CHAPTER XII

Chinese

BEFORE THE BEGINNING of the campaign Rostov had received a letter from his parents, in which they informed him briefly of Natasha’s illness and the breaking off of her engagement, and again begged him to retire from the army and come home to them. Natasha had, they explained, broken off the engagement by her own wish. On receiving this letter Nikolay did not even attempt to retire from the army or to obtain leave, but wrote to his parents that he was very sorry to hear of Natasha’s illness and her rupture with her betrothed, and that he would do everything in his power to follow their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.

It was, in fact, only the outbreak of the war that detained Rostov and hindered him from returning home, as he had promised, and marrying Sonya. The autumn at Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas festivities and Sonya’s love had opened before his imagination a vista of peace and quiet country delights unknown to him before, and this prospect now lured him back. “A charming wife, children, a good pack of hounds, ten to twelve leashes of swift harriers, the estate to look after, the neighbours, election to offices, perhaps, by the provincial nobility,” he mused. But now war was breaking out, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since this had to be, Nikolay Rostov was characteristically able to be content too with the life he led in the regiment, and to make that life a pleasant one.

On his return from his leave, Nikolay had been joyfully welcomed by his comrades and sent off for remounts. He succeeded in bringing back from Little Russia some first-rate horses that gave him great satisfaction, and won him the commendation of his superior officers. In his absence he had been promoted to be captain, and when the regiment was being made ready with reinforcements for active service, he was again put in command of his old squadron.

The campaign was beginning, pay was doubled, the regiment was reinforced with new officers, new men, and fresh horses, and had moved into Poland. The temper of eager cheerfulness, always common at the beginning of a war, was general in the army, and Rostov, fully conscious of his improved position in the regiment, gave himself up heart and soul to the pleasures and interests of the army, though he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave it.

The army had been compelled to retreat from Vilna owing to various complex considerations of state, of policy, and tactics. Every step of that retreat had been accompanied by a complicated play of interests, arguments, and passions at headquarters. For the hussars of the Pavlograd regiment, however, this whole march in the finest part of the summer, with ample supplies of provisions, was a most simple and agreeable business. Depression, uneasiness, and intrigue were possible only at headquarters; the rank and file of the army never even wondered where and why they were going. If the retreat was a subject of regret, it was simply owing to the necessity of leaving quarters one had grown used to or a pretty Polish hostess. If the idea did occur to any one that things were amiss, he tried, as a good soldier should, to put a cheerful face on it; and to keep his thoughts fixed on the duty that lay nearest, and not on the general progress of the war. At first they had been very pleasantly stationed near Vilna, where they made acquaintance with the Polish gentry of the neighbourhood, prepared for reviews, and were reviewed by the Tsar and various commanders of high authority. Then came the command to retreat to Sventsyany, and to destroy all the stores that could not be carried away. Sventsyany was memorable to the hussars simply as the drunken camp, the name given to the encampment there by the whole army, and as the scene of many complaints against the troops, who had taken advantage of orders to collect stores, and under the head of stores had carried off horses and carriages and carpets from the Polish landowners. Rostov remembered Sventsyany, because on the very day of his arrival there he had dismissed his quartermaster and did not know how to manage the men of his squadron, who had, without his knowledge, carried off five barrels of strong old ale and were all drunk. From Sventsyany they had fallen further back, and then further again, till they reached Drissa; and from Drissa they retreated again, till they were getting near the frontiers of Russia proper.

On the 13th of July the Pavlograd hussars took part in their first serious action.

On the previous evening there had been a violent storm of rain and hail. The summer of 1812 was remarkably stormy throughout.

The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking in the middle of a field of rye, which was already in ear, but had been completely trodden down by the cattle and horses. The rain was falling in torrents, and Rostov was sitting with a young officer, Ilyin, a protégé of his, under a shanty, that had been hastily rigged up for them. An officer of their regiment, adorned with long moustaches, that hung down from his cheeks, was caught in the rain on his way back from visiting the staff, and he went into Rostov’s shanty for shelter.

“I’m on my way from the staff, count. Have you heard of Raevsky’s exploit?” And the officer proceeded to relate to them details of the Saltanov battle that had been told him at the staff.

Rostov smoked his pipe, and wriggled his neck, down which the water was trickling. He listened with little interest, looking from time to time at the young officer Ilyin, who was squatting beside him. Ilyin, a lad of sixteen, who had lately joined the regiment, took now with Nikolay the place Nikolay had taken seven years before with Denisov. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him, as a girl might have done.

The officer with the double moustaches, Zdrzhinsky, in a very high-flown manner, described the dike at Saltanov as the Russian Thermopylae, and the heroic deed of General Raevsky on that dike as worthy of antiquity. Zdrzhinsky told then how Raevsky had thrust his two sons forward on the dike under a terrific fire, and had charged at their side. Rostov listened to the tale, and said nothing betokening sympathy with Zdrzhinsky’s enthusiasm. He looked, indeed, as though ashamed of what he was told, but not intending to gainsay it. After Austerlitz and the campaign of 1807, Rostov knew from his own experience that men always lie when they describe deeds of battle, as he did himself indeed. He had had too sufficient experience to know that everything in battle happens utterly differently from our imagination and description of it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinsky’s story, and did not, indeed, like Zdrzhinsky himself, who had, besides his unprepossessing moustaches, a habit of bending right over into the face of the person he was speaking to. He was in their way in the cramped little shanty. Rostov looked at him without speaking. “In the first place, on the dike they were charging there must have been such a crowd and confusion that, if Raevsky really thrust his sons forward, it would have had no effect except on the dozen men closest to him,” thought Rostov; “the rest could not have even seen who were with Raevsky on the dike. And those who did see it were not likely to be greatly affected by it, for what thought had they to spare for Raevsky’s tender, parental feelings, when they had their own skins to think of saving? And besides the fate of the country did not depend on whether that dike was taken or not, as we are told the fate of Greece did depend on Thermopylae. And then what was the object of such a sacrifice? Why do your own children a mischief in war? I wouldn’t put Petya, my brother, in a place of danger; no, even Ilyin here, who’s nothing to me but a good-natured lad, I would do my best to keep safe and sheltered,” Rostov mused, as he listened to Zdrzhinsky. But he did not give utterance to his thoughts, he had experience of that too. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms, and therefore one must appear not to doubt its truth: and he acted accordingly.

“I can’t stand this, though,” said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov did not care for Zdrzhinsky’s story; “stockings and shirt, and all—I’m wet through. I’m going to look for shelter. I fancy the rain’s not so heavy.” Ilyin ran out and Zdrzhinsky rode away.

Five minutes later Ilyin came splashing through the mud to the shanty.

“Hurrah! Rostov, make haste and come along. I have found an inn, two hundred paces or so from here; a lot of our fellows are there already. We can get dry anyway, and Marya Hendrihovna’s there.”

Marya Hendrihovna was the wife of the regimental doctor; a pretty young German woman, whom he had married in Poland. Either from lack of means or disinclination to part from his young wife in the early days of their marriage, the doctor had brought her with him in the regiment, and his jealousy was a favourite subject for the jibes of the hussars.

Rostov flung on a cape, shouted to Lavrushka to follow them with their things, and went off with Ilyin, slipping in the mud, and splashing through the pools in the drizzling rain and the darkness, which was rent at intervals by distant lightning.

“Rostov, where are you?”

“Here. What a flash!” they called to one another as they went.

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