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IT was a warm, rainy, autumn day. The sky and the horizon were all of the
uniform tint of muddy water. Sometimes a mist seemed to be falling, and
sometimes there was a sudden downpour of heavy, slanting rain.
Denisov, in a long cape and a high fur cap, both streaming with water, was
riding a thin, pinched-looking, thoroughbred horse. With his head aslant, and
his ears pricked up, like his horse, he was frowning at the driving rain, and
anxiously looking before him. His face, which had grown thin, and was covered
with a thick, short, black heard, looked wrathful.
Beside Denisov, wearing also a long cape and a high cap, and mounted on a
sleek, sturdy Don horse, rode the esaul, or hetman of the Cossacks—Denisov's
partner in his enterprises.
The esaul, Lovaisky the Third, also in a cape, and a high cap, was a long
creature, flat as a board, with a pale face, flaxen hair, narrow, light eyes,
and an expression of calm self-confidence both in his face and his attitude.
Though it was impossible to say what constituted the peculiarity of horse and
rider, at the first glance at the esaul and at Denisov, it was evident that
Denisov was both wet and uncomfortable; that Denisov was a man sitting on a
horse; while the esaul seemed as comfortable and calm as always, and seemed not
a man sitting on a horse, but a man forming one whole with a horse—a single
being enlarged by the strength of two.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant-guide, soaked through and through in
his grey full coat and white cap.
A little behind, on a thin, delicate Kirghiz pony with a flowing tail and
mane, and a mouth flecked with blood, rode a young officer in a blue French
military coat. Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French
uniform and blue cap, perched upon his horse behind him. The boy held on to the
hussar with hands red with cold, and kept moving his bare feet, trying to warm
them, and lifting his eyebrows, gazed about him wonderingly. This was the French
drummer, who had been taken in the morning.
Along the narrow, muddy, cut-up forest-track there came hussars in knots of
three and four at a time, and then Cossacks; some in capes, some in French
cloaks; others with horse-cloths pulled over their heads. The horses, chestnut
and bay, all looked black from the soaking rain. Their necks looked strangely
thin with their drenched manes, and steam rose in clouds from them. Clothes,
saddles, and bridles, all were sticky and swollen with the wet, like the earth
and the fallen leaves with which the track was strewn. The men sat huddled up,
trying not to move, so as to keep warm the water that had already reached their
skins, and not to let any fresh stream of cold rain trickle in anywhere under
their seat, or at their knees or necks. In the midst of the file of Cossacks two
waggons, drawn by French horses, and Cossack saddle-horses hitched on in front,
rumbled over stumps and branches, and splashed through the ruts full of
water.
Denisov's horse, in avoiding a puddle in the track, knocked his rider's knee
against a tree.
“Ah, devil!” Denisov cried angrily; and showing his teeth, he struck his
horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
Denisov was out of humour, both from the rain and hunger (no one had eaten
anything since morning); and, most of all, from having no news of Dolohov, and
from no French prisoner having been caught to give him information.
“We shall never have such another chance to fall on the transport as to-day.
To attack them alone would be risky, and to put it off to another day—some one
of the bigger leaders will carry the booty off from under our noses,” thought
Denisov, continually looking ahead, and fancying he saw the messenger from
Dolohov he expected.
Coming out into a clearing from which he could get a view to some distance on
the right, Denisov stopped.
“There's some one coming,” he said.
The esaul looked in the direction Denisov was pointing to.
“There are two men coming—an officer and a Cossack. Only I wouldn't be
prepositive that is the colonel himself,” said the esaul, who loved to
use words that were unfamiliar to the Cossacks. The two figures, riding
downhill, disappeared from sight, and came into view again a few minutes later.
The foremost was an officer, dishevelled looking, and soaked through, with his
trousers tucked up above his knees; he was lashing his horse into a weary
gallop. Behind him a Cossack trotted along, standing up in his stirrups. This
officer, a quite young boy, with a broad, rosy face and keen, merry eyes,
galloped up to Denisov, and handed him a sopping packet.
“From the general,” he said. “I must apologise for its not being quite
dry.…”
Denisov, frowning, took the packet and broke it open.
“Why, they kept telling us it was so dangerous,” said the officer, turning to
the esaul while Denisov was reading the letter. “But Komarov”— and he indicated
the Cossack—“and I were prepared. We have both two pisto … But what's this?” he
asked, seeing the French drummer-boy. “A prisoner? You have had a battle
already? May I talk to him?”
“Rostov! Petya!” Denisov cried at that moment, running through the packet
that had been given him. “Why, how was it you didn't say who you were?” and
Denisov, turning with a smile, held out his hand to the officer. This officer
was Petya Rostov.
Petya had been all the way preparing himself to behave with Denisov as a
grown-up person and an officer should do, making no reference to their previous
acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him, Petya beamed at once,
blushed with delight, and forgetting all the formal demeanour he had been
intending to preserve, he began telling him how he had ridden by the French, and
how glad he was he had been given this commission, and how he had already been
in a battle at Vyazma, and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself in
it.
“Well, I am glad to see you,” Denisov interrupted him, and his face looked
anxious again.
“Mihail Feoklititch,” he said to the esaul, “this is from the German again,
you know. He” (Petya) “is in his suite.” And Denisov told the esaul that the
letter, which had just been brought, repeated the German general's request that
they would join him in attacking the transport. “If we don't catch them by
to-morrow, he'll snatch them from under our noses,” he concluded.
While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya, disconcerted by Denisov's cold
tone, and imagining that that tone might be due to the condition of his
trousers, furtively pulled them down under his cloak, trying to do so
unobserved, and to maintain as martial an air as possible.
“Will your honour have any instructions to give me?” he said to Denisov,
putting his hand to the peak of his cap, and going back to the comedy of
adjutant and general, which he had prepared himself to perform, “or should I
remain with your honour?”
“Instructions? …” said Denisov absently. “Well, can you stay till
tomorrow?”
“Oh, please … May I stay with you?” cried Petya.
“Well, what were your instructions from your general—to go back at once?”
asked Denisov.
Petya blushed.
“Oh, he gave me no instructions. I think I may?” he said
interrogatively.
“All right, then,” said Denisov. And turning to his followers, he directed a
party of them to go to the hut in the wood, which they had fixed on as a
resting-place, and the officer on the Kirghiz horse (this officer performed the
duties of an adjutant) to go and look for Dolohov, to find out where he was, and
whether he were coming in the evening.
Denisov himself, with the esaul and Petya, intended to ride to the edge of
the wood near Shamshevo to have a look at the position of the French, where
their attack next day was to take place.
“Come, my man,” he said to their peasant guide, “take us to Shamshevo.”
Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by a few Cossacks and the hussar
with the prisoner, turned to the left and crossed a ravine towards the edge of
the wood.
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