by Dinah Dean
She stirred and wriggled even closer to him, her arm tightening round his waist in a little hug. Then she woke properly and started up, her eyes wide with shock.
'There was a thunderstorm,' Orlov said in his most matter-of-fact tone. 'By the time it passed, you were asleep and I fell asleep too.' As he spoke, he withdrew his arm, removed himself neatly to his own side of the tent and rolled himself in his remaining blanket. 'It's all right,' he assured her. 'Nothing happened.'
She was silent for a few minutes, and then said in a choking voice, 'Whatever must you think of me----'
'I think you were very frightened. What else could I do? Turn over and go to sleep again, leaving you to die of fright? Forget about it.'
She lay down and was quiet and Orlov listened to the rain for a while, then said conversationally, 'It looks as if we're in for a wet day. Be careful not to touch the tent when you get up or the wet will come through.' She murmured something, then there was a long, awkward silence.
Orlov huddled under his blanket, watching the rain through the door of the tent and thinking about her. He had a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach as if something momentous were happening to him, something of very great importance but he wasn't sure what it was. How could he convince her that he didn't think badly of her?
He knew very well that it wasn't because she had been afraid that she sounded so ashamed—it was because she had clung to him, going to sleep in his arms and she was afraid he would think----He said, in a voice which sounded to him quite unlike his own, very gentle and sincere, 'If you really want to know what I think of you—I admire and respect you more than any other woman I've ever known.'
She gave a gasp. After that, there didn't seem anything else he could say so he closed his eyes and dropped into a doze until it was time to get up.
When Josef arrived, he suggested that his master should be shaved and dressed under an awning which had been put up between a couple of nearby trees. Orlov went out, clutching his clothes and accoutrements and then turned back to advise the Countess to wear his cloak. She thanked him gravely and he stood for a moment, awkwardly bent over, his greatcoat and other things dragging on his good arm and cold rivulets running down his bare back, looking anxiously at her. After a moment, she smiled and said 'You'll get wet'. He returned the smile and ran off through the pouring rain to the improvised shelter.
The orderlies produced some more boxes as the ground was too wet to sit on and presently Kolniev and Kusminsky joined Orlov. They sat in a row, gloomily contemplating the rain.
'Looks as if it could go on forever,' observed Kolniev. 'Better than yesterday's heat,' Orlov replied.
'We'll have to find shelter,' Kusminsky said. 'We're not a normal army on the march, we're a moving hospital. If these men get soaked, there'll be fever and inflammation of the lungs to add to our troubles. Most of them haven't adequate clothing and the awnings won't keep them dry. I suggest that alter breakfast one of you goes over to the big house there to Bee if we can lay up in it or its barns until the weather improves.'
They both agreed and rose to their feet as the Countess arrived. She was wearing Orlov's voluminous black cloak which was so long on her that it touched the ground and she had to hold it bunched up a little. Orlov stood smiling down at her and said, 'It goes round you twice,' pulling the edge over and round her to demonstrate and took her plait of hair, winding it round her white throat. Kusminsky observed the look on his face, caught Kolniev's eye, and winked.
'Bad storm last night,' he said. 'Did it worry you very much, Countess?'
She blushed and looked acutely embarrassed. Orlov cut in quickly, 'She was scared half to death, so don't remind her of it!' and the subject was not mentioned again.
The cooks had done wonders in getting their fire to burn well and Orlov ran across to their kitchen area, under another awning, to praise them for their good sense in keeping their stock of firewood covered in anticipation of the rain. They assured him that they always covered it as heavy dew was almost as bad as rain.
Breakfast was a good sustaining meal of hot 'sergeant' with the last of the ham and plenty of coffee. 'How much of this did you acquire?' Orlov asked.
'Two large sacks, and the Governor's coffee-mill,' Kolniev replied without even looking guilty. He had his large bony hands wrapped tightly round his tin cup and had turned the collar of his greatcoat up around his ears—it was quite cold this morning after the heat of the past few days.
The Countess sat silently on a box, the big cloak swathed round her, and Orlov thought she looked small, frail and cold. He dragged his own box nearer to hers, sat down, wishing he had a spare arm to put round her. In any case, he told himself, what right had he to assume that she would welcome the familiarity? Just because she had clung to him a couple of times when she was afraid or unhappy, it didn't necessarily mean that she wanted him pawing her about, particularly in public.
He wondered how many of the men had seen him kiss her the afternoon before and what had they thought. Come to think of it, what would most of them expect went on in their tent at night? Did she realize that they probably all thought that she was his mistress?
He sat brooding over his coffee with a black scowl on his face, wondering if she knew. Probably not—she was surely pretty ignorant about men. What would she feel if she found out? He worried about this but realized that it was no use hoping that she would remain unenlightened—sooner or later, someone would say something. Perhaps they had already. Maybe that was why she seemed very unhappy sometimes.
Kolniev's voice penetrated his thoughts and he looked up to find the other three looking at him curiously. Obviously, Kolniev had spoken to him before and not received an answer.
'I'm sorry—what did you say?' he asked.
'I said, will you ride over to the house with me?' Kolniev repeated. 'We can go by way of the village and see if we can find shelter or food.'
Orlov agreed and called Josef to bring horses. The two men mounted and rode off down the road towards the village. The rain was falling straight down, blotting out the distance and reducing the landscape to a flat, grey monotone. It drummed on Orlov's helmet, running round his chinstrap and dripping from the peak in front of his eyes, but the curved back steered the drops there outside his collar. He was luckier than Kolniev, whose shako directed a steady stream down the back of his neck and made him curse at intervals.
'No sign of life,' Kolniev commented as they neared the village. 'Wonder why it hasn't been burned.'
'I shouldn't think the Cossacks have been here yet,' Orlov replied. 'It's a long way from the Moscow road and a long way from Smolensk. It's more likely that the owner has gone to one of his other estates further from the war area and taken all the serfs with him.'
'Poor souls! They'll have a hard winter.' Kolniev looked across the fields. 'All their crops are still standing.'
'They'd have lost them anyway if the French pass this way and a great deal more besides. At least going will have saved their lives and their womenfolk.'
'To starve next winter?' Kolniev sounded bitter.
'If the owner cared enough to take them away, perhaps he'll care enough to feed them,' Orlov reasoned.
Kolniev's shrug appeared to indicate that he had little faith in the philanthropy of landlords.
When they reached the village, it became clear that it had been evacuated in an orderly way. Nothing movable was left at all, apart from the stacks of firewood. Most of the houses had been left with their doors unbarred, perhaps in the hope that the enemy would not be too destructive if they didn't have to smash anything to gain access. After a few minutes of looking through doors into empty huts and bare sheds and barns, the two officers rode on towards the house, which was quite hidden in the trees.
It was approached by a gravel drive, which left the road just inside the forest about a mile beyond the village, passing between two tall stone pillars crowned with heraldic griffins or dragons, with a large pair of ornate and rusty gates which di
d not appear to have been closed for many years. The drive was well-raked and weeded, however, and the bushes and trees were clipped back on either side beyond a wide margin of grass which looked as if it had been cut at least within the last fortnight.
The two riders followed the curve of the drive for half-a-mile, until it opened out into a forecourt bordered by flowerbeds before a fairly large house, well-built in the style of the middle of the previous century, with a colonnade along part of the front. Orlov dismounted and tied his horse to a convenient stone balustrade, climbed the half-dozen steps to the large double front door and knocked on it with the hilt of his sword. There was no reply and no sign of life.
Kolniev tied his horse alongside Orlov's and joined him in the porch as the Major twisted the large doorknob and pushed. The door swung open and they went in. The inner door was also unlocked and beyond was a large, marble-floored entrance hall with a fine staircase on the left leading up to a gallery running round the hall at first-floor level.
To the right, a plaster-decorated archway framed a room with a painted ceiling, lit by large windows, with a conservatory visible beyond it. Straight ahead, a passage led through another arch to a swing door, which would probably give access to the domestic regions. There was no furniture, and marks on the walls showed where pictures had hung. Even the curtains and portieres had been removed.
Kolniev, with admirable single-mindedness, made for the swing-door and disappeared in search of the store-rooms. Orlov took off his wet greatcoat and hung it on a statue of a Nubian maiden which decorated the newel post of the staircase. Then he strolled into the salon, looking about him at the marks which showed that the room had been hung with pictures and well-filled with furniture.
The conservatory was still filled with plants and a small trickle of water ran from a wall fountain in a tiny mossy grotto. There was some well-made wooden furniture and a big marble sarcophagus. It would probably be a pleasant place to sit in normal circumstances, but many of the plants were drooping or dead, and the continual sound of the rain on the glass panels and the grey light gave it a dismal aspect. Orlov felt glad to close the door on it and return to the entrance hall.
Kolniev came back soon after and said cheerfully that the store-rooms were full of food. 'They don't seem to have taken much with them,' he said. 'There's a barn at the back. I'll go and have a quick look in it before we go back for the others.' He strode off energetically and Orlov climbed the stairs, listening to the silence of the house.
The first-floor rooms were quite impressive in size and decoration but rather old-fashioned. Here too, the furnishings had gone, but upper floors were a mixture, some rooms stripped bare, others containing a few items of shabby furniture which had clearly not been considered worth removing.
One room rather caught Orlov's fancy and he returned to it when he had completed his brief tour, merely glancing into each of the other rooms in turn. It was a charming room, with deep pink silk-covered walls and garlands of white-painted plaster flowers. It had a pretty fireplace with an ornately carved frame of pinkish marble putti and flowers and looked as if it had been fairly recently redecorated. He imagined it furnished with dainty white or gilt furniture, perhaps with flowered chintz hangings, and white muslin bed-curtains—a charming setting for a young bride.
He crossed to the centre of the three windows and stood looking out at the rain and the black, wet forest beyond the garden. It was a formal garden, with steps and seats and statues between the flowerbeds, a high clipped hedge shutting it off from the dark wilderness beyond and the barns and orchard to one side. Immediately below, he could see a small terrace set with little trees in tubs and he was amused to see that they were clipped into the shapes of chess pieces.
He drummed his fingers on the windowsill and his hand brushed against a small white porcelain box, about four inches square, decorated with a spray of painted roses. It must have been overlooked when everything else was taken from the room. Curious, he lifted the lid and found that it was full of hairpins—there must have been twenty or thirty of them. With a smile which would have surprised some of his friends by its tenderness, he scooped them up and stowed them carefully away in the leather wallet on his cross-belt.
Below the window, he saw Kolniev cross from the barn to the terrace, hurrying through the rain with his sword swinging under his long coat like a grotesque tail. There was a jaunty spring in his step and as Orlov went downstairs to meet him, he felt his own spirits rising a little.
'The barn's full of oats and hay!' Kolniev bellowed as he entered the house, obviously thinking that Orlov was still upstairs somewhere. 'Oh, sorry! I didn't know you'd come down.' He stood dripping a large puddle on the marble floor, his red face beaming with delight. 'There's enough food to last a whole regiment all the way to anywhere. Do you think we'd be justified in taking some? Enough for our needs, not all of it.'
'Certainly,' replied Orlov. 'I'll leave receipts pinned up somewhere prominent so if the French and the Cossacks don't burn the place and the owner returns, he'll be able to collect payment. I should think we might as well have everyone in the house as we'll only be here a short time. The cooks can use the kitchens and we can light fires in some of the rooms. That's a good stack of firewood by the barn, isn't it?'
'Enough for a whole winter, I should think. Are you coming back to camp, or will you wait here?'
'I'll come back,' Orlov decided. 'I quite like riding in the rain when there's the prospect of a dry house and a good fire at the end of it. It's a pleasant change after the last few days!' He struggled into his heavy greatcoat, which had dripped itself free of some of its load of water, and they went out to get the horses, mounting them under the colonnade to avoid getting the saddles wet.
The rain was still pouring down in a steady, unrelenting-torrent which made a continuous, monotonous background of sound. Orlov's hands were cold and he wondered what had become of the gloves which were part of his uniform. He had no recollection of seeing them since before he was wounded, so presumably he had lost them then. He rubbed his left hand with his right and took a surreptitious look at his nails, remembering the warning Kusminsky had given him what seemed like half a lifetime ago. They were perfectly normal in colour but in need of paring and cleaning and he felt a little disgusted with them—he was rather fastidious about such matters.
'Nice house?' asked Kolniev conversationally.
'Not bad,' Orlov replied. 'Needs modernising and redecorating but it’s quite a comfortable little place.'
Kolniev, who thought it a large house, wondered what Orlov's home must be like if this one seemed small to him.
When they emerged from the forest and started across the belt of agricultural land around the village, Orlov looked around to see if there was any sign of improvement in the weather, but the sky was uniformly heavy and the rain poured down, flattening the green crops in the fields and reducing visibility to a bare half-mile.
The horses trotted along easily, manes and forelocks flopping wetly with their movement, and Kolniev thrust a large and rather grubby handkerchief down the back of his neck where the high collar of his uniform was rubbing his wet neck sore. 'Glad we're not travelling in this,' he said. 'God!—what a wonderful thought! We're going to spend a night in a real house, With four walls and a roof!'
'Don't you care for living in a tent?' Orlov enquired, smiling.
'It's damned draughty and the ground always has hard bits sticking out where my bones come—and Kusminsky snores half the night, or else wakes me up to complain that I'm snoring. You're damned lucky you don't have to share with him. I wouldn't mind wagering....' His voice died away suddenly and his face became redder than ever.
Orlov's smile faded, but he replied with an assumed air of unconcern, 'My companion doesn't snore, or wake me to complain that I do, thank goodness, but you're right about the ground—it must be the hardest in Russia!'
Kolniev, glad to change the subject, launched into a monologue on the relative hardness o
f the ground in various places where he had camped during his military career, which lasted as far as the village. They both fell silent as they rode through it. There was something depressing about the sight of the empty, silent houses, the lack of busy housewives, playing children, hens and ducks, men and animals which must normally have filled the place with noisy life.
'I wonder where they've gone,' Kolniev looked around him. 'I wonder if they'll ever come back.'
'I should think so. It looks like good land—they'll be eager to return as soon as it's safe.'
'If the French marched on Ryazan, would you take all your people away?' Kolniev asked.
'Yes, if they wanted to come. I'd take them to one of the other estates, feed them and house them somehow until it was safe to return and buy supplies to tide them through the winter. One couldn't leave them to the mercy of Bonaparte.'
'If they wanted to come?' Kolniev questioned in surprise. 'Wouldn't you just order them?’
'They're all free,' Orlov replied. 'I can't order them to do anything.'
Kolniev was stunned by this, but he soon recovered and asked a great many questions about the process of freeing serfs and its relative advantages and disadvantages. Orlov was delighted to expound on the matter—it was one of his favourite subjects.
When they reached the camp, Orlov could see that the wounded men were not up to standing a soaking. There was an air of dejection about them, unlike their usual brave spirit, and a few were rolled up in their blankets, lying under the carts. Kusminsky came to meet them, and said in a low voice, 'I hope you've found shelter. Half the men will be really ill by tomorrow if we don't get them under cover.'
Kolniev told him about the house, speaking out loudly about the stack of firewood and the store-rooms full of food and there was a perceptible lightening of spirits as the men prepared to move.
Orlov gave the bridle of his horse and his helmet to Josef as he passed him and went over to the Countess, who was sitting on a box under the awning, busily patching a shirt. He dropped on his knees in front of her, groping inside his coat for his wallet and drew out the bundle of hairpins, which he placed carefully in one of her small hands. He knelt looking up at her face, his grey eyes alight with laughter and triumph at her expression of delight when she saw what he had brought her.