Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

The officer jumped to his feet, and growing first pale and then red and bending almost double, he followed his partner silently out of the box, leaving Nicholas alone with his lady.

She proved to be a pretty, twenty-year-old virgin, the daughter of a Swedish governess. She told Nicholas how when quite a child she had fallen in love with him from his portraits; how she adored him and had made up her mind to attract his attention at any cost. Now she had succeeded and wanted nothing more – so she said.

The girl was taken to the place where Nicholas usually had rendezvous with women, and there he spent more than an hour with her.

When he returned to his room that night and lay on the hard narrow bed about which he prided himself, and covered himself with the cloak which he considered to be (and spoke of as being) as famous as Napoleon’s hat, it was a long time before he could fall asleep. He thought now of the frightened and elated expression on that girl’s fair face, and now of the full, powerful shoulders of his established mistress, Nelidova, and he compared the two. That profligacy in a married man was a bad thing did not once enter his head, and he would have been greatly surprised had anyone censured him for it. Yet though convinced that he had acted rightly, some kind of unpleasant after-taste remained, and to stifle that feeling he dwelt on a thought that always tranquillized him – the thought of his own greatness.

Though he had fallen asleep so late, he rose before eight, and after attending to his toilet in the usual way – rubbing his big well-fed body all over with ice – and saying his prayers (repeating those he had been used to from childhood – the prayer to the Virgin, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, without attaching any kind of meaning to the words he uttered), he went out through the smaller portico of the palace onto the embankment in his military cloak and cap.

On the embankment he met a student in the uniform of the School of Jurisprudence, who was as enormous as himself. On recognizing the uniform of that school, which he disliked for its freedom of thought, Nicholas frowned, but the stature of the student and the painstaking manner in which he drew himself up and saluted, ostentatiously sticking out his elbow, mollified his displeasure.

‘Your name?’ said he.

‘Polosátov, your Imperial Majesty.’

‘… fine fellow!’

The student continued to stand with his hand lifted to his hat.

Nicholas stopped.

‘Do you wish to enter the army?’

‘Not at all, your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Blockhead!’ And Nicholas turned away and continued his walk, and began uttering aloud the first words that came into his head.

‘Kopervine … Kopervine —’ he repeated several times (it was the name of yesterday’s girl). ‘Horrid … horrid —’ He did not think of what he was saying, but stifled his feelings by listening to the words.

‘Yes, what would Russia be without me?’ said he, feeling his former dissatisfaction returning. ‘What would – not Russia alone but Europe be, without me?’ and calling to mind the weakness and stupidity of his brother-in-law the King of Prussia, he shook his head.

As he was returning to the small portico, he saw the carriage of Helena Pávlovna,¹⁹ with a red-liveried footman, approaching the Saltykóv entrance of the palace.

Helena Pávlovna was to him the personification of that futile class of people who discussed not merely science and poetry, but even the ways of governing men: imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them! He knew that however much he crushed such people they reappeared again and again, and he recalled his brother, Michael Pávlovich, who had died not long before. A feeling of sadness and vexation came over him and with a dark frown he again began whispering the first words that came into his head, which he only ceased doing when he reentered the palace.

On reaching his apartments he smoothed his whiskers and the hair on his temples and the wig on his bald patch, and twisted his moustaches upwards in front of the mirror, and then went straight to the cabinet in which he received reports.

He first received Chernyshov, who at once saw by his face, and especially by his eyes, that Nicholas was in a particularly bad humour that day, and knowing about the adventure of the night before he understood the cause. Having coldly greeted him and invited him to sit down, Nicholas fixed on him a lifeless gaze. The first matter Chernyshóv reported upon was a case of embezzlement by commissariat officials which had just been discovered; the next was the movement of troops on the Prussian frontier; then came a list of rewards to be given at the New Year to some people omitted from a former list; then Vorontsov’s report about Hadji Murád; and lastly some unpleasant business concerning an attempt by a student of the Academy of Medicine on the life of a professor.

Nicholas heard the report of the embezzlement silently with compressed lips, his large white hand – with one ring on the fourth finger – stroking some sheets of paper, and his eyes steadily fixed on Chernyshóv’s forehead and on the tuft of hair above it.

Nicholas was convinced that everybody stole. He knew he would have to punish the commissariat officials now, and decided to send them all to serve in the ranks, but he also knew that this would not prevent those who succeeded them from acting in the same way. It was a characteristic of officials to steal, but it was his duty to punish them for doing so, and tired as he was of that duty he conscientiously performed it.

‘It seems there is only one honest man in Russia!’ said he.

Chernyshóv at once understood that this one honest man was Nicholas himself, and smiled approvingly.

‘It looks like it, your Imperial Majesty,’ said he.

‘Leave it – I will give a decision,’ said Nicholas, taking the document and putting it on the left side of the table.

Then Chernyshóv reported about the rewards to be given and about moving the army on the Prussian frontier.

Nicholas looked over the list and struck out some names, and then briefly and firmly gave orders to move two divisions to the Prussian frontier. He could not forgive the King of Prussia for granting a Constitution to his people after the events of 1848, and therefore while expressing most friendly feelings to his brother-in-law in letters and conversation, he considered it necessary to keep an army near the frontier in case of need. He might want to use these troops to defend his brother-in-law’s throne if the people of Prussia rebelled (Nicholas saw a readiness for rebellion everywhere) as he had used troops to suppress the rising in Hungary a few years previously. They were also of use to give more weight and influence to such advice as he gave to the King of Prussia.

‘Yes – what would Russia be like now if it were not for me?’ he again thought.

‘Well, what else is there?’ said he.

‘A courier from the Caucasus,’ said Chernyshóv, and he reported what Vorontsóv had written about Hadji Murád’s surrender.

‘Well, well!’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s a good beginning!’

‘Evidently the plan devised by your Majesty begins to bear fruit,’ said Chernyshóv.

This approval of his strategic talents was particularly pleasant to Nicholas because, though he prided himself upon them, at the bottom of his heart he knew that they did not really exist, and he now desired to hear more detailed praise of himself.

‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I mean that if your Majesty’s plans had been adopted before, and we had moved forward slowly and steadily, cutting down forests and destroying the supplies of food, the Caucasus would have been subjugated long ago. I attribute Hadji Murád’s surrender entirely to his having come to the conclusion that they can hold out no longer.’

‘True,’ said Nicholas.

Although the plan of a gradual advance into the enemy’s territory by means of felling forests and destroying the food supplies was Ermólov’s and Velyamínov’s plan, and was quite contrary to Nicholas’s own plan of seizing Shamil’s place of residence and destroying that nest of robbers – which was the plan on which the Dargo expedition in 1845 (that cost so many lives) had been undertaken – Nicholas nevertheless attributed to himself also the plan of a slow advance and a systematic felling of forests and devastation of the country. It would seem that to believe the plan of a slow movement by felling forests and destroying food supplies to have been his own would have necessitated hiding the fact that he had insisted on quite contrary operations in 1845. But he did not hide it and was proud of the plan of the 1845 expedition as well as of the plan of a slow advance – though the two were obviously contrary to one another. Continual brazen flattery from everybody round him in the teeth of obvious facts had brought him to such a state that he no longer saw his own inconsistencies or measured his actions and words by reality, logic, or even simple common sense; but was quite convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and mutually contradictory they might be, became reasonable, just, and mutually accordant simply because he gave them. His decision in the case next reported to him – that of the student of the Academy of Medicine – was of that senseless kind.

The case was as follows: A young man who had twice failed in his examinations was being examined a third time, and when the examiner again would not pass him, the young man whose nerves were deranged, considering this to be an injustice, seized a pen-knife from the table in a paroxysm of fury, and rushing at the professor inflicted on him several trifling wounds.

‘What’s his name?’ asked Nicholas.

‘Bzhezóvski.’

‘A Pole?’

‘Of Polish descent and a Roman Catholic,’ answered Chernyshóv.

Nicholas frowned. He had done much evil to the Poles. To justify that evil he had to feel certain that all Poles were rascals, and he considered them to be such and hated them in proportion to the evil he had done them.

‘Wait a little,’ he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head.

Chernyshóv, having more than once heard Nicholas say so, knew that when the Emperor had to take a decision it was only necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to do. He was now thinking how most fully to satisfy the feeling of hatred against the Poles which this incident had stirred up within him, and the inner voice suggested the following decision. He took the report and in his large handwriting wrote on its margin with three orthographical mistakes:

‘Diserves deth, but, thank God, we have no capitle punishment, and it is not for me to introduce it. Make him run the gauntlet of a thousand men twelve times. – Nicholas.’

He signed, adding his unnaturally huge flourish.

Nicholas knew that twelve thousand strokes with the regulation rods were not only certain death with torture, but were a superfluous cruelty, for five thousand strokes were sufficient to kill the strongest man. But it pleased him to be ruthlessly cruel and it also pleased him to think that we have abolished capital punishment in Russia.

Having written his decision about the student, he pushed it across to Chernyshóv.

‘There,’ he said, ‘read it.’

Chernyshóv read it, and bowed his head as a sign of respectful amazement at the wisdom of the decision.

‘Yes, and let all the students be present on the drill-ground at the punishment,’ added Nicholas.

‘It will do them good! I will abolish this revolutionary spirit and will tear it up by the roots!’ he thought.

‘It shall be done,’ replied Chernyshóv; and after a short pause he straightened the tuft on his forehead and returned to the Caucasian report.

‘What do you command me to write in reply to Prince Vorontsov’s dispatch?’

‘To keep firmly to my system of destroying the dwellings and food supplies in Chechnya and to harass them by raids,’ answered Nicholas.

‘And what are your Majesty’s commands with reference to Hadji Murád?’ asked Chernyshóv.

‘Why, Vorontsóv writes that he wants to make use of him in the Caucasus.’

‘Is it not dangerous?’ said Chernyshóv, avoiding Nicholas’s gaze. ‘Prince Vorontsóv is too confiding, I am afraid.’

‘And you – what do you think?’ asked Nicholas sharply, detecting Chernyshóv’s intention of presenting Vorontsóv’s decision in an unfavourable light.

‘Well, I should have thought it would be safer to deport him to Central Russia.’

‘You would have thought!’ said Nicholas ironically. ‘But I don’t think so, and agree with Vorontsóv. Write to him accordingly.’

‘It shall be done,’ said Chernyshóv, rising and bowing himself out.

Dolgorúky also bowed himself out, having during the whole audience only uttered a few words (in reply to a question from Nicholas) about the movement of the army.

After Chernyshóv, Nicholas received Bíbikov, General-Governor of the Western Provinces. Having expressed his approval of the measures taken by Bíbikov against the mutinous peasants who did not wish to accept the Orthodox Faith, he ordered him to have all those who did not submit tried by court-martial. That was equivalent to sentencing them to run the gauntlet. He also ordered the editor of a newspaper to be sent to serve in the ranks of the army for publishing information about the transfer of several thousand State peasants to the Imperial estates.

‘I do this because I consider it necessary,’ said Nicholas, ‘and I will not allow it to be discussed.’

Bíbikov saw the cruelty of the order concerning the Uniate²⁰ peasants and the injustice of transferring State peasants (the only free peasants in Russia in those days) to the Crown, which meant making them serfs of the Imperial family. But it was impossible to express dissent. Not to agree with Nicholas’s decisions would have meant the loss of that brilliant position which it had cost Bíbikov forty years to attain and which he now enjoyed; and he therefore submissively bowed his dark head (already touched with grey) to indicate his submission and his readiness to fulfil the cruel, insensate, and dishonest supreme will.

Having dismissed Bíbikov, Nicholas stretched himself, with a sense of duty well fulfilled, glanced at the clock, and went to get ready to go out. Having put on a uniform with epaulettes, orders, and a ribbon, he went out into the reception hall where more than a hundred persons – men in uniforms and women in elegant low-necked dresses, all standing in the places assigned to them – awaited his arrival with agitation.

He came out to them with a lifeless look in his eyes, his chest expanded, his stomach bulging out above and below its bandages, and feeling everybody’s gaze tremulously and obsequiously fixed upon him he assumed an even more triumphant air. When his eyes met those of people he knew, remembering who was who, he stopped and addressed a few words to them sometimes in Russian and sometimes in French, and transfixing them with his cold glassy eye listened to what they said.

Having received all the New Year congratulations he passed on to church, where God, through His servants the priests, greeted and praised Nicholas just as worldly people did; and weary as he was of these greetings and praises Nicholas duly accepted them. All this was as it should be, because the welfare and happiness of the whole world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse the universe his assistance.

When at the end of the service the magnificently arrayed deacon, his long hair crimped and carefully combed, began the chant Many Years, which was heartily caught up by the splendid choir, Nicholas looked round and noticed Nelídova, with her fine shoulders, standing by a window, and he decided the comparison with yesterday’s girl in her favour.

After Mass he went to the Empress and spent a few minutes in the bosom of his family, joking with the children and his wife. Then passing through the Hermitage,²¹ he visited the Minister of the Court, Volkonski, and among other things ordered him to pay out of a special fund a yearly pension to the mother of yesterday’s girl. From there he went for his customary drive.

Dinner that day was served in the Pompeian Hall. Besides the younger sons of Nicholas and Michael there were also invited Baron Lieven, Count Rzhévski, Dolgorúky, the Prussian Ambassador, and the King of Prussia’s aide-de-camp.

While waiting for the appearance of the Emperor and Empress an interesting conversation took place between Baron Lieven and the Prussian Ambassador concerning the disquieting news from Poland.

‘La Pologne et le Caucase, ce sont les deux cautères de la Russie,’ said Lieven. ‘Il nous faut cent mille hommes à peu près, dans chacun de ces deux pays.”²²

The Ambassador expressed a fictitious surprise that it should be so.

‘Vous dites, la Pologne —’ began the Ambassador.

‘Oh, oui, c’était un coup de maître de Metternich de nous en avoir laissé l’embarras.…’²³

At this point the Empress, with her trembling head and fixed smile, entered followed by Nicholas.

At dinner Nicholas spoke of Hadji Murád’s surrender and said that the war in the Caucasus must now soon come to an end in consequence of the measures he was taking to limit the scope of the mountaineers by felling their forests and by his system of erecting a series of small forts.

The Ambassador, having exchanged a rapid glance with the aide-de-camp – to whom he had only that morning spoken about Nicholas’s unfortunate weakness for considering himself a great strategist – warmly praised this plan which once more demonstrated Nicholas’s great strategic ability.

After dinner Nicholas drove to the ballet where hundreds of women marched round in tights and scanty clothing. One of them specially attracted him, and he had the German ballet-master sent for and gave orders that a diamond ring should be presented to him.

The next day when Chernyshóv came with his report, Nicholas again confirmed his order to Vorontsóv – that now that Hadji Murád had surrendered, the Chechens should be more actively harassed than ever and the cordon round them tightened.

Chernyshóv wrote in that sense to Vorontsóv; and another courier, overdriving more horses and bruising the faces of more drivers, galloped to Tiflis.

XVI

IN obedience to this command of Nicholas a raid was immediately made in Chechnya that same month, January 1852.

The detachment ordered for the raid consisted of four infantry battalions, two companies of Cossacks, and eight guns. The column marched along the road; and on both sides of it in a continuous line, now mounting, now descending, marched Jägers in high boots, sheepskin coats, and tall caps, with rifles on their shoulders and cartridges in their belts.

As usual when marching through a hostile country, silence was observed as far as possible. Only occasionally the guns jingled jolting across a ditch, or an artillery horse snorted or neighed, not understanding that silence was ordered, or an angry commander shouted in a hoarse subdued voice to his subordinates that the line was spreading out too much or marching too near or too far from the column. Only once was the silence broken, when from a bramble patch between the line and the column a gazelle with a white breast and grey back jumped out followed by a buck of the same colour with small backward-curving horns. Doubling up their forelegs at each big bound they took, the beautiful timid creatures came so close to the column that some of the soldiers rushed after them laughing and shouting, intending to bayonet them, but the gazelles turned back, slipped through the line of Jâgers, and pursued by a few horsemen and the company’s dogs, fled like birds to the mountains.

It was still winter, but towards noon, when the column (which had started early in the morning) had gone three miles, the sun had risen high enough and was powerful enough to make the men quite hot, and its rays were so bright that it was painful to look at the shining steel of the bayonets or at the reflections – like little suns – on the brass of the cannons.

The clear and rapid stream the detachment had just crossed lay behind, and in front were tilled fields and meadows in shallow valleys. Farther in front were the dark mysterious forest-clad hills with crags rising beyond them, and farther still on the lofty horizon were the ever-beautiful ever-changing snowy peaks that played with the light like diamonds.

At the head of the 5th Company, Butler, a tall handsome officer who had recently exchanged from the Guards, marched along in a black coat and tall cap, shouldering his sword. He was filled with a buoyant sense of the joy of living, the danger of death, a wish for action, and the consciousness of being part of an immense whole directed by a single will. This was his second time of going into action and he thought how in a moment they would be fired at, and he would not only not stoop when the shells flew overhead, or heed the whistle of the bullets, but would carry his head even more erect than before and would look round at his comrades and the soldiers with smiling eyes, and begin to talk in a perfectly calm voice about quite other matters.

The detachment turned off the good road onto a little-used one that crossed a stubbly maize field, and they were drawing near the forest when, with an ominous whistle, a shell flew past amid the baggage wagons – they could not see whence – and tore up the ground in the field by the roadside.

‘It’s beginning,’ said Butler with a bright smile to a comrade who was walking beside him.

And so it was. After the shell a thick crowd of mounted Chechens appeared with their banners from under the shelter of the forest. In the midst of the crowd could be seen a large green banner, and an old and very far-sighted sergeant-major informed the short-sighted Butler that Shamil himself must be there. The horsemen came down the hill and appeared to the right, at the highest part of the valley nearest the detachment, and began to descend. A little general in a thick black coat and tall cap rode up to Butler’s company on his ambler, and ordered him to the right to encounter the descending horsemen. Butler quickly led his company in the direction indicated, but before he reached the valley he heard two cannon shots behind him. He looked round: two clouds of grey smoke had risen above two cannon and were spreading along the valley. The mountaineers’ horsemen – who had evidently not expected to meet artillery – retired. Butler’s company began firing at them and the whole ravine was filled with the smoke of powder. Only higher up above the ravine could the mountaineers be seen hurriedly retreating, though still firing back at the Cossacks who pursued them. The company followed the mountaineers farther, and on the slope of a second ravine came in view of an aoul.

Following the Cossacks, Butler and his company entered the aoul at a run, to find it deserted. The soldiers were ordered to burn the corn and the hay as well as the sáklyas, and the whole aoul was soon filled with pungent smoke amid which the soldiers rushed about dragging out of the sáklyas what they could find, and above all catching and shooting the fowls the mountaineers had not been able to take away with them.

The officers sat down at some distance beyond the smoke, and lunched and drank. The sergeant-major brought them some honeycombs on a board. There was no sign of any Chechens and early in the afternoon the order was given to retreat. The companies formed into a column behind the aoul and Butler happened to be in the rear-guard. As soon as they started Chechens appeared, following and firing at the detachment, but they ceased this pursuit as soon as they came out into an open space.

Not one of Butler’s company had been wounded, and he returned in a most happy and energetic mood. When after fording the same stream it had crossed in the morning, the detachment spread over the maize fields and the meadows, the singers²⁴ of each company came forward and songs filled the air.

‘Very diff’rent, very diff’rent, Jägers are, Jägers are!’ sang Butler’s singers, and his horse stepped merrily to the music. Trezórka, the shaggy grey dog belonging to the company, ran in front, with his tail curled up with an air of responsibility like a commander. Butler felt buoyant, calm, and joyful. War presented itself to him as consisting only in his exposing himself to danger and to possible death, thereby gaining rewards and the respect of his comrades here, as well as of his friends in Russia. Strange to say, his imagination never pictured the other aspect of war: the death and wounds of the soldiers, officers, and mountaineers. To retain his poetic conception he even unconsciously avoided looking at the dead and wounded. So that day when we had three dead and twelve wounded, he passed by a corpse lying on its back and did not stop to look, seeing only with one eye the strange position of the waxen hand and a dark red spot on the head. The hillsmen appeared to him only as mounted dzhigíts from whom he had to defend himself.

‘You see, my dear sir,’ said his major in an interval between two songs, ‘it’s not as it is with you in Petersburg – “Eyes right! Eyes left!” Here we have done our job, and now we go home and Máha will set a pie and some nice cabbage soup before us. That’s life – don’t you think so? – Now then! As the Dawn was Breaking!’ He called for his favourite song.

There was no wind, the air was fresh and clear and so transparent that the snow hills nearly a hundred miles away seemed quite near, and in the intervals between the songs the regular sound of the footsteps and the jingle of the guns was heard as a background on which each song began and ended. The song that was being sung in Butler’s company was composed by a cadet in honour of the regiment, and went to a dance tune. The chorus was: ‘Very diff’rent, very diff’rent, Jägers are, Jägers are!’

Butler rode beside the officer next in rank above him, Major Petróv, with whom he lived, and he felt he could not be thankful enough to have exchanged from the Guards and come to the Caucasus. His chief reason for exchanging was that he had lost all he had at cards and was afraid that if he remained there he would be unable to resist playing though he had nothing more to lose. Now all that was over, his life was quite changed and was such a pleasant and brave one! He forgot that he was ruined, and forgot his unpaid debts. The Caucasus, the war, the soldiers, the officers – those tipsy, brave, good-natured fellows – and Major Petróv himself, all seemed so delightful that sometimes it appeared too good to be true that he was not in Petersburg – in a room filled with tobacco-smoke, turning down the corners of cards²⁵ and gambling, hating the holder of the bank and feeling a dull pain in his head – but was really here in this glorious region among these brave Caucasians.

The major and the daughter of a surgeon’s orderly, formerly known as Másha, but now generally called by the more respectful name of Márya Dmítrievna, lived together as man and wife. Márya Dmítrievna was a handsome, fair-haired, very freckled, childless woman of thirty. Whatever her past may have been she was now the major’s faithful companion and looked after him like a nurse – a very necessary matter, since he often drank himself into oblivion.

When they reached the fort everything happened as the major had foreseen. Márya Dmítrievna gave him and Butler, and two other officers of the detachment who had been invited, a nourishing and tasty dinner, and the major ate and drank till he was unable to speak, and then went off to his room to sleep.

Butler, having drunk rather more chikhír wine than was good for him, went to his bedroom, tired but contented, and hardly had time to undress before he fell into a sound, dreamless, and unbroken sleep with his hand under his handsome curly head.

XVII

THE aoul which had been destroyed was that in which Hadji Murád had spent the night before he went over to the Russians. Sado and his family had left the aoul on the approach of the Russian detachment, and when he returned he found his sáklya in ruins – the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy. His son, the handsome bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at Hadji Murád, was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a búrka: he had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet. The dignified woman who had served Hadji Murád when he was at the house now stood over her son’s body, her smock torn in front, her withered old breasts exposed, her hair down, and she dug her nails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly. Sado, taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined sáklya cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary. The two stacks of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all the beehives and bees had been burnt. The wailing of the women and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not be used. The mosque was polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were cleaning it out. No one spoke of hatred of the Russians. The feeling experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings, but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them – like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves – was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

The inhabitants of the aoul were confronted by the choice of remaining there and restoring with frightful effort what had been produced with such labour and had been so lightly and senselessly destroyed, facing every moment the possibility of a repetition of what had happened; or to submit to the Russians – contrary to their religion and despite the repulsion and contempt they felt for them. The old men prayed, and unanimously decided to send envoys to Shamil asking him for help. Then they immediately set to work to restore what had been destroyed.

XVIII

ON the morning after the raid, not very early, Butler left the house by the back porch meaning to take a stroll and a breath of fresh air before breakfast, which he usually had with Petróv. The sun had already risen above the hills and it was painful to look at the brightly lit-up white walls of the houses on the right side of the street. But then as always it was cheerful and soothing to look to the left, at the dark receding and ascending forest-clad hills and at the dim line of snow peaks, which as usual pretended to be clouds. Butler looked at these mountains, inhaling deep breaths and rejoicing that he was alive, that it was just he that was alive, and that he lived in this beautiful place.

He was also rather pleased that he had behaved so well in yesterday’s affair both during the advance and especially during the retreat when things were pretty hot; he was also pleased to remember how Másha (or Márya Dmítrievna), Petróv’s mistress, had treated them at dinner on their return after the raid, and how she had been particularly nice and simple with everybody, but specially kind – as he thought – to him.

Márya Dmítrievna with her thick plait of hair, her broad shoulders, her high bosom, and the radiant smile on her kindly freckled face, involuntarily attracted Butler, who was a healthy young bachelor. It sometimes even seemed to him that she wanted him, but he considered that that would be doing his good-natured simple-hearted comrade a wrong, and he maintained a simple, respectful attitude towards her and was pleased with himself for doing so.

He was thinking of this when his meditations were disturbed by the tramp of many horses’ hoofs along the dusty road in front of him, as if several men were riding that way. He looked up and saw at the end of the street a group of horsemen coming towards him at a walk. In front of a score of Cossacks rode two men: one in a white Circassian coat with a tall turban on his head, the other an officer in the Russian service, dark, with an aquiline nose, and much silver on his uniform and weapons. The man with the turban rode a fine chestnut horse with mane and tail of a lighter shade, a small head, and beautiful eyes. The officer’s was a large, handsome Karabákh horse. Butler, a lover of horses, immediately recognized the great strength of the first horse and stopped to learn who these people were.

The officer addressed him. ‘This the house of commanding officer?’ he asked, his foreign accent and his words betraying his foreign origin.

Butler replied that it was. ‘And who is that?’ he added, coming nearer to the officer and indicating the man with the turban.

‘That Hadji Murád. He come here to stay with the commander,’ said the officer.

Butler knew about Hadji Murád and about his having come over to the Russians, but he had not at all expected to see him here in this little fort. Hadji Murád gave him a friendly look.

‘Good day, kotkildy,’ said Butler, repeating the Tartar greeting he had learnt.

‘Saubul!’ (‘Be well!’) replied Hadji Murád, nodding. He rode up to Butler and held out his hand, from two fingers of which hung his whip.

‘Are you the chief?’ he asked.

‘No, the chief is in here. I will go and call him,’ said Butler addressing the officer, and he went up the steps and pushed the door. But the door of the visitors’ entrance, as Márya Dmítrievna called it, was locked, and as it still remained closed after he had knocked, Butler went round to the back door. He called his orderly but received no reply, and finding neither of the two orderlies he went into the kitchen, where Márya Dmítrievna – flushed, with a kerchief tied round her head and her sleeves rolled up on her plump white arms – was rolling pastry, white as her hands, and cutting it into small pieces to make pies of.

‘Where have the orderlies gone to?’ asked Butler.

‘Gone to drink,’ replied Márya Dmítrievna. ‘What do you want?’

‘To have the front door opened. You have a whole horde of mountaineers in front of your house. Hadji Murád has come!’

‘Invent something else!’ said Márya Dmítrievna, smiling.

‘I am not joking, he is really waiting by the porch!’

‘Is it really true?’ said she.

‘Why should I wish to deceive you? Go and see, he’s just at the porch!’

‘Dear me, here’s a go!’ said Márya Dmítrievna pulling down her sleeves and putting up her hand to feel whether the hairpins in her thick plait were all in order. ‘Then I will go and wake Iván Matvéich.’

‘No, I’ll go myself. And you Bondarénko, go and open the door,’ said he to Petróv’s orderly who had just appeared.

‘Well, so much the better!’ said Márya Dmítrievna and returned to her work.

When he heard that Hadji Murád had come to his house, Iván Matvéich Petróv, the major, who had already heard that Hadji Murád was in Grózny, was not at all surprised. Sitting up in bed he rolled a cigarette, lit it, and began to dress, loudly clearing his throat and grumbling at the authorities who had sent ‘that devil’ to him.

When he was ready he told his orderly to bring him some medicine. The orderly knew that ‘medicine’ meant vodka, and brought some.

‘There is nothing so bad as mixing,’ muttered the major when he had drunk the vodka and taken a bite of rye bread. ‘Yesterday I drank a little chikhír and now I have a headache.… Well, I’m ready,’ he added, and went to the parlour, into which Butler had already shown Hadji Murád and the officer who accompanied him.

The officer handed the major orders from the commander of the left flank to the effect that he should receive Hadji Murád and should allow him to have intercourse with the mountaineers through spies, but was on no account to allow him to leave the fort without a convoy of Cossacks.

Having read the order the major looked intently at Hadji Murád and again scrutinized the paper. After passing his eyes several times from one to the other in this manner, he at last fixed them on Hadji Murád and said:

‘Yakshí, Bek; yakshí!’ ‘(‘Very well, sir, very well!’)’ ‘Let him stay here, and tell him I have orders not to let him out – and what is commanded is sacred! Well, Butler, where do you think we’d better lodge him? Shall we put him in the office?’

Butler had not time to answer before Márya Dmítrievna – who had come from the kitchen and was standing in the doorway – said to the major:

‘Why? Keep him here! We will give him the guest-chamber and the storeroom. Then at any rate he will be within sight,’ said she, glancing at Hadji Murád; but meeting his eyes she turned quickly away.

‘Do you know, I think Márya Dmítrievna is right,’ said Butler.

‘Now then, now then, get away! Women have no business here,’ said the major frowning.

During the whole of this discussion Hadji Murád sat with his hand on the hilt of his dagger and a faint smile of contempt on his lips. He said it was all the same to him where he lodged, and that he wanted nothing but what the Sirdar had permitted – namely, to have communication with the mountaineers, and that he therefore wished they should be allowed to come to him.

The major said this should be done, and asked Butler to entertain the visitors till something could be got for them to eat and their rooms prepared. Meantime he himself would go across to the office to write what was necessary and to give some orders.

Hadji Murád’s relations with his new acquaintances were at once very clearly defined. From the first he was repelled by and contemptuous of the major, to whom he always behaved very haughtily. Márya Dmítrievna, who prepared and served up his food, pleased him particularly. He liked her simplicity and especially the – to him – foreign type of her beauty, and he was influenced by the attraction she felt towards him and unconsciously conveyed. He tried not to look at her or speak to her, but his eyes involuntarily turned towards her and followed her movements. With Butler, from their first acquaintance, he immediately made friends and talked much and willingly with him, questioning him about his life, telling him of his own, communicating to him the news the spies brought him of his family’s condition, and even consulting him as to how he ought to act.

The news he received through the spies was not good. During the first four days of his stay in the fort they came to see him twice and both times brought bad news.

XIX

HADJI MURÁD’S family had been removed to Vedenó soon after his desertion to the Russians, and were there kept under guard awaiting Shamil’s decision. The women – his old mother Patimát and his two wives with their five little children – were kept under guard in the sáklya of the officer Ibrahim Raschid, while Hadji Murád’s son Yusúf, a youth of eighteen, was put in prison – that is, into a pit more than seven feet deep, together with seven criminals, who like himself were awaiting a decision as to their fate.

The decision was delayed because Shamil was away on a campaign against the Russians.

On January 6, 1852, he returned to Vedenó after a battle, in which according to the Russians he had been vanquished and had fled to Vedenó; but in which according to him and all the murids he had been victorious and had repulsed the Russians. In this battle he himself fired his rifle – a thing he seldom did – and drawing his sword would have charged straight at the Russians had not the murids who accompanied him held him back. Two of them were killed on the spot at his side.

It was noon when Shamil, surrounded by a party of murids who caracoled around him firing their rifles and pistols and continually singing Lya illyah il Allah! rode up to his place of residence.

All the inhabitants of the large aoul were in the street or on their roofs to meet their ruler, and as a sign of triumph they also fired off rifles and pistols. Shamil rode a white Arab steed which pulled at its bit as it approached the house. The horse had no gold or silver ornaments, its equipment was of the simplest – a delicately worked red leather bridle with a stripe down the middle, metal cup-shaped stirrups, and a red saddlecloth showing a little from under the saddle. The Imám wore a brown cloth cloak lined with black fur showing at the neck and sleeves, and was tightly girded round his long thin waist with a black strap which held a dagger. On his head he wore a tall cap with flat crown and black tassel, and round it was wound a white turban, one end of which hung down on his neck. He wore green slippers, and black leggings trimmed with plain braid.

He wore nothing bright – no gold or silver – and his tall, erect, powerful figure, clothed in garments without any ornaments, surrounded by murids with gold and silver on their clothes and weapons, produced on the people just the impression and influence he desired and knew how to produce. His pale face framed by a closely trimmed reddish beard, with his small eyes always screwed up, was as immovable as though hewn out of stone. As he rode through the aoul he felt the gaze of a thousand eyes turned eagerly on him, but he himself looked at no one.

Hadji Murád’s wives had come out into the penthouse with the rest of the inmates of the sáklya to see the Imám’s entry. Only Patimát, Hadji Murád’s old mother, did not go out but remained sitting on the floor of the sáklya with her grey hair down, her long arms encircling her thin knees, blinking with her fiery black eyes as she watched the dying embers in the fireplace. Like her son she had always hated Shamil, and now she hated him more than ever and had no wish to see him. Neither did Hadji Murád’s son see Shamil’s triumphal entry. Sitting in the dark and fetid pit he heard the firing and singing, and endured tortures such as can only be felt by the young who are full of vitality and deprived of freedom. He only saw his unfortunate, dirty, and exhausted fellow-prisoners – embittered and for the most part filled with hatred of one another. He now passionately envied those who, enjoying fresh air and light and freedom, caracoled on fiery steeds around their chief, shooting and heartily singing: Lya illyah il Allah!

When he had crossed the aoul Shamil rode into the large courtyard adjoining the inner court where his seraglio was. Two armed Lesghians met him at the open gates of this outer court, which was crowded with people. Some had come from distant parts about their own affairs, some had come with petitions, and some had been summoned by Shamil to be tried and sentenced. As the Imám rode in, they all respectfully saluted him with their hands on their breasts, some of them kneeling down and remaining on their knees while he rode across the court from the outer to the inner gates. Though he recognized among the people who waited in the court many whom he disliked, and many tedious petitioners who wanted his attention, Shamil passed them all with the same immovable, stony expression on his face, and having entered the inner court dismounted at the penthouse in front of his apartment, to the left of the gate. He was worn out, mentally rather than physically, by the strain of the campaign, for in spite of the public declaration that he had been victorious he knew very well that his campaign had been unsuccessful, that many Chechen aouls had been burnt down and ruined, and that the unstable and fickle Chechens were wavering and those nearest the border line were ready to go over to the Russians.

All this had to be dealt with, and it oppressed him, for at that moment he did not wish to think at all. He only desired one thing: rest and the delights of family life, and the caresses of his favourite wife, the black-eyed quick-footed eighteen-year-old Aminal, who at that very moment was close at hand behind the fence that divided the inner court and separated the men’s from the women’s quarters (Shamil felt sure she was there with his other wives, looking through a chink in the fence while he dismounted). But not only was it impossible for him to go to her, he could not even lie down on his feather cushions and rest from his fatigues; he had first of all to perform the midday rites for which he had just then not the least inclination, but which as the religious leader of the people he could not omit, and which moreover were as necessary to him himself as his daily food. So he performed his ablutions and said his prayers and summoned those who were waiting for him.

The first to enter was Jemal Eddin, his father-in-law and teacher, a tall grey-haired good-looking old man with a beard white as snow and a rosy red face. He said a prayer and began questioning Shamil about the incidents of the campaign and telling him what had happened in the mountains during his absence.

Among events of many kinds – murders connected with blood-feuds, cattle-stealing, people accused of disobeying the Tarikát (smoking and drinking wine) – Jemal Eddin related how Hadji Murád had sent men to bring his family over to the Russians, but that this had been detected and the family had been brought to Vedenó where they were kept under guard and awaited the Imám’s decision. In the next room, the guest-chamber, the Elders were assembled to discuss all these affairs, and Jemal Eddin advised Shamil to finish with them and let them go that same day, as they had already been waiting three days for him.

After eating his dinner – served to him in his room by Zeidát, a dark, sharp-nosed, disagreeable-looking woman whom he did not love but who was his eldest wife – Shamil passed into the guest-chamber.

The six old men who made up his council – white, grey, or red-bearded, with tall caps on their heads, some with turbans and some without, wearing new beshméts and Circassian coats girdled with straps on which their daggers were suspended – rose to greet him on his entrance. Shamil towered a head above them all. On entering the room he, as well as all the others, lifted his hands, palms upwards, closed his eyes and recited a prayer, and then stroked his face downwards with both hands, uniting them at the end of his beard. Having done this they all sat down, Shamil on a larger cushion than the others, and discussed the various cases before them.

In the case of the criminals the decisions were given according to the Shariát: two were sentenced to have a hand cut off for stealing, one man to be beheaded for murder, and three were pardoned. Then they came to the principal business: how to stop the Chechens from going over to the Russians. To counteract that tendency Jemal Eddin drew up the following proclamation:

‘I wish you eternal peace with God the Almighty!

‘I hear that the Russians flatter you and invite you to surrender to them. Do not believe what they say, and do not surrender but endure. If ye be not rewarded for it in this life ye shall receive your reward in the life to come. Remember what happened before when they took your arms from you! If God had not brought you to reason then, in 1840, ye would now be soldiers, and your wives would be dishonoured and would no longer wear trousers.

‘Judge of the future by the past. It is better to die in enmity with the Russians than to live with the Unbelievers. Endure for a little while and I will come with the Koran and the sword and will lead you against the enemy. But now I strictly command you not only to entertain no intention, but not even a thought, of submitting to the Russians!’

Shamil approved this proclamation, signed it, and had it sent out.

After this business they considered Hadji Murád’s case. This was of the utmost importance to Shamil. Although he did not wish to admit it, he knew that if Hadji Murád with his agility, boldness, and courage, had been with him, what had now happened in Chechnya would not have occurred. It would therefore be well to make it up with Hadji Murád and have the benefit of his services again. But as this was not possible it would never do to allow him to help the Russians, and therefore he must be enticed back and killed. They might accomplish this either by sending a man to Tiflis who would kill him there, or by inducing him to come back and then killing him. The only means of doing the latter was by making use of his family and especially his son, whom Shamil knew he loved passionately. Therefore they must act through the son.

When the councillors had talked all this over, Shamil closed his eyes and sat silent.

The councillors knew that this meant that he was listening to the voice of the Prophet, who spoke to him and told him what to do.

After five minutes of solemn silence Shamil opened his eyes, and narrowing them more than usual, said:

‘Bring Hadji Murád’s son to me.’

‘He is here,’ replied Jemal Eddin, and in fact Yusúf, Hadji Murád’s son, thin, pale, tattered, and evil-smelling, but still handsome in face and figure, with black eyes that burnt like his grandmother Patimát’s, was already standing by the gate of the outside court waiting to be called in.

Yusúf did not share his father’s feelings towards Shamil. He did not know all that had happened in the past, or if he knew it, not having lived through it he still did not understand why his father was so obstinately hostile to Shamil. To him who wanted only one thing – to continue living the easy, loose life that, as the naïb’s son, he had led in Khunzákh – it seemed quite unnecessary to be at enmity with Shamil. Out of defiance and a spirit of contradiction to his father he particularly admired Shamil, and shared the ecstatic adoration with which he was regarded in the mountains. With a peculiar feeling of tremulous veneration for the Imám he now entered the guest-chamber. As he stopped by the door he met the steady gaze of Shamil’s half-closed eyes. He paused for a moment, and then approached Shamil and kissed his large, long-fingered hand.

‘Thou art Hadji Murád’s son?’

‘I am, Imám.’

‘Thou knowest what he has done?’

‘I know, Imám, and deplore it.’

‘Canst thou write?’

‘I was preparing myself to be a Mullah—’

‘Then write to thy father that if he will return to me now, before the Feast of Bairam, I will forgive him and everything shall be as it was before; but if not, and if he remains with the Russians’ – and Shamil frowned sternly – ‘I will give thy grandmother, thy mother, and the rest to the different aouls, and thee I will behead!’

Not a muscle of Yusúf’s face stirred, and he bowed his head to show that he understood Shamil’s words.

‘Write that and give it to my messenger.’

Shamil ceased speaking, and looked at Yusúf for a long time in silence.

‘Write that I have had pity on thee and will not kill thee, but will put out thine eyes as I do to all traitors!… Go!’

While in Shamil’s presence Yusúf appeared calm, but when he had been led out of the guest-chamber he rushed at his attendant, snatched the man’s dagger from its sheath and tried to stab himself, but he was seized by the arms, bound, and led back to the pit.

That evening at dusk after he had finished his evening prayers, Shamil put on a white fur-lined cloak and passed out to the other side of the fence where his wives lived, and went straight to Aminal’s room, but he did not find her there. She was with the older wives. Then Shamil, trying to remain unseen, hid behind the door and stood waiting for her. But Aminal was angry with him because he had given some silk stuff to Zeidát and not to her. She saw him come out and go into her room looking for her, and she purposely kept away. She stood a long time at the door of Zeidát’s room, laughing softly at Shamil’s white figure that kept going in and out of her room.

Having waited for her in vain, Shamil returned to his own apartments when it was already time for the midnight prayers.

XX

HADJI Murád had been a week in the major’s house at the fort. Although Márya Dmítrievna quarrelled with the shaggy Khanéfi (Hadji Murád had only brought two of his murids, Khanéfi and Eldár, with him) and had turned him out of her kitchen – for which he nearly killed her – she evidently felt a particular respect and sympathy for Hadji Murád. She now no longer served him his dinner, having handed that duty over to Eldár, but she seized every opportunity of seeing him and rendering him service. She always took the liveliest interest in the negotiations about his family, knew how many wives and children he had, and their ages, and each time a spy came to see him she inquired as best she could into the results of the negotiations.

Butler during that week had become quite friendly with Hadji Murád. Sometimes the latter came to Butler’s room, sometimes Butler went to Hadji Murád’s: sometimes they conversed by the help of the interpreter, and sometimes they got on as best they could with signs and especially with smiles.

Hadji Murád had evidently taken a fancy to Butler, as could be gathered from Eldár’s relations with the latter. When Butler entered Hadji Murád’s room Eldár met him with a pleased smile showing his glittering teeth, and hurried to put down a cushion for him to sit on and to relieve him of his sword if he was wearing one.

Butler also got to know, and became friendly with, the shaggy Khanéfi, Hadji Murád’s sworn brother. Khanéfi knew many mountain songs and sang them well, and to please Butler, Hadji Murád often made Khanéfi sing, choosing the songs he considered best. Khanéfi had a high tenor voice and sang with extraordinary clearness and expression. One of the songs Hadji Murád specially liked impressed Butler by its solemnly mournful tone and he asked the interpreter to translate it.

The subject of the song was the very blood-feud that had existed between Khanéfi and Hadji Murád. It ran as follows:

‘The earth will dry on my grave,

Mother, my Mother!

And thou wilt forget me!

And over me rank grass will wave,

Father, my Father!

Nor wilt thou regret me

When tears cease thy dark eyes to lave,

Sister, dear Sister!

No more will grief fret thee!

‘But thou, my Brother the elder, wilt never forget,

With vengeance denied me!

And thou, my Brother the younger, wilt ever regret,

Till thou liest beside me!

‘Hotly thou camest, O death-bearing ball that I spurned,

For thou wast my slave!

And thou, black earth, that battle-steed trampled and churned,

Wilt cover my grave!

‘Cold art Thou, O Death, yet I was thy Lord and thy Master!

My body sinks fast to the earth, my soul to Heaven flies faster.’

Hadji Murád always listened to this song with closed eyes and when it ended on a long gradually dying note he always remarked in Russian –

‘Good song! Wise song!’

After Hadji Murád’s arrival and his intimacy with him and his murids, the poetry of the stirring mountain life took a still stronger hold on Butler. He procured for himself a beshmét and a Circassian coat and leggings, and imagined himself a mountaineer living the life those people lived.

On the day of Hadji Murád’s departure the major invited several officers to see him off. They were sitting, some at the table where Márya Dmítrievna was pouring out tea, some at another table on which stood vodka, chikhír, and light refreshments, when Hadji Murád dressed for the journey came limping into the room with soft, rapid footsteps.

They all rose and shook hands with him. The major offered him a seat on the divan, but Hadji Murád thanked him and sat down on a chair by the window.

The silence that followed his entrance did not at all abash him. He looked attentively at all the faces and fixed an indifferent gaze on the tea-table with the samovar and refreshments. Petróvsky, a lively officer who now met Hadji Murád for the first time, asked him through the interpreter whether he liked Tiflis.

‘Alya!’ he replied.

‘He says “Yes”,’ translated the interpreter.

‘What did he like there?’

Hadji Murád said something in reply.

‘He liked the theatre best of all.’

‘And how did he like the ball at the house of the commander-in-chief?’

Hadji Murád frowned. ‘Every nation has its own customs! Our women do not dress in such a way,’ said he, glancing at Márya Dmítrievna.

‘Well, didn’t he like it?’

‘We have a proverb,’ said Hadji Murád to the interpreter, ‘ “The dog gave meat to the ass and the ass gave hay to the dog, and both went hungry,” ’ and he smiled. ‘Its own customs seem good to each nation.’

The conversation went no farther. Some of the officers took tea, some other refreshments. Hadji Murád accepted the tumbler of tea offered him and put it down before him.

‘Won’t you have cream and a bun?’ asked Márya Dmítrievna, offering them to him.

Hadji Murád bowed his head.

‘Well, I suppose it is good-bye!’ said Butler, touching his knee. ‘When shall we meet again?’

‘Good-bye, good-bye!’ said Hadji Murád, in Russian, with a smile. ‘Kunák bulug. Strong kunák to thee! Time – ayda – go!’ and he jerked his head in the direction in which he had to go.

Eldár appeared in the doorway carrying something large and white across his shoulder and a sword in his hand. Hadji Murád beckoned to him and he crossed the room with big strides and handed him a white búrka and the sword. Hadji Murád rose, took the búrka, threw it over his arm, and saying something to the interpreter handed it to Márya Dmítrievna.

‘He says thou hast praised the búrka, so accept it,’ said the interpreter.

‘Oh, why?’ said Márya Dmítrievna blushing.

‘It is necessary. Like Adam,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘Well, thank you,’ said Márya Dmítrievna, taking the búrka. ‘God grant that you rescue your son,’ she added. ‘Ulan yakshi. Tell him that I wish him success in releasing his son.’

Hadji Murád glanced at Márya Dmítrievna and nodded his head approvingly. Then he took the sword from Eldár and handed it to the major. The major took it and said to the interpreter, ‘Tell him to take my chestnut gelding. I have nothing else to give him.’

Hadji Murád waved his hand in front of his face to show that he did not want anything and would not accept it. Then, pointing first to the mountains and then to his heart, he went out.

All the household followed him as far as the door, while the officers who remained inside the room drew the sword from its scabbard, examined its blade, and decided that it was a real Gurda.²⁶

Butler accompanied Hadji Murád to the porch, and then came a very unexpected incident which might have ended fatally for Hadji Murád had it not been for his quick observation, determination, and agility.

The inhabitants of the Kumúkh aoul, Tash-Kichu, which was friendly to the Russians, respected Hadji Murád greatly and had often come to the fort merely to look at the famous naïb. They had sent messengers to him three days previously to ask him to visit their mosque on the Friday. But the Kumúkh princes who lived in Tash-Kichu hated Hadji Murád because there was a blood-feud between them, and on hearing of this invitation they announced to the people that they would not allow him to enter the mosque. The people became excited and a fight occurred between them and the princes’ supporters. The Russian authorities pacified the mountaineers and sent word to Hadji Murád not to go to the mosque.

Hadji Murád did not go and everyone supposed that the matter was settled.

But at the very moment of his departure, when he came out into the porch before which the horses stood waiting, Arslán Khan, one of the Kumúkh princes and an acquaintance of Butler and the major, rode up to the house.

When he saw Hadji Murád he snatched a pistol from his belt and took aim, but before he could fire, Hadji Murád in spite of his lameness rushed down from the porch like a cat towards Arslán Khan who missed him.

Seizing Arslán Khan’s horse by the bridle with one hand, Hadji Murád drew his dagger with the other and shouted something to him in Tartar.

Butler and Eldár both ran at once towards the enemies and caught them by the arms. The major, who had heard the shot, also came out.

‘What do you mean by it, Arslán – starting such a nasty business on my premises?’ said he, when he heard what had happened. ‘It’s not right, friend! “To the foe in the field you need not yield!” – but to start this kind of slaughter in front of my house —’

Arslán Khan, a little man with black moustaches, got off his horse pale and trembling, looked angrily at Hadji Murád, and went into the house with the major. Hadji Murád, breathing heavily and smiling, returned to the horses.

‘Why did he want to kill him?’ Butler asked the interpreter.

‘He says it is a law of theirs,’ the interpreter translated Hadji Murád’s reply. ‘Arslán must avenge a relation’s blood and so he tried to kill him.’

‘And supposing he overtakes him on the road?’ asked Butler.

Hadji Murád smiled.

‘Well, if he kills me it will prove that such is Allah’s will.… Good-bye,’ he said again in Russian, taking his horse by the withers. Glancing round at everybody who had come out to see him off, his eyes rested kindly on Márya Dmítrievna.

‘Good-bye, my lass,’ said he to her. ‘I thank you.’

‘God help you – God help you to rescue your family!’ repeated Márya Dmítrievna.

He did not understand her words, but felt her sympathy for him and nodded to her.

‘Mind, don’t forget your kunák,’ said Butler.

‘Tell him I am his true friend and will never forget him,’ answered Hadji Murád to the interpreter, and in spite of his short leg he swung himself lightly and quickly into the high saddle, barely touching the stirrup, and automatically feeling for his dagger and adjusting his sword. Then, with that peculiarly proud look with which only a Caucasian hill-man sits his horse – as though he were one with it – he rode away from the major’s house. Khanéfi and Eldár also mounted and having taken a friendly leave of their hosts and of the officers, rode off at a trot, following their murshíd.

As usual after a departure, those who remained behind began to discuss those who had left.

‘Plucky fellow! He rushed at Arslán Khan like a wolf! His face quite changed!’

‘But he’ll be up to tricks – he’s a terrible rogue, I should say,’ remarked Petróvsky.

‘It’s a pity there aren’t more Russian rogues of such a kind!’ suddenly put in Márya Dmítrievna with vexation. ‘He has lived a week with us and we have seen nothing but good from him. He is courteous, wise, and just,’ she added.

‘How did you find that out?’

‘No matter, I did find it out!’

‘She’s quite smitten, and that’s a fact!’ said the major, who had just entered the room.

‘Well, and if I am smitten? What’s that to you? Why run him down if he’s a good man? Though he’s a Tartar he’s still a good man!’

‘Quite true, Márya Dmítrievna,’ said Butler, ‘and you’re quite right to take his part!’

XXI

LIFE in our advanced forts in the Chechen lines went on as usual. Since the events last narrated there had been two alarms when the companies were called out and militiamen galloped about; but both times the mountaineers who had caused the excitement got away, and once at Vozdvízhensk they killed a Cossack and succeeded in carrying off eight Cossack horses that were being watered. There had been no further raids since the one in which the aoul was destroyed, but an expedition on a large scale was expected in consequence of the appointment of a new commander of the left flank, Prince Baryátinsky. He was an old friend of the Viceroy’s and had been in command of the Kabardá Regiment. On his arrival at Grózny as commander of the whole left flank he at once mustered a detachment to continue to carry out the Tsar’s commands as communicated by Chernyshóv to Vorontsóv. The detachment mustered at Vozdvízhensk left the fort and took up a position towards Kurín, where the troops were encamped and were felling the forest. Young Vorontsóv lived in a splendid cloth tent, and his wife, Márya Vasílevna, often came to the camp and stayed the night. Baryátinsky’s relations with Márya Vasílevna were no secret to anyone, and the officers who were not in the aristocratic set and the soldiers abused her in coarse terms – for her presence in camp caused them to be told off to lie in ambush at night. The mountaineers were in the habit of bringing guns within range and firing shells at the camp. The shells generally missed their aim and therefore at ordinary times no special measures were taken to prevent such firing, but now men were placed in ambush to hinder the mountaineers from injuring or frightening Márya Vasílevna with their cannon. To have to be always lying in ambush at night to save a lady from being frightened, offended and annoyed them, and therefore the soldiers, as well as the officers not admitted to the higher society, called Márya Vasílevna bad names.

Having obtained leave of absence from his fort, Butler came to the camp to visit some old messmates from the cadet corps and fellow officers of the Kurín regiment who were serving as adjutants and orderly officers. When he first arrived he had a very good time. He put up in Poltorátsky’s tent and there met many acquaintances who gave him a hearty welcome. He also called on Vorontsóv, whom he knew slightly, having once served in the same regiment with him. Vorontsóv received him very kindly, introduced him to Prince Baryátinsky, and invited him to the farewell dinner he was giving in honour of General Kozlóvsky, who until Baryátinsky’s arrival had been in command of the left flank.

The dinner was magnificent. Special tents were erected in a line, and along the whole length of them a table was spread as for a dinner-party, with dinner-services and bottles. Everything recalled life in the Guards in Petersburg. Dinner was served at two o’clock. Kozlóvsky sat in the middle on one side, Baryátinsky on the other. At Kozlóvsky’s right and left hand sat the Vorontsóvs, husband and wife. All along the table on both sides sat the officers of the Kabardá and Kurín regiments. Butler sat next to Poltorátsky and they both chatted merrily and drank with the officers around them. When the roast was served and the orderlies had gone round and filled the champagne glasses, Poltorátsky said to Butler, with real anxiety:

‘Our Kozlóvsky will disgrace himself!’

‘Why?’

‘Why, he’ll have to make a speech, and what good is he at that?… It’s not as easy as capturing entrenchments under fire! And with a lady beside him too, and these aristocrats!’

‘Really it’s painful to look at him,’ said the officers to one another. And now the solemn moment had arrived. Baryátinsky rose and lifting his glass, addressed a short speech to Kozlóvsky. When he had finished, Kozlóvsky – who always had a trick of using the word ‘how’ superfluously – rose and stammeringly began:

‘In compliance with the august will of his Majesty I am leaving you – parting from you, gentlemen,’ said he. ‘But consider me as always remaining among you. The truth of the proverb, how “One man in the field is no warrior”, is well known to you, gentlemen.… Therefore, how every reward I have received … how all the benefits showered on me by the great generosity of our sovereign the Emperor … how all my position – how my good name … how everything decidedly … how …’ (here his voice trembled) ‘… how I am indebted to you for it, to you alone, my friends!’ The wrinkled face puckered up still more, he gave a sob and tears came into his eyes. ‘How from my heart I offer you my sincerest, heartfelt gratitude!’

Kozlóvsky could not go on but turned round and began to embrace the officers. The princess hid her face in her handkerchief. The prince blinked, with his mouth drawn awry. Many of the officers’ eyes grew moist and Butler, who had hardly known Kozlóvsky, could also not restrain his tears. He liked all this very much.

Then followed other toasts. Healths were drunk to Baryátinsky, Vorontsóv, the officers, and the soldiers, and the visitors left the table intoxicated with wine and with the military elation to which they were always so prone. The weather was wonderful, sunny and calm, and the air fresh and bracing. Bonfires crackled and songs resounded on all sides. It might have been thought that everybody was celebrating some joyful event. Butler went to Poltorátsky’s in the happiest, most emotional mood. Several officers had gathered there and a card-table was set. An adjutant started a bank with a hundred rubles. Two or three times Butler left the tent with his hand gripping the purse in his trousers-pocket, but at last he could resist the temptation no longer, and despite the promise he had given to his brother and to himself not to play, he began to do so. Before an hour was past, very red, perspiring, and soiled with chalk, he was sitting with both elbows on the table and writing on it – under cards bent for ‘corners’ and ‘transports’²⁷ – the figures of his stakes. He had already lost so much that he was afraid to count up what was scored against him. But he knew without counting that all the pay he could draw in advance, added to the value of his horse, would not suffice to pay what the adjutant, a stranger to him, had written down against him. He would still have gone on playing, but the adjutant sternly laid down the cards he held in his large clean hands and added up the chalked figures of the score of Butler’s losses. Butler, in confusion, began to make excuses for being unable to pay the whole of his debt at once, and said he would send it from home. When he said this he noticed that everybody pitied him and that they all – even Poltorátsky – avoided meeting his eye. That was his last evening there. He reflected that he need only have refrained from playing and gone to the Vorontsóvs who had invited him, and all would have been well, but now it was not only not well – it was terrible.

Having taken leave of his comrades and acquaintances he rode home and went to bed, and slept for eighteen hours as people usually sleep after losing heavily. From the fact that he asked her to lend him fifty kopeks to tip the Cossack who had escorted him, and from his sorrowful looks and short answers, Márya Dmítrievna guessed that he had lost at cards and she reproached the major for having given him leave of absence.

When he woke up at noon next day and remembered the situation he was in he longed again to plunge into the oblivion from which he had just emerged, but it was impossible. Steps had to be taken to repay the four hundred and seventy rubles he owed to the stranger. The first step he took was to write to his brother, confessing his sin and imploring him, for the last time, to lend him five hundred rubles on the security of the mill they still owned in common. Then he wrote to a stingy relative asking her to lend him five hundred rubles at whatever rate of interest she liked. Finally he went to the major, knowing that he – or rather Márya Dmítrievna – had some money, and asked him to lend him five hundred rubles.

‘I’d let you have them at once,’ said the major, ‘but Másha won’t! These women are so close-fisted – who the devil can understand them?… And yet you must get out of it somehow, devil take him!… Hasn’t that brute the canteen-keeper got something?’

But it was no use trying to borrow from the canteen-keeper, so Butler’s salvation could only come from his brother or his stingy relative.

XXII

NOT having attained his aim in Chechnya, Hadji Murád returned to Tiflis and went every day to Vorontsóv’s, and whenever he could obtain audience he implored the Viceroy to gather together the mountaineer prisoners and exchange them for his family. He said that unless that were done his hands were tied and he could not serve the Russians and destroy Shamil as he desired to do. Vorontsóv vaguely promised to do what he could, but put it off, saying that he would decide when General Argutínski reached Tiflis and he could talk the matter over with him.

Then Hadji Murád asked Vorontsóv to allow him to go to live for a while in Nukhá, a small town in Transcaucasia where he thought he could better carry on negotiations about his family with Shamil and with the people who were attached to himself. Moreover Nukhá, being a Mohammedan town, had a mosque where he could more conveniently perform the rites of prayer demanded by the Mohammedan law. Vorontsóv wrote to Petersburg about it but meanwhile gave Hadji Murád permission to go to Nukhá.

For Vorontsóv and the authorities in Petersburg, as well as for most Russians acquainted with Hadji Murád’s history, the whole episode presented itself as a lucky turn in the Caucasian war, or simply as an interesting event. For Hadji Murád it was a terrible crisis in his life – especially latterly. He had escaped from the mountains partly to save himself and partly out of hatred of Shamil, and difficult as this flight had been he had attained his object, and for a time was glad of his success and really devised a plan to attack Shamil, but the rescue of his family – which he had thought would be easy to arrange – had proved more difficult than he expected.

Shamil had seized the family and kept them prisoners, threatening to hand the women over to the different aouls and to blind or kill the son. Now Hadji Murád had gone to Nukhá intending to try by the aid of his adherents in Daghestan to rescue his family from Shamil by force or by cunning. The last spy who had come to see him in Nukhá informed him that the Avars, who were devoted to him, were preparing to capture his family and themselves bring them over to the Russians, but that there were not enough of them and they could not risk making the attempt in Vedenó, where the family was at present imprisoned, but could do so only if the family were moved from Vedenó to some other place – in which case they promised to rescue them on the way.

Hadji Murád sent word to his friends that he would give three thousand rubles for the liberation of his family.

At Nukhá a small house of five rooms was assigned to Hadji Murád near the mosque and the Khan’s palace. The officers in charge of him, his interpreter, and his henchmen, stayed in the same house. Hadji Murád’s life was spent in the expectation and reception of messengers from the mountains and in rides he was allowed to take in the neighbourhood.

On 24th April, returning from one of these rides, Hadji Murád learnt that during his absence an official sent by Vorontsóv had arrived from Tiflis. In spite of his longing to know what message the official had brought him he went to his bedroom and repeated his noonday prayer before going into the room where the officer in charge and the official were waiting. This room served him both as drawing- and reception-room. The official who had come from Tiflis, Councillor Kiríllov, informed Hadji Murád of Vorontsóv’s wish that he should come to Tiflis on the 12th to meet General Argutínski.

‘Yakshi!’ said Hadji Murád angrily. The councillor did not please him. ‘Have you brought money?’

‘I have,’ answered Kiríllov.

‘For two weeks now,’ said Hadji Murád, holding up first both hands and then four fingers. ‘Give here!’

‘We’ll give it you at once,’ said the official, getting his purse out of his travelling-bag. ‘What does he want with the money?’ he went on in Russian, thinking that Hadji Murád would not understand. But Hadji Murád had understood, and glanced angrily at him. While getting out the money the councillor, wishing to begin a conversation with Hadji Murád in order to have something to tell Prince Vorontsóv on his return, asked through the interpreter whether he was not feeling dull there. Hadji Murád glanced contemptuously out of the corner of his eye at the fat, unarmed little man dressed as a civilian, and did not reply. The interpreter repeated the question.

‘Tell him that I cannot talk with him! Let him give me the money!’ and having said this, Hadji Murád sat down at the table ready to count it.

Hadji Murád had an allowance of five gold pieces a day, and when Kiríllov had got out the money and arranged it in seven piles of ten gold pieces each and pushed them towards Hadji Murád, the latter poured the gold into the sleeve of his Circassian coat, rose, quite unexpectedly smacked Councillor Kiríllov on his bald pate, and turned to go.

The councillor jumped up and ordered the interpreter to tell Hadji Murád that he must not dare to behave like that to him who held a rank equal to that of colonel! The officer in charge confirmed this, but Hadji Murád only nodded to signify that he knew, and left the room.

‘What is one to do with him?’ said the officer in charge. ‘He’ll stick his dagger into you, that’s all! One cannot talk with those devils! I see that he is getting exasperated.’

As soon as it began to grow dusk two spies with hoods covering their faces up to their eyes, came to him from the hills. The officer in charge led them to Hadji Murád’s room. One of them was a fleshy, swarthy Tavlinian, the other a thin old man. The news they brought was not cheering. Hadji Murád’s friends who had undertaken to rescue his family now definitely refused to do so, being afraid of Shamil, who threatened to punish with most terrible tortures anyone who helped Hadji Murád. Having heard the messengers he sat with his elbows on his crossed legs, and bowing his turbaned head remained silent a long time.

He was thinking and thinking resolutely. He knew that he was now considering the matter for the last time and that it was necessary to come to a decision. At last he raised his head, gave each of the messengers a gold piece, and said: ‘Go!’

‘What answer will there be?’

‘The answer will be as God pleases.… Go!’

The messengers rose and went away, and Hadji Murád continued to sit on the carpet leaning his elbows on his knees. He sat thus a long time and pondered.

‘What am I to do? To take Shamil at his word and return to him?’ he thought. ‘He is a fox and will deceive me. Even if he did not deceive me it would still be impossible to submit to that red liar. It is impossible … because now that I have been with the Russians he will not trust me,’ thought Hadji Murád; and he remembered a Tavlinian fable about a falcon who had been caught and lived among men and afterwards returned to his own kind in the hills. He returned, wearing jesses with bells, and the other falcons would not receive him. ‘Fly back to where they hung those silver bells on thee!’ said they. ‘We have no bells and no jesses.’ The falcon did not want to leave his home and remained, but the other falcons did not wish to let him stay there and pecked him to death.

‘And they would peck me to death in the same way,’ thought Hadji Murád. ‘Shall I remain here and conquer Caucasia for the Russian Tsar and earn renown, titles, riches?’

‘That could be done,’ thought he, recalling his interviews with Vorontsóv and the flattering things the prince had said; ‘but I must decide at once, or Shamil will destroy my family.’

That night he remained awake, thinking.

XXIII

BY midnight his decision had been formed. He had decided that he must fly to the mountains, and break into Vedenó with the Avars still devoted to him, and either die or rescue his family. Whether after rescuing them he would return to the Russians or escape to Khunzákh and fight Shamil, he had not made up his mind. All he knew was that first of all he must escape from the Russians into the mountains, and he at once began to carry out his plan.

He drew his black wadded beshmét from under his pillow and went into his henchmen’s room. They lived on the other side of the hall. As soon as he entered the hall, the outer door of which stood open, he was at once enveloped by the dewy freshness of the moonlit night and his ears were filled by the whistling and trilling of several nightingales in the garden by the house.

Having crossed the hall he opened the door of his henchmen’s room. There was no light there, but the moon in its first quarter shone in at the window. A table and two chairs were standing on one side of the room, and four of his henchmen were lying on carpets or on búrkas on the floor. Khanéfi slept outside with the horses. Gamzálo heard the door creak, rose, turned round, and saw him. On recognizing him he lay down again, but Eldár, who lay beside him, jumped up and began putting on his beshmét, expecting his master’s orders. Khan Mahomá and Bata slept on. Hadji Murád put down the beshmét he had brought on the table, which it hit with a dull sound, caused by the gold sewn up in it.

‘Sew these in too,’ said Hadji Murád, handing Eldár the gold pieces he had received that day. Eldár took them and at once went into the moonlight, drew a small knife from under his dagger and started unstitching the lining of the beshmét. Gamzálo raised himself and sat up with his legs crossed.

‘And you, Gamzálo, tell the men to examine the rifles and pistols and get the ammunition ready. To-morrow we shall go far,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘We have bullets and powder, everything shall be ready,’ replied Gamzálo, and roared out something incomprehensible. He understood why Hadji Murád had ordered the rifles to be loaded. From the first he had desired only one thing – to slay and stab as many Russians as possible and to escape to the hills – and this desire had increased day by day. Now at last he saw that Hadji Murád also wanted this and he was satisfied.

When Hadji Murád went away Gamzálo roused his comrades, and all four spent the rest of the night examining their rifles, pistols, flints, and accoutrements; replacing what was damaged, sprinkling fresh powder onto the pans, and stoppering with bullets wrapped in oiled rags packets filled with the right amount of powder for each charge, sharpening their swords and daggers and greasing the blades with tallow.

Before daybreak Hadji Murád again came out into the hall to get water for his ablutions. The songs of the nightingales that had burst into ecstasy at dawn were now even louder and more incessant, while from his henchmen’s room, where the daggers were being sharpened, came the regular screech and rasp of iron against stone.

Hadji Murád got himself some water from a tub, and was already at his own door when above the sound of the grinding he heard from his murids’ room the high tones of Khanéfi’s voice singing a familiar song. He stopped to listen. The song told of how a dzhigít, Hamzád, with his brave followers captured a herd of white horses from the Russians, and how a Russian prince followed him beyond the Térek and surrounded him with an army as large as a forest; and then the song went on to tell how Hamzád killed the horses, entrenched his men behind this gory bulwark, and fought the Russians as long as they had bullets in their rifles, daggers in their belts, and blood in their veins. But before he died Hamzád saw some birds flying in the sky and cried to them:

‘Fly on, ye winged ones, fly to our homes!

Tell ye our mothers, tell ye our sisters,

Tell the white maidens, that fighting we died

For Ghazavát! Tell them our bodies

Never will lie and rest in a tomb!

Wolves will devour and tear them to pieces,

Ravens and vultures will pluck out our eyes.’

With that the song ended, and at the last words, sung to a mournful air, the merry Bata’s vigorous voice joined in with a loud shout of ‘Lya-il-lyakha-il Allakh!’ finishing with a shrill shriek. Then all was quiet again, except for the tchuk, tchuk, tchuk, tchuk and whistling of the nightingales from the garden and from behind the door the even grinding, and now and then the whiz, of iron sliding quickly along the whetstone.

Hadji Murád was so full of thought that he did not notice how he tilted his jug till the water began to pour out. He shook his head at himself and re-entered his room. After performing his morning ablutions he examined his weapons and sat down on his bed. There was nothing more for him to do. To be allowed to ride out he would have to get permission from the officer in charge, but it was not yet daylight and the officer was still asleep.

Khanéfi’s song reminded him of the song his mother had composed just after he was born – the song addressed to his father that Hadji Murád had repeated to Lóris-Mélikov.

And he seemed to see his mother before him – not wrinkled and grey-haired, with gaps between her teeth, as he had lately left her, but young and handsome, and strong enough to carry him in a basket on her back across the mountains to her father’s when he was a heavy five-year-old boy.

And the recollection of himself as a little child reminded him of his beloved son, Yusúf, whose head he himself had shaved for the first time; and now this Yusúf was a handsome young dzhigít. He pictured him as he was when last he saw him on the day he left Tselméss. Yusúf brought him his horse and asked to be allowed to accompany him. He was ready dressed and armed, and led his own horse by the bridle, and his rosy handsome young face and the whole of his tall slender figure (he was taller than his father) breathed of daring, youth, and the joy of life. The breadth of his shoulders, though he was so young, the very wide youthful hips, the long slender waist, the strength of his long arms, and the power, flexibility, and agility of all his movements had always rejoiced Hadji Murád, who admired his son.

‘Thou hadst better stay. Thou wilt be alone at home now. Take care of thy mother and thy grandmother,’ said Hadji Murád. And he remembered the spirited and proud look and the flush of pleasure with which Yusúf had replied that as long as he lived no one should injure his mother or grandmother. All the same, Yusúf had mounted and accompanied his father as far as the stream. There he turned back, and since then Hadji Murád had not seen his wife, his mother, or his son. And it was this son whose eyes Shamil threatened to put out! Of what would be done to his wife Hadji Murád did not wish to think.

These thoughts so excited him that he could not sit still any longer. He jumped up and went limping quickly to the door, opened it, and called Eldár. The sun had not yet risen, but it was already quite light. The nightingales were still singing.

‘Go and tell the officer that I want to go out riding, and saddle the horses,’ said he.

XXIV

BUTLER’S only consolation all this time was the poetry of warfare, to which he gave himself up not only during his hours of service but also in private life. Dressed in his Circassian costume, he rode and swaggered about, and twice went into ambush with Bogdanóvich, though neither time did they discover or kill anyone. This closeness to and friendship with Bogdanóvich, famed for his courage, seemed pleasant and warlike to Butler. He had paid his debt, having borrowed the money off a Jew at an enormous rate of interest – that is to say, he had postponed his difficulties but had not solved them. He tried not to think of his position, and to find oblivion not only in the poetry of warfare but also in wine. He drank more and more every day, and day by day grew morally weaker. He was now no longer the chaste Joseph he had been towards Márya Dmítrievna, but on the contrary began courting her grossly, meeting to his surprise with a strong and decided repulse which put him to shame.

At the end of April there arrived at the fort a detachment with which Baryátinsky intended to effect an advance right through Chechnya, which had till then been considered impassable. In that detachment were two companies of the Kabardá regiment, and according to Caucasian custom these were treated as guests by the Kurín companies. The soldiers were lodged in the barracks, and were treated not only to supper, consisting of buckwheat-porridge and beef, but also to vodka. The officers shared the quarters of the Kurín officers, and as usual those in residence gave the new-comers a dinner at which the regimental singers performed and which ended up with a drinking-bout. Major Petróv, very drunk and no longer red but ashy pale, sat astride a chair and, drawing his sword, hacked at imaginary foes, alternately swearing and laughing, now embracing someone and now dancing to the tune of his favourite song.

‘Shamil, he began to riot

In the days gone by;

Try, ry, rataty,

In the years gone by!’

Butler was there too. He tried to see the poetry of warfare in this also, but in the depth of his soul he was sorry for the major. To stop him, however, was quite impossible; and Butler, feeling that the fumes were mounting to his own head, quietly left the room and went home.

The moon lit up the white houses and the stones on the road. It was so light that every pebble, every straw, every little heap of dust was visible. As he approached the house he met Márya Dmítrievna with a shawl over her head and neck. After the rebuff she had given him Butler had avoided her, feeling rather ashamed, but now in the moonlight and after the wine he had drunk he was pleased to meet her and wished to make up to her again.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked.

‘Why, to see after my old man,’ she answered pleasantly. Her rejection of Butler’s advances was quite sincere and decided, but she did not like his avoiding her as he had done lately.

‘Why bother about him? He’ll soon come back.’

‘But will he?’

‘If he doesn’t they’ll bring him.’

‘Just so.… That’s not right, you know!… But you think I’d better not go?’

‘Yes, I do. We’d better go home.’

Márya Dmítrievna turned back and walked beside him. The moon shone so brightly that a halo seemed to move along the road round the shadows of their heads. Butler was looking at this halo and making up his mind to tell her that he liked her as much as ever, but he did not know how to begin. She waited for him to speak, and they walked on in silence almost to the house, when some horsemen appeared from round the corner. These were an officer with an escort.

‘Who’s that coming now?’ said Márya Dmítrievna, stepping aside. The moon was behind the rider so that she did not recognize him until he had almost come up to them. It was Peter Nikoláevich Kámenev, an officer who had formerly served with the major and whom Márya Dmítrievna therefore knew.

‘Is that you, Peter Nikoláevich?’ said she, addressing him.

‘It’s me,’ said Kámenev. ‘Ah, Butler, how d’you do?… Not asleep yet? Having a walk with Márya Dmítrievna! You’d better look out or the major will give it you.… Where is he?’

‘Why, there.… Listen!’ replied Márya Dmítrievna pointing in the direction whence came the sounds of a tulumbas²⁸ and songs. ‘They’re on the spree.’

‘Why? Are your people having a spree on their own?’

‘No; some officers have come from Hasav-Yurt, and they are being entertained.’

‘Ah, that’s good! I shall be in time.… I just want the major for a moment.’

‘On business?’ asked Butler.

‘Yes, just a little business matter.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘It all depends.… Good for us but bad for some people,’ and Kámenev laughed.

By this time they had reached the major’s house.

‘Chikhirév,’ shouted Kámenev to one of his Cossacks, ‘come here!’

A Don Cossack rode up from among the others. He was dressed in the ordinary Don Cossack uniform with high boots and a mantle, and carried saddle-bags behind.

‘Well, take the thing out,’ said Kámenev, dismounting.

The Cossack also dismounted, and took a sack out of his saddle-bag. Kámenev took the sack from him and inserted his hand.

‘Well, shall I show you a novelty? You won’t be frightened, Márya Dmítrievna?’

‘Why should I be frightened?’ she replied.

‘Here it is!’ said Kámenev taking out a man’s head and holding it up in the light of the moon. ‘Do you recognize it?’

It was a shaven head with salient brows, black short-cut beard and moustaches, one eye open and the other half-closed. The shaven skull was cleft, but not right through, and there was congealed blood in the nose. The neck was wrapped in a blood-stained towel. Notwithstanding the many wounds on the head, the blue lips still bore a kindly childlike expression.

Márya Dmítrievna looked at it, and without a word turned away and went quickly into the house.

Butler could not tear his eyes from the terrible head. It was the head of that very Hadji Murád with whom he had so recently spent his evenings in such friendly intercourse.

‘What does this mean? Who has killed him?’ he asked.

‘He wanted to give us the slip, but was caught,’ said Kámenev, and he gave the head back to the Cossack and went into the house with Butler.

‘He died like a hero,’ he added.

‘But however did it all happen?’

‘Just wait a bit. When the major comes I’ll tell you all about it. That’s what I am sent for. I take it round to all the forts and aouls and show it.’

The major was sent for, and came back accompanied by two other officers as drunk as himself, and began embracing Kámenev.

‘And I have brought you Hadji Murád’s head,’ said Kámenev.

‘No?… Killed?’

‘Yes; wanted to escape.’

‘I always said he would bamboozle them!… And where is it? The head, I mean.… Let’s see it.’

The Cossack was called, and brought in the bag with the head. It was taken out and the major looked long at it with drunken eyes.

‘All the same, he was a fine fellow,’ said he. ‘Let me kiss him!’

‘Yes, it’s true. It was a valiant head,’ said one of the officers.

When they had all looked at it, it was returned to the Cossack who put it in his bag, trying to let it bump against the floor as gently as possible.

‘I say, Kámenev, what speech do you make when you show the head?’ asked an officer.

‘No!… Let me kiss him. He gave me a sword!’ shouted the major.

Butler went out into the porch.

Márya Dmítrievna was sitting on the second step. She looked round at Butler and at once turned angrily away again.

‘What’s the matter, Márya Dmítrievna?’ asked he.

‘You’re all cut-throats!… I hate it! You’re cut-throats, really,’ and she got up.

‘It might happen to anyone,’ remarked Butler, not knowing what to say. ‘That’s war.’

‘War? War, indeed!… Cut-throats and nothing else. A dead body should be given back to the earth, and they’re grinning at it there!… Cut-throats, really,’ she repeated, as she descended the steps and entered the house by the back door.

Butler returned to the room and asked Kámenev to tell them in detail how the thing had happened.

And Kámenev told them.

This is what had happened.

XXV

HADJI MURÁD was allowed to go out riding in the neighbourhood of the town, but never without a convoy of Cossacks. There was only half a troop of them altogether in Nukhá, ten of whom were employed by the officers, so that if ten were sent out with Hadji Murád (according to the orders received) the same men would have had to go every other day. Therefore after ten had been sent out the first day, it was decided to send only five in future and Hadji Murád was asked not to take all his henchmen with him. But on April the 25th he rode out with all five. When he mounted, the commander, noticing that all five henchmen were going with him, told him that he was forbidden to take them all, but Hadji Murád pretended not to hear, touched his horse, and the commander did not insist.

With the Cossacks rode a non-commissioned officer, Nazárov, who had received the Cross of St George for bravery. He was a young, healthy, brown-haired lad, as fresh as a rose. He was the eldest of a poor family belonging to the sect of Old Believers, had grown up without a father, and had maintained his old mother, three sisters, and two brothers.

‘Mind, Nazárov, keep close to him!’ shouted the commander.

‘All right, your honour!’ answered Nazárov, and rising in his stirrups and adjusting the rifle that hung at his back he started his fine large roan gelding at a trot. Four Cossacks followed him: Ferapóntov, tall and thin, a regular thief and plunderer (it was he who had sold gunpowder to Gamzálo); Ignátov, a sturdy peasant who boasted of his strength, though he was no longer young and had nearly completed his service; Míshkin, a weakly lad at whom everybody laughed; and the young fair-haired Petrakóv, his mother’s only son, always amiable and jolly.

The morning had been misty, but it cleared up later on and the opening foliage, the young virgin grass, the sprouting corn, and the ripples of the rapid river just visible to the left of the road, all glittered in the sunshine.

Hadji Murád rode slowly along followed by the Cossacks and by his henchmen. They rode out along the road beyond the fort at a walk. They met women carrying baskets on their heads, soldiers driving carts, and creaking wagons drawn by buffaloes. When he had gone about a mile and a half Hadji Murád touched up his white Kabardá horse, which started at an amble that obliged the henchmen and Cossacks to ride at a quick trot to keep up with him.

‘Ah, he’s got a fine horse under him,’ said Ferapóntov. ‘If only he were still an enemy I’d soon bring him down.’

‘Yes, mate. Three hundred rubles were offered for that horse in Tiflis.’

‘But I can get ahead of him on mine,’ said Nazárov.

‘You get ahead? A likely thing!’

Hadji Murád kept increasing his pace.

‘Hey, kunák, you mustn’t do that. Steady!’ cried Nazárov, starting to overtake Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád looked round, said nothing, and continued to ride at the same pace.

‘Mind, they’re up to something, the devils!’ said Ignátov. ‘See how they are tearing along.’

So they rode for the best part of a mile in the direction of the mountains.

‘I tell you it won’t do!’ shouted Nazárov.

Hadji Murád did not answer or look round, but only increased his pace to a gallop.

‘Humbug! You won’t get away!’ shouted Nazárov, stung to the quick. He gave his big roan gelding a cut with his whip and, rising in his stirrups and bending forward, flew full speed in pursuit of Hadji Murád.

The sky was so bright, the air so clear, and life played so joyously in Nazárov’s soul as, becoming one with his fine strong horse, he flew along the smooth road behind Hadji Murád, that the possibility of anything sad or dreadful happening never occurred to him. He rejoiced that with every step he was gaining on Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád judged by the approaching tramp of the big horse behind him that he would soon be overtaken, and seizing his pistol with his right hand, with his left he began slightly to rein in his Kabardá horse which was excited by hearing the tramp of hoofs behind it.

‘You mustn’t, I tell you!’ shouted Nazárov, almost level with Hadji Murád and stretching out his hand to seize the latter’s bridle. But before he reached it a shot was fired. ‘What are you doing?’ he screamed, clutching at his breast. ‘At them, lads!’ and he reeled and fell forward on his saddle-bow.

But the mountaineers were beforehand in taking to their weapons, and fired their pistols at the Cossacks and hewed at them with their swords.

Nazárov hung on the neck of his horse, which careered round his comrades. The horse under Ignátov fell, crushing his leg, and two of the mountaineers, without dismounting, drew their swords and hacked at his head and arms. Petrakóv was about to rush to his comrade’s rescue when two shots – one in his back and the other in his side – stung him, and he fell from his horse like a sack.

Míshkin turned round and galloped off towards the fortress. Khanéfi and Bata rushed after him, but he was already too far away and they could not catch him. When they saw that they could not overtake him they returned to the others.

Petrakóv lay on his back, his stomach ripped open, his young face turned to the sky, and while dying he gasped for breath like a fish.

Gamzálo having finished off Ignátov with his sword, gave a cut to Nazárov too and threw him from his horse. Bata took their cartridge-pouches from the slain. Khanéfi wished to take Nazárov’s horse, but Hadji Murád called out to him to leave it, and dashed forward along the road. His murids galloped after him, driving away Nazárov’s horse that tried to follow them. They were already among rice-fields more than six miles from Nukhá when a shot was fired from the tower of that place to give the alarm.

* * *

‘O good Lord! O God! my God! What have they done?’ cried the commander of the fort seizing his head with his hands when he heard of Hadji Murád’s escape. ‘They’ve done for me! They’ve let him escape, the villains!’ cried he, listening to Míshkin’s account.

An alarm was raised everywhere and not only the Cossacks of the place were sent after the fugitives but also all the militia that could be mustered from the pro-Russian aouls. A thousand rubles reward was offered for the capture of Hadji Murád alive or dead, and two hours after he and his followers had escaped from the Cossacks more than two hundred mounted men were following the officer in charge at a gallop to find and capture the runaways.

After riding some miles along the high road Hadji Murád checked his panting horse, which, wet with sweat, had turned from white to grey.

To the right of the road could be seen the sáklyas and minarets of the aoul Benerdzhík, on the left lay some fields, and beyond them the river. Although the way to the mountains lay to the right, Hadji Murád turned to the left, in the opposite direction, assuming that his pursuers would be sure to go to the right, while he, abandoning the road, would cross the Alazán and come out onto the high road on the other side where no one would expect him – ride along it to the forest, and then after recrossing the river make his way to the mountains.

Having come to this conclusion he turned to the left; but it proved impossible to reach the river. The rice-field which had to be crossed had just been flooded, as is always done in spring, and had become a bog in which the horses’ legs sank above their pasterns. Hadji Murád and his henchmen turned now to the left, now to the right, hoping to find drier ground; but the field they were in had been equally flooded all over and was now saturated with water. The horses drew their feet out of the sticky mud into which they sank, with a pop like that of a cork drawn from a bottle, and stopped, panting, after every few steps. They struggled in this way so long that it began to grow dusk and they had still not reached the river. To their left lay a patch of higher ground overgrown with shrubs and Hadji Murád decided to ride in among these clumps and remain there till night to rest their exhausted horses and let them graze. The men themselves ate some bread and cheese they had brought with them. At last night came on and the moon that had been shining at first, hid behind the hill and it became dark. There were a great many nightingales in that neighbourhood and there were two of them in these shrubs. As long as Hadji Murád and his men were making a noise among the bushes the nightingales had been silent, but when they became still the birds again began to call to one another and to sing.

Hadji Murád, awake to all the sounds of night, listened to them involuntarily, and their trills reminded him of the song about Hamzád which he had heard the night before when he went to get water. He might now at any moment find himself in the position in which Hamzád had been. He fancied that it would be so, and suddenly his soul became serious. He spread out his búrka and performed his ablutions, and scarcely had he finished before a sound was heard approaching their shelter. It was the sound of many horses’ feet plashing through the bog.

The keen-sighted Bata ran out to one edge of the clump, and peering through the darkness saw black shadows, which were men on foot and on horseback. Khanéfi discerned a similar crowd on the other side. It was Kargánov, the military commander of the district, with his militia.

‘Well, then, we shall fight like Hamzád,’ thought Hadji Murád.

When the alarm was given, Kargánov with a troop of militiamen and Cossacks had rushed off in pursuit of Hadji Murád, but had been unable to find any trace of him. He had already lost hope and was returning home when, towards evening, he met an old man and asked him if he had seen any horsemen about. The old man replied that he had. He had seen six horsemen floundering in the rice-field, and then had seen them enter the clump where he himself was getting wood. Kargánov turned back, taking the old man with him, and seeing the hobbled horses he made sure that Hadji Murád was there. In the night he surrounded the clump and waited till morning to take Hadji Murád alive or dead.

Having understood that he was surrounded, and having discovered an old ditch among the shrubs, Hadji Murád decided to entrench himself in it and to resist as long as strength and ammunition lasted. He told his comrades this, and ordered them to throw up a bank in front of the ditch, and his henchmen at once set to work to cut down branches, dig up the earth with their daggers, and make an entrenchment. Hadji Murád himself worked with them.

As soon as it began to grow light the commander of the militia troop rode up to the clump and shouted:

‘Hey! Hadji Murád, surrender! We are many and you are few!’

In reply came the report of a rifle, a cloudlet of smoke rose from the ditch and a bullet hit the militiaman’s horse, which staggered under him and began to fall. The rifles of the militiamen who stood at the outskirt of the clump of shrubs began cracking in their turn, and their bullets whistled and hummed, cutting off leaves and twigs and striking the embankment, but not the men entrenched behind it. Only Gamzálo’s horse, that had strayed from the others, was hit in the head by a bullet. It did not fall, but breaking its hobbles and rushing among the bushes it ran to the other horses, pressing close to them and watering the young grass with its blood. Hadji Murád and his men fired only when any of the militiamen came forward, and rarely missed their aim. Three militiamen were wounded, and the others, far from making up their minds to rush the entrenchment, retreated farther and farther back, only firing from a distance and at random.

So it continued for more than an hour. The sun had risen to about half the height of the trees, and Hadji Murád was already thinking of leaping on his horse and trying to make his way to the river, when the shouts were heard of many men who had just arrived. These were Hadji Aga of Mekhtulí with his followers. There were about two hundred of them. Hadji Aga had once been Hadji Murád’s kunák and had lived with him in the mountains, but he had afterwards gone over to the Russians. With him was Akhmet Khan, the son of Hadji Murád’s old enemy.

Like Kargánov, Hadji Aga began by calling to Hadji Murád to surrender, and Hadji Murád answered as before with a shot.

‘Swords out, my men!’ cried Hadji Aga, drawing his own; and a hundred voices were raised by men who rushed shrieking in among the shrubs.

The militiamen ran in among the shrubs, but from behind the entrenchment came the crack of one shot after another. Some three men fell, and the attackers stopped at the outskirts of the clump and also began firing. As they fired they gradually approached the entrenchment, running across from behind one shrub to another. Some succeeded in getting across, others fell under the bullets of Hadji Murád or of his men. Hadji Murád fired without missing; Gamzálo too rarely wasted a shot, and shrieked with joy every time he saw that his bullet had hit its aim. Khan Mahomá sat at the edge of the ditch singing ‘Il lyakha il Allakh!’ and fired leisurely, but often missed. Eldár’s whole body trembled with impatience to rush dagger in hand at the enemy, and he fired often and at random, constantly looking round at Hadji Murád and stretching out beyond the entrenchment. The shaggy Khanéfi, with his sleeves rolled up, did the duty of a servant even here. He loaded the guns which Hadji Murád and Khan Mahomá passed to him, carefully driving home with a ramrod the bullets wrapped in greasy rags, and pouring dry powder out of the powder-flask onto the pans. Bata did not remain in the ditch as the others did, but kept running to the horses, driving them away to a safer place and, shrieking incessantly, fired without using a prop for his gun. He was the first to be wounded. A bullet entered his neck and he sat down spitting blood and swearing. Then Hadji Murád was wounded, the bullet piercing his shoulder. He tore some cotton wool from the lining of his beshmét, plugged the wound with it, and went on firing.

‘Let us fly at them with our swords!’ said Eldár for the third time, and he looked out from behind the bank of earth ready to rush at the enemy; but at that instant a bullet struck him and he reeled and fell backwards onto Hadji Murád’s leg. Hadji Murád glanced at him. His eyes, beautiful like those of a ram, gazed intently and seriously at Hadji Murád. His mouth, the upper lip pouting like a child’s, twitched without opening. Hadji Murád drew his leg away from under him and continued firing.

Khanéfi bent over the dead Eldár and began taking the unused ammunition out of the cartridge-cases of his coat.

Khan Mahomá meanwhile continued to sing, loading leisurely and firing. The enemy ran from shrub to shrub, hallooing and shrieking and drawing ever nearer and nearer.

Another bullet hit Hadji Murád in the left side. He lay down in the ditch and again pulled some cotton wool out of his beshmét and plugged the wound. This wound in the side was fatal and he felt that he was dying. Memories and pictures succeeded one another with extraordinary rapidity in his imagination. Now he saw the powerful Abu Nutsal Khan, dagger in hand and holding up his severed cheek he rushed at his foe; then he saw the weak, bloodless old Vorontsóv with his cunning white face, and heard his soft voice; then he saw his son Yusúf, his wife Sofiát, and then the pale, red-bearded face of his enemy Shamil with its half-closed eyes. All these images passed through his mind without evoking any feeling within him – neither pity nor anger nor any kind of desire: everything seemed so insignificant in comparison with what was beginning, or had already begun, within him.

Yet his strong body continued the thing that he had commenced. Gathering together his last strength he rose from behind the bank, fired his pistol at a man who was just running towards him, and hit him. The man fell. Then Hadji Murád got quite out of the ditch, and limping heavily went dagger in hand straight at the foe.

Some shots cracked and he reeled and fell. Several militiamen with triumphant shrieks rushed towards the fallen body. But the body that seemed to be dead suddenly moved. First the uncovered, bleeding, shaven head rose; then the body with hands holding to the trunk of a tree. He seemed so terrible, that those who were running towards him stopped short. But suddenly a shudder passed through him, he staggered away from the tree and fell on his face, stretched out at full length like a thistle that had been mown down, and he moved no more.

He did not move, but still he felt.

When Hadji Aga, who was the first to reach him, struck him on the head with a large dagger, it seemed to Hadji Murád that someone was striking him with a hammer and he could not understand who was doing it or why. That was his last consciousness of any connexion with his body. He felt nothing more and his enemies kicked and hacked at what had no longer anything in common with him.

Hadji Aga placed his foot on the back of the corpse and with two blows cut off the head, and carefully – not to soil his shoes with blood – rolled it away with his foot. Crimson blood spurted from the arteries of the neck, and black blood flowed from the head, soaking the grass.

Kargánov and Hadji Aga and Akhmet Khan and all the militiamen gathered together – like sportsmen round a slaughtered animal – near the bodies of Hadji Murád and his men (Khanéfi, Khan Mahomá, and Gamzálo they bound), and amid the powder-smoke which hung over the bushes they triumphed in their victory.

The nightingales, that had hushed their songs while the firing lasted, now started their trills once more: first one quite close, then others in the distance.

* * *

It was of this death that I was reminded by the crushed thistle in the midst of the ploughed field.

¹ About £1, for at that time the ruble was worth about three shillings.

² ‘Well now! You’re going to tell me what it is.’

‘But, my dear.…

‘Don’t “my dear” me! It was an emissary, wasn’t it?’

‘Supposing it was, still I must not tell you.’

‘You must not? Well then, I will tell you!’

‘You?’

³ ‘It is a thing of value.’

⁴ ‘We must find an opportunity to make him a present.’

⁵ ‘This is the opportunity! Give him the watch.’

⁶ ‘You would do much better to remain at home … this is my business, and not yours.’

‘You cannot prevent my going to see the general’s wife!’

⁷ A popular expression, meaning that the sender of the message is already dead.

⁸ A town thirty miles south-west of Smolensk, at which, in November 1812, the rear-guard of Napoleon’s army was defeated during the retreat from Moscow. It is mentioned in War and Peace.

⁹ ‘Excellent, my dear!’

¹⁰ ‘Simon has had good luck.’

¹¹ ‘How horrible!’

¹² ‘War is war.’

¹³ ‘All this is thanks to you!’

¹⁴ ‘He has had some unpleasantness with the commandant of the place. Simon was in the wrong.’

¹⁵ Count Michael Tariélovich Lóris-Mélikov, who afterwards became Minister of the Interior and framed the Liberal ukase which was signed by Alexander II the day that he was assassinated.

¹⁶ The military conspirators who tried to secure a Constitution for Russia in 1825, on the accession of Nicholas I.

¹⁷ ‘His Majesty has just returned.’

¹⁸ ‘There’s someone there!’

¹⁹ Widow of Nicholas’s brother Michael: a clever, well-educated woman, interested in science, art, and public affairs.

²⁰ The Uniates acknowledge the Pope of Rome, though in other respects they are in accord with the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church.

²¹ A celebrated museum and picture gallery in St Petersburg, adjoining the Winter Palace.

²² ‘Poland and the Caucasus are Russia’s two sores. We need about 100,000 men in each of those two countries.’

²³ ‘You say that Poland —’ ‘Oh yes, it was a masterstroke of Metternich’s to leave us the bother of it.…’

²⁴ Each regiment had a choir of singers.

²⁵ A way of doubling one’s stake at the game of shtos.

²⁶ A highly prized quality of blade.

²⁷ These expressions relate to the game of shtos and have been explained in Two Hussars.

²⁸ Tulumbas, a sort of kettledrum.