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 Feôdorovitch Krylov. 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. "To-morrow" 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 to-morrow 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

naiveté that had been always in his face seemed now entirely to have

left him. He had always looked before as though he wanted some one 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 to-day 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. To-day 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 any one."

"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. Every one'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 _any one_ 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 some one 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 to-night."

"We have a nice room here."

"No, thank you."

"Perhaps one of you--"

"No. We are returning to-night,"

"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 some one seemed to

whisper in my ear:

"He's come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna."

CHAPTER 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 naïvely 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 fulness

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 to-day 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

any one 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, open-hearted, 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

any one 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 to-night.

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 for ever

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 to-morrow, 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 to-day, 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 Connexion 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 any one 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 mediæval

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,

some one 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 home-made cake, perhaps the local

weekly paper with the "Do you know that ..." column demanding one's

critical attention. One's annoyed because to-morrow 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 hair-brush, 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 prayer-book, 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 to-night! I realise, I suppose, that there isn't one

single living soul in the world who cares whether I die to-night 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 to-night. 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 to-day, 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 any one 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 to-day--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 every one 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 every one. 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 connexion, 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 every one 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

to-day 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 to-night. 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 to-night. They say the Austrians

have taken Vulatch. Shocking, our lack of ammunition.... God! The

heat!

CHAPTER 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 any one 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 any

one 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 to-morrow....

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 to-night. 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. To-day 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 every one in it. It was all very well

fighting Austrians, but whole forests was more than any one 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 every one) 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

to-night. 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 to-morrow night--all the same he advised us to leave."

"We'll stay until some one 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 any one--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 to-morrow 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 some one 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. To-night and to-morrow 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 feldscher 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 to-day 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 rattle 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 some one'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 re-read 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 to-day, 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 to-day. 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 to-day 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 some one 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

any one's touched.... I put this in my bag. To-morrow ... 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 every one

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 counter-attack, 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 over-strained,

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.

* * * * *