War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [647]
“And where is that?”
“Over there in Yechkino,” said the Cossack officer, pointing to a distant manor house.
“How can it be, beyond the line?”
“They sent two of our regiments to the line. There’s such carousing going on there now, it’s awful! Two bands, three choruses of singers.”
The officer rode beyond the line to Yechkino. From a distance, as he approached the house, he could already hear the merry, concerted sounds of a soldiers’ dancing song.
“Intheme-e-eadows…intheme-e-eadows!…” he heard, with whistling and a torban,3 occasionally overwhelmed by the shouting of voices. The officer felt cheered by these sounds, but at the same time afraid of being blamed for taking so long to convey the important order he had been entrusted with. It was already past eight o’clock. He dismounted and went up the porch and into the front hall of a big, intact landowner’s mansion that stood between the Russians and the French. In the pantry and the front hall, servants bustled about with wines and food. The singers stood by the windows. The officer was led through the door, and he suddenly saw the most important generals of the army all together, among them the large, conspicuous figure of Ermolov. The generals were all standing in a semicircle, their tunics unbuttoned, their faces red and animated, laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a handsome, short, red-faced general was briskly and deftly dancing the trepak.
“Ha, ha, ha! Go to it, Nikolai Ivanovich! Ha, ha, ha!”
The officer felt that, coming in just then with an important order, he was doubly to blame, and he wanted to wait; but one of the generals saw him and, learning why he had come, told Ermolov. Ermolov, with a frowning face, came over to the officer and, having heard him out, took the paper from him without saying anything.
“You think he left by chance?” a comrade from the staff said that evening to the officer of the horse guards about Ermolov. “It’s a trick, it was all on purpose. To undercut Konovnitsyn.4 You’ll see what a hash there’ll be tomorrow!”
V
Early the next morning, the decrepit old Kutuzov got up, said his prayers, dressed, and, with the unpleasant awareness that he had to lead a battle of which he did not approve, got into a caleche and drove out of Letashevka, three miles behind Tarutino, to the place where the attacking columns were to assemble. Kutuzov rode along, falling asleep and waking up and trying to hear if there was gunfire to the right, if the action had begun. But everything was still quiet. A damp and overcast autumnal day was beginning to dawn. Approaching Tarutino, Kutuzov noticed some cavalrymen, who were taking their horses to water across the road on which his caleche was driving. Kutuzov looked at them closely, stopped the caleche, and asked what regiment they were from. The cavalrymen were from a column that should have been waiting in ambush far ahead. “An error, maybe,” the old commander in chief thought. But, having driven further, Kutuzov saw infantry regiments, their muskets stacked, the soldiers in their underdrawers, eating kasha and toting firewood. An officer was sent for. The officer reported that there had been no order to advance.
“How’s that, no or…” Kutuzov began, but fell silent at once and ordered the senior officer to be sent to him. Getting out of the caleche, his head lowered and breathing hard, he paced up and down, waiting silently. When Eichen, the summoned officer of the general staff, appeared, Kutuzov turned purple, not because this officer was guilty of an error, but because he was