, then like chuckling; the monotonous, resounding song of crickets, frogs, and quails; a sort of rumbling I could not account for at all, but which seemed to draw nearer; scarcely audible motions of Nature, which can neither be understood nor defined, mingled into one beautiful harmony, which we call the stillness of night. This stillness was interrupted by, or rather combined with, the dull thud of hoofs and the rustling of the tall grass, produced by the slowly advancing detachment.
Only very occasionally you heard the clang of a heavy gun, the sound of bayonets striking together, hushed voices, or the snorting of a horse. Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power. Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth, under those immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men, ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature: that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.