Nesvitsky’s imposing figure, accompanied by his Cossack, and the determination of Denisov, waving his sword and shouting desperately, produced so much effect that they stopped the infantry and got to the other end of the bridge. Nesvitsky found at the entry the colonel, tc whom he had to deliver the command, and having executed his com-: mission he rode back.
Having cleared the way for him, Denisov stopped at the entrance o:
W A R A N D P E A C E 127
the bridge. Carelessly holding in his horse, who neighed to get to his companions, and stamped with its foot, he looked at the squadron moving towards him. The clang of the hoofs on the boards of the bridge sounded as though several horses were galloping, and the squadron, with the officers in front, drew out four men abreast across the bridge and began emerging on the other side.
The infantry soldiers, who had been forced to stop, crowding in the trampled mud of the bridge, looked at the clean, smart hussars, passing them in good order, with that special feeling of aloofness and irony with which different branches of the service usually meet.
‘They’re a smart lot! They ought to be on the Podnovinsky!’
‘They’re a great deal of use! ThejPre only for show!’ said another.
‘Infantry, don’t you kick up a dust!’ jested a hussar, whose horse, prancing, sent a spurt of mud on an infantry soldier.
‘I should like to see you after two long marches with the knapsack on your shoulder. Your frogs would be a bit shabby,’ said the foot-soldier, rubbing the mud off his face with his sleeve; ‘perched up there you’re more like a bird than a man!’
‘Wouldn’t you like to be popped on a horse, Zikin; you'd make an elegant rider,’ jested a corporal at a thin soldier, bowed down by the weight of his knapsack.
‘Put a stick between your legs and you'd have a horse to suit you,' responded the hussar.
VIII
The rest of the infantry pressed together into a funnel shape at the entrance of the bridge, and hastily marched across it. At last all the baggage-waggons had passed over; the crush was less, and the last battalion were stepping on to the bridge. Only the hussars of Denisov’s 1 squadron were left on the further side of the river facing the enemy. The enemy, visible in the distance from the opposite mountain, could not yet be seen from the bridge below, as, from the valley, through which the river flowed, the horizon was bounded by rising ground not more than half a mile away. In front lay a waste plain dotted here and there ;with handfuls of our scouting Cossacks. Suddenly on the road, where it ran up the rising ground opposite, troops came into sight wearing blue tunics and accompanied by artillery. They were the French. A scouting party of Cossacks trotted away down the hillside. Though the officers and the men of Denisov’s squadron tried to talk of other things, and to look in other directions, they all thought continually of nothing else out what was there on the hillside, and kept constantly glancing towards :he dark patches they saw coming into sight on the sky-line, and recognised as the enemy’s forces. The weather had cleared again after midday, and the sun shone brilliantly as it began to go down over the panube and the dark mountains that encircle it. The air was still, and
12 8 VV A R A N D P E A C E
from the hillside there floated across from time to time the sound of bugles and of the shouts of the enemy. Between the squadron and the enemy there was no one now but a few scouting parties. An empty- plain, about six hundred yards across, separated them from the hostile troops. The enemy had ceased firing, and that made even more keenly felt the stern menace of that inaccessible, unassailable borderland that -was the dividing-line between the two hostile armies.
‘One step across that line, that suggests the line dividing the living from the dead, and unknown sufferings and death. And what is there? and who is there? there, beyond that field and that tree and the roofs with the sunlight on them? No one knows, and one longs to know and dreads crossing that line, and longs to cross it, and one knows that sooner or later one will have to cross it and find out what there is on the other side of the line, just as one must inevitably find out what is on the other side of death. Yet one is strong and well and cheerful and nervously excited, and surrounded by men as strong in the same irritable excitement.’ That is how every man, even if he does not think, feels in the sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a peculiar brilliance and delightful keenness to one’s impressions of all that takes place at such moments.
