|
Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre
got back with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the
corner of the Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place
from which he had set out to look for the child, so crowded was
it now with people and goods that had been dragged out of the
houses. Besides Russian families who had taken refuge here from
the fire with their belongings, there were several French soldiers
in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried
to find the family of that civil servant in order to restore the
daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre felt
that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the
heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than
ever the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had
come on him when he ran to save the child. She had now become
quiet and, clinging with her little hands to Pierre's coat, sat
on his arm gazing about her like some little wild animal. He glanced
at her occasionally with a slight smile. He fancied he saw something
pathetically innocent in that frightened, sickly little face.
He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had
left them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning
the various faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian
or Armenian family consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental
type, wearing a new, cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots,
an old woman of similar type, and a young woman. That very young
woman seemed to Pierre the perfection of Oriental beauty, with
her sharply outlined, arched, black eyebrows and the extraordinarily
soft, bright color of her long, beautiful, expressionless face.
Amid the scattered property and the crowd on the open space, she,
in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl on her head,
suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She
was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old woman, and
looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large, almond-shaped
eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware of her
beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre and,
hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at
her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding those
he sought, he stopped and looked about him.
With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous
than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered
about him.
"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the
gentry yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked
him.
Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black
coat who had been sitting there with her other children, and he
asked whether anyone knew where she had gone.
"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon,
addressing a pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy!" he added in his customary bass.
"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left
in the morning. That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"
"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady,"
remarked a house serf.
"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth,"
said Pierre.
"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden
when these wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing
to the French soldiers.
"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.
"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept
on lamenting and crying," continued the woman. "It's
she. Here, this way!"
But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some
seconds been intently watching what was going on a few steps away.
He was looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers
who had gone up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was
wearing a blue coat tied round the waist with a rope. He had a
nightcap on his head and his feet were bare. The other, whose
appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered,
fair-haired man, slow in his movements and with an idiotic expression
of face. He wore a woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers,
and large torn Hessian boots. The little barefooted Frenchman
in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and, saying something,
immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old man at
once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands
in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and silent.
"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily
and hurriedly to the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give
her back to them, give her back!" he almost shouted, putting
the child, who began screaming, on the ground, and again looking
at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.
The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman
had secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against
the other. The old man was saying something in a voice broken
by sobs, but Pierre caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention
was directed to the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile,
swaying slowly from side to side, had drawn nearer to the young
woman and taking his hands from his pockets had seized her by
the neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same
attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see
or feel what the soldier was doing to her.
While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him
from the Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already
tearing from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing,
and the young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely
in a furious voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders
and throwing him aside.
The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing
down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward
Pierre.
"Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried.
*"Look here, no nonsense!"
Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered
nothing and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted
Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked
him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval
were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted
patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans
came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.
Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only
remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling
that his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers
stood around him and were searching him.
"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words
Pierre understood.
"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the
barefooted soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All
right, you can tell all about it at the court-martial." Then
he turned to Pierre. "Do you speak French?"
Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply.
His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something
in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves
on both sides of Pierre.
"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again,
keeping at a distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."
A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the
ranks, and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once
knew him to be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.
"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter,
after a searching look at Pierre.
"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked
the officer. "And ask him who he is," he added.
"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian.
"You must answer the chief."
"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take
me!" Pierre suddenly replied in French.
"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well
then, march!"
A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre
stood the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when
the patrol started she moved forward.
"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said
she. "And the little girl, the little girl, what am I to
do with her if she's not theirs?" said the woman.
"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.
Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the
sight of the little girl he had saved.
"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is
bringing me my daughter whom I have just saved from the flames,"
said he. "Good-by!" And without knowing how this aimless
lie had escaped him, he went along with resolute and triumphant
steps between the French soldiers.
The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,
and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the
general opinion which had that day originated among the higher
French officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching
through a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian
suspects: a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant,
and a house serf, besides several looters. But of all these various
suspected characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious
of all. When they had all been brought for the night to a large
house on the Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse,
Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.
|
