‘Yes, very,’ said Mikhaylov, and he recalled how when making his way along the trench to the bastion he had met Kalugin walking bravely along, his sabre clanking smartly.
‘My turn’s to-morrow by rights, but we have an officer ill’, continued Mikhaylov, ‘so-’
He wanted to say that it was not his turn but as the Commander of the 8th Company was ill and only the ensign was left in the company, he felt it his duty to go in place of Lieutenant Nepshisetski and would therefore be at the bastion that evening. But Kalugin did not hear him out.
‘I feel sure that something is going to happen in a day or two,’ he said to Prince Galtsin.
‘How about to-day? Will nothing happen to-day?’ Mikhaylov asked shyly, looking first at Kalugin and then at Galtsin.
No one replied. Prince Galtsin only puckered up his face in a curious way and looking over Mikhaylov’s cap said after a short silence:
Tine girl that, with the red kerchief. You know her, don’t you, Captain?’
‘She lives near my lodgings, she’s a sailor’s daughter,’ answered the lieutenant-captain.
‘Come, let’s have a good look at her.’
And Prince Galtsin gave one of his arms to Kalugin and the other to the lieutenant-captain, being sure he would confer great pleasure on the latter by so doing, which was really quite true.
The lieutenant-captain was superstitious and considered it a great sin to amuse himself with women before going into action; but on this occasion he pretended to be a roue, which Prince Galtsin and Kalugin evidently did not believe and which greatly surprised the girl with the red kerchief, who had more than once noticed how the lieutenant-captain blushed when he passed her window. Praskukhin walked behind them, and kept touching Prince Galtsin’s arm and making various remarks in French, but as four people could not walk abreast on the path he was obliged to go alone until, on the second round, he took the arm of a well-known brave naval officer, Servyagin, who came up and spoke to him, being also anxious to join the aristocrats. And the well-known hero gladly passed his honest muscular hand under the elbow of Praskukhin, whom everybody, including Servyagin himself, knew to be no better than he should be. When, wishing to explain his acquaintance with this sailor, Praskukhin whispered to Prince Galtsin that this was the well-known hero, Prince Galtsin — who had been in the Fourth Bastion the day before and seen a shell burst at some twenty yards’ distance — considering himself not less courageous than the newcomer, and believing that many reputations arc obtained by luck, paid not the slightest attention to Servyagin. Lieutenant-Captain Mikhaylov found it so pleasant to walk in this company that he forgot the nice letter
from T-and his gloomy forebodings at the thought
of having to go to the bastion. He remained with them till they began talking exclusively among themselves, avoiding his eyes to show that he might go, and at last walked away from him. But all the same the lieutenant-captain was contented, and when he passed Cadet Baron Pesth — who was Particularly conceited and self-satisfied since the previous night, when for the first time in his life he had been in the bombproof of the Fifth Bastion and had consequently become a hero in his own estimation — he was not at all hurt by the suspiciously haughty expression with which the cadet saluted him.
IV
But the lieutenant-captain had hardly crossed the threshold of his lodgings before very different thoughts entered his head. He saw his little room with its uneven earth floor, its crooked windows, the broken panes mended with paper, his old bedstead with two Tula pistols and a rug (showing a lady on horseback) nailed to the wall beside it,1 as well as the dirty bed of the cadet who lived with him, with its cotton quilt. He saw his man Nikita, with his rough greasy hair, rise from the floor scratching himself, he saw his old cloak, his common boots, a little bundle tied in a handkerchief ready for him to take to the bastion, from which peeped a bit of cheese and the neck of a porter bottle containing vodka — and he suddenly remembered that he had to go with his company to spend the whole night at the lodgements.
‘I shall certainly be killed to-night,’ thought he, ‘I feel I shall. And there was really no need for me to
1 A common way in Russia of protecting a bed from the damp or cold of a wall, is to nail a rug or carpet to the wall by the side of the bed. go — I offered to do it of my own accord. And it always happens that the one who offers himself gets killed. And what is the matter with that confounded Nepshisetski? He may not be ill at all, and they’ll go and kill me because of him — they’re sure to. Still, if they don’t kill me I shall certainly be recommended for promotion. I saw how pleased the regimental commander was when I said: “Allow me to go if Lieutenant Nepshisetski is ill.” If I’m not made a major then I’ll get the Order of Vladimir for certain. Why, I am going to the bastion for the thirteenth time. Oh dear, the thirteenth! Unlucky number! I am certain to be killed. I feel I shall . . . but somebody had to go: the company can’t go with only an ensign. Supposing something were to happen. . . . Why, the honour of the regiment, the honour of the army is at stake. It is my duty to go. Yes, my sacred duty. . . . But I have a presentiment.’
The lieutenant-captain forgot that it was not the first time he had felt this presentiment: that in a greater or lesser degree he had it whenever he was going to the bastion, and he did not know that before going into action everyone has such forebodings more or less strongly. Having calmed himself by appealing to his sense of duty — which was highly developed and very strong — the lieutenant-captain sat down at the table and began writing a farewell letter to his father. Ten minutes later, having finished his letter, he rose from the table his eyes wet with tears, and repeating mentally all the prayers he knew he began to dress. His rather tipsy and rude servant lazily handed him his new cloak — the old one which the lieutenant-captain usually wore at the bastion not being mended.
‘Why isn’t my cloak mended? You do nothing but sleep,’ said Mikhaylov angrily.
‘Sleep indeed!’ grumbled Nikita, ‘I do nothing but run about like a dog the whole day, and when I get fagged I mayn’t even go to sleep!’ ‘I see you are drunk again.’
‘It’s not at your expense if I am, so you needn’t complain.’
‘Hold your tongue, you dolt!’ shouted the lieutenant-captain, ready to strike the man.
Already upset, he now quite lost patience and felt hurt by the rudeness of Nikita, who had lived with him for the last twelve years and whom he was fond of and even spoilt.
‘Dolt? Dolt?’ repeated the servant. ‘And why do you, sir, abuse me and call me a dolt? You know in times like these it isn’t right to abuse people.’
Recalling where he was about to go Mikhaylov felt ashamed.
‘But you know, Nikita, you would try anyone’s patience!’ he said mildly. ‘That letter to my father on the table you may leave where it is. Don’t touch it,9 he added reddening.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Nikita, becoming sentimental under the influence of the vodka he had drunk, as he said, at his own expense, and blinking with an evident inclination to weep.
But at the porch, when the lieutenant-captain said, ‘Good-bye, Nikita,’ Nikita burst into forced sobs and rushed to kiss his master’s hand, saying, ‘Good-bye, sir,’ in a broken voice. A sailor’s widow who was also standing in the porch could not, as a woman, help joining in this tender scene, and began wiping her eyes on her dirty sleeve, saying something about people who, though they were gentlefolk, took such sufferings upon themselves while she, poor woman, was left a widow. And she told the tipsy Nikita for the hundredth time about her sorrows; how her husband had been killed in the first bondbarment, and how her hut had been shattered (the one she lived in now was not her own) and so on. After his master was gone Nikita lit his pipe, asked the landlady’s little girl to get some vodka, very soon left off crying, and even had a quarrel with the old woman about a pail he said she had smashed for him.
‘But perhaps I shall only be wounded,’ reasoned the lieutenant-captain as he drew near the bastion with his company when twilight had already begun to fall. ‘But where, and how? Here or here?’ he said to himself, mentally passing his chest, his stomach, and his thighs in review. ‘Supposing it’s here’ (he thought of his thighs) ‘and goes right round. … Or goes here with a piece of a bomb, then it will be all up.’
The lieutenant-captain passed along the trenches and reached the lodgements safely. In perfect darkness he and an officer of Engineers set the men to their work, after which he sat down in a pit under the breastwork. There was little firing; only now
