The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Katavassov very favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakably impressed by the knowledge of the officer and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant, and saying nothing about himself. When Katavassov asked him what had impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly:
`Oh, well, everyone's going. The Servians want help, too. I'm sorry for them.'
`Yes, you artillerymen are especially scarce there,' said Katavassov.
`Oh, I wasn't long in the artillery; maybe they'll put me into the infantry or the cavalry.'
`Into the infantry, when they need artillery more than anything?'
said Katavassov, fancying from the artilleryman's apparent age that he must have reached a fairly high grade.
`I wasn't long in the artillery; I'm a junker, in reserve,' he said, and he began to explain how he had failed in his examination.
All of this together made a disagreeable impression on Katavassov, and when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink, Katavassov would have liked to compare his unfavorable impression in conversation with someone.
There was an old man in the carriage, wearing a military overcoat, who had been listening all the while to Katavassov's conversation with the volunteers. When they were left alone, Katavassov addressed him.
`What different positions they come from, all those fellows who are going off there,' Katavassov said vaguely, not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man's views.
The old man was an officer who had served in two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and, judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer.
But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Katavassov without committing himself.
`Well, men are wanted there,' he said, laughing with his eyes.
And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest news, all along the line. And so they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.
Katavassov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergei Ivanovich his observations of the volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows.
At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collection boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 8, Chapter 04[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 4 While the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergei Ivanovich did not go to the refreshment room, but walked up and down the platform.
The first time he passed Vronsky's compartment he noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time he saw the old Countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev.
`I'm going, you see - taking him as far as Kursk,' she said.
`Yes, so I heard,' said Sergei Ivanovich, standing at her window and peeping in. `What a noble act on his part!' he added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment.
`Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?'
`What a terrible thing it was!' said Sergei Ivanovich.
`Ah, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah, what I have been through!' she repeated, when Sergei Ivanovich had got in and sat down beside her. `You can't conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him. And not for one minute could we leave him alone. We took away everything he could have used against himself. We lived on the ground floor, but there was no reckoning on anything.
You know, of course, that he had shot himself once already on her account,'
she said, and the old lady's brows contracted at the recollection. `Yes, hers was the fitting end for such a woman. Even the death she chose was low and vulgar.'
`It's not for us to judge, Countess,' said Sergei Ivanovich sighing;`but I can understand that it has been very hard for you.'
`Ah, don't speak of it! I was staying on my estate, and he was with me. A note was brought him. He wrote an answer and sent it off. We hadn't an idea that she was close by at the station. In the evening I had only just gone to my room, when my Mary told me a lady had thrown herself under the train. Something seemed to strike me at once. I knew it was she.
The first thing I said was that he was not to be told. But they'd told him already. His coachman was there and saw it all. When I ran into his room, he was beside himself - it was frightful to see him. He didn't say a word, but galloped off there. I don't know to this day what happened there, but he was brought back at death's door. I shouldn't have known him. Prostration complète , the doctor said. And that was followed almost by madness. Oh, why talk of it!' said the Countess with a wave of her hand. `It was an awful time! No, say what you will, she was a bad woman. Why, what is the meaning of such desperate passions? It was all to show herself something out of the ordinary. Well, and that she did do. She brought herself to ruin and two good men - her husband, and my unhappy son.'
`And what did her husband do?' asked Sergei Ivanovich.