The thunder of the cannon continued with the same power as before, but
Yekaterinskaya street, along which Volodya walked, followed by the
taciturn Nikolaeff, was quiet and deserted. All that he could see,
through the thick darkness, was the wide street with the white walls of
large houses, battered in many places, and the stone sidewalk beneath
his feet; now and then, he met soldiers and officers. As he passed
along the left side of the street, near the Admiralty building, he
perceived, by the light of a bright fire burning behind the wall, the
acacias planted along the sidewalk, with green guards beneath, and the
wretchedly dusty leaves of these acacias.
He could plainly hear his own steps and those of Nikolaeff, who
followed him, breathing heavily. He thought of nothing; the pretty
little Sister of Mercy, Martzoff's leg with the toes twitching in its
stocking, the bombs, the darkness, and divers pictures of death floated
hazily through his mind. All his young and sensitive soul shrank
together, and was borne down by his consciousness of loneliness, and
the indifference of every one to his fate in the midst of danger.
“They will kill me, I shall be tortured, I shall suffer, and no one
will weep.” And all this, instead of the hero's life, filled with
energy and sympathy, of which he had cherished such glorious dreams.
The bombs burst and shrieked nearer and ever nearer. Nikolaeff sighed
more frequently, without breaking the silence. On crossing the bridge
leading to the Korabelnaya, he saw something fly screaming into the
bay, not far from him, which lighted up the lilac waves for an instant
with a crimson glow, then disappeared, and threw on high a cloud of
foam.
“See there, it was not put out!” said Nikolaeff, hoarsely.
“Yes,” answered Volodya, involuntarily, and quite unexpectedly to
himself, in a thin, piping voice.
They encountered litters with wounded men, then more regimental
transports with gabions; they met a regiment on Korabelnaya street;
men on horseback passed them. One of them was an officer, with his
Cossack. He was riding at a trot, but, on catching sight of Volodya, he
reined in his horse near him, looked into his face, turned and rode on,
giving the horse a blow of his whip.
“Alone, alone; it is nothing to any one whether I am in existence or
not,” thought the lad, and he felt seriously inclined to cry.
After ascending the hill, past a high white wall, he entered a street
of small ruined houses, incessantly illuminated by bombs. A drunken and
dishevelled woman, who was coming out of a small door in company with a
sailor, ran against him.
“If he were only a fine man,” she grumbled,—“Pardon, Your Honor the
officer.”
The poor boy's heart sank lower and lower, and more and more frequently
flashed the lightnings against the dark horizon, and the bombs
screamed and burst about him with ever increasing frequency. Nikolaeff
sighed, and all at once he began to speak, in what seemed to Volodya a
frightened and constrained tone.
“What haste we made to get here from home. It was nothing but
travelling. A pretty place to be in a hurry to get to!”
“What was to be done, if my brother was well again,” replied Volodya,
in hope that he might banish by conversation the frightful feeling that
was taking possession of him.
“Well, what sort of health is it when he is thoroughly ill! Those who
are really well had better stay in the hospital at such a time. A
vast deal of joy there is about it, isn't there? You will have a leg
or an arm torn off, and that's all you will get! It's not far removed
from a downright sin! And here in the town it's not at all like the
bastion, and that is a perfect terror. You go and you say your prayers
the whole way. Eh, you beast, there you go whizzing past!” he added,
directing his attention to the sound of a splinter of shell whizzing
by near them. “Now, here,” Nikolaeff went on, “I was ordered to show
Your Honor the way. My business, of course, is to do as I am bid; but
the cart has been abandoned to some wretch of a soldier, and the bundle
is undone.... Go on and on; but if any of the property disappears,
Nikolaeff will have to answer for it.”
After proceeding a few steps further, they came out on a square.
Nikolaeff held his peace, but sighed.
“Yonder is your artillery, Your Honor!” he suddenly said. “Ask the
sentinel; he will show you.”
And Volodya, after he had taken a few steps more, ceased to hear the
sound of Nikolaeff's sighs behind him.
All at once, he felt himself entirely and finally alone. This
consciousness of solitude in danger, before death, as it seemed to him,
lay upon his heart like a terribly cold and heavy stone.
He halted in the middle of the square, glanced about him, to see
whether he could catch sight of any one, grasped his head, and uttered
his thought aloud in his terror:—“Lord! Can it be that I am a coward,
a vile, disgusting, worthless coward ... can it be that I so lately
dreamed of dying with joy for my father-land, my tsar? No, I am a
wretched, an unfortunate, a wretched being!” And Volodya, with a
genuine sentiment of despair and disenchantment with himself, inquired
of the sentinel for the house of the commander of the battery, and set
out in the direction indicated.