V
Towards seven that evening, dusty and tired, we entered the wide fortified gate of Fort N⸺. The sun was already setting, and threw its rosy slanting rays on the picturesque little batteries, and on the gardens with their tall poplars, which surrounded the fortress, on the yellow gleaming cultivated fields, and on the white clouds that, crowding round the snowy peaks, had, as if trying to imitate them, formed a range not less fantastic and beautiful.
On the horizon the new moon appeared, delicate as a little cloud. In the Tartar village that lay at the gates of the fortress, from the roof of a hut, a Tartar was calling the faithful to prayer; and our singers lifted their voices with renewed energy and vigour.
After a rest, and after tidying myself up a bit, I went to an adjutant of my acquaintance, to ask him to let the general know of my intention. On my way from the suburb where I had put up, I noticed in Fort N⸺ something I did not at all expect: a pretty little brougham, which overtook me, in which I caught sight of a fashionable bonnet, and from which I overheard some French words. The sounds of some “Lizzie” or “Kitty” polka, played on a bad ramshackle piano, reached me through the windows of the commander’s house. In a little grocery and wine shop which I passed, some clerks with cigarettes in their fingers sat drinking wine: and I heard one of them say to another, “No, excuse me, as for politics, Mary Gregoryevna is first among our ladies.” A Jew in a worn-out coat, with a bent back and sickly countenance, was dragging along a wheezy barrel-organ, and the whole suburb resounded with the tones of the finale of Lucia. Two women in rustling dresses, with silk kerchiefs on their heads, and carrying bright-coloured parasols, passed by, along the planks that did duty for a pavement. Two girls, one in a pink, the other in a blue, dress, stood bareheaded beside the earth-embankments of a low-roofed house, and shrieked with high-pitched, forced laughter, evidently to attract the attention of passing officers. The officers, dressed in new uniforms, with glittering epaulettes and white gloves, flaunted along the street and on the boulevard. I found my acquaintance on the ground-floor of the general’s house. I had scarcely had time to explain my wishes to him, and to get his reply, that they could easily be fulfilled, when the pretty little brougham I had noticed outside rattled past the window we were sitting at. A tall well-built man, in an infantry major’s uniform and epaulettes, got out and entered the house.
“Oh, please excuse me,” said the adjutant, rising; “I must go and announce them to the general.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“The countess,” he replied and, buttoning his uniform, rushed upstairs.
A few minutes later a very handsome man in a frock coat without epaulettes, a white cross in his buttonhole, went out into the porch. He was not tall, but remarkably good-looking. He was followed by the major, the adjutant, and a couple of other officers. The general’s gait, voice, and all his movements, showed him to be a man well aware of his own value.
“Bonsoir, Madame la Comtesse,” he said, offering his hand through the carriage-window.
A small hand in a kid glove pressed his, and a pretty smiling face in a yellow bonnet appeared at the carriage-window.
Of the conversation, which lasted several minutes, I only overheard the general say laughingly, as I passed by:
“Vous savez que j’ai fait vœu de combattre les infidèles: prenez donc garde de le devenir.”
A laugh answered from inside the carriage.
“Adieu donc, cher Général!”
“Non, à revoir,” said the general, ascending the steps of the porch. “N’oubliez pas, que je m’invite pour la soirée de demain.”
The carriage rattled off. “Here again,” I thought as I walked home, “is a man who possesses all that Russians strive after: rank, riches, distinction; and this man, on the day before an engagement, the outcome of which is known only to God, jokes with a pretty woman and promises to have tea with her next day, just as if they had met at a ball!”
At that same adjutant’s, I met a young man who surprised me even more. It was a young lieutenant of the K⸺ regiment, who was noted for his almost feminine meekness and timidity, and who had come to the adjutant to pour out his vexation and resentment against those who, he said, had intrigued against him to keep him from taking part in the impending action. He said it was mean to behave in that way, that it was unfriendly, and that he would not forget it, and so forth. Intently as I watched the expression of his face and listened to the sound of his voice, I could not help feeling convinced that he was not pretending, but was genuinely filled with indignation and grief because he was not allowed to go and shoot Circassians and expose himself to their fire. He was grieved like a little child who has been unjustly birched. I could make nothing at all of it.