"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 G.o.d, 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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 Toma.s.sov. The dark ma.s.s behind him which moved across my sight were the horses which his orderly was leading away. Toma.s.sov 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 m.u.f.fled 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 Toma.s.sov had got hold of the G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d of War this, but a French officer. The great white cuira.s.sier"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 Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov, 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.
"Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov, 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 d.a.m.ned 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."
"Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov.
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."
"Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov.
"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, Toma.s.sov," 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 gla.s.sy 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. Toma.s.sov 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. Toma.s.sov addressed me in Russian.
""It is he, the man himself..." I nodded and Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov meant. We could do nothing for him. This avenging winter of fate held both the fugitives and the pursuers in its iron grip. Compa.s.sion 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 Toma.s.sov gave me. We knew what those convoys were like: appalling mobs of hopeless wretches driven on by the b.u.t.ts 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 pa.s.sing. 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 hoa.r.s.ely: "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 Toma.s.sov.
""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 Toma.s.sov"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. Toma.s.sov had done it. Destiny had led that De Castel to the man who could understand him perfectly. But it was poor Toma.s.sov"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!
Toma.s.sov 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 Toma.s.sov 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, Toma.s.sov 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 att.i.tude. 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)