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It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for
four days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles
in an hour and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov
reached Litashevka after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at
a cottage on whose wattle fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF,
and throwing down his reins, he entered a dark passage.
"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!"
said he to someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark
passage.
"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is
the third night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly
in a whisper. "You should wake the captain first."
"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov,"
said Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found
by feeling in the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
"Your honor, your honor! A courier."
"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.
"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is
at Forminsk," said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark
who was speaking but guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.
The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for
something. "He is very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."
"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My
orders are to give it at once to the general on duty."
"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal,
where do you always hide it?" said the voice of the man who
was stretching himself, to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin,
Konovnitsyn's adjutant.) "I've found it, I've found it!"
he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling
for something on the candlestick.
"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's
youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man
who was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.
When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder
burned up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow
candle, from the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had
been gnawing it were running away, and looked at the messenger.
Bolkhovitinov was bespattered all over with mud and had smeared
his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking
the envelope.
"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners,
Cossacks, and the scouts all say the same thing."
"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him,"
said Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap
who lay covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said
he. (Konovnitsyn did not stir.) "To the General Staff!"
he said with a smile, knowing that those words would be sure to
arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression
remote from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and
his face assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.
"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately
but without hurry, blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke
the seal and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he
lowered his legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor
and began putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap,
combed his hair over his temples, and donned his cap.
"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."
Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was
of great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not
consider or ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That
did not interest him. He regarded the whole business of the war
not with his intelligence or his reason but by something else.
There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would
be well, but that one must not trust to this and still less speak
about it, but must only attend to one's own work. And he did his
work, giving his whole strength to the task.
Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have
been included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called
heroes of 1812- the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and
Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being
a man of very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov
he never made plans of battle but was always found where the situation
was most difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he
had always slept with his door open, giving orders that every
messenger should be allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always
under fire, so that Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to
send him to the front, and like Dokhturov he was one of those
unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute
the most essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn
frowned- partly from an increased pain in his head and partly
at the unpleasant thought that occurred to him, of how all that
nest of influential men on the staff would be stirred up by this
news, especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at
daggers drawn with Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions,
quarrel, issue orders, and rescind them. And this premonition
was disagreeable to him though he knew it could not be helped.
And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,
immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his
quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded
him that they must go to see his Highness.
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