3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ fury, kicking his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a vice, his instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly at his eyes. But he was greatly humiliated by his position. At last she gave up. She was more exhausted than appeased, he feared. Nevertheless, he attempted to get out of this wicked dream by way of negotiation.

      “Listen to me,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Will you promise to run for a surgeon if I let you go?”

      With real affliction he heard her declare that she would do nothing of the kind. On the contrary, her sobbed out intention was to remain in the garden, and fight tooth and nail for the protection of the vanquished man. This was shocking.

      “My dear child!” he cried in despair, “is it possible that you think me capable of murdering a wounded adversary? Is it. . . . Be quiet, you little wild cat, you!”

      They struggled. A thick, drowsy voice said behind him, “What are you after with that girl?”

      Lieut. Feraud had raised himself on his good arm. He was looking sleepily at his other arm, at the mess of blood on his uniform, at a small red pool on the ground, at his sabre lying a foot away on the path. Then he laid himself down gently again to think it all out, as far as a thundering headache would permit of mental operations.

      Lieut. D’Hubert released the girl who crouched at once by the side of the other lieutenant. The shades of night were falling on the little trim garden with this touching group, whence proceeded low murmurs of sorrow and compassion, with other feeble sounds of a different character, as if an imperfectly awake invalid were trying to swear. Lieut. D’Hubert went away.

      He passed through the silent house, and congratulated himself upon the dusk concealing his gory hands and scratched face from the passers-by. But this story could by no means be concealed. He dreaded the discredit and ridicule above everything, and was painfully aware of sneaking through the back streets in the manner of a murderer. Presently the sounds of a flute coming out of the open window of a lighted upstairs room in a modest house interrupted his dismal reflections. It was being played with a persevering virtuosity, and through the fioritures of the tune one could hear the regular thumping of the foot beating time on the floor.

      Lieut. D’Hubert shouted a name, which was that of an army surgeon whom he knew fairly well. The sounds of the flute ceased, and the musician appeared at the window, his instrument still in his hand, peering into the street.

      “Who calls? You, D’Hubert? What brings you this way?”

      He did not like to be disturbed at the hour when he was playing the flute. He was a man whose hair had turned grey already in the thankless task of tying up wounds on battlefields where others reaped advancement and glory.

      “I want you to go at once and see Feraud. You know Lieut. Feraud? He lives down the second street. It’s but a step from here.”

      “What’s the matter with him?”

      “Wounded.”

      “Are you sure?”

      “Sure!” cried D’Hubert. “I come from there.”

      “That’s amusing,” said the elderly surgeon. Amusing was his favourite word; but the expression of his face when he pronounced it never corresponded. He was a stolid man. “Come in,” he added. “I’ll get ready in a moment.”

      “Thanks! I will. I want to wash my hands in your room.”

      Lieut. D’Hubert found the surgeon occupied in unscrewing his flute, and packing the pieces methodically in a case. He turned his head.

      “Water there — in the corner. Your hands do want washing.”

      “I’ve stopped the bleeding,” said Lieut. D’Hubert. “But you had better make haste. It’s rather more than ten minutes ago, you know.”

      The surgeon did not hurry his movements.

      “What’s the matter? Dressing came off? That’s amusing. I’ve been at work in the hospital all day but I’ve been told this morning by somebody that he had come off without a scratch.”

      “Not the same duel probably,” growled moodily Lieut. D’Hubert, wiping his hands on a coarse towel.

      “Not the same. . . . What? Another. It would take the very devil to make me go out twice in one day.” The surgeon looked narrowly at Lieut. D’Hubert. “How did you come by that scratched face? Both sides, too — and symmetrical. It’s amusing.”

      “Very!” snarled Lieut. D’Hubert. “And you will find his slashed arm amusing, too. It will keep both of you amused for quite a long time.”

      The doctor was mystified and impressed by the brusque bitterness of Lieut. D’Hubert’s tone. They left the house together, and in the street he was still more mystified by his conduct.

      “Aren’t you coming with me?” he asked.

      “No,” said Lieut. D’Hubert. “You can find the house by yourself. The front door will be standing open very likely.”

      “All right. Where’s his room?”

      “Ground floor. But you had better go right through and look in the garden first.”

      This astonishing piece of information made the surgeon go off without further parley. Lieut. D’Hubert regained his quarters nursing a hot and uneasy indignation. He dreaded the chaff of his comrades almost as much as the anger of his superiors. The truth was confoundedly grotesque and embarrassing, even putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself, which made it come abominably near a criminal offence. Like all men without much imagination, a faculty which helps the process of reflective thought, Lieut. D’Hubert became frightfully harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly glad that he had not killed Lieut. Feraud outside all rules, and without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly glad. At the same time he felt as though he would have liked to wring his neck for him without ceremony.

      He was still under the sway of these contradictory sentiments when the surgeon amateur of the flute came to see him. More than three days had elapsed. Lieut. D’Hubert was no longer officier d’ordonnance to the general commanding the division. He had been sent back to his regiment. And he was resuming his connection with the soldiers’ military family by being shut up in close confinement, not at his own quarters in town, but in a room in the barracks. Owing to the gravity of the incident, he was forbidden to see any one. He did not know what had happened, what was being said, or what was being thought. The arrival of the surgeon was a most unexpected thing to the worried captive. The amateur of the flute began by explaining that he was there only by a special favour of the colonel.

      “I represented to him that it would be only fair to let you have some authentic news of your adversary,” he continued. “You’ll be glad to hear he’s getting better fast.”

      Lieut. D’Hubert’s face exhibited no conventional signs of gladness. He continued to walk the floor of the dusty bare room.

      “Take this chair, doctor,” he mumbled.

      The doctor sat down.

      “This affair is variously appreciated — in town and in the army. In fact, the diversity СКАЧАТЬ