He says he is sorry that it must be through a woman's mouth, but he thinks the captain would not mind because the captain always said that women told the truth better than officers. The Duke looked at the old soldier. Then he said in slow, careful Russian, "Yes, Sunday. Thank you, brother." Stepan's face went through several things at once.
He did not smile. He bowed his head very low and put his cap back on and walked away down the terrace steps toward the sea without looking back. On Sunday it rained. It came in off the sea in the afternoon, soft at first, and then harder, driving against the long windows in gray sheets. By evening, the river below the house had begun to talk to itself in a low brown voice.
After supper, the caretaker built up the library fire. The Duke stood beside it. Anna sat in a chair near the carved lion with the broken ear with her hands folded in her lap and she found that they were cold though the fire was hot on her face. Stepan came in at 8. He had put on his own coat for it.
The old green solders's coat he had crossed Europe in brushed and mended with its brass buttons polished until they shone. He came to the middle of the carpet and stopped and drew himself up and fixed his eyes on a point above the Duke's head, as he had been drilled to do before an officer. For a moment he did not speak. Anna watched his beard move as he swallowed. Then he began, and she gave it to the Duke sentence by sentence.
In the same plain order he gave it to her. He says this is his report on the death of the captain. He says it was the second winter when the French were going back and the Russians were following them west. He says they came in the night to a wide river and the bridges were gone and the ice was new. The general wanted the guns across before morning.
So they tested the ice with poles and it held and they began to go over in the dark a few at a time leading the horses. The rain drove against the windows. Stepan's voice went on flat and steady. Anna made her own voice match it. He says he was in the middle of the river with the captain's horse when the ice broke under him.
He went into the water. It was so cold that he could not shout. He says his coat filled and pulled him down and he held on to the edge of the ice with his fingers and the edge kept breaking. Everyone on the bank was shouting that nobody should go out because the ice was going. He says the captain did not listen.
He says the captain lay down flat on the ice and crawled out to him on his belly and got him by the collar and pulled. He says the captain pulled him out. Stepan stopped. His eyes had not moved from the point above the Duke's head, but his hands at his sides had begun to shake. "On an he says the ice broke again," Anna said very low under the captain.