War and Peace (197 page)

On the 21st of October, when his general expressed a desire to send some one to Denisov’s company, Petya had so piteously besought him to send him, that the general could not refuse. But, as he was sending him off, the general recollected Petya’s foolhardy behaviour at the battle of Vyazma, when, instead of riding by way of the road to take a message, Petya had galloped across the lines under the fire of the French, and had there fired a couple of pistol-shots. Recalling that prank, the general explicitly forbade Petya’s taking part in any enterprise whatever that Denisov might be planning. This was why Petya had blushed and been disconcerted when Denisov asked him if he might stay. From the moment he set off till he reached the edge of the wood, Petya had fully intended to do his duty steadily, and to return at once. But when he saw the French, and saw Tihon, and learned that the attack would certainly take place that night, with the rapid transition from one view to another, characteristic of young people, he made up his mind that his general, for whom he had till that moment had the greatest respect, was a poor stick, and only a German, that Denisov was a hero, and the esaul a hero, and Tihon a hero, and that it would be shameful to leave them at a moment of difficulty.

It was getting dark when Denisov, with Petya and the esaul, reached the forester’s hut. In the half-dark they could see saddled horses, Cossacks and hussars, rigging up shanties in the clearing, and building up a glowing fire in a hollow near, where the smoke would not be seen by the French. In the porch of the little hut there was a Cossack with his sleeves tucked up, cutting up a sheep. In the hut, three officers of Denisov’s band were setting up a table made up of doors. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once set to work to help the officers in fixing up a dining-table.

In ten minutes the table was ready and covered with a napkin. On the table was set vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, and roast mutton, and salt.

Sitting at the table with the officers, tearing the fat, savoury mutton with greasy fingers, Petya was in a childishly enthusiastic condition of tender love for all men and a consequent belief in the same feeling for himself in others.

“So what do you think, Vassily Fyodorovitch,” he said to Denisov, “it won’t matter my staying a day with you, will it?” And without waiting for
an answer, he answered himself: “Why, I was told to find out, and here I am finding out … Only you must let me go into the middle … into the real … I don’t care about rewards … But I do want …” Petya clenched his teeth and looked about him, tossing his head and waving his arm.

“Into the real, real thing …” Denisov said, smiling.

“Only, please, do give me a command of something altogether, so that I really might command,” Petya went on. “Why, what would it be to you? Ah, you want a knife?” he said to an officer, who was trying to tear off a piece of mutton. And he gave him his pocket-knife.

The officer praised the knife.

“Please keep it. I have several like it …” said Petya, blushing. “Heavens! Why, I was quite forgetting,” he cried suddenly. “I have some capital raisins, you know the sort without stones. We have a new canteen-keeper, and he does get first-rate things. I bought ten pounds of them. I’m fond of sweet things. Will you have some?” … and Petya ran out to his Cossack in the porch, and brought in some panniers in which there were five pounds of raisins. “Please take some.”

“Don’t you need a coffee-pot?” he said to the esaul; “I bought a famous one from our canteen-keeper! He has first-rate things. And he’s very honest. That’s the great thing. I’ll be sure and send it you. Or perhaps your flints are worn out; that does happen sometimes. I brought some with me, I have got them here …” he pointed to the panniers. “A hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. You must please take as many as you want or all, indeed …” And suddenly, dismayed at the thought that he had let his tongue run away with him, Petya stopped short and blushed.

He began trying to think whether he had been guilty of any other blunders. And running through his recollections of the day the image of the French drummer-boy rose before his mind.

“We are enjoying ourselves, but how is he feeling? What have they done with him? Have they given him something to eat? Have they been nasty to him?” he wondered.

But thinking he had said too much about the flints, he was afraid to speak now.

“Could I ask about him?” he wondered. “They’ll say: he’s a boy himself, so he feels for the boy. I’ll let them see to-morrow whether I’m a boy! Shall I feel ashamed if I ask?” Petya wondered. “Oh, well! I don’t care,” and he said at once, blushing and watching the officers’ faces in dread of detecting amusement in them:

“Might I call that boy who was taken prisoner, and give him something to eat … perhaps …”

“Yes, poor little fellow,” said Denisov, who clearly saw nothing to be ashamed of in this reminder. “Fetch him in here. His name is Vincent Bosse. Fetch him in.”

“I’ll call him,” said Petya.

“Yes, do. Poor little fellow,” repeated Denisov.

Petya was standing at the door as Denisov said this. He slipped in between the officers and went up to Denisov.

“Let me kiss you, dear old fellow,” he said. “Ah, how jolly it is! how splendid!” And, kissing Denisov, he ran out into the yard.

“Bosse! Vincent!” Petya cried, standing by the door.

“Whom do you want, sir?” said a voice out of the darkness. Petya answered that he wanted the French boy, who had been taken prisoner that day.

“Ah! Vesenny?” said the Cossack.

His name Vincent had already been transformed by the Cossacks into Vesenny, and by the peasants and the soldiers into Visenya. In both names there was a suggestion of the spring—vesna—which seemed to them to harmonise with the figure of the young boy.

“He’s warming himself there at the fire. Ay, Visenya! Visenya!” voices called from one to another with laughter in the darkness. “He is a sharp boy,” said an hussar standing near Petya. “We gave him a meal not long ago. He was hungry, terribly.”

There was a sound of footsteps in the darkness, and the drummer-boy came splashing through the mud with his bare feet towards the door.

“Ah, that’s you!” said Petya. “Are you hungry? Don’t be afraid, they won’t hurt you,” he added, shyly and cordially touching his hand. “Come in, come in.”

“Thank you,” answered the drummer, in a trembling, almost childish voice, and he began wiping the mud off his feet on the threshold. Petya had a great deal he longed to say to the drummer-boy, but he did not dare. He stood by him in the porch, moving uneasily. Then he took his hand in the darkness and squeezed it. “Come in, come in,” he repeated, but in a soft whisper.

“Oh, if I could only do something for him!” Petya was saying inwardly, and opening the door he ushered the boy in before him.

When the drummer-boy had come into the hut, Petya sat down at
some distance from him, feeling that it would be lowering his dignity to take much notice of him. But he was feeling the money in his pocket and wondering whether it would do to give some to the drummer-boy.

Denisov gave orders for the drummer-boy to be given some vodka and mutton, and to be put into a Russian dress, so that he should not be sent off with the other prisoners, but should stay with his band. Petya’s attention was diverted from the boy by the arrival of Dolohov. He had heard a great many stories told in the army of Dolohov’s extraordinary gallantry and of his cruelty to the French. And therefore from the moment Dolohov entered the hut Petya could not take his eyes off him, and flinging up his head, he assumed a more and more swagging air, that he might not be unworthy of associating even with a hero like Dolohov.

Dolohov’s appearance struck Petya as strange through its simplicity.

Denisov was dressed in a Cossack coat; he had let his beard grow, and had a holy image of Nikolay, the wonder-worker, on his breast. His whole manner of speaking and all his gestures were suggestive of his peculiar position. Dolohov, on the contrary, though in old days he had worn a Persian dress in Moscow, looked now like the most correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven; he wore the wadded coat of the Guards with a St. George medal on a ribbon, and a plain forage cap, put on straight on his head. He took his wet cloak off in the corner and, without greeting any one, went straight up to Denisov and began at once asking questions about the matter in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the larger detachment had upon the French convoy, of the message Petya had brought, and the answer he had given to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the position of the French.

“That’s so. But we must find out what troops they are, and what are their numbers,” said Dolohov; “we must go and have a look at them. We can’t rush into the thing without knowing for certain how many there are of them. I like to do things properly. Come, won’t one of you gentlemen like to come with me to pay them a call in their camp? I have an extra uniform with me.”

“I, I … I’ll come with you!” cried Petya.

“There’s not the slightest need for you to go,” said Denisov, addressing Dolohov; “and as for him I wouldn’t let him go on any account.”

“That’s good!” cried Petya; “why shouldn’t I go?…”

“Why, because there’s no reason to.”

“Oh, well, excuse me … because … because … I’m going, and that’s all. You will take me?” he cried, turning to Dolohov.

“Why not?…” Dolohov answered, absently, staring into the face of the French drummer-boy.

“Have you had that youngster long?” he asked Denisov.

“We caught him to-day, but he knows nothing; I have kept him with us.”

“Oh, and what do you do with the rest?” said Dolohov.

“What do I do with them? I take a receipt for them, and send them off!” cried Denisov, suddenly flushing. “And I make bold to say that I haven’t a single man’s life on my conscience. Is there any difficulty in your sending thirty, or three hundred men, under escort, to the town rather than stain—I say so bluntly—one’s honour as a soldier?”

“It’s all very well for this little count here at sixteen to talk of such refinements,” Dolohov said, with a cold sneer; “but it’s high time for you to drop all that.”

“Why, I am not saying anything, I only say that I am certainly going with you,” said Petya shyly.

“But for me and you, mate, it’s high time to drop such delicacy,” Dolohov went on, apparently deriving peculiar gratification from talking on a subject irritating to Denisov. “Why have you kept this lad,” he said, “except because you are sorry for him? Why, we all know how much your receipts are worth. You send off a hundred men and thirty reach the town. They die of hunger or are killed on the way. So isn’t it just as well to make short work of them?”

The esaul, screwing up his light-coloured eyes, nodded his head approvingly.

“That’s not my affair, no need to discuss it. I don’t care to have their lives on my conscience. You say they die. Well, let them. Only not through my doing.”

Dolohov laughed.

“Who prevented their taking me twenty times over? But you know if they do catch me—and you too with your chivalrous sentiments—it will just be the same—the nearest aspen-tree.” He paused. “We must be getting to work, though. Send my Cossack here with the pack. I have two French uniforms. Well, are you coming with me?” he asked Petya.

“I? Yes, yes, of course,” cried Petya, blushing till the tears came into his eyes, and glancing at Denisov.

While Dolohov had been arguing with Denisov what should be done with prisoners, Petya had again had that feeling of discomfort and nervous hurry; but again he had not time to get a clear idea of what they were talking about. “If that’s what is thought by grown-up men, famous leaders, then it must be so, it must be all right,” he thought. “And the great thing is, that Denisov shouldn’t dare to imagine that I must obey him, that he can order me about. I shall certainly go with Dolohov into the French camp. He can go, and so can I!”

To all Denisov’s efforts to dissuade him from going, Petya replied that he too liked doing things properly and not in haphazard fashion, and that he never thought about danger to himself.

“For, you must admit, if we don’t know exactly how many men there are there, it might cost the life of hundreds, and it is only we two, and so I very much wish it, and I shall certainly, most certainly go, and don’t try to prevent me,” he said; “it won’t be any use …”

Petya and Dolohov, after dressing up in French uniforms and shakoes, rode to the clearing from which Denisov had looked at the French camp, and coming out of the wood, descended into the hollow in the pitch darkness. When they had ridden downhill, Dolohov bade the Cossacks accompanying him to wait there, and set off at a smart trot along the road towards the bridge. Petya, faint with excitement, trotted along beside him.

“If we are caught, I won’t be taken alive. I have a pistol,” whispered Petya.

“Don’t speak Russian,” said Dolohov, in a rapid whisper, and at that moment they heard in the dark the challenge: “Who goes there?” and the click of a gun.

The blood rushed into Petya’s face, and he clutched at his pistol.

“Uhlans of the Sixth Regiment,” said Dolohov, neither hastening nor slackening his horse’s pace.

The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

“The password?”

Dolohov reined in his horse, and advanced at a walking pace.

“Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?” he said.

“Password?” repeated the sentinel, making no reply and barring their way.

“When an officer makes his round, sentinels don’t ask him for the password …” cried Dolohov, suddenly losing his temper and riding straight at the sentinel. “I ask you, is the colonel here?”

And not waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who moved aside, Dolohov rode at a walking pace uphill.

Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolohov stopped the man, and asked where the colonel and officers were. The man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to Dolohov’s horse, stroking it with his hand, and told them in a simple and friendly way that the colonel and the officers were higher up the hill, on the right, in the courtyard of the farm, as he called the little manor-house.