The officer was at such pains to explain his delays and seemed so keen to vindicate himself that it involuntarily occurred to one that he was afraid. This was still more evident when he began to ask where his regiment was, and whether it was dangerous there. He even grew pale and his voice faltered when the one-armed officer, who belonged to the same regiment, told him that during those last two days they had lost seventeen officers.
In fact this officer was just then a thorough coward, though six months previously he had been very different. A change had come over him which many others experienced both before and after him. He had had an excellent and quiet post in one of our provincial towns in which there is a Cadet College, but reading in the papers and in private letters of the heroic deeds performed at Sevastopol by his former comrades, he was suddenly inspired by ambition and still more by patriotic heroism.
He sacrificed much to this feeling: his well-established position, his little home with its comfortable furniture painstakingly acquired by five years’ effort, his acquaintances, and his hopes of making a good marriage. He threw all this up, and in February already had volunteered for active service, dreaming of deathless honours and of a general’s epaulettes. Two months after he had sent in his application he received an official inquiry whether he would require assistance from the government. He replied in the negative, and continued to wait patiently for an appointment, though his patriotic ardour had had time to cool considerably during those eight weeks. After another two months he received an inquiry as to whether he belonged to a Freemasons’ Lodge,1 and other similar questions, and having replied in the negative, he at last, in the fifth month, received his appointment. But all that time his friends, and still more that subconscious feeling which always awakens
1 A number of Freemasons were involved in the Decembrist mutiny in 1825, when Nicholas I ascended the throne. He was consequently very suspicious of that organization, which at the time of the Crimean War was prohibited in Russia. The inquiry made would therefore be offensive to a loyal and patriotic volunteer. at any change in one’s position, had had time to convince him that he was committing an act of extreme folly by entering the active army. And when he found himself alone, with a dry throat and his face covered with dust, at the first post-station — where he met a courier from Sevastopol who told him of the horrors of the war, and where he had to spend twelve hours waiting for relay horses — he quite repented of his thoughtlessness, reflecting with vague horror on what awaited him, and without realizing it continued on his way as to a sacrifice. This feeling constantly increased during his three months’ travelling from station to station, at which he always had to wait and where he met officers returning from Sevastopol with dreadful stories, and at last this poor officer — from being a hero prepared for desperate deeds, as in the provincial town he had imagined himself to be — arrived in Djanka a wretched coward, and having a month ago come across some young fellows from the Cadet College, he tried to travel as slowly as possible, considering these days to be his last on earth, and at every station put up his bed, unpacked his canteen, played preference, looked through the station complaint-book for amusement, and felt glad when horses were not to be had.
Had he gone at once from home to the bastions he would really have been a hero, but now he would have to go through much moral suffering before he could become such a calm, patient man, facing toil and danger, as Russian officers generally are. But it would by this time have been difficult to reawaken enthusiasm in him.]
VI
‘Who ordered soup?’ demanded the landlady, a rather dirty, fat woman of about forty, as she came into the room with a tureen of cabbage-soup.
The conversation immediately stopped, and every-one in the room fixed his eyes on the landlady. One officer even winked to another with a glance at her.
‘Oh, Kozeltsov ordered it/ said the young officer.
‘We must wake him up… Get up for dinner!’ he said,
going up to the sofa and shaking the sleeper’s shoulder. A lad of about seventeen, with merry black eyes and very rosy cheeks, jumped up energetically and stepped into the middle of the room rubbing his eyes.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ he said to the doctor, whom he had knocked against in rising.
Lieutenant Kozeltsov at once recognized his brother and went up to him.
‘Don’t you know me?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Ah-h-h!’ cried the younger Kozeltsov. ‘This is wonderful!’ And he began kissing his brother.
They kissed three times, but hesitated before the third kiss, as if the thought, ‘Why has it to be just three times?’ had struck them both.
‘Well, I am glad!’ said the elder, looking into his brother’s face. ‘Come out into the porch and let’s have a chat.’
‘Yes, come along. I don’t want any soup. You eat it, Federson,’ he said to his comrade.
‘But you wanted something to eat.’
‘I don’t want anything now.’
Out on the porch the younger one kept asking his brother: ‘Well, and how are you? Tell me how things are!’ and saying how glad he was to see him, but he did not tell him anything about himself.
When five minutes had passed and they had paused for a moment, the elder brother asked why the younger had not entered the Guards as everyone had expected him to do.
[‘Oh, yes!’ the younger replied, blushing at the very recollection, ‘that upsets me terribly. I never expected such a thing could happen. Just imagine, at the very end of the term three of us went to have a smoke — you remember that little room by the hall-porter’s lodge? It must have been there in your time — but just imagine, that beast of a hall-porter saw us and ran to tell the officer on duty (though we had tipped that porter several times) and the officer crept up on tiptoe. As soon as we noticed him the others threw away their cigarettes and bolted out by the side door — you know — but I hadn’t the chance. The officer was very nasty to me, and of course I answered him back. Well, he told the Inspector, and there was a row. Because of that, you see, they didn’t give me full marks for conduct, though for everything else my marks were excellent, except for mechanics, for which I got twelve. And so they wouldn’t let me enter the Guards. They promised to transfer me later . . . but I no longer wanted it, and applied to be sent to the front.’
‘Dear me!’
‘Really, I tell you seriously, I was so disgusted with everything that] I wanted to get to Sevastopol as quickly as possible. And you see, if things turn out well here one can get on quicker than in the Guards. There it takes ten years to become a colonel, but here in two years Todleben from a lieutenant-colonel has become a general. And if one gets killed — well, it can’t be helped.’
‘So that’s the sort of stuff you are made of!’ said his brother, with a smile.
‘But the chief thing, you know,’ said the younger brother, smiling and blushing as if he were going to say something very shameful— ‘the chief thing was that I felt rather ashamed to be living in Petersburg while here men are dying for the Fatherland. And besides, I wanted to be with you,’ he added, still more shyly.
The other did not look at him. ‘What a funny fellow you are!’ he said, taking out his cigarette-case. ‘Only the pity is that we shan’t be together.’
‘I say, tell me quite frankly: is it very dreadful at the bastions?’ asked the younger suddenly. ‘It seems dreadful at first but one gets used to it. You’ll see for yourself.’
‘Yes . . . and another thing: Do you think they will take Sevastopol? I don’t think they will. I’m certain they won’t.’
‘Heaven only knows.’
‘It’s so provoking…. Just think what a misfortune! Do you know, we’ve had a whole bundle of things stolen on the way and my shako was inside so that I am in a terrible position. Whatever shall I appear in? [You know we have new shakos now, and in general there are many changes, all improvements. I can tell you all about it. I have been everywhere in Moscow.’]
The younger Kozeltsov, Vladimir, was very like his brother Michael, but it was the likeness of an opening rosebud to a withered dog-rose. He had the same fair hair as his brother, but it was thick and curled about his temples, and a little tuft of it grew down the delicate white nape of his neck — a sign of luck according to the nurses. The delicate white skin of his face did not always show colour, but the full young blood rushing to it betrayed his every emotion.
His eyes were like his brother’s, but more open and brighter, and seemed especially so because a slight moisture often made them glisten. Soft, fair down was beginning to appear on his cheeks and above the red lips, on which a shy smile often played disclosing his white and glistening teeth. Straight, broad-shouldered, the uniform over his red Russian shirt unbuttoned
