THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF JOSEPH CONRAD. Джозеф Конрад
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but two short glimpses of her. They had been great friends and confidants; and now they were going to give her away to a man whom he did not know—a very worthy fellow, no doubt, but not half good enough for her. He would never see his old Léonie again. She had a capable little head and plenty of tact; she would know how to manage the fellow, to be sure. He was easy about her happiness, but he felt ousted from the first place in her affection which had been his ever since the girl could speak. And a melancholy regret of the days of his childhood settled upon Captain D'Hubert, third aide-de-camp to the Prince of Ponte-Corvo.
He pushed aside the letter of congratulation he had begun to write, as in duty bound but without pleasure. He took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote: "This is my last will and testament." And, looking at these words, he gave himself up to unpleasant reflection; a presentiment that he would never see the scenes of his childhood overcame Captain D'Hubert. He jumped up, pushing his chair back, yawned leisurely, which demonstrated to himself that he didn't care anything for presentiments, and, throwing himself on the bed, went to sleep. During the night he shivered from time to time without waking up. In the morning he rode out of town between his two seconds, talking of indifferent things and looking right and left with apparent detachment into the heavy morning mists, shrouding the flat green fields bordered by hedges. He leaped a ditch, and saw the forms of many mounted men moving in the low fog. "We are to fight before a gallery," he muttered bitterly.
His seconds were rather concerned at the state of the atmosphere, but presently a pale and sympathetic sun struggled above the vapours. Captain D'Hubert made out in the distance three horsemen riding a little apart; it was his adversary and his seconds. He drew his sabre and assured himself that it was properly fastened to his wrist. And now the seconds, who had been standing in a close group with the heads of their horses together, separated at an easy canter, leaving a large, clear field between him and his adversary. Captain D'Hubert looked at the pale sun, at the dismal landscape, and the imbecility of the impending fight filled him with desolation. From a distant part of the field a stentorian voice shouted commands at proper intervals: Au pas—Au trot—Chargez! Presentiments of death don't come to a man for nothing he thought at the moment he put spurs to his horse.
And therefore nobody was more surprised than himself when, at the very first set-to, Captain Feraud laid himself open to a cut extending over the forehead, blinding him with blood, and ending the combat almost before it had fairly begun. The surprise of Captain Feraud might have been even greater. Captain D'Hubert, leaving him swearing horribly and reeling in the saddle between his two appalled friends, leaped the ditch again and trotted home with his two seconds, who seemed rather awestruck at the speedy issue of that encounter. In the evening, Captain D'Hubert finished the congratulatory letter on his sister's marriage.
He finished it late. It was a long letter. Captain D'Hubert gave reins to his fancy. He told his sister he would feel rather lonely after this great change in her life. But, he continued, "the day will come for me, too, to get married. In fact, I am thinking already of the time when there will be no one left to fight in Europe, and the epoch of wars will be over. I shall expect then to be within measurable distance of a marshal's baton and you will be an experienced married woman. You shall look out a nice wife for me. I will be moderately bald by then, and a little blasé; I will require a young girl—pretty, of course, and with a large fortune, you know, to help me close my glorious career with the splendour befitting my exalted rank." He ended with the information that he had just given a lesson to a worrying, quarrelsome fellow, who imagined he had a grievance against him. "But if you, in the depth of your province," he continued, "ever hear it said that your brother is of a quarrelsome disposition, don't you believe it on any account. There is no saying what gossip from the army may reach your innocent ears; whatever you hear, you may assure our father that your ever loving brother is not a duellist." Then Captain D'Hubert crumpled up the sheet of paper with the words, "This is my last will and testament," and threw it in the fire with a great laugh at himself. He didn't care a snap for what that lunatic fellow could do. He had suddenly acquired the conviction that this man was utterly powerless to affect his life in any sort of way, except, perhaps, in the way of putting a certain special excitement into the delightful gay intervals between the campaigns.
From this on there were, however, to be no peaceful intervals in the career of Captain D'Hubert. He saw the fields of Eylau and Friedland, marched and countermarched in the snow, the mud, and the dust of Polish plains, picking up distinction and advancement on all the roads of northeastern Europe. Meantime, Captain Feraud, despatched southward with his regiment, made unsatisfactory war in Spain. It was only when the preparations for the Russian campaign began that he was ordered north again. He left the country of mantillas and oranges without regret.
The first signs of a not unbecoming baldness added to the lofty aspect of Colonel D'Hubert's forehead. This feature was no longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring fowl—something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He still manifested an outspoken dislike for "intriguing fellows." He seized every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank in the anterooms of marshals.
The unlucky persons, civil or military, who, with an intention of being pleasant, begged Colonel Feraud to tell them how he came by that very apparent scar on the forehead, were astonished to find themselves snubbed in various ways, some of which were simply rude and others mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly by their more experienced comrades not to stare openly at the colonel's scar. But, indeed, an officer need have been very young in his profession not to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating in some mysterious, unforgivable offence.
III
The retreat from Moscow submerged all private feelings in a sea of disaster and misery. Colonels without regiments, D'Hubert and Feraud carried the musket in the ranks of the sacred battalion—a battalion recruited from officers of all arms who had no longer any troops to lead.
In that battalion promoted colonels did duty as sergeants; the generals captained the companies; a marshal of France, Prince of the Empire, commanded the whole. All had provided themselves with muskets picked up on the road, and cartridges taken from the dead. In the general destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades and divisions of an armed host, this body of men put their pride in preserving some semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded on doggedly, stumbling over the corpses of men, the carcasses of horses, the fragments of gun-carriages, covered by the white winding-sheet of the great disaster. Their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains, shining with a livid light under a sky the colour of ashes. Whirlwinds of snow ran along the fields, broke against the dark column, rose in a turmoil of flying icicles, and subsided, disclosing it creeping on without the swing and rhythm of the military pace. They struggled onward, exchanging neither words nor looks—whole ranks marched, touching elbows, day after day, and never raising their eyes, as if lost in despairing reflections. On calm days, in the dumb black forests of pines the cracking of overloaded branches was the only sound. Often from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling corpses towards a distant grave. Only an alarm of Cossacks could restore to their lack-lustre eyes a semblance of martial resolution. The battalion deployed, facing about, or formed square under the endless fluttering of snowflakes. A cloud of horsemen with fur caps on their heads, levelled long lances and yelled "Hurrah! Hurrah!" around their menacing immobility, whence, with muffled detonations, hundreds of dark-red flames darted through the air thick with falling snow. In a very few moments the horsemen would disappear, as if carried off yelling