V
Prince Gáltsin, Lieutenant-Colonel Nefyórdof, and Praskoúhin, whom no one had invited and with whom no one spoke, but who yet stuck to them, went to Kaloúgin’s to tea.
“But you did not finish telling me about Váska Méndel,” said Kaloúgin, when he had taken off his cloak, and sat in a soft easy-chair by the window unbuttoning the collar of his clean, starched shirt. “How did he get married?”
“It was a joke, my boy! … Je vous dis, il y avait un temps, on ne parlait que de ça à Petersbourg,” said Prince Gáltsin, laughing, as he jumped up from the piano-stool and sat down near Kaloúgin on the windowsill, “a capital joke. I know all about it.” … And he told, amusingly, cleverly, and with animation, some love story which we will omit, as it does not interest us.
It was noticeable that not only Prince Gáltsin but each of these gentlemen who established themselves, one on the windowsill, another with his legs in the air, and a third by the piano, seemed quite different people 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,” 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?” 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?” 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. I want the General.”
“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.