Part + 

II + 

I + 

The Lovers + 

Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised love⁠—they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin now. He had never disguised his love for Marie Ivanovna and now she was his “spoils”⁠—won by his own strong piratical hand from the good but rather feeble barque Trenchard⁠—he manifested his scorn of us more openly than ever. + 

He seemed to have grown rather stronger and stouter during these last months, and his square stolidity was a thing at which to marvel. Had he been taller, had his beard been pointed rather than square, he would have been graceful and even picturesque⁠—but his figure, as he strode along, showed foursquare, as though it had been hewn out of wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-coloured woods would give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical contempt of some foolish victim. How he did despise us! + 

When one of our childish quarrels arose at mealtimes he would say nothing, but would continue stolidly his serious business of eating. He was very fond of his food, which he ate in the greediest manner. When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue eyes, laugh and say: “Well, and now?⁠ ⁠… Who is it next?”⁠—and everyone would be clumsily embarrassed. + 

We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayev in The Cherry Orchard, suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would invade our table. “Oh, do look at Goga!” someone would say, and there we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until the tears ran down his face⁠—simply at nothing at all! + 

The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed it, a “beastly” man. He certainly had no great opinion of myself. “You think yourself very clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you’re watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose there’ll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about poor Russians⁠—and you’ll flatter yourself that now at last one true picture has been given⁠ ⁠… but let me tell you that you’ll never know anything really about us so long as you’re a sentimentalist!” + 

Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed with us when he, so openly, despised us all. Until the arrival of Marie Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions⁠—after that the answer was obvious enough. Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling independence of character. We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances, severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down. We were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not “a strong lot.” Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come down from his dreams and see things as they were. + 

But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position. He asked no man’s help nor advice, minded no man’s scorn, sought no man’s love. During my experience of him I saw him moved only once by an overmastering emotion, and that was, of course, his love for Marie Ivanovna. That, I believe, did master him, but deep down, deep down, he kept his rebellions, his anxieties, his surmises; only as the light of a burning house is seen by men, pale and faint upon the sky many miles from the conflagration, did we catch signs of his trouble. If I had not had those talks with Trenchard and read his diary I should have known nothing. Even now I can offer no solution.⁠ ⁠… + 

Meanwhile he showed fiercely and openly enough his love for Marie Ivanovna. He behaved to her with the vulgarest ostentation, as a rich merchant behaves when he has snatched some priceless picture from a defeated rival. As he laughed at us he seemed to say: “Now, I have really a thing of value here. You are, all of you, too stupid to realise this, but you must take my word for it. Show yourself off, my dear, and let them all see!” + 

Marie Ivanovna most certainly did not “show herself off.” The beginning of his trouble was that he could not do with her as he pleased. She had fallen into his hands so easily that he thought, I suppose, that “she had been dying of love for him” from the first moment of seeing him. But this was I believe very far from the truth. My impression of her acceptance of him was that she had done it “with her eyes fixed upon something else.” That she had not realised all the consequences of accepting him any more than she had realised the consequences of her accepting Trenchard was obvious from the first. She simply was ignorant of life, and at the same time wanted to cram into her hands the full sense of it (as one crushes rose-leaves) as quickly as possible. She admired Semyonov⁠—it may be that she loved him; but she certainly had not surrendered herself to him, and in her lively ignorant way she was as strong as he. + 

During the first weeks of her engagement she was, as she had been at her first arrival amongst us, as happy and lighthearted as a child. She knew that we disapproved of her treatment of Trenchard, but she thought that we must see, as she did, that “she had behaved in the only possible way.” Once again she was straight and honest to the world⁠—and she could behave now like a real friend of her John. That strange irrational temper that she had shown during the Retreat had now entirely disappeared. She approved of us all and wished us to approve of her⁠—which we, as we were Russians and could not possibly dislike pleasant agreeable people whatever there might be against them, speedily did. She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal of her ignorance and strength and credulity⁠—ah! she won our hearts simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, but let her “come round” and round we came too. + 

Her treatment of Semyonov was strange. She was quite fearless, laughing at his temper, his sarcasm, rebuking his selfishness and bad manners, avoiding his coarse and unhesitating lovemaking, and above all, trusting him in the oddest way as though, in spite of his faults, she placed all her reliance on him and knew that he would not fail her. Nothing annoyed him more than her behaviour to Trenchard. It would, of course, be absurd to say that he was jealous of Trenchard; he despised the man too deeply and was, himself, too sure of his lady to know jealousy; but he was irritated by the attention paid to him, irritated even by the attention he himself paid to him. + 

“Wherever I go there’s that man,” he said once to me. “Why doesn’t he go back to his own country?” + 

“I suppose,” I would answer hotly, “he has other things to do than to consider your individual wishes, Alexei Petrovitch.” + 

Then he would laugh: “Well, well, Ivan Andreievitch, you sentimentalists all hang together.” + 

“Why can’t you leave him alone?” I remember that I continued. + 

“Because he doesn’t leave me alone,” he answered shortly. + 

It was, of course, Marie Ivanovna who brought them together. She could not see, or rather she would not see, that friendship between two such men was an impossibility. For herself she liked Trenchard better than she had ever done. She had now no responsibility towards him; we were all fond of him, pleased ourselves by saying that “he was more Russian than English.” The Sisters mended his clothes, cared for his stomach, and listened with pleased gravity to his innocent chatter. Marie Ivanovna was now really proud of him. There were great stories of the courage and enterprise he had shown during the night when he had been with Nikitin. Nikitin, in his lofty romantic fashion, spoke of him as though he had been the hero of the Russian army. Trenchard was, of course, quite unspoiled by this praise and popularity. He remained for me at least very much the same innocent, clumsy, pathetic, and frequently irritating figure that he had been at the beginning. I will honestly confess that I was often heartily tired of his Glebeshire stories, tired too of a certain childish obstinacy with which he clung to his generally crude and half-baked opinions. + 

But then I do not care to be contradicted by people of whom, intellectually, I have a low estimation; it is one of my most unfortunate weaknesses. I had no opinion of Trenchard’s intellect at all, and in that I was quite wrong. Semyonov at this time flung Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself into one basket. We were all “crazy romantics” and there came an occasion, which I have reason most clearly to remember, when he told us what he thought of us. We were together, Semyonov, Nikitin, Trenchard and I, after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, enjoying half an hour’s idleness before setting about our various business. It was a blazing hot morning and the air quivered, like a silver curtain before our eyes, separating us from the dim blue forest of S⁠⸺ beyond the river, the Nestor itself, the deep green slopes of our own hill. We had been silent, then Trenchard said a foolish thing: “War brings all the best out of people, I think,” he said. God knows what private line of thought he had been pursuing, some sentimental reflections, I suppose, that were in him perfectly honest and sincere. But he did not look his best that morning, sitting back in his chair with his mouth open, his forehead damp with the heat, his tunic up about his neck and a rather dirty blue pocket-handkerchief in his hand. + 

I saw Semyonov’s lip curl. + 

“Yes. That’s very interesting, Mr.,” he said. “I’m glad at any rate that we’ve had the honour of seeing the best of you. That’s very pleasant to know.” + 

“What I mean⁠—” said Trenchard, blushing and stammering. “What⁠ ⁠… that is⁠—” + 

“I agree with Mr.,” suddenly said Nikitin, who had been dreamily watching the blue forest. “War does bring out the best in the human character⁠—always.” + 

Semyonov turned smilingly to him. “Yes, Vladimir Stepanovitch, we know your illusions. Forgive me for insisting that they are illusions. I would not disturb your romantic happiness for the world.” + 

“You can’t disturb me, Alexei Petrovitch,” Nikitin answered sleepily. “What a hot morning!” + 

“No,” said Semyonov. “I would be very wrong to disturb you. Believe me, I’ve never tried. It’s very agreeable to me to see you and Mr. so happy together and it must be pleasant for both of you to feel that you’ve got a nice God all of your own who sleeps a good deal but still, on the whole, gives you what you want. We may wonder a little what Mr. has done to be so favoured⁠—never very much I fancy⁠—but still I like the friendliness and comfort of it and I’m really lucky to have the good fortune of your acquaintance. So nice for Russia too to have plenty of people about who don’t do any work nor take any trouble about anything because they’ve got a nice fat God who’ll do it all for them if they’ll only be patient. Thats why we’re beating the Germans so handsomely⁠—the poor Germans, who only, ignorant heathens as they are, believe in themselves.” + 

He looked at us all with a friendly patronising contempt. + 

“That’s your point of view, Alexei Petrovitch,” Nikitin answered rather hotly. “Think as you please of course. But there’s more in life than you can see⁠—there is indeed.” + 

“Of course there is,” said Semyonov lazily, “much more. I’m an ignorant, rough man. I like things as they are and make the best of them, so, of course, I’m not clever. Mr.’s clever, aren’t you, Mr.? All the same he doesn’t know how to put his boots on properly. If he put his boots on better and knew less about God he might be of more use at the Front, perhaps. That’s only my idea, and I daresay I’m wrong.⁠ ⁠… All the same, for the sake of the comfort and the pockets of all of us I do hope you’ll really rouse your God and ask Him to do something sensible⁠—something with method in it and a few more bullets in it and a little more efficiency in it. You might ask Him to do what He can.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He looked at us, laughing; then he said to Trenchard, “But don’t you fear, Mr. You’ll go to heaven all right. Even though it’s the wise men who succeed in this world, I don’t doubt it’s the fools who have their way in the next.” + 

He left us. + 

Semyonov was with every new day more baffled by Marie Ivanovna. In the first place she quietly refused to obey him. We were now much occupied with the feeding of the peasants in a village stricken with cholera on the other side of the river. A gloomy enough business it was and I shall have, very shortly, to speak of it in detail. For the moment it is enough to say that two of us went off every morning with a kitchen on wheels, distributed the food, and returned in the afternoon. Semyonov intensely disliked Marie Ivanovna’s share in this work, but he could not, of course, object to her taking, with the other Sisters, the risks and unpleasantness of it. He made, whenever it was possible, objections, found her work at the hospital where he himself was, occupied her in every possible way. But he did this against her will. She seemed to find a very especial pleasure and excitement in the cholera work; she wished often to take the place of some other Sister. Indeed everything on the other side of the river seemed to have a great fascination for her. She herself told me: “The moment I cross the bridge I feel as though I were on enchanted ground.” On the occasions when I accompanied her to the cholera village she was radiant, so happy that she seemed to have nothing further in the world to desire. She herself was puzzled. “What is it?” she said to me. “Is it the forest? It must be, I think, the forest. I would remain on this side forever if I had my way.” + 

When I saw Semyonov’s anxiety about her I could not but remember that little scene at the battle of S⁠⸺ when he had taken her off with him, leaving Trenchard in so pitiful a condition. Certainly Time brings in his revenges! And Marie Ivanovna would listen to nothing that he said. + 

“I want you at the hospital this morning,” he would say. + 

“Do you really want me?” she would ask, looking up, laughing, in his face. + 

“Of course I do.” + 

“Well, you should have told me last night. This morning I go with Anna Petrovna to the cholera. All is arranged.” + 

“I’m afraid you must change your plans.” + 

“I’m afraid not.” + 

“Goga may go.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No, I wish to go.” + 

And she went. He had certainly never before in his life been thus defied. He simply did not know what to do about it. If he had thought that bullying would frighten her he would, I believe, have bullied her, but he knew quite well that it wouldn’t. And then, as I now began to perceive (I had at first thought otherwise), he was for the first time in his life experiencing something deeper and more confusing than his customary animal passions. He may at first have wanted Marie Ivanovna as he wanted his dinner or his supper⁠ ⁠… now he wanted her differently. New emotions, surprising confusing emotions stirred in him. At least that is how I interpret the uneasiness, the hesitation, which I now seemed to perceive in him. He was no longer sure of himself. + 

I witnessed just at this time a little scene that surprised me. I had been in the bandaging room alone one evening, cutting up bandages. I was going through the passage into the other part of the house when a sound stopped me. I could not avoid seeing beyond the open door a little scene that happened so swiftly that I could neither retire nor advance. + 

Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov were coming together towards the bandaging room. She was in front of him when he put his hand on her arm. + 

“Do you love me?” he said in a low voice. + 

She turned round to him, laughing. + 

“Yes,” she said, looking at him. + 

“Then kiss me.” + 

“No, not now.” + 

“Why not now?” + 

“I don’t want to.” + 

“Why don’t you want to?” + 

She shook her head, still laughing into his eyes. + 

“But if I command you?” + 

“Ah! command!⁠ ⁠… Then I certainly will not.” + 

His hand tightened on her arm and she did not draw away. + 

“Kiss me.” + 

“No.” + 

“I say yes.” + 

“I say no.” + 

He suddenly caught her, held her to him as though he would kill her and kissed her furiously, on her eyes, her mouth, her hair. With his violence he pushed back her headdress. I could see his back bent like a bow, and his thick short legs wide apart, every muscle taut. She lay quite motionless, as though asleep in his arms, giving him no response⁠—then quite suddenly she flung her hands round his neck and kissed him as passionately as he had kissed her. At last they parted, both of them laughing. + 

He looked at her, and then with a gentleness and courtesy that I had never seen in him before nor dreamed that he possessed, very softly kissed her hand. + 

“I love you and⁠—and you love me,” he said. + 

“Yes⁠ ⁠… I love you,” she answered gravely. “At least, part of me does.” + 

“It shall be all of you soon,” he answered. + 

“If there’s time enough,” she replied. + 

“Time!⁠ ⁠… I’ll follow you wherever you go⁠—” + 

“I really believe you will,” she answered, laughing again. They waited then, looking at one another. A bell rang. “Ah! I’m hungry.⁠ ⁠… Supper time.⁠ ⁠…” To my relief they passed away from the bandaging room towards the other part of the house. + 

Meanwhile his irritation at Marie Ivanovna’s kindness to Trenchard increased with every hour. His attitude to the man had changed since Trenchard’s night at the Position; he was vexed, I think, to hear that the fellow had proved himself a man⁠—and a practical man with common sense. Semyonov was honest about this. He did not doubt Nikitin’s word, he even congratulated Trenchard, but he certainly disliked him more than ever. He thought, I suppose, as he had thought about Nikitin: “How can a man with his wits about him be at the same time such a fool?” And then he saw that Marie Ivanovna was delighted with Trenchard’s little piece of good luck. She laughed at Semyonov about it. “We all know you’re a very brave man,” she cried. “But you’re not so brave as Mr.” And Semyonov, because he knew that Trenchard was a fool and that he himself was not, was vexed, as a bull is vexed by a red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he would satisfy himself why this gnat of a man worried him! + 

Then, finally, was Andrey Vassilievitch.⁠ ⁠… The little man had not given me much of his company during these last weeks. I fancy that since that night at the battle of S⁠⸺ when he had revealed his terror he had been shy of me although, God knows, he had no need to be. He never forgot if anyone had seen him in an unfortunate position, and, although he bore me no grudge, he was nervous and embarrassed with me. It happened, however, that during this same week of which I have been speaking I had a conversation with him. I was standing alone by the Cross watching a long trail of wagons cross the bridge far beneath me, watching too a high bank of black cloud that was passing away from the sky above the forest, blown by a wind that rolled the surface of the river into silver. He too had come to look at the view and was surprised and disturbed at finding me there. Of course he was exaggerated in expressions of pleasure: “Why, Ivan Andreievitch, this is delightful!” he cried. “If I only had known we might have walked here together!” + 

We sat down on the stone seat. + 

“You don’t think it will rain?” he asked anxiously. “No, those clouds are going away, I see. Well⁠ ⁠… this is delightful⁠ ⁠…” and then sat there gloomily looking in front of him. + 

I could see that he was depressed. + 

“Well, Andrey Vassilievitch,” I said to him. “You’re depressed about something?” + 

“Yes,” he said very gloomily indeed. “I have many unhappy hours, Ivan Andreievitch.” + 

I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a desire to know the little man’s side of that affair. In some curious fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin’s account to explain to me his passion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes, to be present with us.⁠ ⁠… + 

I waited. + 

“Tell me frankly,” Andrey Vassilievitch said at last, “am I of any use here?” + 

“Of use?” I repeated, taken by surprise. + 

“Yes. Am I doing only what anyone else can do as well? Would it be better perhaps if another were here?” + 

“No, certainly not,” I answered warmly. “Your business training is of the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me ‘that he does not know what we should do without you.’ ” + 

(This was not strictly true.) + 

“Ah!” the little man was greatly pleased. “I am glad, very glad⁠—to hear what you say. Semyonov made me feel⁠—” + 

“You should not be influenced,” I hurriedly interrupted him, “by what Semyonov thinks. It is of no importance.” + 

“He has a bad character,” Andrey Vassilievitch said suddenly with great excitement, “a bad character. And why cannot he leave me alone? Why should he laugh always? I do my best. I am quiet and not in his way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I do not rob men of their women.” + 

He was shaking with anger, his head trembling and his hands quivering⁠—it was difficult not to smile. + 

“You must not listen nor notice nor think of it,” I said firmly. “We are grateful for your work⁠—all of us. Semyonov laughs at us all.” + 

“That poor Marie Ivanovna,” he burst out. “She does not know. She is ignorant of life. At first I was angry with her but now I see that she is helpless. There will be terrible things afterwards, Ivan Andreievitch!” he cried. + 

“I think she understands him better than we do.” + 

“I have never,” he said vehemently, “hated a man in my life as I hate him.” But in spite of his passionate declaration he was obviously reassured by my defence of him. He was quiet suddenly, looked at the view mildly and, in a moment, thought me the best friend he had in the world⁠—in the Russian manner. + 

“You see, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, looking at me with the eyes of an unnaturally wise baby, “that I cannot help wishing that my wife were here to advise Marie Ivanovna. She would have loved my wife very much, as everyone did, and would have confided in her. That would have helped a girl who, like Marie Ivanovna, is ignorant of the world and the loves of men.” + 

“You miss your wife very much?” I asked. + 

“There is not a moment of the day but I do not think of her,” he answered very solemnly, staring in front of him. “That must seem strange to you who did not know her, and even I sometimes think it is not good. But what to do? She was a woman so remarkable that no one who knew her can forget.” + 

“I have often been told that everyone who knew her loved her,” I said. + 

“Ah! you have heard that.⁠ ⁠… They talk of her, of course. She will always be remembered.” His eyes shone with pleasure. “Yes, everyone loved her. I myself loved her with a passion that nothing can ever change. And why?⁠ ⁠… I cannot tell you⁠—unless it were that she was the only person I have known who did not wish me another kind of man. I could be myself with her and know that she still cared for me.⁠ ⁠… I will not pretend to you, Ivan Andreievitch, that I think myself a fine man,” he continued. “I have never thought myself so. When I was very young I envied tall men and handsome men and men who knew what was the best thing to do without thinking of it. I have always known that people would only come to me for what I have got to give and I have pretended that I do not care. And once I had an English merchant as my guest. He was very agreeable and pleasant to me⁠—and then by chance I overheard him say: ‘Ah, Andrey Vassilievitch! A vulgar little snob!’ That is perhaps what I am⁠—I do not know⁠—we are all what God pleases. But I had mistresses, I had friends, acquaintances. They despised me. They left me always for someone finer. They say that we Russians care too much what others think of us⁠—but when in your own house people⁠—your friends⁠—say such things of you.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He broke off, then, smiling, continued: + 

“My wife came. There was something in me, just as I was, that she cared for. She did not passionately love me, but she loved me with her heart because she saw that I needed love. She always saw people just as they were.⁠ ⁠… And I understood. I understood from the beginning exactly what I was to her.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He paused again, put his hand on my knee, then spoke, looking very serious with his comic little nose and mouth like the nose and mouth of a poodle. “I had a friend, Ivan Andreievitch. A fine man.⁠ ⁠… He loved my wife and my wife loved him. He was not vulgar. He had a fine taste, he was handsome and clever. What was I to do? I knew that my wife loved him, and she must be happy. I knew that I owed her everything because of all that she had done for me. I helped them in their love.⁠ ⁠… For five years I wished them well. Do you think it was easy for me? I suffered, Ivan Andreievitch, the tortures of hell. I was jealous, God forgive me! How jealous! Sometimes alone in my room I would cry all night⁠—not a fine thing to do. But then how should I act? She gave him what she could never give to me. She loved him with passion⁠—for me she cared as good women care for the poor. I was foolish perhaps. I tried to be as they were, with their taste and easy judgments⁠ ⁠… I failed, of course. What could I do all at once? One is as God has pleased from the beginning. Ah! how I was unhappy those five years! I wished that he would die and then cursed myself for wishing it. And yet I knew that I had something that he had not. I needed her more than he, and she knew that. Her charm for him would fade perhaps as the years passed. He was a passionate man who had loved many women. For me, as she well knew, it would never pass. + 

“She died. For a time I was like a dead man. And she was not enough with me. I talked to her friends, but they had not known her⁠—not as she was. Only one had known her and he was the friend whom she had loved. + 

“Of course he found me as he had always done⁠—tiresome, irritating, of vulgar taste. But he, too, wanted to speak of her. And so we were drawn together.⁠ ⁠… Now⁠ ⁠… is he my friend? I say always that he is. I say to myself: ‘Andrey Vassilievitch, he is your best friend’⁠—but I am jealous. Yes, Ivan Andreievitch, I am jealous of him. I think that perhaps he will die before me and that then⁠—somewhere⁠—together⁠—they will laugh at me. And he has such memories of her! At the last she cried his name! He is so much a grander man than I! Fine in every way! Did I say that she would laugh? No, no⁠ ⁠… that never. But she will say: ‘Poor Andrey Vassilievitch!’ She will pity me!⁠ ⁠… I think that I would be happier if I did not see my friend. But I cannot leave him.⁠ ⁠… We talk of her often. And yet he despises me and wonders that she can have loved me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I had a fear lest Andrey Vassilievitch should cry. He seemed so desolate there, giving strange little self-important coughs and sniffs, beating the ground with his smart little military boot. + 

Across the river the black wall of cloud had returned and now hung above the forest of S⁠⸺, that lay sullenly, in its shadow, forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the Nestor like a snake.⁠ ⁠… I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were often strangely chill. + 

“Look,” cried Andrey Vassilievitch, starting to his feet “There’s Marie Ivanovna!” + 

I turned and saw her standing there, smiling at us, silently and without movement, like an apparition. + 

II + 

Marie Ivanovna + 

It was on July 23 that I first entered the Forest of S⁠⸺. I did not, I remember, pay the event any especial attention. I went with Anna Petrovna to the cholera village that is on the outskirts of the forest, and I recollect that we hastened back because that evening we were to celebrate the conclusion of the first six months’ work of our Otriad. Of my entrance into the forest I remember absolutely nothing; it seemed, I suppose, an ordinary enough forest to me. Of the festivities in the evening I have a very clear recollection. I remember that it was the loveliest summer weather, not too hot, with a little breeze coming up from the river, and the green glittering on every side of us with the quiver of flashing water. In the little garden outside our house a table had been improvised and on this were a large gilt icon, a vase of flowers in a hideous purple jar, and two tall candles whose flames looked unreal and thin in the sunlight. There was the priest, a fine stout man with a long black beard and hair falling below his shoulders, clothed in silk of gold and purple, waving a censer, monotoning the prayers in a high Russian tenor, with one eye on the choir of sanitars, one eye on the candles blown by the wind, the breeze meanwhile playing irreverent jests on his splendid skirts of gold. Then there was the congregation in three groups. The first group⁠—two generals, two colonels, four or five other officers, the Sisters (Sister K⁠⸺ bowing and crossing herself incessantly, Anna Petrovna with her attention obviously on the dinner cooking behind a tree in the garden, Marie Ivanovna looking lovely and happy and good), ourselves⁠—Molozov official, Semyonov sarcastic, Nikitin in a dream, Andrey Vassilievitch busy with his smart uniform, Trenchard (forgotten his sword, his blue handkerchief protruding from his pocket) absorbed by the ceremony, myself thinking of Trenchard, Goga⁠—and the rest. The second group⁠—the singing sanitars, some ten of them, stout and healthy, singing as Russians do with complete self-forgetfulness and a rapturous happiness in front of them, a funny little man with spectacles and a sharp-pointed beard, once a schoolmaster, now a sanitar, conducting their music with a long bony finger⁠—all of them chanting the responses with perfect precision and harmony. Third group, the other sanitars, the strangest collection of faces, wild, savage and eastern: Tartars, Lithuanians, Mongolian, mild and northern, cold and western, merry and human from Little Russia, gigantic and fierce from the Caucasus, small and frozen from Archangel, one or two civilised and superior and uninteresting from Petrograd and Moscow. + 

Over the wall a long row of interested Galician peasants and soldiers passing in carts or on horseback. Seeing the icon, the priest, the blowing candles, hearing the singing they would take off their hats, cross themselves, for a moment their eyes would go dreamy, mild, forgetful, then on their hats would go again, back they would turn their horses, cursing them up the hill, chaffing the Galician women, down deep in the everyday life again. + 

The service ended. The priest turns to us, the gold Cross is raised, we advance one by one: the generals, the colonels, the lieutenants, the Sisters, Semyonov, Nikitin, Goga, then the choir, then the sanitars, even to hunchbacked Alesha, who is always given the dirtiest work to do and is only half a human being; one by one we kiss the Cross, the candles are blown out, the icon folded up and put away in a cardboard box, we are introduced to the generals, there is general conversation, and the stars and the moon come out “blown straight up, it seems, out of the bosom of the Nestor.⁠ ⁠…” + 

It was a very happy and innocent evening. For extracting the utmost happiness possible out of the simplest materials the Russians have surely no rivals. How our generals and our colonels enjoyed that evening! A wonderful dinner was cooked between two stones in the garden⁠—little pig, young chickens, borscht, that most luxurious of soups, and ices⁠—yes, and ices. Then there were speeches, many, many glasses of tea, strawberry and cherry jam, biscuits and cigarettes. We were all very, very happy.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was arranged on the morning after the feast that I should go again to the cholera village with Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Under a morning of a blazing relentless heat, bars of light ruling the sky, we started, the three of us, at about ten o’clock, in the little low dogcart, followed by the kitchen and the boiler. Marie Ivanovna sat next to Semyonov, I facing them. Semyonov was happier than I had ever seen him before. Happiness was not a quality with which I would ever have charged him; he had seemed to despise it as something too simple and sentimental for any but sentimental fools⁠—but now this morning (I had noticed something of the same thing in him the evening before) he was quite simply happy, looking younger by many years, the ironical curve of his lip gone, his eyes smiling, his attitude to the world gentle and almost benevolent. Of course she, Marie Ivanovna, had wrought this change in him. There was no doubt this morning that she loved him. She had in her face and bearing all the pride and also all the humility that a love, won, secured, ensured, brings with it. She did not look at him often nor take his hand. She spoke to me during the drive and only once and again smiled up at him; but her soul, shining through the thin covering of her body, laughed to me, crying: “I am happy because I have my desire. Of yesterday I remember nothing, of tomorrow I can know nothing, but today is mine!” + 

He was very quiet. When he looked at her his eyes took complete possession of her. I did not, that morning, count at all to either of them, but I too felt a kind of pride as though I were sharing in some triumphal procession. She chattered on, and then at last was silent. I remember that the great heat of the morning wrought in us all a kind of lethargy. We were lazily confident that day that nothing evil could overtake us. We idly watched the sky, the river, the approaching forest, with a luxurious reliance on the power of man, and I caught much of my assurance from Semyonov himself. He did really seem to me, that morning, a “tremendous” figure, as he sat there, so still, so triumphant. He had never before, perhaps, been quite certain of Marie Ivanovna, had been alarmed at her independence, or at his own passionate love for her. But this morning he knew. She loved him. She was his⁠—no one could take her from him. She was the woman he wanted as he had never wanted a woman before, and she was his⁠—she was his! + 

I do not remember our entering the forest. I know that first you climb a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of N⁠⸺. It was here, on passing the first houses of the village, that I felt the heat to be almost unbearable; it seemed strange to me, I remember, that they (whoever “they” were), having so many trees here, a forest that stretched many miles behind them, should have chosen to pitch their village upon the only exposed and torrid bit of ground that they could find. Behind us was the forest, in front of us also the forest, but here, how the sun blazed down on the roofs and little blown patches of garden, how it glared in through the broken windows, and penetrated into the darkest corners of the desolate rooms! + 

Poor N⁠⸺! In the second month of the war it had been shelled and many of the houses destroyed. The buildings that remained seemed to have given up the struggle and abandoned themselves to inevitable degradation. Moreover, down the principal street, at every other door there hung the sinister black flag, a piece of dirty black cloth fastened to a stick, and upon the filthy wall was scrawled in Russian “cholera.” Dead, indeed, under the appalling heat of the morning the whole place lay. No one was to be seen until we neared the ruins of what had once been a little town-hall or meeting-place, a procession turned the corner⁠—a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the miserable party. They did not look at us as we passed.⁠ ⁠… + 

A rumble of cannon, once and again, sounded like the lazy snore of some sleeping beast. + 

Near the town-hall we found a company of fantastic creatures awaiting us. They were pressed together in a dense crowd as though they were afraid of someone attacking them. There were many old men, like the clowns in Shakespeare, dirty beyond belief in tattered garments, wide-brimmed hats, broad skirts and baggy trousers; old men with long tangled hair, bare bony breasts and slobbering chins. Many of the women seemed strong and young; their faces were on the whole cheerful⁠—a brazen indifference to anything and everything was their attitude. There were many children. Two gendarmes guarded them with rough friendly discipline. I thought that I had seen nothing more terrible at the war than the eager pitiful docility with which they moved to and fro in obedience to the gendarmes’ orders. A dreadful, broken, creeping submission.⁠ ⁠… + 

But it was their fantasy, their coloured incredible unreality that overwhelmed me. The building, black and twisted against the hard blue sky, raised its head behind us like a malicious monster. Before us this crowd, all tattered faded pieces of scarlet and yellow and blue, men with huge noses, sunken eyes, sharp chins, long skinny hands, women with hard, bright, dead faces, little children with eyes that were afraid and indifferent, hungry and mad, all this crowd swaying before us, with the cannon muttering beyond the walls, and the thin miserable thread of the funeral hymn trickling like water under our feet.⁠ ⁠… I looked from these to Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna, they in their white overalls working at the meat kitchen and the huge breadbaskets, radiant in their love, their success, their struggle, confident, both of them, this morning that they had the fire of life in their hands to do with it as they pleased. + 

I have not wished during the progress of this book, which is the history of the experiences of others rather than of myself, to lay any stress on my personal history, and here I would only say that anyone who is burdened with a physical disease or encumbrance that will remain to the end of life must know that there are certain moments when this hindrance leaps up at him like the grinning face of a devil⁠—despairing hideous moments they are! I have said that during our drive I had felt a confident happy participation in the joy of those others who were with me⁠ ⁠… now as we stood there feeding that company of scarecrows, a sudden horror of my own lameness, a sudden consciousness that I belonged rather to that band of miserable diseased hungry fugitives than to the two triumphant figures on the other side of me, overwhelmed and defeated me. I bent my head; I felt a shame, a degradation as though I should have crept into some shadow and hidden.⁠ ⁠… I would not mention this were it not that afterwards, in retrospect, the moment seemed to me an omen. After all, life is not always to the victorious!⁠ ⁠… + 

Our scarecrows wanted, horribly, their food. It was dreadful to see the anxiety with which they watched the portioning of the thick heavy hunks of black bread. They had to show Marie Ivanovna their dirty little scraps of paper which described the portions to which they were entitled. How their bony fingers clutched the paper afterwards as they pressed it back into their skinny bosoms! Sometimes they could not wait to return home, but would squat down on the ground and lap their soup like dogs. The day grew hotter and hotter, the world smelt of disease and dirt, waste and desolation. Marie Ivanovna’s face was soft with tenderness as she watched them. Semyonov had always his eye upon her, seeing that she did not touch them, sometimes calling out sharply: “Now! Marie!⁠ ⁠… take care! Take care!” but this morning he also seemed kind and gentle to them, leading a small girl back to her haggard bony old guardian, carrying her heavy can of soup for her, or joking with some of the old men.⁠ ⁠… “Now, uncle⁠ ⁠… you ought to be at the war! What have they done, leaving you? So young and so vigorous! They’ll take you yet!” and the old man, a toothless trembling creature, clutching his hunk of bread with shaking hands, would grin like the head of Death himself! How close to death they all seemed! How alive were my friends, strong in the sun, compassionate but also perhaps a little despising this poor gathering of wastrels. + 

The work went on; then at last the final scraps of meat and bread had been shared, the kitchen closed its oven, we took off our overalls, shook ourselves, and bade farewell to the scarecrows. The kitchen was then sent home and we moved forward with the tea boiler and two sanitars further into the forest. Our destination was a large empty house behind the trenches. From here we were to take tea in the boiler to certain regiments, tea with wine in it as preventative against cholera. It was the early afternoon now, and we moved very slowly. The heat was intense and although the trees were thick on every side of us there seemed to be no shade nor coolness, as though the leaves had been made of paper. + 

“This is a strange forest,” I said. “Although there are trees there’s no shade. It burns like a furnace.” + 

No one replied. We passed as though in a dream, meeting no one, hearing no sound, the light dancing and flickering on our path. I nodded on my seat. I was half asleep when we arrived at our destination. This was the accustomed white deserted house standing in a desolate tangled garden. There was no one there on our arrival. All the doors were open, the sun blazing along the dusty passages. It was inhabited, just then, I believe, by some artillery officers, but I saw none of them. Semyonov went off to find the Colonel of the regiment to whom we were to give tea; Marie Ivanovna and I remained in one of the empty rooms, the only sound the buzzing flies. Every detail of that room will remain in my heart and brain until I die. Marie Ivanovna, looking very white and cool, with the happiness shining in her large clear eyes, sat on an old worn sofa near the window. In the glass of the window there were bullet holes, and beyond the window a piece of blazing golden garden. The room was very dirty, dust lay thick upon everything. Someone had eaten a meal there, and there was a plate, a knife, also eggshells, an empty sardine-tin, and a hunk of black bread. There was a book which I picked up, attracted by the English lettering on the faded red cover. It was a “Report on the Condition of New Mexico in 1904”⁠—a heavy fat volume with the usual photographs of waterfalls, cornfields and enormous sheep. On the walls there was only one picture, a torn supplement from some German magazine showing father returning to his family after a long absence⁠—welcomed, of course, by child (fat and ugly), wife (fatter and uglier), and dog (a mongrel). There was the usual pile of fiction in Polish, translations I suspect of Conan Doyle and Jerome; there was a desolate palm in a corner and a chipped blue washing stand. A hideous place: the sun did not penetrate and it should have been cool, but for some reason the air was heavy and hot as though we were enclosed in a biscuit-tin. + 

I leaned against the table and looked at Marie Ivanovna. + 

“Isn’t it strange?” I said, “we’re only a verst or two from the Austrians and not a sound to be heard. But the gendarme told me that we must be careful here. A good many bullets flying about, I believe.” + 

“Ah!” she said laughing. “I don’t feel as though anything could touch me today. I never loved life before as I love it now. Is it right to be so happy at such a time as this and in such a place?⁠ ⁠… And how strange it is that through all the tragedy one can only truly see one’s own little affairs, and only feel one’s own little troubles and joys. That’s bad⁠ ⁠… one should be punished for that!” + 

I loved her at that moment; I felt bitterly, I remember, that I, because I was plain and a cripple, silent and uninteresting, would never win the love of such women. I remembered little Andrey Vassilievitch’s words about his wife: “For me she cared as good women care for the poor.” In that way for me too women would care⁠—when they cared at all. And always, all my life, it would be like that. How unfair that everything should be given to the Semyonovs and the Nikitins of this world, everything denied to such men as Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and I!⁠ ⁠… + 

But my little grumble passed as I looked at her. + 

How honest and straight and true with her impulses, her enthusiasms, her rebellions and ignorances she was! Yes, I loved her and had always loved her. That was why I had cared for Trenchard, why now I was attracted by Semyonov, because, shadow of a man as I was, not man enough to be jealous, I could see with her eyes, stand beside her and share her emotion.⁠ ⁠… But God! how that day I despised myself! + 

“You’re tired!” she said, looking at me. “Is your leg hurting you?” + 

“Not much,” I answered. + 

“Sit down here beside me.” She made way for me on the sofa. “Ivan Andreievitch, you will always be my friend?” + 

“Always,” I answered. + 

“I believe you will. I’m a little afraid of you, but I think that I would rather have you as a friend than anyone⁠—except John. How fortunate I am! Two Englishmen for my friends! You do not change as R-russians do! You will be angry with me when you think that I am wrong, but then I can believe you. I know that you will tell me the truth.” + 

“Perhaps,” I said slowly, “Alexei Petrovitch will not wish that I should be your friend!” + 

“Alexei?” she said, laughing. “Oh, thank you very much, I shall choose my own friends. That will always be my affair.” + 

I had an uneasy suspicion that perhaps she knew as little about Semyonov as she had once known about Trenchard. It might be that all her life she might never learn wisdom. I do not know that I wished her to learn it. + 

“No,” she continued. “But you forgive me now? Forgive me for all my mistakes, for thinking that I loved John when I did not and treating him so badly. Ah! but how unhappy I was! I wished to be honourable and honest⁠—I wished it passionately⁠—and I seemed only to make mistakes. And then because I was ashamed of myself I was angry with everyone⁠—at least it seemed that it was with everyone, but it was really with myself.” + 

“I did you injustice,” I said. “And I did Alexei Petrovitch an injustice also. I know now that he truly and deeply loves you.⁠ ⁠… I believe that you will be very happy⁠ ⁠… yes, it is better, much better, than that you should have married Trenchard.” + 

Her face flushed with happiness, that strange flush of colour behind her pale cheeks, coming and going with the beats of her heart. + 

She continued happily, confidently: “When I was growing up I was always restless. My mother allowed me to do as I pleased and I had no one in authority over me. I was restless because I knew nothing and no one could tell me anything that seemed to me true. I would have, like other girls, sudden enthusiasms for someone who seemed strong and wonderful⁠—and then they were never wonderful⁠—only like everyone else. I would be angry, impatient, miserable. Russian girls begin life so early.⁠ ⁠… After a time, mother began to treat me as though I was grown up. We went to Petrograd and I thought about clothes and theatres. But I never forgot⁠—I always waited for the man or the work or the friend that was to make life real. Then suddenly the war came and I thought that I had found what I wanted. But there too there were disappointments. John was not John, the war was not the war⁠ ⁠… and it’s only today now that I feel as though I were r-right inside. I’ve been so stupid⁠—I’ve made so many mistakes.” She dropped her voice: “I’ve always been afraid, Ivan Andreievitch, that is the truth. You remember that morning before S⁠⸺?” + 

“Yes,” I said. “I remember it.” + 

“Well, it has been often, often like that. I’ve been afraid of myself and⁠—of something else⁠—of dying. I found that I didn’t want to die, that the thought of death was too horrible to me. That day of the Retreat how afraid I was! John could not protect me, no one could. And I was ashamed of myself! How ashamed, how miserable. And I was afraid because I thought of myself more than of anyone else⁠—always. I had fine ideals but⁠—in practice⁠—it was only that⁠—that I always was selfish. Now, for the first time ever, I care for someone more than myself and suddenly I am afraid of death no longer. It is true, Ivan Andreievitch, I do not believe that death can separate Alexei from me; I have more reason now to wish to live than I have ever had, but now I am not afraid. Wherever I am, Alexei will come⁠—wherever he is, I will go.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She broke off⁠—then laughed. “You think it silly in England to talk about such things. No English girl would, would she? In Russia we are silly if we like. But oh! how happy it is, after all these weeks, not to be afraid⁠—not to wake up early and lie there and think⁠—think and shudder. They used to say I was brave about the wounded, brave at S⁠⸺, brave at operations⁠ ⁠… if they only knew! You only, Ivan Andreievitch, have seen me afraid, you only!⁠ ⁠…” She looked at me, her eyes searching my face: “Isn’t it strange that you who do not love me know me, perhaps, better than John⁠—and yes, better than Alexei. That’s why I tell you⁠—I can talk to you. I never could talk to women⁠—I never cared for women. You and John for my friends⁠—yes, I am indeed happy!” + 

She got up from the old sofa, walked a little about the room, looked at the remains of the meal, at the book, then turned round to me: + 

“Don’t ever tell anyone, Ivan Andreievitch, that I have been afraid.⁠ ⁠… I’m never to be afraid again. And I’m not going to die. I know now that life is wonderful⁠—at last all that when I was young I expected it to be.⁠ ⁠… Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I feel today as though I would live forever!⁠ ⁠…” + 

Semyonov came in. He was in splendid spirits; I had never seen him so gay, so carelessly happy. + 

“Well,” he cried to me, “we’re to go now⁠—at once⁠ ⁠… and the next time at eight. We’ll leave you this time. We’ll be back by half-past six. We’ll do the Third and Fourth Roti now. The Eighth and Ninth afterwards. Can you wait for tea until we return? Good.⁠ ⁠… Half-past six, then!” + 

They departed. As she went out of the door she turned and gave me a little happy smile as though to bind me to an intimate enduring confidence. I smiled back at her and she was gone. + 

After they had left me I felt very lonely. The house was still and desolate, and I took a book that I had brought with me⁠—the Le Deuil des Primeveres of François Jammes. I had learnt the habit during my first visit to the war of always taking a book in my pocket when engaged upon any business; there were so many long weary hours of waiting when the nerves were stretched, and a book⁠—quiet and real and something apart from all wars and all rumours of wars⁠—was a most serious necessity. What Tristram Shandy was to me once under fire near Nijnieff, and Red-Gauntlet on an awful morning when our whole Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the evening⁠—with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the garden with M. Jammes. + 

As I walked along the little paths through a tangle of wood and green that might very well have presented the garden of the Sleeping Beauty, I heard now and then a sound that resembled the swift flight of a bird or the sudden ting of a telegraph-wire. The Austrians were amusing themselves; sometimes a bullet would clip a tree in its passing or one would see a leaf, quite suddenly detached, hover for a moment idly in the air and then circle slowly to the ground. Except for this sound the garden was fast held in the warm peace of a summer afternoon. I found a most happy little neglected orchard with old gnarled apple-trees and thick waving grass. Here I lay on my back, watching the gold through the leaves, soaked in the apathy and somnolence of the day, sinking idly into sleep, rising, sinking again, as though rocked in a hammock. I was in England once more⁠—at intervals there came a sharp click that exactly resembled the sound that one hears in an English village on a summer afternoon when they are playing cricket in the field near by⁠—oneself at one’s ease in the garden, half sleeping, half building castles in the air, the crack of the ball on the bat, the cooing of some pigeons on the roof.⁠ ⁠… Once again that sharp pleasant sound, again the flight of the bird above one’s head, again the rustle of some leaves behind one’s head⁠ ⁠… soon there will be tea, strawberries and cream, a demand that one shall play tennis, that saunter through the cool dark house, up old stairs, along narrow passages to one’s room where one will slowly, happily change into flannels⁠—hearing still through the open window the crack of the bat upon the ball from the distant field.⁠ ⁠… + 

But as I lay there I was unhappy, rebellious. The confidence and splendour of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov had driven me into exile. I hated myself that afternoon. That pursuit⁠—the excitement of the penetration into the dark forest⁠—the thrill of the chase⁠—those things were for the strong men, the brave women⁠—not for the halt and maimed⁠ ⁠… not love nor glory, neither hate nor fierce rebellion were for such men as I.⁠ ⁠… I cursed my fate, my life, because I loved, not for the first time, a woman who was glad that I did not love her and was so sure that I did not and could not, that she could proclaim her satisfaction openly to me! + 

I had an hour of bitterness⁠—then, as I had so often done before, I laughed, drove the little devil into his cage, locked it, dropped the thick curtain in front of it. + 

I claimed the company of M. François Jammes. + 

He has a delightful poem about donkeys and as I read it I regained my tranquillity. It begins: + 

Lorsqu’il faudra aller vers Vous, ô mon Dieu, faites + 

Que ce soit par un jour ou la campagne en fête + 

Poudroiera. Je désire, ainsi que je fis ici-bas, + 

Choisir un chemin pour aller, comme il me plaira, + 

Au Paradis, où sont en plein jour les étoiles. + 

Je prendrai mon bâton et sur la grande route + 

J’irai et je dirai aux ânes, mes amis: + 

Je suis François Jammes et je vais au Paradis, + 

Car il n’y a pas d’enfer au pays du Bon Dieu. + 

Je leur dirai: Venez, doux amis du ciel bleu, + 

Pauvres bêtes chéries qui d’un brusque mouvement d’oreilles, + 

Chassez les mouches plates, les coups et les abeilles.⁠ ⁠… + 

That brought tranquillity back to me. I found another poem⁠—his “Amsterdam.” + 

Les maisons pointues ont l’air de pencher. On dirait + 

Qu’elles tombent. Les mâts des vaisseaux qui s’embrouillent + 

Dans le ciel sont penchés comme des branches sèches + 

Au milieu de verdure, de raye, de rouille, + 

De harengs saurs, de peaux de moutons et de bouille. + 

Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam + 

(Je crois du moins qu’il y passa) en revenant + 

De l’île ombreuse et verte aux noix de coco fraîches. + 

Quelle émotion il dut avoir quand il vit luire + 

Les portes énormes, aux lourds marteaux, de cette ville!⁠ ⁠… + 

Regardait-il curieusement les entresols + 

Ou les commis écrivent les livres de comptes? + 

Eut-il envie de pleurer en resongeant + 

A son cher perroquet, à son lourd parasol, + 

Qui l’abritait dans l’île attristée et clémente?⁠ ⁠… + 

I was asleep; my eyes closed; the book fell from my hand. Someone near me seemed to repeat in the air the words: + 

Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam + 

(Je crois, du moins, qu’il y passa) en revenant + 

De l’île ombreuse.⁠ ⁠… + 

“De l’île ombreuse”⁠ ⁠… “Robinson Crusoë passa”⁠ ⁠… + 

I was rocked in the hot golden air. I slept heavily, deeply, without dreams.⁠ ⁠… + 

I was awakened by a cold fierce apprehension of terror. I sat up, stared slowly around me with the sure, certain conviction that some dreadful thing had occurred. The orchard was as it had been⁠—the sun, lower now, shone through the green branches. All was still and even, as I listened I heard the sharp crack of the ball upon the bat breaking the evening air. My heart had simply ceased to beat. I remember that with a hand that trembled I picked up the book that was lying open on the grass and read, without understanding them, the words. I remember that I said, out aloud: “Something’s happened,” then turning saw Semyonov’s face. + 

I realised nothing save his face with its pale square beard and red lips, framed there by the shining green and blue. He stood there, without moving, staring at me, and the memory of his eyes even now as I write of it hurts me physically so that my own eyes close. + 

That was perhaps the worst moment of my life, that confrontation of Semyonov. He stood there as though carved in stone (his figure had always the stiff clear outline of stone or wood). I realised nothing of his body⁠—I simply saw his eyes, that were staring straight in front of him, that were blazing with pain, and yet were blind. He looked past me and, if one had not seen the live agony of his eyes, one would have thought that he was absorbed in watching something that was so distant that he must concentrate all his attention upon it. + 

I got upon my feet and as my eyes met his I knew without any question at all that Marie Ivanovna was dead. + 

When I had risen we stood for a moment facing one another, then without a word he turned towards the house. I followed him, leaving my book upon the grass. He walking slowly in front of me with his usual assured step, except that once he walked into a bush that was to his right; he afterwards came away from it, as a man walking in his sleep might do, without lowering his eyes to look at it. We entered by a side-door. I, myself, had no thoughts at all at this time. I felt only the cold, heavy oppression at my heart, and I had, I remember, no curiosity as to what had occurred. We passed through passages that were strangely dark, in a silence that was weighted and mysterious. We entered the room where we had been earlier in the afternoon; it seemed now to be full of people, I saw now quite clearly, although just before the whole world had seemed to be dark. I saw our two soldiers standing back by the door; a doctor, whose face I did not know, a very corpulent man, was on his knees on the floor⁠—some sanitars were in a group by the window. In the middle of the room lay Marie Ivanovna on a stretcher. Even as I entered the stout doctor rose, shaking his head. I had only that one glimpse of her face on my entry, because, at the shake of the doctor’s head, a sanitar stepped forward and covered her with a cloth. But I shall see her face as it was until I die. Her eyes were closed, she seemed very peaceful.⁠ ⁠… But I cannot write of it, even now.⁠ ⁠… + 

My business here is simply with facts, and I must be forgiven if now I am brief in my account. + 

The room was just as it had been earlier in the afternoon; I saw the sardine-tin, the dirty plate that had a little cloud of flies upon it; the room seemed under the evening sun full of gold dust. I crossed over to our soldiers and asked them how it had been. One of them told me that they had gone with the boiler to the trenches. Everything had been very quiet. They had taken their stand behind a small ruined house. Semyonov had just returned from telling the officers of the Rota that the tea was ready when, quite suddenly, the Austrians had begun to fire. Bullets had passed thickly overhead. Marie Ivanovna had seemed quite fearless, and laughing, had stepped, for a moment, from behind the shelter to see whether the soldiers were coming for their tea. She was struck instantly; she gave a sharp little cry and fell. They rushed to her side, but death had been instantaneous. She had been struck in the heart.⁠ ⁠… There was nothing to be done.⁠ ⁠… The soldiers seemed to feel it very deeply, and one of them, a little round fellow with a merry face whom I knew well, turned away from me and began to cry, with his hand to his eyes. + 

Semyonov was standing in the room with exactly that same dead burning expression in his eyes. His mouth was set severely, his legs apart, his hands at his sides. + 

“A terrible misfortune,” I heard the stout doctor say. + 

Semyonov looked at him gravely. + 

“Thank you very much for your kindness,” he said courteously. Then, by a common instinct, without any spoken word between us, we all went from the room, leaving Semyonov alone there. + 

I remember very little of our return to Mittövo. We borrowed a cart upon which we laid the body. I sat in the trap with Semyonov. I was, I remember, afraid lest he should suddenly go off his head. It seemed quite a possible thing then, he was so quiet, so motionless, scarcely breathing. I concentrated all my thought upon this. I had my hand upon his arm and I remember that it relieved me in some way to feel it so thick and strong beneath his sleeve. He did not look at me once. + 

I do not know what my thoughts were, a confused incoherent medley of nonsense. I did not think of Marie Ivanovna at all. I repeated again and again to myself, in the silly, insane way that one does under the shock of some trouble, the words of the poem that I had read that afternoon: + 

Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam + 

(Je crois du moins qu’il y passa) en revenant + 

De l’île ombreuse et verte⁠—ombreuse et verte⁠—ombreuse et verte.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was dark, or at any rate, it seemed to me dark. The weather was still and close; every sound echoed abominably through the silence. When we arrived at Mittövo I suddenly thought of Trenchard. I had utterly forgotten him until that moment. I got out of the trap and when Semyonov climbed out he put his hand on my arm. I don’t know why but that touched me so deeply and sharply that I felt, suddenly, as though in another instant I should lose my self-control. It was so unlike him, so utterly unlike him, to do that. I trembled a little, then steadied myself, and we walked together into the house. They must all instantly have known what had occurred because I heard running steps and sharp anxious voices. + 

I felt desperately, as a man runs when he is afraid, that I must be alone. I slipped away into the passage that leads from the hall. This passage was quite dark and I was feeling my direction with my hands when someone, carrying a candle, turned the corner. It was Trenchard. He raised the candle high to look at me. + 

“Hallo, Durward,” he cried. “You’re back. What sort of a time?⁠ ⁠…” + 

I told him at once what had occurred. The candle dropped from his hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest Trenchard should do something to me, there, as we stood. + 

I felt his hand groping on my clothes. But he was only feeling his way. I heard his steps, creeping, stumbling down the passage. Once I thought that he had fallen. + 

Then there was silence, and at last I was alone. + 

III + 

The Forest + 

And now I am confronted with a very serious difficulty. There is nothing stranger in this whole business of the life and character of war than the fashion in which an atmosphere that has been of the intensest character can, by the mere advance or retreat of a pace or two, disappear, close in upon itself, present the blindest front to the soul that has, a moment before, penetrated it. It is as though one had visited a house for the first time. The interior is of the most absorbing and unique interest. There are revealed in it beauties, terrors, of so sharp a reality that one believes that one’s life is changed forever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only before one’s view a thick cold wall⁠—the windows are dead, there is no sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors.⁠ ⁠… Ordinary life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance, one disbelieves in fantastic dreams. + 

I believe that everyone who has had experience of war will admit the truth of this. I had myself already known something of the kind and had wondered at the fashion in which the crossing of a mere verst or two can bring the old life about one. I had known it during the battle of S⁠⸺, in the days that followed the battle, in moments of the Retreat, when for half an hour we would suddenly be laughing and careless as though we were in Petrograd. + 

And so when I look back to the weeks of whose history I wish now to give a truthful account, I am afraid of myself. I wish to give nothing more than the facts, and yet that something that is more than the facts is of the first, and indeed the only, importance. Moreover the last impression that I wish to convey is that war is a hysterical business. I believe that that succession of days in the forest of S⁠⸺, the experience of Nikitin, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself⁠—might have occurred to anyone, must have occurred to many other persons, but from the cool safe foundation on which now I stand it cannot but seem exceptional, even exaggerated. Exaggerated, in very truth, I know that it is not. And yet this life⁠—so ordered, so disciplined, so rational, and that life⁠—where do they join?⁠ ⁠… I penetrated but a little way; my friends penetrated into the very heart⁠ ⁠… and, because I was left outside, I remain the only possible recorder: but a recorder who can offer only signs, moments, glimpses through a closing door.⁠ ⁠… + 

I am waiting now for the return of my opportunity. + 

On the night of the death of Marie Ivanovna I slept a heavy, dreamless sleep. I was wakened between six and seven the next morning by Nikitin, who told me that he, Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and I were to return at once to the forest. I realised at once that indescribable quiver in the air of momentous events. The house was quite still, the summer morning very fresh and clear, but the air was weighted with some crisis. It was not only the death of Marie Ivanovna that was present with us, it was rather something that told us that now no individual life or death counted⁠ ⁠… individualities, personalities, were swallowed up in the sweeping urgency of a great climax. Nikitin simply told me that a furious battle was raging some ten versts on the other side of the river, that we were to go at once to form a temporary hospital behind the lines in the Forest; that the nurses and the rest of the Otriad would remain in Mittövo to wait for the main tide of the wounded, but that we were to go forward to help the army doctors. He spoke very quietly. We said nothing of Marie Ivanovna. + 

I dressed quickly and on going out found the wagons waiting, some fifteen or twenty sanitars and Trenchard and Andrey Vassilievitch. The four of us climbed into one of the wagons and set off. I did not see Semyonov. Trenchard was pale, there were heavy black lines under his eyes⁠—but he seemed calm, and he stared in front of him as though he were absorbed by some concentrated self-control. For the first time in my experience of him he seemed to me a strong independent character. + 

We did not speak at all. I could see that Andrey Vassilievitch was nervous: his eyes were anxious and now and then he moistened his lips with his tongue. When we had crossed the river and began to climb the hill I knew that I hated the Forest. It was looking beautiful under the early morning sun, its green so delicate and clear, its soft shadows so cool, its birds singing so carelessly, the silver birches, lines of light against the dark spaces; but this was all to me now as though it had been arranged by some ironic hand. It knew well enough who had died there yesterday and it was preparing now, behind its black recesses, a rich harvest for its malicious spirit. We passed through the cholera village and reached the white house of yesterday at about ten o’clock. As we clattered up to the door I for a moment closed my eyes. I felt as though I could not face the horrible place, then summoning my control I boldly challenged it, surveying its long broken windows, its high doorway, its sunny, insulting garden. We were met by the stout doctor, whom I had seen before. As he is of some importance in the events that followed I will mention his name⁠—Konstantine Feodorovitch Kryllow. He was large and stout, a true Russian type, with a merry laughing face. He had the true Russian spirit of unconquerable irrational merriment. He laughed at everything with the gaiety of a man who finds life too preposterous for words. He had all the Russian untidyness, kindness of heart, gay, ironical pessimism. “Tomorrow” was a word unknown to him: nothing was sacred to him, and yet at times it seemed as though life were so holy, so mysterious, that the only way to keep it from careless eyes was by laughing at it. He had no principles, no plans, no prejudices, no reverences. If he wished to sleep for a week he would do so, if he wished to eat for a week he would do so. If he died tomorrow he did not care⁠ ⁠… it was all so absurd that it was not worth while to give it any attention. He would grow very fat, he would die⁠—he would love women, play cards, drink, quarrel, give his life for a sentimental moment, pour every farthing of his possessions into the lap of a friend, incur debts which he would not pay, quarrel wildly with a man about a rouble, remember things that you would expect him to forget, forget everything that he should remember⁠—a pagan, a saint, a blackguard, a hero⁠—anything you please so long as you do not take it seriously. + 

This morning he was dirty and looked as though he had slept for many nights without taking off his clothes⁠—unshaven, his shirt open showing his hairy chest, his eyes blinking in the light. + 

“That’s good,” he said, seeing us. “I’ve got to be off, leaving the place to you.⁠ ⁠… Fearful time they’re having over there,” pointing across the garden. “Yes, five versts away. Plenty of work in a minute. Brought food with you? Very little here.” Then I heard him begin, as he walked into the house with Nikitin, “Terrible thing, Doctor, about your Sister yesterday.⁠ ⁠… Terrible.⁠ ⁠… I⁠—” + 

I remember that my great desire was that I should not be left alone with Trenchard. I clung to Andrey Vassilievitch, and a poor resource he was, watching with nervous eyes the building and the glimmering forest, dusting his clothes and beginning sentences which he did not finish, Trenchard was quite silent. We entered the horrible room of yesterday. The dirty plate and the sardine-tin were still there with the flies about them: the highly coloured German supplement watched us from its rakish position on the wall, the treatise on New Mexico was lying on the table. I picked up the book and it opened naturally at a place where the last reader had turned down the corner of the page. The same page happens to be quoted exactly in Trenchard’s diary on an occasion about which afterwards I shall have to speak. There is an account of the year’s work of some New Mexican school and it runs: + 

“Besides the regular class work there have been other features of special merit, programmes of which we append: + 

“Lectures: Rev. H. W. Ruffner, Titles and Degrees; Mr. Fred A. Bush, What the Community owes the Newspaper and what the Newspaper owes the Community; Dr. E. H. Woods, Tuberculosis; Rev. I. R. Glass, Fools; Mr. Eugene Warren, Blood of the Nation; Dr. L. M. Strong, Orthopedics; Hon. S. M. Ashenfelter, Freedom of Effort; Hon. W. T. Cessna, Don’t Pay too dearly for the Whistle; Dr. O. S. Westlake, The Physician and the Laity; Prof. Wellington Putman, Rip Van Winkle; Rev. E. S. Hanshaw, The Mind’s Picture Gallery; Hon. R. M. Turner, Opportunities. + 

“Othello. For the first time the normal students presented for the class-day exercise a Shakespearian play, Othello. Cast of characters: Othello, E. F. Dunlavey; Iago, Douglas Giffard; Duke of Venice, Charles Harper; Brabantio, Eugene Cosgrove; Cassio, Arnold Rosenfeld; Roderigo, Erwin Moore; Montano, Wilson Portherfield; Lodovico, Henry Geitz; Gratiano, William Fleming; Desdemona, Carrie Whitehill; Emilia, Gussie Rodgers; Bianca, Florence Otter; senators, officers, messengers and attendants. + 

“Graduating Programme. Music: the Anglo-Saxon in History, Douglas Giffard; the Anglo-Saxon in Science, Florence Otter; the Anglo-Saxon in Literature, Gussie Rodgers; Music; annual address, Hon. R. M. Turner; Music; presentation of diplomas. + 

“Doubtless among the most interesting and most profitable events of the institution was the annual society contest between the two societies, the Literati and the Lyceum. The Silver City Commercial Club offered a costly cup to the winning society and it was won by the Lyceum. The contest was in oration, elocution, debate, parliamentary usage and athletics. + 

“The inside adornment of the hall has not been neglected. A number of portraits and a large number of carbon prints of celebrated paintings have been added, the class picture being the most important and costing in the neighbourhood of $100; this is the hunting scene of Ruysdael. Some of the others are The Parthenon, The Immaculate Conception by Murillo, and The Allegorie du Printemps by Botticelli. Many valuable specimens have been added to the museum: among these are minerals, animals and vegetable products, and manufactured articles from abroad illustrative of the habits and customs of foreigners.” + 

I give this page in full because it was afterwards to have importance, though at the time I glanced at it only carelessly. But I remember that I speculated on the lecture by the Rev. I. R. Glass about “Fools,” that I admired a contest so widely extended as to embrace oration, parliamentary usage and athletics, that I liked very much the “class Ruysdael,” “costing in the neighbourhood of $100,” and the “manufactured articles from abroad, illustrative of the habits and customs of foreigners.” + 

Nikitin came up to me. “Will you please set off at once with Mr. to Vulatch?” he said. “Find there Colonel Maximoff and get direct orders from him. Return as soon as possible. They say we’re not likely to have wounded until late this afternoon⁠—a good thing as a lot wants doing to this place. Hasten, Ivan Andreievitch. No time to lose.” + 

Vulatch was a little town situated ten versts to our right in the Forest. I had heard of its strange position before, quite a town and yet lying in the very heart of the Forest, as though it had been the settlement of some early colonists. It had running through it a good high road, but otherwise was far removed from the outer world. It had during the war been twice bombarded and was now, I believed, ruined and deserted. For the moment it was the headquarters of the Sixty-Fifth Staff. I was frankly frightened of going alone with Trenchard⁠—frightened both of myself and of him. I told him and without a word he went with me. When we started off in the wagon I looked at him. He was sitting on the straw, very quietly, his hands folded, looking in front of him. He seemed older: the sentimental naivete that had been always in his face seemed now entirely to have left him. He had always looked before as though he wanted someone to help him out of a position that was too difficult for him; now he was alone in a world where no one could reach him. During the whole drive to Vulatch we exchanged no word. The sound of the cannon was distant but incessant, and strangely, as it seemed to me, we were alone. Once and again soldiers passed us, sometimes wagons with kitchens or provisions met us on the road, sometimes groups of men were waiting by the roadside, once we saw them setting up telegraph wires, once a desolate band of Austrian prisoners crossed our path, twice wagons with wounded rumbled along⁠—but for the most part we were alone. We were out of the main track of the battle. It was as though the Forest had arranged this that it might the more impress us. Our road, although it was the high road, was rough and uneven and we advanced slowly: with every step that the horses took I was the more conscious of a sinister and malign influence. I know how easily one’s nerves can lend atmosphere to something that is in itself innocent and harmless enough, but it must be remembered that (at this time), in spite of what had happened yesterday, neither Trenchard’s nerves nor mine were strained. My sensation must, I think, have closely resembled the feelings of a diver who, for the first time, descends below the water. I had never felt anything like this before and there was quite definitely about my eyes, my nose, my mouth, a feeling of suffocation. I can only say that it was exactly as though I were breathing in an atmosphere that was strange to me. This may have been partly the effect of the sun that was beating down very strongly upon us, but it was also, curiously enough, the result of some dimness that obscured the direct path of one’s vision. On every side of our rough forest road there were black cavernous spaces set here and there like caves between sheets of burning sunlight. Into these caves one’s gaze simply could not penetrate, and the light and darkness shifted about one with exactly the effect of stirring, swaying water. Although the way was quite clear and the road broad I felt as though at any moment our advance would be stopped by an impenetrable barrier, a barrier of bristled thickets, of an iron wall, of a sudden, fathomless precipice. Of course to both Trenchard and myself there were, during this drive, thoughts of his dream. We both recognized, although at this time we did not speak of it, that this was the very place that had now grown so vivid to us. “Ah, this is how it looks in sunlight!” I would think to myself, having seen it always in the early morning and cold. Behind me the long white house, the hunters, the dogs.⁠ ⁠… No, they were not here in the burning suffocating sunlight, but they would come⁠—they would come! + 

The monotony of the place emphasised its vastness. It was not, I suppose, a great Forest, but today it seemed as though we were winding further and further, through labyrinth after labyrinth of clouding obscurity, winding towards some destination from which we could never again escape. Pum⁠—pum⁠—pum, whispered the cannon; Whirr⁠—whirr⁠—whirr, the shadowy trembling background echoed. Then with a sudden lifting of the curtain Vulatch was revealed to us. Ruined towns and villages were, by this time, no new sight to me, but this place was different from anything that I had ever seen before. From the bend of the little hill we looked down upon it and the sight of it made me shudder. It was the deadest place, the deadest place in the world⁠—all white under the sun it lay there like the bleached bones of some animal picked clean long ago by the birds. + 

Not a sound came from it, not a movement could be discerned in it. I could see, standing out straight from the heart of it, what must have been once a fine church. It had had four green turrets perched like little green bubbles on white towers; three of these were still there, and between them stood the white husk of the place; from where we watched we could see little fires of blue light sparkling like jewels between the holes. Over it all was a strange metallic glitter as though we were seeing through glass, glass shaded very faintly green. Under this green shadow, which seemed very gently to stain the air, the town was indeed like a lost city beneath the sea. Catching our breaths we plunged down into the fantastic depths.⁠ ⁠… + 

As we descended the hill we were surprised by the silence⁠—not a soul to be seen. We had expected to find the place filled with the soldiers of the Sixty-Fifth Division. Our driver on this day was the man Nikolai whom I have mentioned before as attaching himself from the very beginning to Trenchard’s service. He had been Trenchard’s unofficial servant now for a long time, saying very little, always succeeding, in some quiet fashion of his own, in accompanying Trenchard on his expeditions. Nikolai was one of the quietest human beings I have ever known. His charming ugly face was in repose a little gloomy, not thoughtful so much as expectant, dreamy perhaps but also very practical and unidealistic. His smile changed all that; in a moment his face was merry, even good-humouredly malicious, suspicious, and a little ironical. He had the thick stolid body of the Russian peasant who is trained to any endurance, any misfortune that God might choose to send it. His attachment to Trenchard had been so unobtrusive that Molozov had officially permitted it without realising that he had permitted anything. It was so unobtrusive that I myself had not, during these last weeks, noticed it. Today I saw Nikolai glance many times at Trenchard. His eyes were anxious and inquiring; he looked at him rather as a dog may look at his master, although there was here no dumb submission, nor any sentimental weakness.⁠ ⁠… I should rather say that Nikolai looked at Trenchard as one free man may look at another. “What is the matter with you?” his eyes seemed to say. “But I know⁠ ⁠… a terrible thing has happened to you. At any rate I am here to be of any use that I can.” + 

“Nikolai,” I said, “why is there no one here?” + 

“Ne mogoo znat, your Honour.” + 

“Well, the first soldier you see you must ask.” + 

“Tak totchno.” + 

“Who said you were to drive us?” + 

“Vladimir Stepanovitch, your Honour.” + 

“Are you going to remain with us?” + 

“Tak totchno.” + 

His eyes rested for a moment on Trenchard, then he turned to his horses. + 

We were entering the town now and it did, indeed, present to us a scene of desperate desolation. The place had been originally built in rising tiers on the side of the valley, and the principal street had leading out of it, up the hill, steps rising to balconied houses that commanded a view of the opposite hill. Almost every house in this street was in ruins; sometimes the ruins were complete⁠—only an isolated chimney of broken stone wall remaining, sometimes the shell was standing, the windows boarded up with wood, sometimes almost the whole building was there, a gaping space in the roof the only sign of desolation. And there remained the ironical signs of its earlier life. Many of the buildings had their titles still upon them. In one place I saw the blackened and almost illegible plate of a lawyer, in another a large still fresh-looking advertisement of a dentist, here there was the large lettering “Tobacconist,” there upon a trembling wall the tattered remains of an announcement of a sale of furniture. Once, most ironical of all, a gaping and smoke-stained building showed the half-torn remnant of a cinematograph picture, a fat gentleman in a bowler hat entering with a lady on either arm a gaily painted restaurant. Over this, in big letters, the word “farce.” + 

Although we saw no soldiers we were not entirely alone. In and out of the sunny caverns, appearing outlined against the darkness, vanishing in a sudden blaze of light, were shadows of the citizens of Vulatch. They seemed to me, without exception, to be Jews. From most of the Galician towns and villages the Jews had been expelled⁠—here they only, apparently, had been left. Of women I saw scarcely any⁠—old men, with long dirty black or grizzled beards, yellow skins, peaked black caps, and filthy black gowns clutched about their thin bodies. They watched us, silently, ominously, maliciously. They crept from door to door, stole up the stone steps and vanished, appeared, as it seemed, right beneath our horses’ feet and disappeared. If we caught them with our eyes they bowed with a loathsome, trembling subservience. There were many little Jewish children, with glittering eyes, naked feet, bare scrubby heads and white faces. Nikolai at length caught an old man and asked him where the soldiers were. The old man replied in very tolerable Russian that all the soldiers had gone last night⁠—not one of them remained⁠—but he believed that some more were shortly to arrive. They were always coming and going, he said. + 

We stayed where we were, under the blazing sun, and held council. In every doorway, in every shadow, there were eyes watching us. The whole town was overweighted, overwhelmed by the brooding Forest. From where we stood I could see it rising on every side of us like a trembling, threatening green wave; in the furious heat of the sun the white ruins seemed to jump and leap. + 

“Well,” I said to Trenchard, “what’s to be done?” + 

He pulled himself back from his thoughts. + 

He had been sitting in the cart, quite motionless, his face white and hidden, as though he slept. He raised his tired, heavy eyes to my face. + 

“Do?” he said. + 

“Yes,” I answered impatiently. “Didn’t you hear what Nikolai said? There are no soldiers here. We can’t find Maximoff because he isn’t here. We must go back, I suppose.” + 

“Very well,” he answered indifferently. + 

“I’m not going back,” I said, “until I’ve had something to drink⁠—tea or coffee. I wonder whether there’s anything here⁠—any place we could go to.” + 

Nikolai inquired. Old Shylock pointed with his bony finger down the street. + 

“Very fine restaurant there,” he said. + 

“Will you come and see?” I asked Trenchard. + 

“Very well,” said Trenchard. + 

I told Nikolai to stay there and wait for us. I walked down the street, followed by Trenchard. I found on my left, at the top of a little flight of steps, a house that was for the most part untouched by the general havoc around and about it. The lower windows were cracked and the door open and gaping, but there stood, quite bravely with new paint, the word “Restoration” on the lintel and there were even curtains about the upper windows. Passing through the door we found a room decently clean, and behind the little bar a stout red-faced Galician in white shirt and grey trousers, a citizen of the normal world. We were just then his only customers. We asked him for tea and sat down at a little table in the corner of the room. He did not talk to us but stood in his place humming cheerfully to himself and cleaning glasses. He was a rogue, I thought, looking at his little eyes, but at any rate a merry rogue; he certainly had kept off from him the general death and desolation that had overwhelmed his neighbours. I sat opposite to Trenchard and wondered what to say to him. His expression had never varied. As I looked at him I could not but think of the strength of his eyes, of his mouth, the quiet concentration of his hands⁠ ⁠… a different figure from the smiling uncertain man on the Petrograd station⁠—how many years ago? + 

Our tea was brought to us. Then quite suddenly Trenchard said to me: + 

“Did she say anything before she died?” + 

“No,” I answered quietly. “She died instantly, they told me.” + 

“How exactly was she killed?” + 

His eyes watched my face without falter, clearly, gravely, steadfastly. + 

“She was killed by a bullet. Stepped out from behind her shelter and it happened at once. She can have suffered nothing.” + 

“And Semyonov let her?” + 

“He could not have prevented it. It might have happened to anyone.” + 

“I would have prevented it,” he said, nodding his head gravely. + 

He was silent for a little; then with a sudden jerk he said: + 

“Where has she gone?” + 

“Gone?” I repeated stupidly after him. + 

“Yes⁠—that’s not death⁠—to go like that. She must be somewhere still⁠—somewhere in this beastly forest. What⁠—afterwards⁠—when you saw her⁠—what?⁠ ⁠… her face?⁠ ⁠…” + 

“She looked very peaceful⁠—quite happy.” + 

“No restlessness in her face? No anxiety?” + 

“None.” + 

“But all that life⁠—that energy. It can’t have stopped. Quite suddenly. It can’t. She can’t have wanted not to know all those things that she was so eager about before.” He was suddenly voluble, excited, leaning forward, staring at me. “You know how she was. You must have seen it numbers of times⁠—how she never looked at any of us really, how we were none of us⁠—no, not even Semyonov⁠—anything to her really; always staring past us, wanting to know the answer to questions that we couldn’t solve for her. She wouldn’t give it all up simply for nothing, simply for a bullet⁠ ⁠…” he broke off. + 

“Look here, Trenchard,” I said, “try not to think of her just now more than you can help, just now. We’re in for a stiff time, I believe. This will be our last easy afternoon, I fancy, and even now we ought to be back helping Nikitin. You’ve got to work all you know. One’s nerves get wrong easily enough in a place like this⁠—and after what has happened I feel this damned Forest already. But we mustn’t let our nerves go. We’ve simply got to work and think about nothing at all⁠—think about nothing at all.” + 

I don’t believe that he heard me. + 

“Semyonov?” he said slowly. “What did he do?” + 

“He was very quiet,” I answered. “He didn’t say anything. He looked awful.” + 

“Yes. She snapped her fingers at him anyway. He couldn’t keep her for all his bullying.” + 

“It pretty well killed him,” I said rather fiercely. “Look here, Trenchard. Don’t think of yourself⁠—or of her. Everyone’s in it now. There isn’t any personality about it. We’ve simply got to do our best and not think about it. It’s thinking that beats one if one lets it.” + 

“Semyonov⁠ ⁠… Semyonov,” he repeated to himself, smiling. “No, he had not power over her.” Then looking at me very calmly, he remarked: “This Death, you know, Durward.⁠ ⁠… It simply doesn’t exist. It can’t stop her. It can’t stop anyone if they’re determined. I’ll find her before Semyonov does, too.” + 

Then, as though he had waked from sleep, he said to me, his voice trembling a little: “Am I talking queerly, Durward? If I am, don’t think anything of it. It’s this heat⁠—and this place. Let’s get back.” He only spoke once more. He said: “Do you remember that first drive⁠—ages ago, when we saw the trenches and heard the frogs and I thought there was someone there?” + 

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.” + 

“Well, it’s rather like that now, isn’t it?” + 

A pretty girl, twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, obviously the daughter of the red-faced proprietor, came up to us and asked us if we would like any more tea. She would be stout later on, her red cheeks were plump and her black hair arranged coquettishly in little shining curls. She smiled on us. + 

“No more tea?” she said. + 

“No more,” I answered. + 

“You will not be staying here?” + 

“Not tonight.” + 

“We have a nice room here.” + 

“No, thank you.” + 

“Perhaps one of you⁠—” + 

“No. We are returning tonight.” + 

“Perhaps, for an hour or two.” Then smiling at me and laughing a little, “I have known many officers⁠ ⁠… very many.” + 

“No, thank you,” I said sternly. + 

“I have a sister,” she said. She turned, crying: “Marie, Marie!” + 

A little girl, who could not have been more than fourteen years of age, appeared from the background. She also was red-cheeked and plump; her hair also was arranged in black, shining curls. She stood looking at us, half smiling, half defiant, sucking her finger. + 

“She also has known officers,” said the girl. “She would be very glad, if you cared⁠—” + 

I heard their father behind the bar humming to himself. + 

“Come out of this!” I said to Trenchard. “Come away!” + 

He followed me quietly, bowing very politely to the staring sisters.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Go on,” I said to Nikolai. “Drive on. No time to waste. We’ve got work to do.” + 

On our return we found that the press of work was not as yet severe. Half the building belonged to us, the remaining half being used by the officers of the battery. Nikitin had arranged a large room, that must I think have been a dining-room in happier days, with beds; to the right was the operating-room, overhead were our bedrooms and the room where originally I had sat with Marie Ivanovna was a general meeting place. The officers of the battery, two middle-aged and two very young indeed, were extremely courteous and begged us to make use of them in any way possible. They were living in the raggedest fashion, a week’s growth of beard on their chins, their beds unmade, the floor littered with ends of cigarettes, pieces of paper, journals. + 

“Been here weeks,” they apologetically explained to us. “Come in and have a meal with us whenever you like.” They resembled animals in a cave. When they were not on duty they played chemin-de-fer and slept. Meanwhile for three days and nights our work was slight. The battle drew further away into the Forest. Wagons with wounded came to us only at long intervals. + 

The result of these three days was a strange new intimacy between the four of us. I have never in all my life seen anything more charming than the behaviour of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch to Trenchard. There is something about Russian kindness that is both simpler and more tactful than any other kindness in the world. Tact is too often another name for insincerity, but Russian kindheartedness is the most honest impulse in the Russian soul, the quality that comes first, before anger, before injustice, before prejudice, before slander, before disloyalty, and overrides them all. They were, of course, conscious that Trenchard’s case was worse than their own. Marie Ivanovna’s death had shocked them, but she had been outside their lives and already she was fading from them. Trenchard was another matter. Nikitin seemed to me for the first time in my knowledge of him to come down from his idealistic dreaming. He cared for Trenchard like a child, but never obtrusively. Trenchard seemed to appreciate it, but there was something about him that I did not like. His nerves were tensely strained, he did his work with his eyes fixed upon some impossible distance, he often did not hear us when we spoke to him. + 

And so the three of us formed a kind of hedge about him to protect him, a hedge of which he was perfectly unconscious. He was very silent and I would have given a great deal to hear again one of those Glebeshire stories that I had once found so tiresome. That some plan or purpose was in his head one could not doubt. + 

We had, all of us, much in common in our characters. We liked the sentimental easy coloured view of life. We suddenly felt a strange freedom here in this place. For myself, on the third day, I found that Marie Ivanovna was most strangely present with me, and on the afternoon of that day, our wounded quiet on their beds, our wagons sent into the tent with no prospect of their return for several hours, we sat together, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch and I, looking out through a break in the garden towards the Forest, and talked about her. The weather was now very heavy⁠—certainly a thunderstorm was coming. I was also weighted down by an intense desire for sleep, at the same time knowing that if I were to fling myself on my bed sleep would not come to me. This is an experience that is not unusual at the Front, and officers have told me that in the middle of a battle when there comes a sudden lull, their longing for sleep has been so overpowering that no imminent danger could lift it from their eyes. + 

We sat there then and talked in low voices of Marie Ivanovna. I was aware of the buzzing of the flies, of the dull yellow light beyond the windows, of the Forest crouching a little as it seemed to me like a creature who expects a blow. We were all half asleep perhaps, the room dark behind us, and we talked of her as we might talk of a picture, a book, an experience ended and dismissed⁠—something outside our present affairs. And yet I knew that for me at any rate she was not outside them. I felt as though at any moment she might enter the room. We discussed her aloofness, her sudden happiness and her sudden distress, her intimacies and withdrawals, Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch slowly elaborating her into a high romantic figure. Behind her, behind all our thoughts of her, there was the presence of Semyonov. Nothing was stranger during our time here than the way that Semyonov had always kept us company. + 

Our consciousness of relief from him had begun it. We had been more under his influence than any of us had cared to confess and, in his presence, had checked our natural impulses. I also was strongly aware of him through Trenchard. Trenchard seemed now to have a horror of him that could be explained only by the fact that he held him responsible for Marie Ivanovna’s death. It’s a good thing, I thought to myself, that Semyonov’s not here. + 

These hours of waiting, when there was nothing to do, was bad for all our nerves. Upon this afternoon I remember that after a time silence fell between us. We were all staring in front of us, seeing pictures of other places and other people. I was aware, as I always was, of the Forest, seeing it shine with its sinister green haze, seeing the white bleached town, the huddled villagers waiting for their food, but seeing yet more vividly the deep silences, the dark hollows, the silent avenues of silver birch. Against this were the figures of the people who were dear to me. It is strange how war selects and brings forward as one’s eternal company the one or two souls who have been of importance in one’s life. One knows then, in those long, long threatening pauses, when the battle seems to gather itself together before it thunders its next smashing blow, those who are one’s true companions. Certain English figures were now with me outlined against the Forest⁠—and joined together with them Marie Ivanovna as I had last seen her, turning round to me by the door and smiling upon me. I did truthfully feel, as Trenchard had said to me, that she was not dead; I sat, staring before me, conjuring her to appear. The others also sat there, staring in front of them. Were they also summoning some figure? I knew, as though Andrey Vassilievitch had told me, that he was thinking of his wife. And Nikitin?⁠ ⁠… + 

He sat there, lying back on the old sofa that Marie had used, his black beard, his long limbs, his dark eyes giving him the colour of some Eastern magician. He did indeed, with his intense, absorbed gaze, seem to be casting a spell. As I looked Andrey Vassilievitch caught his glance⁠—they exchanged the strangest flash⁠—something that was intimate and yet foreign, something appealing and yet hostile. It was as though Andrey Vassilievitch had said: “I know you are thinking of her. Leave her to me,” and Nikitin had replied: “My poor friend. What can you do?⁠ ⁠… I do as I please.” + 

I know at least that I saw Andrey Vassilievitch frown, make as though he would get up and leave the room, then think better of it, and sink back into his chair. + 

I remember that just at that moment Trenchard entered. He joined us and sat on the sofa near Nikitin without speaking, staring in front of him like the rest of us. His face was tired and old, his cheeks hollow. + 

I waited and the silence began to get on my nerves. Then there came an interruption. The door opened quite silently: we all turned our eyes towards it without moving our heads. In the doorway stood Semyonov. + 

We were startled as though by a ghost. I remember that Andrey Vassilievitch jumped to his feet, crying. Trenchard never moved. Semyonov with his usual stolid self-possession came towards us, greeted us, then turning to me said: + 

“I’ve come to take your place, Ivan Andreievitch.” + 

“My place?” I stammered. + 

“Yes. You’re wanted there. You’re to return at once in the britchka.⁠ ⁠… In half an hour, if you don’t mind.” + 

“And you’ll stay?” + 

“And I’ll stay.” + 

No one else said anything. I remember that I had some half-intention of protesting, of begging to be allowed to remain. But I was no match for Semyonov. I could fancy the futility of my saying: “But really, Alexei Petrovitch, we don’t want you here. It’s much better to leave me. You’ll upset them all. It’s a nervous place, this.” I said nothing, except: “All right. I’ll go.” He watched me. He watched us all. I fancy that he smiled. + 

Outside I had a desperate absurd thought that I would return and ask him to be kind to Trenchard. As I turned away someone seemed to whisper in my ear: + 

“He’s come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna.” + 

IV + 

Four? + 

Before I give the extracts from Trenchard’s diary that follow I would like to say that I do not believe that Trenchard had any thought whatever, as he wrote, of publication. He says quite clearly that he wrote simply for his own satisfaction and later interest. At the same time I am convinced that he would not now object to their publication. If he had been here he would, I know, have supported my intention. The diary lies before me, here on my table, written in two yellow, stiff-covered manuscript books without lines. They are written very unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper Rupert Brooke’s sonnet, beginning: + 

“Blow out, you Bugles, over the rich Dead!” + 

and pasted it on to the blank page. + 

At times he sticks on to the other pages newspaper descriptions that have pleased him. His own descriptions of the Forest seem to me influenced by my talks with him, and I remember that it was Nikitin who spoke of the light like a glass ball and of the green-like water. For the most part he exhibits, from the beginning of the diary to the end, extreme practical common sense and he makes, I fancy, a very strong effort to record quite simply and even naively the truth as he sees it. At other times he is quite frankly incoherent.⁠ ⁠… + 

I will give, on another page, my impression of him when I saw him on my return to the Forest. I am, of course, in no way responsible for inconsistencies or irrelevances. He had kept a diary since his first coming to the war and I have already given some extracts from it. The earlier diary, in one place only, namely his account of his adventure during his night with Nikitin, is of the full descriptive order. That one occasion I have already quoted in its entirety. With that exception the early diary is brief and concerned only with the dryest recital of events. After the death of Marie Ivanovna, however, its character entirely changes for reasons which he himself shows. I would have expected perhaps a certain solemnity or even pomposity in the style of it; he had never a strong sense of humour. But I find it written in the very simplest fashion; words here and there are misspelt and his handwriting is large and round like a schoolboy’s. + 

Thursday, July 29th. I intend to write this diary with great fullness for two reasons⁠—in the first place because I can see that it is of the greatest importance, if one is to get through this business properly, to leave no hours empty. The trying thing in this affair is having nothing to do⁠—nothing one can possibly do. They all, officers, soldiers, from Nikolai Nikolaievitch to my Nikolai here, will tell you that. No empty hours for me if I can help it.⁠ ⁠… Secondly, I really do wish to record exactly my experiences here. I am perfectly aware that when I’m out of it all, when it’s even a day’s march behind me, I shall regard it as frankly incredible⁠—not the thing itself but the way I felt about it. When I come out of it into the world again I shall be overwhelmed with other people’s impressions of it, people far cleverer than I. There will be brilliant descriptions of battles, of what it feels like to be under fire, of marches, victories, retreats, wounds, death⁠—everything. I shall forget what my own little tiny piece of it was like⁠—and I don’t want to forget. I want intensely to remember the truth always, because the truth is bound up with Marie, and Marie with the truth. Why need I be shy now about her? Why should I hesitate, under the fear of my own later timidity, of saying exactly now what I feel? God knows what I do feel! I am confused, half-numb, half-dead, I believe, with moments of fiery biting realisation. I’m neither sad, nor happy⁠—only breathlessly expectant. The only adventure I have ever had in my life is not⁠—no, it is not⁠—yet ended. And I know that Marie could not have left me like that, without a word, unless she were returning or were going to send for me. + 

Meanwhile today a beastly thing has happened, a thing that will make life much harder for me here. All the morning there was work. Bandaged twenty⁠—had fifty in altogether⁠—sent thirty-four on, kept the rest. Two died during the morning. This isn’t really a good place to be, it’s so hemmed in with trees. We ought to be somewhere more open. The Forest is unhealthy, too. There’s been fighting in and out of it almost since the war began⁠—it can’t be healthy. In this hot weather the place smells.⁠ ⁠… Then there are the Flies. I write them with a capital letter because I’ve got to keep my head about the Flies. Does anyone at home or away from this infernal strip of fighting realise what flies are? Of course one’s read of the tropical sorts, all red and stinging, or white and bloated⁠—what you like, evil and horrid, but these here are just the ordinary household kind. Quite ordinary, but sheets, walls of them. I came into the little larder place near our sitting-room this morning. I thought they’d painted the walls black during the night. Then, at my taking the cover off some sugar, it was exactly as though the walls hovered and then fell inward breaking into black dust as they fell. They’ll cluster over a drop of wine on the table just like an evil black flower with grey petals. With one’s body they can play tricks beyond belief. They laugh at one, hovering at a distance, waiting. They watch one with their wicked little eyes⁠ ⁠… yes, I shall have to be careful about flies. + 

I’ve had a headache all day, but then in the afternoon there was a thunderstorm hovering somewhere near and there was no work to do. I feel tired, too, and yet I can’t sleep. Later in the afternoon we were all sitting together, very quiet, not talking. I was thinking about Semyonov then. I wondered whether he felt her death. How had he taken it? Durward would tell me so little. I was so glad, all the same, that he wasn’t here. And yet, in the strangest way, I would like to have spoken to him, to have asked him, if I had dared, a little about her. He was the only man to whom she really gave herself. I don’t grudge him that⁠—but there’s so much that I want to know⁠—and yet I’d die rather than ask him. Die! That’s an old phrase now⁠—death would tell me much more than Semyonov ever could. Just when we were sitting there he came in. It was the most horrible shock. I don’t want to put it melodramatically but that was exactly what it was. I had been thinking of him, thinking even of speaking to him, but I had known at the time that he wasn’t here, that he couldn’t be here⁠—then there he was in the doorway⁠—square and solid and grave and scornful. Now the horrible thing is that the moment I realised him I felt afraid. I didn’t feel anger or hatred or fine desires for revenge⁠—anything like that⁠—simply a miserable contemptible fear. It seems that as soon as I climb out of one fear I tumble into another. They are not physical now, but worse! + 

Later. The last bit seems rather silly. But I’ll leave it.⁠ ⁠… As to Semyonov. Of course he was very quiet and scornful with all of us. He told Durward that he’d come to take his place and Durward went without a word, Semyonov went off then with Nikitin, looking about, and making suggestions! He changed some things but not very much. We had been pretty intimate, all of us, before he came. I had really felt this last day that Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Vassilievitch were understood by me. Russians come and go so. At one moment they are close to you, intimate, openhearted, then suddenly they shut up, are miles away, look at you with distrust and suspicion. So with these two. On Semyonov’s arrival they changed absolutely. He shut them up of course. We were all as gloomy at supper as though we were deadly enemies. But the worst thing was at night. Durward and I had slept in one little room, Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Vassilievitch in another. Of course Semyonov took Durward’s bed. There was nowhere else for him to go. I don’t know what he thought about it. Of course he said nothing. He talked a little about ordinary things and I answered stupidly as I always do with him. I hated the solemn way he undressed. He was a long time cleaning his teeth, making noises in his mouth as though he were laughing at me. Then he sat on his bed, naked except for his shirt, combing his moustache and beard very carefully with a pocket-comb. He was so thick and solid and scornful, not looking at me exactly, just staring in front of him. There was no sound except his comb scraping through his beard. The room was so small and he seemed absolutely to fill it, so that I felt really flattened against the wall. It was as though he were showing me deliberately how much finer a man he was than I, how much stronger his body, that he could do anything with me if he liked. He asked me, very politely, whether I’d mind blowing out the candle and I did it at once. He watched me as I walked across the floor and I felt ashamed of my thinness and my ugliness and I know that he knew that I was ashamed. After the light was blown out I heard him settle into his bed with a great heavy plop. I couldn’t sleep for a long time, and at every movement that he made I felt as though he were laughing at me. And yet with all this I had also the strangest impulse to get up, there in the dark, to walk across the room, to put my hand on his shoulder and to ask him about her. What would he do? He’d refuse to speak, I suppose. I should only get insulted⁠—and yet.⁠ ⁠… He must be thinking of her⁠—all the time just as I am. He must want to talk of her and I know her better than anyone else did. And perhaps if I once broke down his pride⁠ ⁠… and yet every time that his body moved and the bed creaked I felt that I hated him, that I never wanted to speak to him again, that.⁠ ⁠… Oh! but I’m ashamed of myself. He is right to despise me.⁠ ⁠… + 

Saturday, July 31st. It is just midnight. I am on duty tonight. Everything is quiet and there are not likely I think to be any more wounded until the morning. I am sitting in the room where they brought Marie. It’s strange to think of that, and when you’re sitting with a candle in a dark room you can imagine anything. It’s odd in this affair how little things affect one. There’s a book here, a “Report on New Mexico.” I looked at it idly the other day and now I’m forever picking it up. It always opens at the same page and I find myself thinking, speculating about it in a ridiculous manner. I shall throw the thing away tomorrow, but I know the page by heart anyway. It’s an account of the work of some school or other. Here are a few of the lectures that were given: + 

Mr. Fred A. Bush. What the Community owes the Newspaper and what the Newspaper owes the Community.⁠—Rev. I. R. Glass. Fools.⁠—Hon. W. T. Cessna. Don’t Pay too dearly for the Whistle.⁠—Prof. Wellington Putman. Rip van Winkle.⁠—Rev. R. S. Hanshaw. The Mind’s Picture Gallery. + 

Then they acted Othello⁠—The “Normal Students,” whoever they may be. Othello, E. F. Dunlavey. Iago⁠—Douglas Giffard. Desdemona⁠—Carrie Whitehill. Emilia⁠—Gussie Rodgers.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards I see that Miss Gussie Rodgers gave a lecture on the Anglo-Saxon in Literature. She must have been a clever young woman. Then I see that they decorated one of their rooms with “a large number of carbon prints of celebrated paintings,” “the class picture being the most important and costing in the neighbourhood of $100⁠—this is the hunting scene of Ruysdael.⁠ ⁠…” Also they added to their Museum “manufactured articles from abroad illustrative of the habits and customs of foreigners.” + 

Now isn’t that all incredible after the day that I’ve had? Where do the things join? What’s all that got to do with the horrors I’ve been through today, with the Forest, the cholera, Marie, Semyonov.⁠ ⁠… With all that’s happening in Europe? With this mad earthquake of a catastrophe? And yet one thinks of such silly things. I can see them doing Othello with their cheap ermine, bad jewellery and impossible wigs. I expect Othello’s black came off as he got hotter and hotter; and the Rev. I. R. Glass on “Fools”.⁠ ⁠… There’d be all the cheap morality⁠—“It’s better, my young friends, to be good than to be bad. It pays better in the end”⁠—and there’d be little stories, sentimental some of them and humorous some of them. There’d be a general titter of laughter at the humorous ones.⁠ ⁠… And the carbon prints, the “Ruysdael” always pointed out to visitors⁠ ⁠… and after the war it will all be going on again. At Polchester, too, they’ll be having cheap lectures in the Town-Hall and Shakespeare Readings and High-School Prize-givings.⁠ ⁠… Where’s the Connection between That and This? Where’s the permanent thing in us that goes on whatever life may do to us? Is life still beautiful and noble in spite of whatever man may do with it, or is Semyonov right and there is no meaning in my love for Marie, nothing real and true except the things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears? Is Semyonov right, or are Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch and I?⁠ ⁠… And now let me stick to facts. I left this morning about six with twenty wagons to fetch wounded. Such a wonderful summer morning⁠—the Forest quite incredibly beautiful, birds singing in thousands, and that strange little stream that runs near our house and can look so abominable when it pleases, was trembling and lovely as though it didn’t know what evil was. We got to the first Red Cross place about eight. Here was Krylov. What a good fellow! Always cheerful, always kindhearted, nothing can dismay him. A Russian type that’s common enough in spite of all the “profound pessimism of the Russian heart” that we’re always hearing of. There he was anyway, working like a butcher before a feast-day. Dirty looking barn they were working in and it smelt like hell. Cannon pretty close too. They say the Austrians are fearfully strong just here and of course our ammunition is climbing down to less than nothing⁠—looks as though we were going to have a hot time soon. I turned in and helped Krylov all the morning and somehow his fat, ugly face, his little exclamations, his explosive comical rages, his sudden rough kindnesses did one a world of good. We filled the wagons and sent them back, then about midday, under a blazing hot sun, we went on with the others. Is there any place in the globe hot and suffocating quite as this Forest is? Even in the open spaces one can’t breathe and there’s never any proper shade under the trees. At first we were at a loss. No one seemed quite to know where the Vengrovsky Polk were. I had to go on alone and reconnoitre. I was right out in the open then and more alone than one could believe. Cannon were blazing away and one battery seemed just behind me⁠—and yet I couldn’t see it. I could see nothing⁠—only great ridges of hills with the Forest like gigantic torrents of green water under the mist, and just at my feet cornfields thick with cornflowers. Then I saw rather a wonderful thing. I came to the edge of my hill and looked down into a cup of a valley, quite a little valley with the green waves towering on every side of it. Through the mist there shimmered below me a blue lake. I was puzzled⁠—there was no water here that I knew, but by this time the Forest has so bewitched my senses that I’m ready to believe anything of it. There it was, anyway, a blue lake, shifting a little under gold haze. I climbed down the hill a yard or two and then you can believe that I jumped! My blue lake was Austrian prisoners, nothing more nor less! Has anyone quite seen them like that before, I wonder, and isn’t this Forest really the old witch’s forest, able to do what it pleases with anything? There they were, hundreds of them, covering the whole floor of the little valley. I walked down into the middle of them, found an officer, asked him about wounded, and got directed some two versts in front of me. Then I climbed up the hill back to my wagons and we started off. We went down the hill round by the road and came to the prisoners, crossed a stream and plunged into a shining dazzling nightmare. Where the cannon were I don’t know⁠—all a considerable distance away, I suppose, because the only sign of shell were the little breaking puffs of smoke in the blue sky with just a pin-flash of light as they broke; but really amongst that welter of wooded hill the sounds were uncanny. They’d be under one’s feet, over one’s head, in one’s ear, up against one’s stomach, straight in the small of one’s back. Since my night with Nikitin physical fear really seems to have left me⁠—the whole outward paraphernalia of the war has become an entirely commonplace thing, but it was the Forest that I felt⁠—exactly as though it were playing with me. Wasn’t there an old medieval torture when they shot arrows at their victim, always just missing him, first on one side, then on another, until at last, tired of the game, they fixed him through the head? Well, that’s what the old beast was trying to do to me, anything to doubt what’s real and what is not, anything to make me question my senses.⁠ ⁠… We tumbled quite suddenly on to some men, a small Red Cross shelter and two or three hundred soldiers sitting under the trees by the road resting⁠—most of them sleeping. The doctor in the Red Cross place⁠—a small fussy man⁠—was ill-tempered and overworked. There were at least thirty dead men lying in a row outside the shelter, and the army sanitars were bringing in more wounded every minute. “Why weren’t there more wagons? What was the use of coming with so few? Where was the other doctor, someone or other who ought to have relieved him?” There he was, like a little monkey on wires, dancing up and down in the blazing road, his arms covered with blood, pincers in one hand and bandages in the other and the inside of his shelter with such a green, filthy smell coming out of it that you’d think the roof would burst! I filled seven of my wagons, sent them back and went forward with the remaining three. We were climbing now, up through the Forest road, the shell, very close, making a terrific noise, and in between the scream of the shell the birds singing like anything! + 

The road turned the corner and then we were in the middle of it! Now here’s the worst thing I’ve seen with my eyes since I came to the war⁠—worst thing I shall ever see perhaps. One looks back, you know, to one of those old average afternoons at Polchester, my father coming back from golf, I myself going into the old red-walled garden for tea, with some novel under my arm, the cathedral bell ringing for Evensong just over the wall across the Green, then slowly dropping to its close, then the faint murmur of the organ. Some bird twittering in a tree overhead, buttered toast in a neat pile placed carefully over hot water to keep it warm; honey, heavy homemade cake, perhaps the local weekly paper with the “Do you know that⁠ ⁠…” column demanding one’s critical attention. One’s annoyed because tomorrow some tiresome fellow’s coming to luncheon, because one wishes to buy some china that one can’t afford, because the wife of the Precentor said to the Dean’s sister that young Trenchard would be an old man in a year or two.⁠ ⁠… One sips one’s tea, the organ leads the chants, the sun sinks below the wall.⁠ ⁠… That! This!⁠ ⁠… there’s the Forest road hot like red-hot iron under the sun; it winds away into the Forest, but so far as the eye can see it is covered with things that have been left by flying men⁠—such articles! Swords, daggers, rifles, cartridge-cases, of course, but also books, letters, a hairbrush, underclothes, newspapers, these tilings in thick, tangled profusion, rifles in heaps, cartridge-cases by the hundred! Under the sun up and down the road there are dead and dying, Russians and Austrians together. The Forest is both above and below the road and from out of it there comes a continual screaming. There is every note in this babel of voices, mad notes, plaintive notes, angry notes, whimpering notes. One wounded man is very slowly trying to drag himself across the road, and his foot which is nearly severed from his leg waggles behind him. One path that leads from the road to the Forest is piled with bodies and is a stream of blood. Some of the dead are lying very quietly in the ditch, their heads pillowed on their arms⁠—every now and then something that you had thought dead stirs.⁠ ⁠… And the screaming from the Forest is incessant so that you simply don’t hear the shell (now very close indeed).⁠ ⁠… + 

There is, you know, that world somewhere with the Rev. Someone lecturing on Fools and “the class ‘Ruysdael’ costing in the neighbourhood of $100.” At least, it’s very important if I’m to continue to keep my head steady that I should know that it is there! + 

It seemed that we were the first Red Cross people to arrive. Oh! what rewards would I have offered for another ten wagons! How lamentably insufficient our three carts appeared standing there in the road with this screaming Forest on every side of one! As I waited there, overwhelmed by the blind indifference of the place, listening still to the incredible birds, seeing in the businesslike attentions of my sanitars only a further incredible indifference, a great stream of soldiers came up the road, passing into the first line of trenches, only a little deeper in the Forest. They were very hot, the perspiration dripping down their faces, but they went through to the position without a glance at the dead and wounded. No concern of theirs⁠—that. Life had changed; they had changed with it.⁠ ⁠… Meanwhile they did as they were told.⁠ ⁠… + 

We worked there, filling our wagons. The selection was a horrible difficulty. All the wounded were Austrians and how they begged not to be left! It would be many hours, perhaps, before the next Red Cross Division would appear. An awful business! One man dying in the wood tore at his stomach with an unceasing gesture and the air came through his mouth like gas screaming through an “escape” hole. One Austrian, quite an old man, died in my arms in the middle of the road. He was not conscious, but he fumbled for his prayerbook, which he gave me, muttering something. His name “Schneidher Gyorgy Pelmonoster” was written on the first page. + 

We started for home at length. Our drive back was terrible. I find that I cannot linger any longer over this affair. Our carts drove over rough stones and ruts and we were four hours on the journey. Our wounded screamed all the way⁠—one man died.⁠ ⁠… My candle is nearly out. I must find another. In one of its frantic leaps just now I fancied that I saw Marie standing near the door. She looked just as she always did, very kind though smiling.⁠ ⁠… Of course it was only the candle. I must be careful not to encourage these fancies. But God! how lonely I am tonight! I realise, I suppose, that there isn’t one single living soul in the world who cares whether I die tonight or not⁠—not one. Durward will remember me, perhaps. No one else. And Marie would have cared. Yes, even married to Semyonov she would have cared⁠—and remembered. And I could always have cared for her, been her friend, as she asked me. I’m pretty low tonight. If I could sleep.⁠ ⁠… Boof!⁠ ⁠… There goes the candle! + 

Wednesday, August 4th.⁠ ⁠… I am growing accustomed, I suppose, to Semyonov’s company. After all, his contempt for me is an old thing, dating from the very first moment that he ever saw me. It has become now a commonplace to both of us. He is very silent now compared with the old days. There has been much work yesterday and today, but still last night I could not sleep. I think that he also did not sleep and we both lay there in the dark, thinking, I suppose, of the same thing. I thought even of myself, my sense of humour has never been very strong, but I can at any rate see that I am no very fine figure in life, and that whether such a man as I live or die can be of no great importance to anyone or anything, but I do most truly desire not to make more of the matter than is just. A man may have felt himself the most insignificant and useless of human creatures all his days, but face him with death and he becomes, by very force of the contrast, something of a figure. + 

Here am I, deprived of the only thing in life that gave me joy or pride. I should, after that deprivation, have slipped back, I suppose, to my old life of hopeless uninterest and insignificance, but now here the death of Marie Ivanovna has been no check at all. I half believe now that one can do with life or death what one will. If I had known that from the beginning what things I might have found! As it is, I must simply make the best of it. Semyonov’s contempt would once have frightened the very life out of me, but after that night of his arrival here it has been nothing compared with the excitement of our relationship⁠—the things that are keeping us together in spite of ourselves and the strange changes, I do believe, that this situation here is making in him. The loss of Marie Ivanovna would two months ago perhaps have finished me. What is it now beside the wonder as to whether I have lost her after all, the consciousness of pursuit, the longing to know?⁠ ⁠… + 

Durward and I have spoken sometimes of my dream of the Forest. It must seem to him now, as to myself, strangely fulfilled; but I believe that if I catch the beast it will only be to discover that there is a further quest beyond, and then another maybe beyond that.⁠ ⁠… + 

At the same time there’s the practical question of one’s nerve. If this strain of work continues, if the hot weather lasts, and if I don’t sleep, I shall have to take care. Three times during the last three days I have fancied that I have seen Marie Ivanovna, once in broad daylight in the Forest, once sitting on the sofa in our room, once at night near my bed. Of course this is the merest illusion, but I have hours now when I am not quite sure of things. Andrey Vassilievitch told me something of the same today⁠—that he thought that he saw his wife and that Nikitin told him the same yesterday. The flies also are confusing and there’s a hot dry smell that’s disagreeable and prevents one from eating. I know that I must keep a clear head on these things. If only one could get away for an hour or two, right outside⁠—but one is shut up in this Forest as though it were a green oven.⁠ ⁠… I ought to be sleeping now instead of writing all this.⁠ ⁠… I must say that I had a curious illusion ten minutes ago while I was writing this, that one of the wounded, in a bed near the door which is open, began to slip, bed and all, across the floor towards me. He did indeed come closer and closer to me, the bed moving in jerks as though it were pushed. This was, of course, simply because my eyes were tired. When I try to sleep they are hot and smarting.⁠ ⁠… + 

I interrupt Trenchard’s diary to give a very brief account of the impression that was made on me by my visit to the three of them with some wagons four days after the date of the above entry. It must be remembered that I had not, of course, at this time read any of Trenchard’s diary, nor had I seen anything of him since the moment of Semyonov’s arrival. My chief impression during the interval had been my memory of Trenchard as I had last seen him, miserable, white-faced, unnerved. I had thought about him a good deal. Those days at the Otriad had been for the rest of us rather pleasantly tranquil. There was no question that we were relieved by the absence of Semyonov and Trenchard. Semyonov was no easy companion at any time and we had the very natural desire to throw off from us the weight of Marie Ivanovna’s unexpected death. I will not speak of myself in this matter, but for the others. She had not been very long in their company, she had been strange and unsettled in her behaviour, she had been engaged to a man, jilted him, and engaged herself to another⁠—all within a very short period of time. I, myself, was occupied incessantly by my thoughts of her, but that was my own affair. The past week then with us had been tranquil and easy. On my arrival at the “Point” in the Forest I was met at once by a new atmosphere. For one thing the war here was on the very top of us. Only a few yards away, towards the end of the garden, they were digging trenches. Somewhere beyond the windows, in the Forest, a battery had established itself near a clearing at the edge of a hill, the guns disguised with leaves and branches. Soldiers were moving incessantly to and fro. The house seemed full of wounded, wagons coming and going. They were digging graves in the garden, and sheeted bodies were lying in the orchard. + 

My friends greeted me, seemed glad to see me for a moment, and then pursued their business. I was entirely outside their life. Only ten days before I had felt a closer intimacy with Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and Nikitin than I had ever had with any of them. Now I simply did not exist for them. It was not the work that excluded me. The evening that passed then was an easy evening⁠—very little to do. We spent most of the night in playing chemin-de-fer. No, it was not the work. It was quite simply that something was happening to all of them in which I had no concern. They were all changed and about them all⁠—yes, even, I believe, about Semyonov⁠—there was an air of suppressed excitement, rather the excitement that schoolboys have, when they have prepared some secret forbidden defiance or adventure. Trenchard, whom I had left in the depths of a lethargic depression, was most curiously preoccupied. He looked at me first as though he did not perfectly remember me. He, assuredly, was not well. His eyes were lined heavily, his white cheeks had a flush of red that burnt there feverishly, and he seemed extraordinarily thin. He was restless, his eyes were never still, and I saw him sometimes fix them, in a strange way, upon some object as though he would assure himself that it was there. He was obviously under the influence of some deep excitement. He told me that he was sleeping badly, that his head ached, and that his eyes hurt him, but he did not seem distressed by these things. He was too strongly absorbed by something to be depressed. He treated me and everything around him with impatience, as though he could not wait for something that he was expecting. + 

I have seen in this business of the war strange things that nerves can do with the human mind and body. I have seen many men who remain with their nerves as strong as steel from the first to the last, but this is, I should say, the exception and only to be found with men of a very unimaginative character. As regards Trenchard one must take into account his recent loss, the sudden stress of incessant exhausting work, the flaming weather and the constant companionship of the one human being of all others most calculated to disturb his tranquillity. But in varying degrees I think that everyone in this place was at this time working under a strain of something abnormal and uncalculated. The very knowledge that the attack was now being pressed severely and that we had so little ammunition with which to reply, was enough to strain the nerves of everyone. Trenchard told me, in the course of the conversation, that I had with him during my second day’s stay, that his visit to the lines some days earlier (this is the visit of which he speaks in his diary) had greatly upset him. He had been disturbed apparently by the fact that there were not sufficient wagons. The whole sense of the Forest, he told me, was a strain to him, the feeling that he could not escape from it, the thought of its colour and heat and at the same time its ugliness and horror, the cholera scarecrow in it, and the deserted town and all the horrors of the recent attacks. The dead Austrians and Russians.⁠ ⁠… But I repeat, most emphatically, that he was not depressed by this. It was rather that he wished to keep his energies fresh and clear for some purpose of his own, and was therefore disturbed by anything that threatened his health. He was not quite well, he told me⁠—headaches, not sleeping⁠—but that “he had it well in control.” + 

And here now is a strange thing. One of the chief purposes of my visit had been to persuade one of the four men to return with me to the Otriad. Molozov had asserted very emphatically that none of them should be compelled against their will to return to Mittövo, but he thought that it would be well if, considering the strain of the work and the Position, they were to take it in turns to have a day or two’s rest and so relieve one another. I had had no doubt that this would be very acceptable to them, but on my proposing it, was surprised to receive from each of them individually an abrupt refusal even to consider the matter. At the same time they assured me, severally, that the one or the other of them needed, very badly, a rest. After I had spoken, Nikitin, taking me aside, told me that he thought that Andrey Vassilievitch would be better at Mittövo. “He is a little in the way here,” he said. “Certainly he does his best, but this is not his place.” Nikitin wore the same preoccupied air as the others.⁠—“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t let Andrey know that I spoke to you.” Andrey Vassilievitch, on his side with much nervousness and self-importance, told me that he thought that Nikitin was suffering from overwork and needed a complete rest. “You know, Ivan Andreievitch, he is really not at all well; I sleep in the same room. He talks in his sleep, fancies that he sees things⁠ ⁠… very odd⁠—although this hot weather⁠ ⁠… I myself for the matter of that⁠ ⁠…” and then he nervously broke off. + 

But with all this they did not seem to quarrel with one another. It is true that I discovered a kind of impatience, especially between Andrey Vassilievitch and Nikitin, the kind of restlessness that you see sometimes between two horses which are harnessed together. Semyonov (he paid no attention to me at all during my visit) treated Trenchard quite decently, and I observed on several occasions his look of puzzled curiosity at the man⁠—a look to which I have alluded before. He spoke to him always in the tone of contemptuous banter that he had from the beginning used to him: “Well, Mr., I suppose that you couldn’t bring a big enough bandage however much you were asked to. But why choose the smallest possible.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Or, “That’s where Mr. writes his poetry⁠—being a nice romantic Englishman. Isn’t it, Mr.?” + 

But I was greatly struck by Trenchard’s manner of taking these remarks. He behaved now as though he had secret reasons for knowing that he was in every way as good a man as Semyonov⁠—a better one, maybe. He laughed, or sometimes simply looked at his companion, or he would reply in his bad halting Russian with some jest at Semyonov’s expense. + 

Finally, to end this business, if ever a man were affected to the heart by the loss of a friend or a lover, Semyonov was that man. He was a man too strong in himself and too contemptuous of weakness to show to all the world his hurt. I myself might have seen nothing had I not always before me the memory of that vision of his face between the trees. But from that I had proceeded⁠— + 

It was, I suppose, the first time in his life that the fulfilment of his desire had been denied him. Had Marie Ivanovna lived, and had he attained with her his complete satisfaction, he would have tired of her perhaps as he had tired of many others, and have remained only the stronger cynic. But she had eluded him, eluded him at the very moment of her freshness and happiness and triumph. What defeat to his proud spirit was working now in him? What longing? What fierce determination to secure even now his ends? The change that I fancied in him was perhaps no more than his bracing of his strength and courage to face new conditions. Death had robbed him of his possession⁠—so much the worse then for Death! + 

Upon this day of icy cold, as I write these words, I am afraid that my account may be taken as an extravagant and unjustified conceit. But that I do most honestly believe it not to be. I myself felt, during my two days’ stay in that place, the strangest contact with new experiences, new developments, new relationships. Normal life had been left utterly behind and there was nothing to remind one of it save perhaps that “Report on New Mexico” still there on the dusty table. But there was the heat; there were the wheeling, circling clouds of flies, now in lines, now in squares, now broken like smoke, now dim like vapour; there was that old familiar smell of dust and flesh, chemicals and blood; there were the men dying and broken, fighting like giants, defeating fears and terrors that hung like grey shadows about the doors and windows of the house.⁠ ⁠… Every incident and experience that we had had at the war, every incident and experience that I have related in these pages seemed to be gathered into this house.⁠ ⁠… As I look back upon it now it seems, without any extravagance at all, the very heart of the fortress of the enemy. I do not mean in the least that life was solemn or pretentious or heavy. It was careless, casual, as liable to the ridiculous intervention of unimportant things as ever it had been; but it was life pressed so close to the fine presence of Fate that you could hear the very beating of his heart. And in this Fortress it seemed to me that I, who was watching, outside the lives of these others, an observer only whom, perhaps, this same Fate despised, asked of God a sign. I saw suddenly here the connection, for which I had been waiting, between the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard⁠—Two Wise Men and Two Fools⁠—surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality⁠ ⁠… and yet God does not judge as men do. Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and who left? I recalled Semyonov’s jesting words: “Even though it’s the wise men succeed in this world I don’t doubt it’s the fools have their way in the next.” + 

I waited for my Sign.⁠ ⁠… + 

Last of all I can hear it objected that everyone was surely too busy to attend to relationships or shades of relationships. But it was this very thing that contributed to the situation, namely, that, in the very stress of the work, there were hours, many hours, when there was simply nothing to be done. Then if one could not sleep times were bad indeed. Moreover, even in the throng of work itself one would be conscious of that slipping off from one of all the trappings of reality. One by one they would slip away and then, bewildered, one would doubt the evidence of one’s eyes, one’s brain, one’s ears, the fatigue hammering, hammering at one’s consciousness.⁠ ⁠… I have known what that kind of strain can be. + 

I left on the second morning after my arrival and returned to Mittövo alone. + 

Trenchard’s Diary. Tuesday, August 10. Durward has been here for two days. He’s a good fellow but I seem rather to have lost touch with him during these last days. Then he’s rather bloodless⁠—a little more humour would cheer him up wonderfully. We’ve all been in mad spirits today as though we were drunk. The battery officers have got a gramophone that we turned on. We danced a bit although it’s hot as hell.⁠ ⁠… Then in the evening my spirits suddenly went; Andrey Vassilievitch gets on one’s nerves. His voice is tiresome and I’m tired of his wife. He tells me that he thinks he sees her at night. “Do I think it likely?” Silly little ass⁠—just the way to rot his nerves. Funny thing tonight. We were playing chemin-de-fer. Suddenly Semyonov said: + 

“Supposing Molozov says that only one of us is to stay on here.” There was silence after that. We all four looked at one another. All I knew was nothing was going to move me away from this place if I could help it. Then Semyonov said: + 

“Of course I would have to stay.” + 

We went for him then. You should have heard Nikitin! I didn’t believe that he had it in him. Semyonov was quiet, of course, smiling that beastly smile of his. + 

Then at last he said: + 

“Suppose we play for it?” + 

We agreed. The one who turned up the Ace of Hearts was to stay. You could have heard a pin drop after that. I have never before felt what I felt then. If I had to return and leave Semyonov here! They say that the attack may develop in this direction at any moment. If Semyonov were to be here and I not.⁠ ⁠… And yet what was it that I wanted? What I want is to be close to Marie again, to be there where Semyonov cannot reach us. I believe that she might always have cared for me if he had not been there. Whatever death may be, I must know.⁠ ⁠… If there is nothing more, no matter. If there is something more⁠—then there is something for her as well as for me and I shall find her, and I must find her alone. There’s nothing left in life now to me save that. As I sat there looking at the cards I knew all this, knew quite clearly that I must escape Semyonov. There’s no madness in this. Whilst he is there I’m nothing⁠—but without him, if I were with her again⁠—I was always beaten easily by anybody but in this at least I can be strong. I don’t hate him but I know that he will always be first as long as we’re together. And we seem to be tied now like dogs by their tails, tied by our thoughts of Marie.⁠ ⁠… + 

Well, anyway I turned up the Ace. My heart seemed to jump right upside down when I saw it. The others said nothing. Only Semyonov at last: + 

“Well, Mr., if it comes to it we’ll have to see that it’s necessary for two of us to be here. It will never do for you and me to be parted⁠—” + 

Meanwhile, the firing’s very close tonight. They say the Austrians have taken Vulatch. Shocking, our lack of ammunition.⁠ ⁠… God! The heat! + 

V + 

The Door Closes Behind Them + 

Trenchard’s Diary. Saturday, August 14th.⁠ ⁠… + 

Captain T⁠⸺ died this afternoon at four-thirty. A considerable shock to me. He was so young, so strong. They all said that he had a remarkable future. He had dined with us several times at Mittövo and his vitality had always attracted me; vitality restrained and drilled towards some definite purpose. He might have been a great man.⁠ ⁠… His wound in the stomach did not hurt him, I think. He was wonderfully calm at the last. How strange it is that at home death is so horrible with its long ceremonies, its crowd of relations, its gradual decay⁠—and here, in nine out of every ten deaths that I have seen there has been peace or even happiness. This is the merest truth and will be confirmed by anyone who has worked here. Again and again I have seen that strange flash of surprised, almost startled interest, again and again I have been conscious⁠—behind not in the eyes⁠—of the expression of one who is startled by fresh conditions, a fine view, a sudden piece of news. This is no argument for religion, for any creed or dogma, I only say that here it is so, that Death seems to be happiness and the beginning of something new and unexpected.⁠ ⁠… I believe that even so hardy a cynic as Semyonov would support me in this. I and Semyonov were alone with young Captain T⁠⸺ when he died. Semyonov had liked the man and had done everything possible to save him. But he was absorbed by his death⁠—absorbed as though he would tear the secret of it from the body that looked suddenly so empty, and so meaningless. + 

“Well, I’m glad he was happy,” he said to me. Then he stood, looking at me curiously. I returned the look. We neither of us said anything. These are all commonplaces, I suppose, that I am discovering. The only importance is that some ten million human beings are, in this war, making these discoveries for themselves, just as I am. Who can tell what that may mean? I have seen here no visions, nor have I met anyone who has seen them, but there are undoubted facts⁠—not easy things to discount. + 

Sunday, August 15. Things are pretty bad here. The Austrians have taken Vulatch. Both on the right and on the left they have advanced. They may arrive here at any moment. The magnificence of the Russian soldier is surely beyond all praise. I wonder whether people in France and England realise that for the last three months here he has been fighting with one bullet as against ten. He stands in his trench practically unarmed against an enemy whose resources seem, endless⁠—but nothing can turn him back. Whatever advances the Germans may make I see Russia returning again and again. I do from the bottom of my soul, and, what is of more importance, from the sober witness of my eyes, here believe that nothing can stop the impetus born of her new spirit. This war is the beginning of a world history for her. + 

Krylov this afternoon said that he thought that we should leave this place, get out our wagons and retire. But how can we? At this moment, how can we? We are just now at the most critical meeting of the ways⁠—the extra twelve versts back to Mittövo may make the whole difference to many of the cases, and the doctors of the Division, Krylov himself admits, have got their arms full. We simply can’t leave them.⁠ ⁠… There has been some confusion here. There doesn’t seem any responsible person to give us orders. Colonel Maximoff has forgotten us, I believe. In any case I think that we must stay on here for another day and night. Perhaps we shall get away tomorrow.⁠ ⁠… + 

I had a queer experience this afternoon. I don’t want to make too much of it but here it is. I went up to my room this afternoon at five to get some sleep, as I’m on duty tonight. I lay down and shut my eyes and then, of course, as I always do, immediately saw Marie Ivanovna. I know quite clearly that this present relationship to her cannot continue for long or I shall be off my head. I can see myself quite clearly as though I were outside myself, and I know that I’m madder now than I was a week ago. For instance in this business of Marie Ivanovna, I knew then that my seeing her was an illusion⁠—now I am not quite sure. I knew a week ago that I saw her because she is so much in my thoughts, because of the intolerable heat, because of the Flies and the Forest, because of Semyonov. I am not sure now whether it is not her wish that I should see her. She comes as she came on those last days before she left me⁠—with all the kindness in her eyes that no other human being has ever given me before, nor will ever give me again. Today I looked and was not sure whether she were gone or no. I was not sure of several things in the room and as I lay there I said to myself, “Is that really a looking-glass or no?” “If I tried could I touch it or would it fade from under my hand?” The room was intolerably close and there was a fly who persecuted me. As I lay there he came and settled on my hand. He waited, watching me with his wicked sneering eyes, then he crept forward, and waited again, rubbing his legs one against the other. Then very slyly, laughing to himself, he began to tickle me. I slashed with my hand at him, he flew into the air, sneering, then with a little ping settled on the back of my neck. I vowed that I would not mind him; I lay still. He began then to crawl very slowly forward towards my chin, and it was as though he were dragging spidery strands of nerves through my body, fitting them all on to stiff, tight wires. He reached my chin, and then again, sneering up into my eyes, he began to tickle. I thought once more that I had him, but once again he was in the air. Then, after waiting until I had almost sunk back into sleep, he did the worst thing that a fly can do, began, very slowly, to crawl down the inside of my pince-nez (I had been trying to read). He got between the glass and my eyelash and moved very faintly with his damnable legs. Then my patience went⁠—I did what during these last days I have vowed not to do, lost my control, jumped from my bed, and cursed with rage.⁠ ⁠… + 

Then with my head almost bursting with heat and my legs trembling I had an awful moment, I thought that I was really mad. I thought that I would get the looking-glass and smash it and that then I would jump from the window. In another moment I thought that something would break in my head, the something with which I kept control over myself⁠—I seemed to hear myself praying aloud: “Oh God! let me keep my reason! Oh God! let me keep my reason!” and I could see the Forest like a great green hot wave rising beyond the window to a towering height ready to leap down upon me. + 

Then Semyonov came in. He stood in the doorway and looked at me. He must have thought me strange and I know that I waited, staring at him, feeling foolish as I always do with him. But he spoke to me kindly, with the sort of kindness that there is sometimes in his voice, patronising and reluctant of course. + 

“You can’t sleep, Mr.?” he said. + 

“No,” I answered, and said something about flies. + 

“What have you been doing to the looking-glass?” he asked, laughing, for there the thing was on the floor, broken into pieces. I am sure that I never touched it. + 

“That’s unlucky,” he said. “Never mind, Mr.,” he said smiling at me, “twenty-two misfortunes, aren’t you? Always dropping something,” he added quite kindly. “More, perhaps, than the rest of us.⁠ ⁠… Wash your face in cold water. It’s this infernal heat that worries us all.” + 

I remember then that he poured the water into the blue tin basin for me and then, taking the tin mug himself, poured it in cupfuls over my hands and arms. I afterwards did the same for him. At that moment I very nearly spoke to him of Marie. I wished desperately to try; but I looked at his face, and his eyes, laughing at me as they always did, stopped me. + 

When I had finished he thanked me, wiped his hands, then turning round at the door he said: “Why don’t you go back to Mittövo, Mr. ⸻. You’re tired out.” + 

“You know why,” I answered, without looking at him He seemed then as though he would speak, but he stopped himself and went away. I lay down again and tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes the green beyond the window burnt through my eyelids⁠—and then the fly (I am sure it was the same fly) returned.⁠ ⁠… + 

Monday, August 16.⁠ ⁠… Lord! but I am tired of this endless bandaging, cleaning of filthy wounds, paring away of ragged ends of flesh, smelling, breathing, drinking blood and dust and dirt. The poor fellows! Their bravery is beyond any word of mine. They have come these last few days with their eyes dazed and their ears deafened. Indeed the roaring of the cannon has been since yesterday afternoon incessant. They say that the Austrians are straining every nerve to break through to the river and cross. We are doing what we can to prevent them, but what can we do? There simply is not ammunition! The officers here are almost crying with despair, and the men know it and go on, with their cheerfulness, their obedience, their mild kindliness⁠—go into that green hell to be butchered, and come out of it again, if they are lucky, with their bodies mangled and twisted, and horror in their eyes. It’s nobody’s fault, I suppose, this business. How easy to write in the daily papers that the Germans prepared for war and that we did not, and that after a month or two all will be well.⁠ ⁠… After a month or two! tell that to us here stuck in this Forest and hear us how we laugh!⁠ ⁠… + 

Meanwhile, for the good of my health, I’m figuring very clearly to myself all the physical features of this place. It’s a long white house, two-storied. The front door has broken glass over it and there’s a litter of tumbled bricks on the top step. After you’ve gone through the front door you come into the hall where the wounded are as thick as flies. You go through the hall and turn to the left. There’s a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid place always dirty and stifling. Then there’s the operating-room, then another room for beds, then the kitchen. Outside to the right there’s the garden, dry now with the heat, and the orchard smells of the men they’ve buried in it. To the left, after a little clearing, there’s the forest always green and glittering. The men are in the trenches now, the new ones that were made last week, so I suppose that we shall be in the thick of it very shortly. That battery at the edge of the hill has been banging away all the morning. What else is there? There’s an old pump just outside the sitting-room window. There’s a litter of dirty paper and refuse there, too, that the flies gather round. There’s an old barn away to the right where some horses are and two cows. I have to keep my mind on these things because I know they’re real. You can touch them with your hands and they’ll still be there even if you go away⁠—they won’t walk with you as you move. So I must fasten on to these things about which there can’t be any doubt. In the same way I like to remember that book in the sitting-room⁠—Mr. Glass who lectured on “Fools,” the Ruysdael, and the Normal Pupils who acted Othello. They’re real enough and are probably somewhere now quietly studying, or teaching, or sleeping⁠—I envy them.⁠ ⁠… + 

A thing that happened this morning disturbed us all. Four soldiers came out of the Forest quite mad. They seemed rational enough at first and said that they’d been sent out of the first line trenches with contusion⁠—one of them had a bleeding finger, but the others were untouched. Then one of them, a middle-aged man with a black beard, began quite gravely to tell us that the Forest was moving. They had seen it with their own eyes. They had watched all the trees march slowly forward like columns of soldiers and soon the whole Forest would move and would crush everyone in it. It was all very well fighting Austrians, but whole forests was more than anyone could expect of them. Then suddenly one of them cried out, pointing with his finger: “See, Your Honour⁠—there it comes!⁠ ⁠… Ah! let us run! let us run!” One of them began to cry. It was very disagreeable. I saw Andrey Vassilievitch who was present glance anxiously through the window at the Forest and then gravely check himself and look at me nervously to see whether I had noticed. The men afterwards fell into a strange kind of apathy. We sent them off to Mittövo in the afternoon. + 

I want now to remember as exactly as possible a strange conversation I had this evening with Semyonov. I came up when it was getting dusk to the bedroom. One of the Austrian batteries was spitting away over the hill but we were not replying. Everything this afternoon has looked as though they were preparing for a heavy attack. Our little window was open and the sky beyond was a sort of very pale green, and against this you could see a flush of colour rising and falling like the opening and shutting of a door. Everything quite silent except the Austrian cannon and a soldier, delirious, downstairs, singing. + 

The Forest was deep black, but you could see the soldiers’ fires gleaming here and there like beasts’ eyes. Our room was almost dark and I was very startled to find Semyonov sitting on his bed and staring in front of him. He looked like a wooden figure sitting there, and he didn’t move as I came in. I’m glad that although I’m still awkward and clumsy with him (as I am, and always will be, I suppose, with everyone) I’m not afraid of him any more. The room was so dark that he looked like a shadow. I had intended to fetch something and go away, but instead of that I sat down on my bed, feeling suddenly very tired and lethargic. + 

“Well, Mr.,” he said in the ironical voice he always uses to me. + 

(I would wish now to repeat if I can every word of our conversation.) + 

“Krylov has been again,” I said. “He told Nikitin that we ought to go tonight. Nikitin asked him whether the Division had plenty of wagons and Krylov admitted that there weren’t nearly enough. He agreed that it would make a lot of difference if we could keep this place going until tomorrow night⁠—all the same he advised us to leave.” + 

“We’ll stay until someone orders us to go,” said Semyonov. “It will make a difference to a hundred men or more probably. If they do start firing on to this place we can get the men off in the wagons in time.” + 

“And what if the wagons have left for Mittövo?” + 

“We’ll have to wait until they come back,” he answered. + 

We sat there listening to the cannon. Then Semyonov said very quietly and not at all ironically, “I wish to ask you⁠—I have wished before⁠—tell me. You blame me for her death?” + 

I thought for a moment, then I replied: + 

“I did so at first. Now I do not think that it had anything to do with you or with me or with anyone⁠—except herself.” + 

“Except herself?” he said. “What do you mean?” + 

“She wished it, I think.” + 

His irony returned. “You believe in the power of others, Mr., too much. You should believe more in your own.” + 

“I believe in her power. She was stronger than you,” I answered. + 

“I’m sure that you like to think so,” he said laughing. + 

“She is still stronger than you.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“So you are a mystic, Mr.,” he said. “Of course, with your romantic mind that is only natural. You believe, I suppose, that she is with us here in the room?” + 

“It cannot be of interest to you,” I answered quietly, “what I believe.” + 

“Yes, it is of interest,” he replied in a voice that was friendly and humorously indulgent, as though he spoke to a child. “I find it strange⁠—I have found it strange for many weeks now⁠—that I should think so frequently of you. You are not a man who would naturally be interesting to me. You are an Englishman and I am not interested in Englishmen. You are sentimental, you have no idea of life as it is, you like dull things, dull safe things, you believe always in what you are told. You have no sense of humour.⁠ ⁠… You should be of no interest to me, and yet during these last weeks I have not been able to get rid of you.” + 

“That is not my fault,” I said. “I have not been so anxious for your company.” + 

“No,” he said, speaking rather thoughtfully, as though he were seriously thinking something out, “you regard me, of course, as a very bad character. I have no desire to defend myself to you. But the point is that I have found myself often thinking of you, that I have even taken trouble sometimes to be with you.” + 

He waited as though he expected me to say something, but I was silent. + 

“It was perhaps that I saw that Marie Ivanovna cared for you. She gave you up to the end something that she never gave to me. That I suppose was tiresome to me.” + 

“You thought you knew her,” I said, hoping to hurt him. “You did not know her at all.” + 

“That may be,” he answered. “I certainly did not understand her, but that was attractive to me. And so, Mr., you thought that you understood her?” + 

But I did not answer him. My head ached frantically, I was wretchedly in want of sleep. I jumped to my feet, standing in front of him: + 

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” I cried. “Let us part. I am nothing to you⁠—you despise me and laugh at me⁠—you have from the first done so. It was because you laughed at me that she began to laugh. If you had not been there she might have continued to love me⁠—she was very inexperienced. And now that she is gone I am of no more importance to you⁠—let me be! For God’s sake, let me be!” + 

“You are free,” he said. “You can return to Mittövo in an hour’s time when the wagons go.” + 

I did not speak. + 

“No, you will not go,” he went on, “because you think that she is here. She died here⁠—and you believe that she is not dead. I also will not go⁠—for my own reasons.” + 

Then he jumped off his bed, stood upright against me, his clothes touching mine. He put his hand on my shoulder. + 

“No, Mr., we will remain together. I find you really rather charming. And you are changed, you know. You are not the silly fool you were when you first came to us!” + 

I moved away from him. I could not bear the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I had, I repeat, no fear of him. He might laugh at me or no as he pleased, but I did not want his kindness. + 

“My beliefs seem to you the beliefs of a child,” I said, trying to speak more calmly. “Well, then, leave me to them. They at least do you no harm. I love her now as I loved her when I first saw her. I cannot believe that I shall never be with her again. But that is my own affair and matters to no one but myself!” + 

He answered me: “You have a simple fashion of looking at things which I envy you. I assure you that I am not laughing at you. You believe, if I understand you, that after your death you will meet her again. You are afraid that if I die before you she will belong to me, but that if you die first you will be with her again as you were ‘at the beginning’?⁠ ⁠… Is not that so?” + 

I did not answer him. + 

“I swear to you,” he continued, “that I am not mocking you. What my own thoughts may be does not interest you, but I have not, in my life, found many things or persons that are worth one’s devotion, and she was worthy of being loved as you love her. Such days as these in such a place as this must bring strange thoughts to any man. When we return to Mittövo tomorrow night I assure you that you will see everything differently.” + 

He felt, I suppose, that he had been speaking too seriously because the ironic humour with which he always treated me returned. + 

“Here, Mr., at any rate we are. I’m sorry for you⁠—tiresome to be tied to someone as uncongenial as myself⁠—but be a little sorry for me, too. You’re not, you know, the ideal companion I would have chosen.” + 

“Why did you come?” I asked him. “Durward was here⁠—we were doing very well⁠—” + 

“Without me”⁠—he caught me up. “Yes, I suppose so. But your fascination is so strong that⁠—” He broke off laughing, then continued almost sharply: “Here we are anyway. Tonight and tomorrow we are going to be lively enough if I know anything about it. I’ll do you the justice, Mr., of saying you’ve worked admirably here. I wouldn’t have believed it of you. Let us both of us drop our romantic fancies. We’ve no time to spare.” Then, turning at the door, he ended: “And you needn’t hate me so badly, you know. She cared for you in a way that she never gave me. Perhaps, after all, in the end, you will win⁠—” + 

He gave me one last word: + 

“All the same I don’t give her up to you,” he said. + 

When I came downstairs again it was to find confusion and noise. In the first place little Andrey Vassilievitch was quarrelling loudly with Nikitin. He was speaking Russian very fast and I did not discover his complaint. There was something comic in the sight of his small body towering to a perfect tempest of rage, his plump hands gesticulating and always his eyes, anxious and self-important, doing their best to look after his dignity. Nikitin explained to me that he had been urging Andrey Vassilievitch to return to Mittövo with the wagons. “There’s no need,” he said, “for us all to stay. It’s only taking unnecessary risks⁠—and somebody should take charge of the wagons.” + 

“There’s Feodor Constantinovitch,” said Andrey, naming a feldsher and stammering in his rage. “He’s re-responsible enough.” Then, seeing that he was creating something of a scene, he relapsed into a would-be dignified sulkiness, finally said he would not go, and strutted away. + 

There were many other disturbances, men coming and going, one of the battery officers appearing for a moment dirty and dishevelled, and always the wounded drowsy or in delirium, watching with dull eyes the evening shadows, talking excitedly in their sleep. Semyonov called me to help in the operating room. Within the next two hours he had carried out two amputations with admirable cool composure. During the second one, when the man’s arm tumbled off into the basin and lay there amongst the filthy rags with the dirty white fingers curved, their nails dead and grey, I suddenly felt violently sick. + 

A sanitar took my place and I went out into the cool of the forest, where a silver pattern of stars swung now above the branches and a full moon, red and cold, was rising beyond the hill. After a time I felt better and, finding that I was not needed for a time, I wrote this diary. + 

Tuesday, August 17th. It is just six o’clock⁠—a most lovely evening. Strangely enough everything is utterly quiet⁠—not a sound anywhere. You might fancy yourself in the depths of England somewhere. However, considering what has happened today and what they expect will happen now at any moment, the strain on our nerves is pretty severe, and as usual at such times I will fill in my diary. This is probably the last time that I write it here as we move as soon as the wagons return, which should be in about two hours from now. + 

All our things are packed and I shall slip this book into my bag as soon as I have written this entry; but I have probably two or three hours clear for writing, as everything is ready for departure. Meanwhile I am wonderfully tranquil and at peace, able, too, to think clearly and rationally for the first time since Marie’s death. I want to give an account of the events since my last entry minutely and as truthfully as my memory allows me. + 

At about half-past eleven last night Semyonov and I went up to our bedroom to sleep, Nikitin being on duty. There was not much noise, the cannon sounding a considerable distance away, but the flashlights and rockets against the night-sky were wonderful, and when we had blown out the candle our dark little room leapt up and down or turned round and round, the window flashing into vision and out again. Semyonov was almost immediately asleep, but I lay on my back and, of course, as usual, thought of Marie. My headache of the evening still raged furiously and I was in desperately low spirits. I had been able to eat nothing during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rat tle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand him at all. I don’t think I understand any Russian, such a mixture of hardness and softness as they are, kind and then indifferent, cruel and then sentimental. But I understand people very little, and in all my years at Polchester there was never one single person whom I knew. Semyonov is perfectly right, I suppose, from his point of view to think me a fool. I lay there thinking of Semyonov. He was sleeping on his back, looking very big under the clothes, his beard square and stiff, lit up by the flashing light and then sinking into darkness again. I thought of him and of myself and of the strange contrast that we were, and how queer it was that the same woman should have cared for both of us. And I know that, although I did not hate him at all, I would give almost anything for him not to have been there, never to have been there. Whilst he was there I knew that I had no chance. Marie had not laughed at me during those days at Petrograd; she had believed in me then and I had been worth believing in. If people had believed in me more I might be a very different man now. + 

I was almost asleep, scarcely conscious of the room, when suddenly I heard a voice cry, “Marie! Marie! Marie!” three times. It was a voice that I had never heard before, strong but also tender, full of pain, with a note in it too of a struggling self-control that would break in a moment and overwhelm its possessor. As I look back at it I remember that I felt the passion and strength in it so violently that I seemed to shrink into myself, as though I were witnessing something that no man should see, and as though also I were conscious of my own weakness and insignificance. + 

It was Semyonov. The flashlight flashed into the room, shining for an instant upon him. He was sitting up in bed, his shirt open and his chest bare. His eyes were fixed upon the window, but he was fast asleep. He seemed to me a new man. I had grown so accustomed to his sarcasm, his irony, that I had almost persuaded myself that he had never truly loved Marie, but had felt some sensual attraction for her that would, by realisation, have been at once satisfied. This was another man. Here was a struggle, an agony that was not for such men as I. + 

He cried again, “Marie! Marie!” then got up out of bed, walked on his naked feet in his shirt to the window, stood there and waited. The moonlight had, by this, struck our room and flooded it. He turned suddenly and faced me. I could not believe that he did not see me, but I could not endure the unhappiness in his eyes and I turned, looking down. I did not look at him again but I heard his feet patter back to the bed; then he stood there, his whole body strung to meet some overmastering crisis. He whispered her name as though she had come to him since his first call. “Ah, Marie, my darling,” he whispered. + 

I could not bear that. I crept from my bed, slipped away, closed the door softly behind me and stole downstairs. + 

I cannot write at length of what followed. It was the crisis of everything that has happened to me since I left Petrograd. Every experience that I had had was suddenly flung into this moment. I was in our sitting-room now, pitch dark because shutters had been placed outside the windows to guard against bullets. I stood there in my shirt and drawers: shuddering, shivering with hatred of myself, shivering with fear of Semyonov, shivering above all, with a desperate, agonising, torturing hunger for Marie. Semyonov’s voice had appalled me. I hadn’t realised before how strongly I had relied on his not truly caring for her. Everything in the man had seemed to persuade me of this, and I had even flattered myself on my miserable superiority to him, that I was the true faithful lover and he the vulgar sensualist. How small now I seemed beside him!⁠—and how I feared him! Then I was at sudden fierce grip with the beast!⁠ ⁠… At grips at last! + 

I had once before, on another night, been tempted to kill myself, but that had been nothing to this. Now sick and ill, faint for food, I swayed there on the floor, hearing always in my ear⁠—“Give way! Give way!⁠ ⁠… You’ll be in front of him, you’ll have left him behind you, he can do nothing⁠ ⁠… a moment more and you can be with her⁠—and he cannot reach you!” + 

I do not know how long I fought there. I was not fighting with an evil devil, a fearful beast as in my dreams I had always imagined it⁠—I was fighting myself: every weakness in the past to which I had ever surrendered, every little scrap of personal history, every slackness and cowardice and lethargy was there on the floor against me. + 

I don’t know what it was that prevented me stealing back to my room, fetching my revolver and so ending it. I could see Marie close to me, to be reached by the stretching of a finger. I could see myself living on, always conscious of Semyonov, his thick beastly confident body always there between myself and her. + 

I sank into the last depths of self-despair and degradation. No fine thing saved me, no help from noble principles, nothing fine. The whole was as sordid as possible. I knew, even as I struggled, that I was a silly figure there, with my bony ugliness, in my shirt and drawers, my hair on end and my teeth chattering. But I responded, I suppose, to some little pulse of manly obstinacy that beat somewhere in me. I would not be beaten by the Creature. Even in the middle of it I realised that this was the hardest tussle of my life and worth fighting. I know too that some thought of Nikitin came to me as though, in some way, my failure would damage him. I remembered that night of the Retreat when he had helped me and, as though he were appealing visibly to me there in the room, I responded; I seemed to feel that he was fighting some battle of his own and that my victory would fortify him. I stood with him beside me. So I fought it, fought it with the sweat dripping down my nose and my tongue dry. “No!” something suddenly cried in me. “If she’s his, she’s his⁠—I will not take her this way!”⁠—then in a snivelling, miserable fashion I began to cry, simply from exhaustion and nerves and headache. I slipped down into a chair. I sat there feeling utterly beaten and yet in some dim way, as one hears a trumpet sounding behind a range of hills, I was triumphant. There with my head on the table and my nose, I believe, in a plate left from someone’s last night’s supper, I slept a heavy, dreamless sleep. + 

I woke and heard a clock in the room strike three. I got up, stretched my arms, yawned and knew that my head was clear and my brain at peace. I can’t describe my feelings better than by saying that it was as though I had put my brain and my heart and all my fears and terrors under a good stiff pump of cold water. I felt a different man from four hours before, although still desperately tired and physically weak. + 

I went softly upstairs. The light of a most lovely summer morning flooded the room. Semyonov was lying, sleeping like a child, his head pillowed on his arm. Very cautiously I dressed, then went downstairs again. I did not understand now⁠—the peace and happiness in my heart. All the time I was saying to myself: “Why am I so happy? Why am I so happy?”⁠ ⁠… + 

The world was marvellously fresh, with little white glittering clouds above the trees, the grass wet and shining, and the sky a high dome of blue light, like the inside of a glass bell that has the sun behind it. Here and there on the outskirts of the Forest fires were still dimly burning, pale and dim yellow shadows beneath the sun. Men wrapped in their coats were sleeping in little groups under the trees. Horses cropped at the grass; soldiers were moving with buckets of water. Two men, at the very edge of the Forest, stripped to the waist, were washing in a pool that was like a blue handkerchief in the great forest of green. I found a little glade, very bright and fresh, under a group of silver birch, and there I lay down on my back, my hands behind my head, looking up into the little dancing atoms of blue between the trees and the golden stars of sunlight that flashed and sparkled there. + 

Happiness and peace wrapped me round. I cannot pretend to disentangle and produce in proper sequence all the thoughts and memories that floated into my vision and away again, but I know that whereas before thoughts had attacked me as though they were foul animals biting at my brain, now I seemed myself gently to invite my memories. + 

Many scenes from my Polchester days that I had long forgotten came back to me. I was indeed startled by the clearness with which I saw that earlier figure⁠—the very awkward, careless, ugly boy, listening lazily to other people’s plans, taking shelter from life under a vague love of beauty and an idle imagination; the man, awkward and ugly, sensitive because of his own self-consciousness, wasting his hours through his own self-contempt which paralysed all effort, still trusting to his idle love of beauty to pull him through to some superior standard, complaining of life, but never trying to get the better of it; then the man who came to Russia at the beginning of the war, still self-centred, always given up to timid self-analysis, but responding now a little to the new scenes, the new temperament, the new chances. Then this man, feeling that at last he was rid of all the tiresome encumbrances of the earlier years, lets himself go, falls in love, worships, dreams for a few days a wonderful dream⁠—then for the first time in his life, begins to fight. + 

I saw all the steps so clearly and I saw every little thought, every little action, every little opportunity missed or taken, accumulating until the moment of climax four hours before. I seemed to have brought Polchester on my back to the war, and I could see quite clearly how each of us⁠—Marie, Semyonov, Nikitin, Durward, every one of us⁠—had brought their private histories and scenes with them. War is made up, I believe, not of shells and bullets, not of German defeats and victories, Russian triumphs or surrenders, English and French battles by sea and land, not of smoke and wounds and blood, but of a million million past thoughts, past scenes, streets of little country towns, lonely hills, dark sheltered valleys, the wide space of the sea, the crowded traffic of New York, London, Berlin, yes, and of smaller things than that, of little quarrels, of dances at Christmas time, of walks at night, of dressing for dinner, of waking in the morning, of meeting old friends, of sicknesses, theatres, church services, prostitutes, slums, cricket-matches, children, rides on a tram, baths on a hot morning, sudden unpleasant truth from a friend, momentary consciousness of God.⁠ ⁠… + 

Death too.⁠ ⁠… How clear now it was to me! During these weeks I had wondered, pursued the thought of Death. Was it this? Was it that? Was it pain? Was it terror? I had feared it, as for instance when I had seen the dead bodies in the Forest, or stood under the rain at Nijnieff. I had laughed at it as when I had gone with the sanitars. I had cursed it as when Marie Ivanovna had died. I had sought it as I had done last night⁠—and always, as I drew closer and closer to it, fancied it some fine allegorical figure, something terrible, appalling, devastating.⁠ ⁠… How, when I was, as I believed, at last face to face with it, I saw that one was simply face to face with oneself. + 

Four hours I have been writing, and no sign of the wagons.⁠ ⁠… I am writing everything down as I remember it, because these things are so clear to me now and yet I know that afterwards they will be changed, twisted. + 

I was drowsy. I saw Polchester High Street, Garth in Roselands, Clinton, Truxe, best of all Rafiel. I went down the high white hill, deep into the valley, then along the road beside the stream where the houses begin, the hideous Wesleyan Chapel on my right, “Ebenezer Villa” on my left, then the cottages with the gardens, then the little street, the post-office, the butcher’s, the turn of the road and, suddenly, the bay with the fishing boats riding at anchor and beyond the sea.⁠ ⁠… England and Russia! to their strong and confident union I thought that I would give every drop of my blood, every beat of my heart, and as I lay there I seemed to see on one side the deep green lanes at Rafiel and on the other the shining canals, the little wooden houses, the cobbler and the tufted trees of Petrograd, the sea coast beyond Truxe and the wide snow-covered plains beyond Moscow, the cathedral at Polchester and the Kremlin, breeding their children, to the hundredth generation, for the same hopes, the same beliefs, the same desires. + 

I slept in the sun and had happy dreams. + 

I have reread these last pages and I find some very fine stuff about⁠—“giving every drop of blood,” etc., etc. Of course I am not that kind of man. Men, like Durward and myself⁠—he resembles me in many ways, although he is stronger than I am, and doesn’t care what people think of him⁠—are too analytical and self-critical to give much of their blood to anybody or to make their blood of very much value if they did. + 

I only meant that I would do my best. + 

Later in the morning the firing began again pretty close. Andrey Vassilievitch came to me and wanted to talk to me. I was rather short with him because I was busy. He wanted to tell me that he hoped I hadn’t misunderstood his quarrel with Nikitin last night. It had been nothing at all. His nerves had been rather out of order. He was very much better today, felt quite another man. He looked another man and I said so. He said that I did.⁠ ⁠… Strange, but I felt as I looked at him that he was sickening for some bad illness. One feels that sometimes about people without being able to name a cause. + 

I have an affection for the little man⁠—but he’s an awful fool. Well, so am I. But fools never respect fools.⁠ ⁠… Strange to see Semyonov. I had expected him for some reason to be different today. Just the same, of course, very sarcastic to me. I had a hole in one of my pockets and was always forgetting and putting money and things into it. This seemed to annoy him. But today nothing matters. Even the flies do not worry me. All the morning Marie has seemed so close to me. I have a strange excitement, the feeling that one has when one is in a train that approaches the place where someone whom one loves is waiting.⁠ ⁠… I feel exactly as though I were going on a journey.⁠ ⁠… + 

Since three o’clock we’ve had a lively time. The attack began about five minutes to three, by a shell splashing into the Forest near our battery. No one killed, fortunately. They’ve simply stormed away since then. I don’t seem to be able to realise it and have been sitting in my room writing as though they were a hundred miles away. One so used to the noise. Everything is ready. We’ve got all the wounded prepared. If only the wagons would come.⁠ ⁠… Hallo! a shell in the garden⁠—cracked one of these windows. I must go down to see whether anyone’s touched.⁠ ⁠… I put this in my bag. Tomorrow⁠ ⁠… and I am so happy that⁠ ⁠… + 

The end of Trenchard’s diary. + 

These are the last words in Trenchard’s journal. It fills about half the second exercise book. The last pages are written in a hand very much clearer and steadier than the earlier ones. + 

I would like now to make my account as brief as possible. + 

Upon the afternoon of August 16 we were all at Mittövo, extremely anxious about our friends. Molozov was in a great state of alarm. The sanitars with the wagons that arrived at about four o’clock in the afternoon told us that a violent attack in the intermediate neighbourhood of our white house was expected at any moment. The wagons were to return as quickly as possible, and bring everyone away. They left about five o’clock in charge of Molozov and Goga, who were bursting with excitement. I knew that they could not be with us again until at any rate nine o’clock, but I was so nervous that at about seven I walked out to the cross and watched. + 

It was a very dark night, but the sky was simply on fire with searchlights and rockets, very fine behind the Forest and reflected in the river. The cannonade was incessant but one could not tell how close it was. At last, at about half-past eight, I could endure my ignorance no longer and I went down the hill towards the bridge. I had not been there more than ten minutes and had just seen a shell burst with a magnificent spurt of fire high in the wood opposite, when our wagons suddenly clattered up out of the darkness. I saw at once that something was wrong. The horses were being driven furiously although there was now no need, as I thought, for haste. I could just see Semyonov in the half light and he shouted something to me. I caught one of the wagons as it passed and nearly crushed Goga. + 

We were making so much noise that I had to shout to him. + 

“Well?” I cried. + 

Then I saw that he was crying, his arms folded about his face, sobbing like a little boy. + 

“What is it?” I shouted. + 

“Mr.⁠ ⁠…” he said, “Andrey Vassilievitch.⁠ ⁠…” I looked round. One of the sanitars nodded. + 

Then there followed a nightmare of which I can remember very little. It seems that at about four in the afternoon the Austrians made a furious attack. At about seven our men retreated and broke. They were gradually beaten back towards the river. Then, out of Mittövo, the Moskovsky Polk made a magnificent counterattack, rallied the other Division and finally drove the Austrians right back to their original trenches. From nine o’clock until twelve we were in the thick of it. After midnight all was quiet again. I will not give you details of our experiences as they are not all to my present purpose. + 

At about half-past one in the morning I found Nikitin standing in the garden, looking in front of him across the river, over which a very faint light was beginning to break.⁠ ⁠… + 

I touched him on the arm and he started, as though he had been very far away. + 

“How did Trenchard die?” + 

He answered at once, very readily: “About three o’clock the shells were close. The wagons arrived a little before seven so we had fully four anxious hours. We had had everything ready all the afternoon and, of course, just then we couldn’t go out to fetch the wounded and I think that the army sanitars were working in another direction, so that we had nothing to do⁠—which was pretty trying. I didn’t see Mr. until just before seven. He had been busy upstairs about something and then at the sound of the wagons he came out. I had noticed that all day he had seemed very much quieter and more cheerful. He had been in a wretched condition on the earlier days, nervous and overstrained, and I was very glad to see him so much better. We were all working then, moving the wounded from the house to the wagons. We couldn’t hear one another speak, the noise was so terrific. Andrey and Mr. were directing the sanitars near the house. Semyonov and I were near the wagons. I had looked up and shouted something to Andrey when suddenly I heard a shell that seemed as though it would break right over me. I braced myself, as one does, to meet it. For a moment I heard nothing but the noise; my nostrils were choked with the smell and my eyes blinded with dust. But I knew that I had not been hit, and I stood there, rather stupidly, wondering. Then cleared. I saw that all the right corner of the house was gone, and that Semyonov had run forward and was kneeling on the ground. With all the shouting and firing it was very difficult to realise anything. I ran to Semyonov. Andrey⁠ ⁠… but I won’t⁠ ⁠… I can’t⁠ ⁠… he must have been right under the thing and was blown to pieces. Mr., strangely enough, lying there with his arms spread out, seemed to have been scarcely touched. But I saw at once when I came to him that he had only a few moments to live. He had a terrible stomach wound but was suffering no pain, I think. Semyonov was kneeling, with his arm behind his head, looking straight into his eyes. + 

“ ‘Mr., Mr.,’ he said several times, as though he wanted to rouse him to consciousness. Then, quite suddenly, Mr. seemed to realise. He looked at Semyonov and smiled, one of those rather timid, shy smiles that were so customary with him. His eyes though were not timid. They were filled with the strangest look of triumph and expectation. + 

“The two men looked at one another and I, seeing that nothing was to be done, waited. Semyonov then, speaking as though he and Mr. were alone in all this world of noise and confusion, said: + 

“ ‘You’ve won, Mr.⁠ ⁠… You’ve won!’ He repeated this several times as though it was of the utmost importance that Mr. should realise his words. + 

“Mr., smiling, looked at Semyonov, gave a little sigh, and died. + 

“I can hear now the tones of Semyonov’s voice. There was something so strange in its mixture of irony, bitterness and kindness⁠—just that rather contemptible, patronising kindness that is so especially his. + 

“We had no time to wait after that. We got the wagons out by a miracle without losing a man. Semyonov was marvellous in his self-control and coolness.⁠ ⁠…” + 

We were both silent for a long time. Nikitin only once again. “Andrey!⁠ ⁠… My God, how I will miss him!” he said⁠—and I, who knew how often he had cursed the little man and been impatient with his importunities, understood. “I have lost more⁠—far more⁠—than Andrey,” he said. “I talked to you once, Ivan Andreievitch. You will understand that I have no one now who can bring her to me. I think that she will never come to me alone. I never needed her as he did. No more dreams.⁠ ⁠…” + 

We were interrupted by Semyonov, who, carrying a lantern, passed us. He saw us and turned back. + 

“We must be ready by seven,” he said sharply. “A general retirement. Ivan Andreievitch, do you know whether Mr. had friends or relations to whom we can write?” + 

“I heard of nobody,” I answered. + 

“Nobody?” + 

“Nobody.” + 

Just before he turned my eyes met his. He appeared to me as a man who, with all his self-control, was compelling himself to meet the onset of an immeasurable devastating loss. + 

He gave us a careless nod and vanished into the darkness. + 