TALES OF HEARSAY
BY JOSEPH CONRAD
COPYRIGHT, 1911, 1917, 1918, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE CO. GARDEN
CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
The Warrior’s Soul
Prince Roman
The Tale
The Black Mate
THE WARRIOR’S SOUL (1917)
The old officer with long white moustaches gave rein to his indignation.
“Is it possible that you youngsters should have no more sense than that!
Some of you had better wipe the milk off your upper lip before you start
to pass judgment on the few poor stragglers of a generation which has
done and suffered not a little in its time.”
His hearers having expressed much compunction the ancient warrior became
appeased. But he was not silenced.
“I am one of them--one of the stragglers, I mean,” he went on
patiently. “And what did we do? What have we achieved? He--the great
Napoleon--started upon us to emulate the Macedonian Alexander, with
a ruck of nations at his back. We opposed empty spaces to French
impetuosity, then we offered them an interminable battle so that their
army went at last to sleep in its positions lying down on the heaps of
its own dead. Then came the wall of fire in Moscow. It toppled down on
them.
“Then began the long rout of the Grand Army. I have seen it stream on,
like the doomed flight of haggard, spectral sinners across the innermost
frozen circle of Dante’s Inferno, ever widening before their despairing
eyes.
“They who escaped must have had their souls doubly riveted inside their
bodies to carry them out of Russia through that frost fit to split
rocks. But to say that it was our fault that a single one of them got
away is mere ignorance. Why! Our own men suffered nearly to the limit of
their strength. Their Russian strength!
“Of course our spirit was not broken; and then our cause was good--it
was holy. But that did not temper the wind much to men and horses.
“The flesh is weak. Good or evil purpose, Humanity has to pay the price.
Why! In that very fight for that little village of which I have been
telling you we were fighting for the shelter of those old houses as much
as victory. And with the French it was the same.
“It wasn’t for the sake of glory, or for the sake of strategy. The
French knew that they would have to retreat before morning and we knew
perfectly well that they would go. As far as the war was concerned there
was nothing to fight about. Yet our infantry and theirs fought like wild
cats, or like heroes if you like that better, amongst the houses--hot
work enough---while the supports out in the open stood freezing in
a tempestuous north wind which drove the snow on earth and the great
masses of clouds in the sky at a terrific pace. The very air was
inexpressibly sombre by contrast with the white earth. I have never seen
God’s creation look more sinister than on that day.
“We, the cavalry (we were only a handful), had not much to do except
turn our backs to the wind and receive some stray French round shot.
This, I may tell you, was the last of the French guns and it was the
last time they had their artillery in position. Those guns never went
away from there either. We found them abandoned next morning. But that
afternoon they were keeping up an infernal fire on our attacking column;
the furious wind carried away the smoke and even the noise but we could
see the constant flicker of the tongues of fire along the French front.
Then a driving flurry of snow would hide everything except the dark red
flashes in the white swirl.
“At intervals when the line cleared we could see away across the plain
to the right a sombre column moving endlessly; the great rout of the
Grand Army creeping on and on all the time while the fight on our left
went on with a great din and fury. The cruel whirlwind of snow swept
over that scene of death and desolation. And then the wind fell as
suddenly as it had arisen in the morning.
“Presently we got orders to charge the retreating column; I don’t know
why unless they wanted to prevent us from getting frozen in our saddles
by giving us something to do. We changed front half right and got into
motion at a walk to take that distant dark line in flank. It might have
been half-past two in the afternoon.
“You must know that so far in this campaign my regiment had never been
on the main line of Napoleon’s advance. All these months since the
invasion the army we belonged to had been wrestling with Oudinot in
the north. We had only come down lately, driving him before us to the
Beresina.
“This was the first occasion, then, that I and my comrades had a close
view of Napoleon’s Grand Army. It was an amazing and terrible sight. I
had heard of it from others; I had seen the stragglers from it: small
bands of marauders, parties of prisoners in the distance. But this was
the very column itself! A crawling, stumbling, starved, half-demented
mob. It issued from the forest a mile away and its head was lost in the
murk of the fields. We rode into it at a trot, which was the most we
could get out of our horses, and we stuck in that human mass as if in a
moving bog. There was no resistance. I heard a few shots, half a dozen
perhaps. Their very senses seemed frozen within them. I had time for a
good look while riding at the head of my squadron. Well, I assure you,
there were men walking on the outer edge so lost to everything but
their misery that they never turned their heads to look at our charge.
Soldiers!
“My horse pushed over one of them with his chest. The poor wretch had a
dragoon’s blue cloak, all torn and scorched, hanging from his shoulders
and he didn’t even put his hand out to snatch at my bridle and save
himself. He just went down. Our troopers were pointing and slashing;
well, and of course at first I myself... What would you have! An enemy’s
an enemy. Yet a sort of sickening awe crept into my heart. There was no
tumult--only a low deep murmur dwelt over them interspersed with louder
cries and groans while that mob kept on pushing and surging past us,
sightless and without feeling. A smell of scorched rags and festering
wounds hung in the air. My horse staggered in the eddies of swaying
men. But it was like cutting down galvanized corpses that didn’t care.
Invaders! Yes... God was already dealing with them.
“I touched my horse with the spurs to get clear. There was a sudden rush
and a sort of angry moan when our second squadron got into them on our
right. My horse plunged and somebody got hold of my leg. As I had no
mind to get pulled out of the saddle I gave a back-handed slash without
looking. I heard a cry and my leg was let go suddenly.
“Just then I caught sight of the subaltern of my troop at some little
distance from me. His name was Tomassov. That multitude of resurrected
bodies with glassy eyes was seething round his horse as if blind,
growling crazily. He was sitting erect in his saddle, not looking down
at them and sheathing his sword deliberately.
“This Tomassov, well, he had a beard. Of course we all had beards then.
Circumstances, lack of leisure, want of razors, too. No, seriously, we
were a wild-looking lot in those unforgotten days which so many, so very
many of us did not survive. You know our losses were awful, too. Yes, we
looked wild. _Des Russes sauvages_--what!
“So he had a beard--this Tomassov I mean; but he did not look _sauvage_.
He was the youngest of us all. And that meant real youth. At a distance
he passed muster fairly well, what with the grime and the particular
stamp of that campaign on our faces. But directly you were near enough
to have a good look into his eyes, that was where his lack of age
showed, though he was not exactly a boy.
“Those same eyes were blue, something like the blue of autumn skies,
dreamy and gay, too--innocent, believing eyes. A topknot of fair hair
decorated his brow like a gold diadem in what one would call normal
times.
“You may think I am talking of him as if he were the hero of a novel.
Why, that’s nothing to what the adjutant discovered about him. He
discovered that he had a ‘lover’s lips’--whatever that may be. If the
adjutant meant a nice mouth, why, it was nice enough, but of course it
was intended for a sneer. That adjutant of ours was not a very delicate
fellow. ‘Look at those lover’s lips,’ he would exclaim in a loud tone
while Tomassov was talking.
“Tomassov didn’t quite like that sort of thing. But to a certain extent
he had laid himself open to banter by the lasting character of his
impressions which were connected with the passion of love and, perhaps,
were not of such a rare kind as he seemed to think them. What made
his comrades tolerant of his rhapsodies was the fact that they were
connected with France, with Paris!
“You of the present generation, you cannot conceive how much prestige
there was then in those names for the whole world. Paris was the centre
of wonder for all human beings gifted with imagination. There we were,
the majority of us young and well connected, but not long out of our
hereditary nests in the provinces; simple servants of God; mere rustics,
if I may say so. So we were only too ready to listen to the tales of
France from our comrade Tomassov. He had been attached to our mission
in Paris the year before the war. High protections very likely--or maybe
sheer luck.
“I don’t think he could have been a very useful member of the mission
because of his youth and complete inexperience. And apparently all his
time in Paris was his own. The use he made of it was to fall in love, to
remain in that state, to cultivate it, to exist only for it in a manner
of speaking.
“Thus it was something more than a mere memory that he had brought with
him from France. Memory is a fugitive thing. It can be falsified, it
can be effaced, it can be even doubted. Why! I myself come to doubt
sometimes that I, too, have been in Paris in my turn. And the long road
there with battles for its stages would appear still more incredible if
it were not for a certain musket ball which I have been carrying about
my person ever since a little cavalry affair which happened in Silesia
at the very beginning of the Leipsic campaign.
“Passages of love, however, are more impressive perhaps than passages
of danger. You don’t go affronting love in troops as it were. They are
rarer, more personal and more intimate. And remember that with Tomassov
all that was very fresh yet. He had not been home from France three
months when the war began.
“His heart, his mind were full of that experience. He was really awed
by it, and he was simple enough to let it appear in his speeches. He
considered himself a sort of privileged person, not because a woman had
looked at him with favour, but simply because, how shall I say it, he
had had the wonderful illumination of his worship for her, as if it were
heaven itself that had done this for him.
“Oh yes, he was very simple. A nice youngster, yet no fool; and with
that, utterly inexperienced, unsuspicious, and unthinking. You will find
one like that here and there in the provinces. He had some poetry in him
too. It could only be natural, something quite his own, not acquired. I
suppose Father Adam had some poetry in him of that natural sort. For the
rest _un Russe sauvage_ as the French sometimes call us, but not of that
kind which, they maintain, eats tallow candle for a delicacy. As to the
woman, the French woman, well, though I have also been in France with
a hundred thousand Russians, I have never seen her. Very likely she was
not in Paris then. And in any case hers were not the doors that would
fly open before simple fellows of my sort, you understand. Gilded salons
were never in my way. I could not tell you how she looked, which is
strange considering that I was, if I may say so, Tomassov’s special
confidant.
“He very soon got shy of talking before the others. I suppose the usual
camp-fire comments jarred his fine feelings. But I was left to him
and truly I had to submit. You can’t very well expect a youngster in
Tomassov’s state to hold his tongue altogether; and I--I suppose you
will hardly believe me--I am by nature a rather silent sort of person.
“Very likely my silence appeared to him sympathetic. All the month of
September our regiment, quartered in villages, had come in for an easy
time. It was then that I heard most of that--you can’t call it a story.
The story I have in my mind is not in that. Outpourings, let us call
them.
“I would sit quite content to hold my peace, a whole hour perhaps, while
Tomassov talked with exaltation. And when he was done I would still hold
my peace. And then there would be produced a solemn effect of silence
which, I imagine, pleased Tomassov in a way.
“She was of course not a woman in her first youth. A widow, maybe. At
any rate I never heard Tomassov mention her husband. She had a salon,
something very distinguished; a social centre in which she queened it
with great splendour.
“Somehow, I fancy her court was composed mostly of men. But Tomassov, I
must say, kept such details out of his discourses wonderfully well. Upon
my word I don’t know whether her hair was dark or fair, her eyes brown
or blue; what was her stature, her features, or her complexion. His love
soared above mere physical impressions. He never described her to me in
set terms; but he was ready to swear that in her presence everybody’s
thoughts and feelings were bound to circle round her. She was that sort
of woman. Most wonderful conversations on all sorts of subjects went
on in her salon: but through them all there flowed unheard like a
mysterious strain of music the assertion, the power, the tyranny of
sheer beauty. So apparently the woman was beautiful. She detached all
these talking people from their life interests, and even from their
vanities. She was a secret delight and a secret trouble. All the men
when they looked at her fell to brooding as if struck by the thought
that their lives had been wasted. She was the very joy and shudder of
felicity and she brought only sadness and torment to the hearts of men.
“In short, she must have been an extraordinary woman, or else Tomassov
was an extraordinary young fellow to feel in that way and to talk like
this about her. I told you the fellow had a lot of poetry in him and
observed that all this sounded true enough. It would be just about the
sorcery a woman very much out of the common would exercise, you know.
Poets do get close to truth somehow--there is no denying that.
“There is no poetry in my composition, I know, but I have my share of
common shrewdness, and I have no doubt that the lady was kind to the
youngster, once he did find his way inside her salon. His getting in
is the real marvel. However, he did get in, the innocent, and he found
himself in distinguished company there, amongst men of considerable
position. And you know, what that means: thick waists, bald heads, teeth
that are not--as some satirist puts it. Imagine amongst them a nice
boy, fresh and simple, like an apple just off the tree; a modest,
good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian. My word! What a
change! What a relief for jaded feelings! And with that, having, in his
nature that, dose; of poetry which saves even a simpleton from being a
fool.
“He became an artlessly, unconditionally devoted slave. He was rewarded
by being smiled on and in time admitted to the intimacy of the house.
It may be that the unsophisticated young barbarian amused the exquisite
lady. Perhaps--since he didn’t feed on tallow candles--he satisfied
some need of tenderness in the woman. You know, there are many kinds of
tenderness highly civilized women are capable of. Women with heads and
imagination, I mean, and no temperament to speak of, you understand. But
who is going to fathom their needs or their fancies? Most of the time
they themselves don’t know much about their innermost moods, and blunder
out of one into another, sometimes with catastrophic results. And then
who is more surprised than they? However, Tomassov’s case was in its
nature quite idyllic. The fashionable world was amused. His devotion
made for him a kind of social success. But he didn’t care. There was his
one divinity, and there was the shrine where he was permitted to go in
and out without regard for official reception hours.
“He took advantage of that privilege freely. Well, he had no official
duties, you know. The Military Mission was supposed to be more
complimentary than anything else, the head of it being a personal
friend of our Emperor Alexander; and he, too, was laying himself out for
successes in fashionable life exclusively--as it seemed. As it seemed.
“One afternoon Tomassov called on the mistress of his thoughts earlier
than usual. She was not alone. There was a man with her, not one of the
thick-waisted, bald-headed personages, but a somebody all the same,
a man over thirty, a French officer who to some extent was also a
privileged intimate. Tomassov was not jealous of him. Such a sentiment
would have appeared presumptuous to the simple fellow.
“On the contrary he admired that officer. You have no idea of the French
military men’s prestige in those days, even with us Russian soldiers
who had managed to face them perhaps better than the rest. Victory had
marked them on the forehead--it seemed for ever. They would have been
more than human if they had not been conscious of it; but they were good
comrades and had a sort of brotherly feeling for all who bore arms, even
if it was against them.
“And this was quite a superior example, an officer of the
major-general’s staff, and a man of the best society besides. He was
powerfully built, and thoroughly masculine, though he was as carefully
groomed as a woman. He had the courteous self-possession of a man of the
world. His forehead, white as alabaster, contrasted impressively with
the healthy colour of his face.
“I don’t know whether he was jealous of Tomassov, but I suspect that
he might have been a little annoyed at him as at a sort of walking
absurdity of the sentimental order. But these men of the world are
impenetrable, and outwardly he condescended to recognize Tomassov’s
existence even more distinctly than was strictly necessary. Once or
twice he had offered him some useful worldly advice with perfect tact
and delicacy. Tomassov was completely conquered by that evidence of
kindness under the cold polish of the best society.
“Tomassov, introduced into the _petit salon_, found these two exquisite
people sitting on a sofa together and had the feeling of having
interrupted some special conversation. They looked at him strangely, he
thought; but he was not given to understand that he had intruded. After
a time the lady said to the officer--his name was De Castel--‘I wish you
would take the trouble to ascertain the exact truth as to that rumour.’
“‘It’s much more than a mere rumour,’ remarked the officer. But he got
up submissively and went out. The lady turned to Tomassov and said: ‘You
may stay with me.’
“This express command made him supremely happy, though as a matter of
fact he had had no idea of going.
“She regarded him with her kindly glances, which made something glow and
expand within his chest. It was a delicious feeling, even though it did
cut one’s breath short now and then. Ecstatically he drank in the sound
of her tranquil, seductive talk full of innocent gaiety and of spiritual
quietude. His passion appeared to him to flame up and envelop her in
blue fiery tongues from head to foot and over her head, while her soul
reposed in the centre like a big white rose....
“H’m, good this. He told me many other things like that. But this is the
one I remember. He himself remembered everything because these were the
last memories of that woman. He was seeing her for the last time though
he did not know it then.
“M. De Castel returned, breaking into that atmosphere of enchantment
Tomassov had been drinking in even to complete unconsciousness of the
external world. Tomassov could not help being struck by the distinction
of his movements, the ease of his manner, his superiority to all the
other men he knew, and he suffered from it. It occurred to him that
these two brilliant beings on the sofa were made for each other.
“De Castel sitting down by the side of the lady murmured to her
discreetly, ‘There is not the slightest doubt that it’s true,’ and
they both turned their eyes to Tomassov. Roused thoroughly from his
enchantment he became self-conscious; a feeling of shyness came over
him. He sat smiling faintly at them.
“The lady without taking her eyes off the blushing Tomassov said with a
dreamy gravity quite unusual to her:
“‘I should like to know that your generosity can be supreme--without a
flaw. Love at its highest should be the origin of every perfection.’
“Tomassov opened his eyes wide with admiration at this, as though her
lips had been dropping real pearls. The sentiment, however, was
not uttered for the primitive Russian youth but for the exquisitely
accomplished man of the world, De Castel.
“Tomassov could not see the effect it produced because the French
officer lowered his head and sat there contemplating his admirably
polished boots. The lady whispered in a sympathetic tone:
“‘You have scruples?’
“De Castel, without looking up, murmured: ‘It could be turned into a
nice point of honour.’
“She said vivaciously: ‘That surely is artificial. I am all for natural
feelings. I believe in nothing else. But perhaps your conscience...’
“He interrupted her: ‘Not at all. My conscience is not childish. The
fate of those people is of no military importance to us. What can it
matter? The fortune of France is invincible.’
“‘Well then...’ she uttered, meaningly, and rose from the couch. The
French officer stood up, too. Tomassov hastened to follow their example.
He was pained by his state of utter mental darkness. While he was
raising the lady’s white hand to his lips he heard the French officer
say with marked emphasis:
“‘If he has the soul of a warrior (at that time, you know, people really
talked in that way), if he has the soul of a warrior he ought to fall at
your feet in gratitude.’
“Tomassov felt himself plunged into even denser darkness than before. He
followed the French officer out of the room and out of the house; for he
had a notion that this was expected of him.
“It was getting dusk, the weather was very bad, and the street was quite
deserted. The Frenchman lingered in it strangely. And Tomassov lingered,
too, without impatience. He was never in a hurry to get away from the
house in which she lived. And besides, something wonderful had happened
to him. The hand he had reverently raised by the tips of its fingers had
been pressed against his lips. He had received a secret favour! He was
almost frightened. The world had reeled--and it had hardly steadied
itself yet. De Castel stopped short at the corner of the quiet street.
“‘I don’t care to be seen too much with you in the lighted
thoroughfares, M. Tomassov,’ he said in a strangely grim tone.
“‘Why?’ asked the young man, too startled to be offended.
“‘From prudence,’ answered the other curtly. ‘So we will have to part
here; but before we part I’ll disclose to you something of which you
will see at once the importance.’
“This, please note, was an evening in late March of the year 1812. For
a long time already there had been talk of a growing coolness between
Russia and France. The word war was being whispered in drawing rooms
louder and louder, and at last was heard in official circles. Thereupon
the Parisian police discovered that our military envoy had corrupted
some clerks at the Ministry of War and had obtained from them some very
important confidential documents. The wretched men (there were two
of them) had confessed their crime and were to be shot that night.
To-morrow all the town would be talking of the affair. But the worst was
that the Emperor Napoleon was furiously angry at the discovery, and had
made up his mind to have the Russian envoy arrested.
“Such was De Castel’s disclosure; and though he had spoken in low tones
Tomassov was stunned as by a great crash.
“‘Arrested,’ he murmured, desolately.
“‘Yes, and kept as a state prisoner--with everybody belonging to
him....’
“The French officer seized Tomassov’s arm above the elbow and pressed it
hard.
“‘And kept in France,’ he repeated into Tomassov’s very ear, and then
letting him go stepped back a space and remained silent.
“‘And it’s you, you, who are telling me this!’ cried Tomassov in an
extremity of gratitude that was hardly greater than his admiration for
the generosity of his future foe. Could a brother have done for him
more! He sought to seize the hand of the French officer, but the latter
remained wrapped up closely in his cloak. Possibly in the dark he had
not noticed the attempt. He moved back a bit and in his self-possessed
voice of a man of the world, as though he were speaking across a card
table or something of the sort, he called Tomassov’s attention to
the fact that if he meant to make use of the warning the moments were
precious.
“‘Indeed they are,’ agreed the awed Tomassov. ‘Good-bye then. I have
no word of thanks to equal your generosity; but if ever I have an
opportunity, I swear it, you may command my life....’
“But the Frenchman retreated, had already vanished in the dark lonely
street. Tomassov was alone, and then he did not waste any of the
precious minutes of that night.
“See how people’s mere gossip and idle talk pass into history. In all
the memoirs of the time if you read them you will find it stated that
our envoy had a warning from some highly placed woman who was in love
with him. Of course it’s known that he had successes with women, and in
the highest spheres, too, but the truth is that the person who warned
him was no other than our simple Tomassov--an altogether different sort
of lover from himself.
“This then is the secret of our Emperor’s representative’s escape
from arrest. He and all his official household got out of France all
right--as history records.
“And amongst that household there was our Tomassov of course. He had,
in the words of the French officer, the soul of a warrior. And what more
desolate prospect for a man with such a soul than to be imprisoned
on the eve of war; to be cut off from his country in danger, from his
military family, from his duty, from honour, and--well--from glory, too.
“Tomassov used to shudder at the mere thought of the moral torture he
had escaped; and he nursed in his heart a boundless gratitude to the two
people who had saved him from that cruel ordeal. They were wonderful!
For him love and friendship were but two aspects of exalted perfection.
He had found these fine examples of it and he vowed them indeed a sort
of cult. It affected his attitude towards Frenchmen in general, great
patriot as he was. He was naturally indignant at the invasion of his
country, but this indignation had no personal animosity in it. His was
fundamentally a fine nature. He grieved at the appalling amount of human
suffering he saw around him. Yes, he was full of compassion for all
forms of mankind’s misery in a manly way.
“Less fine natures than his own did not understand this very well. In
the regiment they had nicknamed him the Humane Tomassov.
“He didn’t take offence at it. There is nothing incompatible between
humanity and a warrior’s soul. People without compassion are the
civilians, government officials, merchants and such like. As to the
ferocious talk one hears from a lot of decent people in war time--well,
the tongue is an unruly member at best and when there is some excitement
going on there is no curbing its furious activity.
“So I had not been very surprised to see our Tomassov sheathe
deliberately his sword right in the middle of that charge, you may say.
As we rode away after it he was very silent. He was not a chatterer as
a rule, but it was evident that this close view of the Grand Army had
affected him deeply, like some sight not of this earth. I had always
been a pretty tough individual myself--well, even I... and there was
that fellow with a lot of poetry in his nature! You may imagine what he
made of it to himself. We rode side by side without opening our lips. It
was simply beyond words.
“We established our bivouac along the edge of the forest so as to get
some shelter for our horses. However, the boisterous north wind had
dropped as quickly as it had sprung up, and the great winter stillness
lay on the land from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One could almost feel
its cold, lifeless immensity reaching up to the stars.
“Our men had lighted several fires for their officers and had cleared
the snow around them. We had big logs of wood for seats; it was a
very tolerable bivouac upon the whole, even without the exultation of
victory. We were to feel that later, but at present we were oppressed by
our stern and arduous task.
“There were three of us round my fire. The third one was that adjutant.
He was perhaps a well-meaning chap but not so nice as he might have been
had he been less rough in manner and less crude in his perceptions. He
would reason about people’s conduct as though a man were as simple a
figure as, say, two sticks laid across each other; whereas a man is much
more like the sea whose movements are too complicated to explain, and
whose depths may bring up God only knows what at any moment.
“We talked a little about that charge. Not much. That sort of thing does
not lend itself to conversation. Tomassov muttered a few words about a
mere butchery. I had nothing to say. As I told you I had very soon let
my sword hang idle at my wrist. That starving mob had not even _tried_
to defend itself. Just a few shots. We had two men wounded. Two!... and
we had charged the main column of Napoleon’s Grand Army.
“Tomassov muttered wearily: ‘What was the good of it?’ I did not wish
to argue, so I only just mumbled: ‘Ah, well!’ But the adjutant struck in
unpleasantly:
“‘Why, it warmed the men a bit. It has made me warm. That’s a good
enough reason. But our Tomassov is so humane! And besides he has been in
love with a French woman, and thick as thieves with a lot of Frenchmen,
so he is sorry for them. Never mind, my boy, we are on the Paris road
now and you shall soon see her!’ This was one of his usual, as we
believed them, foolish speeches. None of us but believed that the
getting to Paris would be a matter of years--of years. And lo! less than
eighteen months afterwards I was rooked of a lot of money in a gambling
hell in the Palais Royal.
“Truth, being often the most senseless thing in the world, is sometimes
revealed to fools. I don’t think that adjutant of ours believed in his
own words. He just wanted to tease Tomassov from habit. Purely from
habit. We of course said nothing, and so he took his head in his hands
and fell into a doze as he sat on a log in front of the fire.
“Our cavalry was on the extreme right wing of the army, and I must
confess that we guarded it very badly. We had lost all sense of
insecurity by this time; but still we did keep up a pretence of doing
it in a way. Presently a trooper rode up leading a horse and Tomassov
mounted stiffly and went off on a round of the outposts. Of the
perfectly useless outposts.
“The night was still, except for the crackling of the fires. The raging
wind had lifted far above the earth and not the faintest breath of it
could be heard. Only the full moon swam out with a rush into the sky and
suddenly hung high and motionless overhead. I remember raising my hairy
face to it for a moment. Then, I verily believe, I dozed off, too, bent
double on my log with my head towards the fierce blaze.
“You know what an impermanent thing such slumber is. One moment you
drop into an abyss and the next you are back in the world that you would
think too deep for any noise but the trumpet of the Last Judgment.
And then off you go again. Your very soul seems to slip down into a
bottomless black pit. Then up once more into a startled consciousness. A
mere plaything of cruel sleep one is, then. Tormented both ways.
“However, when my orderly appeared before me, repeating: ‘Won’t your
Honour be pleased to eat?... Won’t your Honour be pleased to eat?...’ I
managed to keep my hold of it--I mean that gaping consciousness. He was
offering me a sooty pot containing some grain boiled in water with a
pinch of salt. A wooden spoon was stuck in it.
“At that time these were the only rations we were getting regularly.
Mere chicken food, confound it! But the Russian soldier is wonderful.
Well, my fellow waited till I had feasted and then went away carrying
off the empty pot.
“I was no longer sleepy. Indeed, I had become awake with an exaggerated
mental consciousness of existence extending beyond my immediate
surroundings. Those are but exceptional moments with mankind, I am glad
to say. I had the intimate sensation of the earth in all its enormous
expanse wrapped in snow, with nothing showing on it but trees with their
straight stalk-like trunks and their funeral verdure; and in this aspect
of general mourning I seemed to hear the sighs of mankind falling to die
in the midst of a nature without life. They were Frenchmen. We didn’t
hate them; they did not hate us; we had existed far apart--and suddenly
they had come rolling in with arms in their hands, without fear of God,
carrying with them other nations, and all to perish together in a long,
long trail of frozen corpses. I had an actual vision of that trail:
a pathetic multitude of small dark mounds stretching away under the
moonlight in a clear, still, and pitiless atmosphere--a sort of horrible
peace.
“But what other peace could there be for them? What else did they
deserve? I don’t know by what connection of emotions there came into my
head the thought that the earth was a pagan planet and not a fit abode
for Christian virtues.
“You may be surprised that I should remember all this so well. What is
a passing emotion or half-formed thought to last in so many years of a
man’s changing, inconsequential life? But what has fixed the emotion
of that evening in my recollection so that the slightest shadows remain
indelible was an event of strange finality, an event not likely to be
forgotten in a life-time--as you shall see.
“I don’t suppose I had been entertaining those thoughts more than five
minutes when something induced me to look over my shoulder. I can’t
think it was a noise; the snow deadened all the sounds. Something it
must have been, some sort of signal reaching my consciousness. Anyway, I
turned my head, and there was the event approaching me, not that I knew
it or had the slightest premonition. All I saw in the distance were two
figures approaching in the moonlight. One of them was our Tomassov. The
dark mass behind him which moved across my sight were the horses which
his orderly was leading away. Tomassov was a very familiar appearance,
in long boots, a tall figure ending in a pointed hood. But by his side
advanced another figure. I mistrusted my eyes at first. It was amazing!
It had a shining crested helmet on its head and was muffled up in a
white cloak. The cloak was not as white as snow. Nothing in the world
is. It was white more like mist, with an aspect that was ghostly and
martial to an extraordinary degree. It was as if Tomassov had got hold
of the God of War himself. I could see at once that he was leading this
resplendent vision by the arm. Then I saw that he was holding it
up. While I stared and stared, they crept on--for indeed they were
creeping--and at last they crept into the light of our bivouac fire and
passed beyond the log I was sitting on. The blaze played on the helmet.
It was extremely battered and the frost-bitten face, full of sores,
under it was framed in bits of mangy fur. No God of War this, but a
French officer. The great white cuirassier’s cloak was torn, burnt full
of holes. His feet were wrapped up in old sheepskins over remnants
of boots. They looked monstrous and he tottered on them, sustained by
Tomassov who lowered him most carefully on to the log on which I sat.
“My amazement knew no bounds.
“‘You have brought in a prisoner,’ I said to Tomassov, as if I could not
believe my eyes.
“You must understand that unless they surrendered in large bodies we
made no prisoners. What would have been the good? Our Cossacks either
killed the stragglers or else let them alone, just as it happened. It
came really to the same thing in the end.
“Tomassov turned to me with a very troubled look.
“‘He sprang up from the ground somewhere as I was leaving the outpost,’
he said. ‘I believe he was making for it, for he walked blindly into my
horse. He got hold of my leg and of course none of our chaps dared touch
him then.’
“‘He had a narrow escape,’ I said.
“‘He didn’t appreciate it,’ said Tomassov, looking even more troubled
than before. ‘He came along holding to my stirrup leather. That’s what
made me so late. He told me he was a staff officer; and then talking in
a voice such, I suppose, as the damned alone use, a croaking of rage
and pain, he said he had a favour to beg of me. A supreme favour. Did I
understand him, he asked in a sort of fiendish whisper.
“‘Of course I told him that I did. I said: _oui, je vous comprends_.’
“‘Then,’ said he, ‘do it. Now! At once--in the pity of your heart.’
“Tomassov ceased and stared queerly at me above the head of the
prisoner.
“I said, ‘What did he mean?’
“‘That’s what I asked him,’ answered Tomassov in a dazed tone, ‘and he
said that he wanted me to do him the favour to blow his brains out. As a
fellow soldier he said. ‘As a man of feeling--as--as a humane man.’
“The prisoner sat between us like an awful gashed mummy as to the face,
a martial scarecrow, a grotesque horror of rags and dirt, with awful
living eyes, full of vitality, full of unquenchable fire, in a body
of horrible affliction, a skeleton at the feast of glory. And suddenly
those shining unextinguishable eyes of his became fixed upon Tomassov.
He, poor fellow, fascinated, returned the ghastly stare of a suffering
soul in that mere husk of a man. The prisoner croaked at him in French.
“‘I recognize, you know. You are her Russian youngster. You were
very grateful. I call on you to pay the debt. Pay it, I say, with one
liberating shot. You are a man of honour. I have not even a broken
sabre. All my being recoils from my own degradation. You know me.’
“Tomassov said nothing.
“‘Haven’t you got the soul of a warrior?’ the Frenchman asked in an
angry whisper, but with something of a mocking intention in it.
“‘I don’t know,’ said poor Tomassov.
“What a look of contempt that scarecrow gave him out of his unquenchable
eyes. He seemed to live only by the force of infuriated and impotent
despair. Suddenly he gave a gasp and fell forward writhing in the
agony of cramp in all his limbs; a not unusual effect of the heat of a
camp-fire. It resembled the application of some horrible torture. But
he tried to fight against the pain at first. He only moaned low while we
bent over him so as to prevent him rolling into the fire, and muttered
feverishly at intervals: ‘_Tuez moi, tuez moi_...’ till, vanquished by
the pain, he screamed in agony, time after time, each cry bursting out
through his compressed lips.
“The adjutant woke up on the other side of the fire and started swearing
awfully at the beastly row that Frenchman was making.
“‘What’s this? More of your infernal humanity, Tomassov,’ he yelled
at us. ‘Why don’t you have him thrown out of this to the devil on the
snow?’
“As we paid no attention to his shouts, he got up, cursing shockingly,
and went away to another fire. Presently the French officer became
easier. We propped him up against the log and sat silent on each side
of him till the bugles started their call at the first break of day. The
big flame, kept up all through the night, paled on the livid sheet
of snow, while the frozen air all round rang with the brazen notes of
cavalry trumpets. The Frenchman’s eyes, fixed in a glassy stare, which
for a moment made us hope that he had died quietly sitting there between
us two, stirred slowly to right and left, looking at each of our faces
in turn. Tomassov and I exchanged glances of dismay. Then De Castel’s
voice, unexpected in its renewed strength and ghastly self-possession,
made us shudder inwardly.
“‘_Bonjour, Messieurs_.’
“His chin dropped on his breast. Tomassov addressed me in Russian.
“‘It is he, the man himself...’ I nodded and Tomassov went on in a tone
of anguish: ‘Yes, he! Brilliant, accomplished, envied by men, loved by
that woman--this horror--this miserable thing that cannot die. Look at
his eyes. It’s terrible.’
“I did not look, but I understood what Tomassov meant. We could do
nothing for him. This avenging winter of fate held both the fugitives
and the pursuers in its iron grip. Compassion was but a vain word before
that unrelenting destiny. I tried to say something about a convoy being
no doubt collected in the village--but I faltered at the mute glance
Tomassov gave me. We knew what those convoys were like: appalling mobs
of hopeless wretches driven on by the butts of Cossacks’ lances, back to
the frozen inferno, with their faces set away from their homes.
“Our two squadrons had been formed along the edge of the forest. The
minutes of anguish were passing. The Frenchman suddenly struggled to his
feet. We helped him almost without knowing what we were doing.
“‘Come,’ he said, in measured tones. ‘This is the moment.’ He paused
for a long time, then with the same distinctness went on: ‘On my word of
honour, all faith is dead in me.’
“His voice lost suddenly its self-possession. After waiting a little
while he added in a murmur: ‘And even my courage.... Upon my honour.’
“Another long pause ensued before, with a great effort, he whispered
hoarsely: ‘Isn’t this enough to move a heart of stone? Am I to go on my
knees to you?’
“Again a deep silence fell upon the three of us. Then the French officer
flung his last word of anger at Tomassov.
“‘Milksop!’
“Not a feature of the poor fellow moved. I made up my mind to go and
fetch a couple of our troopers to lead that miserable prisoner away to
the village. There was nothing else for it. I had not moved six paces
towards the group of horses and orderlies in front of our squadron
when... but you have guessed it. Of course. And I, too, I guessed it,
for I give you my word that the report of Tomassov’s pistol was the most
insignificant thing imaginable. The snow certainly does absorb sound. It
was a mere feeble pop. Of the orderlies holding our horses I don’t think
one turned his head round.
“Yes. Tomassov had done it. Destiny had led that De Castel to the man
who could understand him perfectly. But it was poor Tomassov’s lot to be
the predestined victim. You know what the world’s justice and mankind’s
judgment are like. They fell heavily on him with a sort of inverted
hypocrisy. Why! That brute of an adjutant, himself, was the first to set
going horrified allusions to the shooting of a prisoner in cold blood!
Tomassov was not dismissed from the service of course. But after the
siege of Dantzig he asked for permission to resign from the army, and
went away to bury himself in the depths of his province, where a vague
story of some dark deed clung to him for years.
“Yes. He had done it. And what was it? One warrior’s soul paying its
debt a hundredfold to another warrior’s soul by releasing it from a fate
worse than death--the loss of all faith and courage. You may look on
it in that way. I don’t know. And perhaps poor Tomassov did not know
himself. But I was the first to approach that appalling dark group on
the snow: the Frenchman extended rigidly on his back, Tomassov kneeling
on one knee rather nearer to the feet than to the Frenchman’s head. He
had taken his cap off and his hair shone like gold in the light drift
of flakes that had begun to fall. He was stooping over the dead in a
tenderly contemplative attitude. And his young, ingenuous face, with
lowered eyelids, expressed no grief, no sternness, no horror--but was
set in the repose of a profound, as if endless and endlessly silent,
meditation.”
PRINCE ROMAN (1911)
“Events which happened seventy years ago are perhaps rather too far off
to be dragged aptly into a mere conversation. Of course the year 1831 is
for us an historical date, one of these fatal years when in the presence
of the world’s passive indignation and eloquent sympathies we had once
more to murmur ‘_Vo Victis_’ and count the cost in sorrow. Not that
we were ever very good at calculating, either, in prosperity or
in adversity. That’s a lesson we could never learn, to the great
exasperation of our enemies who have bestowed upon us the epithet of
Incorrigible....”
The speaker was of Polish nationality, that nationality not so much
alive as surviving, which persists in thinking, breathing, speaking,
hoping, and suffering in its grave, railed in by a million of bayonets
and triple-sealed with the seals of three great empires.
The conversation was about aristocracy. How did this, nowadays
discredited, subject come up? It is some years ago now and the precise
recollection has faded. But I remember that it was not considered
practically as an ingredient in the social mixture; and I verily
believed that we arrived at that subject through some exchange of ideas
about patriotism--a somewhat discredited sentiment, because the delicacy
of our humanitarians regards it as a relic of barbarism. Yet neither the
great Florentine painter who closed his eyes in death thinking of his
city, nor St. Francis blessing with his last breath the town of Assisi,
were barbarians. It requires a certain greatness of soul to interpret
patriotism worthily--or else a sincerity of feeling denied to the
vulgar refinement of modern thought which cannot understand the august
simplicity of a sentiment proceeding from the very nature of things and
men.
The aristocracy we were talking about was the very highest, the great
families of Europe, not impoverished, not converted, not liberalized,
the most distinctive and specialized class of all classes, for which
even ambition itself does not exist among the usual incentives to
activity and regulators of conduct.
The undisputed right of leadership having passed away from them, we
judged that their great fortunes, their cosmopolitanism brought about by
wide alliances, their elevated station, in which there is so little to
gain and so much to lose, must make their position difficult in times
of political commotion or national upheaval. No longer born to
command--which is the very essence of aristocracy--it becomes difficult
for them to do aught else but hold aloof from the great movements of
popular passion.
We had reached that conclusion when the remark about far-off events was
made and the date of 1831 mentioned. And the speaker continued:
“I don’t mean to say that I knew Prince Roman at that remote time. I
begin to feel pretty ancient, but I am not so ancient as that. In fact
Prince Roman was married the very year my father was born. It was in
1828; the 19th Century was young yet and the Prince was even younger
than the century, but I don’t know exactly by how much. In any case
his was an early marriage. It was an ideal alliance from every point
of view. The girl was young and beautiful, an orphan heiress of a great
name and of a great fortune. The Prince, then an officer in the
Guards and distinguished amongst his fellows by something reserved
and reflective in his character, had fallen headlong in love with her
beauty, her charm, and the serious qualities of her mind and heart. He
was a rather silent young man; but his glances, his bearing, his whole
person expressed his absolute devotion to the woman of his choice, a
devotion which she returned in her own frank and fascinating manner.
“The flame of this pure young passion promised to burn for ever; and for
a season it lit up the dry, cynical atmosphere of the great world of St.
Petersburg. The Emperor Nicholas himself, the grandfather of the present
man, the one who died from the Crimean War, the last perhaps of the
Autocrats with a mystical belief in the Divine character of his mission,
showed some interest in this pair of married lovers. It is true that
Nicholas kept a watchful eye on all the doings of the great Polish
nobles. The young people leading a life appropriate to their station
were obviously wrapped up in each other; and society, fascinated by the
sincerity of a feeling moving serenely among the artificialities of
its anxious and fastidious agitation, watched them with benevolent
indulgence and an amused tenderness.
“The marriage was the social event of 1828, in the capital. Just forty
years afterwards I was staying in the country house of my mother’s
brother in our southern provinces.