Chapter 3

At Czaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of young men singing `Hail to Thee!' Again the volunteers bowed and poked their heads out, but Sergei Ivanovich paid no attention to them. He had had so much to do with the volunteers that the type was familiar to him and did not interest him. Katavassov, whose scientific work had prevented his having a chance of observing them hitherto, was very much interested in them and questioned Sergei Ivanovich.

Sergei Ivanovich advised him to go into the second class and talk to them himself. At the next station Katavassov acted on this suggestion.

At the first stop he moved into the second class and made the acquaintance of the volunteers. They were sitting in a corner of the carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that the attention of the passengers, and of Katavassov, as he got in, was concentrated upon them. More loudly than all talked the tall, hollow- chested young man. He was unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story that had occurred at his school. Facing him sat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian military jacket of the Guards' uniform. He was listening with a smile to the hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third, in an artillery uniform, was sitting on a portmanteau beside them. A fourth was asleep.

Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavassov learned that he was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a large fortune before he was two-and-twenty. Katavassov did not like him, because he was unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously convinced, especially now after drinking, that he was performing a heroic action, and he bragged of it in the most unpleasant way.

The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impression too upon Katavassov. He was, it seemed, a man who had tried everything. He had been on a railway, had been a land steward, and had started factories, and he talked, quite without necessity, of everything, and used learned expressions quite inappropriately.

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.