On the boulevard of the besieged city of Sevastopol, not far from the
pavilion, the regimental band was playing, and throngs of military
men and of women moved gayly through the streets. The brilliant sun
of spring had risen in the morning over the works of the English, had
passed over the bastions, then over the city, over the Nikolaevsky
barracks, and, illuminating all with equal cheer, had now sunk into
the blue and distant sea, which was lighted with a silvery gleam as it
heaved in peace.
A tall, rather bent infantry officer, who was drawing upon his hand a
glove which was presentable, if not entirely white, came out of one of
the small naval huts, built on the left side of the Morskaya[C] street,
and, staring thoughtfully at the ground, took his way up the slope to
the boulevard.
[C] Sea.
The expression of this officer's homely countenance did not indicate
any great mental capacity, but rather simplicity, judgment, honor, and
a tendency to solid worth. He was badly built, not graceful, and he
seemed to be constrained in his movements. He was dressed in a little
worn cap, a cloak of a rather peculiar shade of lilac, from beneath
whose edge the gold of a watch-chain was visible; in trousers with
straps, and brilliantly polished calfskin boots. He must have been
either a German—but his features clearly indicate his purely Russian
descent—or an adjutant, or a regimental quartermaster, only in that
case he would have had spurs, or an officer who had exchanged from the
cavalry for the period of the campaign, or possibly from the Guards. He
was, in fact, an officer who had exchanged from the cavalry, and as he
ascended the boulevard, at the present moment, he was meditating upon a
letter which he had just received from a former comrade, now a retired
land-owner in the Government of T., and his wife, pale, blue-eyed
Natasha, his great friend. He recalled one passage of the letter, in
which his comrade said:—
“When our _Invalid_[D] arrives, Pupka (this was the name by which the
retired uhlan called his wife) rushes headlong into the vestibule,
seizes the paper, and runs with it to the seat in the arbor, _in
the drawing-room_ (in which, if you remember, you and I passed such
delightful winter evenings when the regiment was stationed in our
town), and reads your heroic deeds with such ardor as it is impossible
for you to imagine. She often speaks of you. ‘There is Mikhaïloff,’ she
says, ‘he's such a _love of a man_. I am ready to kiss him when I see
him. He fights on the bastions, and he will surely receive the Cross of
St. George, and he will be talked about in the newspapers ...’ and so
on, and so on ... so that I am really beginning to be jealous of you.”
[D] Military Gazette.
In another place he writes: “The papers reach us frightfully late,
and, although there is plenty of news conveyed by word of mouth, not
all of it can be trusted. For instance, the _young ladies with the
music_, acquaintances of yours, were saying yesterday that Napoleon
was already captured by our Cossacks, and that he had been sent to
Petersburg; but you will comprehend how much I believe of this.
Moreover, a traveller from Petersburg told us (he has been sent on
special business by the minister, is a very agreeable person, and, now
that there is no one in town, he is more of a _resource_ to us than
you can well imagine ...) well, he declares it to be a fact that our
troops have taken Eupatoria, _so that the French have no communication
whatever with Balaklava_, and that in this engagement two hundred of
ours were killed, but that the French lost fifteen thousand. My wife
was in such raptures over this that she _caroused_ all night, and she
declares that her instinct tells her that you certainly took part in
that affair, and that you distinguished yourself.”
In spite of these words, and of the expressions which I have purposely
put in italics, and the whole tone of the letter, Staff-Captain
Mikhaïloff recalled, with inexpressibly sad delight, his pale friend
in the provinces, and how she had sat with him in the arbor in the
evening, and talked about sentiment, and he thought of his good
comrade, the uhlan, and of how the latter had grown angry and had lost
the game when they had played cards for kopek stakes in his study, and
how the wife had laughed at them ... he recalled the friendship of
these two people for himself (perhaps it seemed to him to lie chiefly
on the side of his pale feminine friend); all these faces with their
surroundings flitted before his mind's eye, in a wonderfully sweet,
cheerfully rosy light, and, smiling at his reminiscences, he placed his
hand on the pocket which contained the letter so dear to him.
From reminiscences Captain Mikhaïloff involuntarily proceeded to dreams
and hopes. “And what will be the joy and amazement of Natasha,” he
thought, as he paced along the narrow lane, “... when she suddenly
reads in the _Invalid_ a description of how I was the first to climb
upon the cannon, and that I have received the George! I shall certainly
be promoted to a full captaincy, by virtue of seniority. Then it is
quite possible that I may get the grade of major in the line, this
very year, because many of our brothers have already been killed, and
many more will be in this campaign. And after that there will be more
affairs on hand, and a regiment will be entrusted to me, since I am
an experienced man ... lieutenant-colonel ... the Order of St. Anna
on my neck ... colonel!...” and he was already a general, granting an
interview to Natasha, the widow of his comrade, who, according to his
dreams, would have died by that time, when the sounds of the music
on the boulevard penetrated more distinctly to his ears, the crowds
of people caught his eye, and he found himself on the boulevard, a
staff-captain of infantry as before.