interpreter to ask them what they'd like before being taken to the field hospital; they all asked for food, but one big Turk with head all bandaged up asked for a cigarette. At once Skobelef leant down from his horse and offered his own cigarette case. The Turk took it, an officer gave him a match, and he puffed out the smoke with an air of ineffable content. And then by way of return he undid the knot of his bandage and began to unwind the dirty linen that covered his head. In spite of Skobelef's gesture and prayer not to do it, he went on, and as the last fold was plucked loose, in spite of the sticky blood, the man's half-jaw fell on his chest. The other half had evidently been taken off by a shell-a most horrible sight-but the Turk smiled, held his half-jaw up and began winding on the linen bandage again. When he had secured it, in went the cigarette again into his mouth and he smiled up at us his liveliest gratitude. 'Fine men,' said Skobelef, 'great soldiers!' And they were-and are!
One more scene. As an Englishman I managed to get down to Adrianople long before the Russian troops. I wanted to see Constantinople and the Turks before resuming work. At one station, I forget its name, I had to stay a day or two. The caravanserai was a miserable makeshift: one morning I heard that some Russian prisoners had been brought in and I went out and found a line of them outside the station sitting on benches and guarded by half a dozen Turks; one gigantic Turk marched up and down in front of the poor captives, scowling and muttering. I told the interpreter who was with me to go off and find a Turkish officer or the Russians would be murdered; he ran off at once.
Suddenly the big Turk stopped in front of a bearded Russian at one end of the line, seized him by the beard and hair, wrenched his mouth open, and spat down his throat-I never saw such a gesture of hate and savage rage. My blood boiled, but I could do nothing except pray for the coming of some officer. Fortunately one came in time, and the poor Russians were saved.
I never saw Skobelef after that fall, but he remains to me as a splendid memory and I shall tell now of his end. I was praising him one day in London when a Russian officer who was in the Russian embassy told me how he died.
'You know he was our hero,' he began. 'There are more photographs of Skobelef in our peasant homes throughout Russia than even of the Tzar. And his end was wonderful: he had come to Moscow to review a couple of army corps; as usual, after the review, when he was very severe on some officers, he asked a lot of us junior ones to dine with him in the Slavianski Bazaar; to take away the sting of his sharp criticism, I fancy. Of course we all turned up, proud as peacocks at being asked, and we had a great feast. 'Afterwards someone suggested that we should adjourn to Madame X's, who had a house in a neighboring street. Nothing loath, Skobelef, to our astonishment, consented and we all went round, picked our girls and disappeared into bedrooms. After midnight I heard a mad screaming, and just as I was I opened
my door and found in the passage the girl Skobelef had chosen. 'The General is dead!' she cried.
''Dead!' I yelled. 'What do you mean? Lead the way,' and back she took me, sobbing hysterically, to her bedroom. There lay Skobelef, motionless, with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling; I called him, put my hand and then my ear on his heart. It had stopped. I looked at the girl. 'It wasn't my fault' she cried. 'Really, it wasn't!' 'I hastened back to my bedroom and dressed myself hurriedly; already every officer was up; we went to the keeper of the brothel and said we must take the general at once back to the Slaviansky Bazaar, his hotel. But the keeper said, 'It's forbidden: the police regulation prevents it; you must first get permission!' At once a couple of us rushed downstairs and drove to the police headquarters, but even there we could do nothing. Only the governor of Moscow, it seemed, could give us the permission. So off we raced to the palace. As ill-luck would have it, the governor was at his villa outside the town, so we had to take a droshky and drive like mad. At about three in the morning we knocked him up, got the necessary permission, and hurried back to the brothel.
'The General was cold and stiff: it was incredibly difficult to dress him, but it had to be done; and then my friend took him by one arm and I by the other and we half-led, half-carried him out to the carriage. Neither of us had thought of the time. Alas! It was already day and to our astonishment the news had got out and the streets were crowded with people. As soon as they saw us half-carrying Skobelef, they all knelt down on the sidewalk and in the street, the dear people, and crossing themselves began to pray for the rest of his soul!
'It was through a kneeling crowd that we took our hero to the Slaviansky Bazaar and laid him on his bed. And the piety of the Russian people is such, its admiration of greatness so profound, that the story has never got out or been in print. Do you wonder that some of us always think of our fatherland as Holy Russia?'
As I listened to this story, the great words of Blake came into my mind, the final word for all of us mortals:
And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me:
As our dear Redeemer said
This is the wine and this is the bread.
CHAPTER II
Why I went to Heidelberg and not to Berlin to study I can't say; there was a touch of romance in the name which probably drew me. I had over fifteen hundred pounds in the bank and thought it would keep me five years and allow me to return to the States to begin my life's work with at least a thousand pounds in my pocket. But was I going back to America? I had to confess to myself that the malarial fever in the States daunted me; besides I liked England better and so put off any decision. Already the proverb influenced me: not to cross a river till you come to it.
Heidelberg fascinated me; I loved its beauty, the great forest-clad hills about it, its river, its ruined castle, its plain, business-like university, its Cafe Leer, its bookshops-everything. I went to the Hotel de l'Europe for a week and found it expensive; but the Rhine wines are delicious and not dear: the Marcobrunner and Liebfraumilch of ten years of age taught me what scent and flavour wine could possess.
On the river I got to know a couple of young Americans, Treadwell by name, with whom I soon struck up a friendship. I had gone to the riverside hoping to get a boat for a row: a stalwart young fellow was just paying for his canoe.
'Kann ich?' I hesitated, pointing to his skiff, 'Ja wohl!' was the loud genial answer. 'But you're an Englishman?' he added in English. 'American rather,'
I replied, and my acquaintance soon confided to me that he and his younger brother had been brought up in a German school and that he was studying chemistry and was already an assistant of the celebrated Professor Bunsen, the man who first discovered the chemical composition of the stars and the inventor of the spectroscope. Here were wonders! I was on fire to learn more, to meet Bunsen. 'Could I?' 'Surely!' I thrilled.
This elder Treadwell was a personable fellow, perhaps five feet nine in height and evidently vigorous, clean- shaven, with strong features and alert expression; but I soon discovered that in spite of his knowledge of quantitative and qualitative analysis, he was not intellectual in my understanding of the word. His younger brother, who had just entered the university to continue the study of philology, pleased me more. He was about my own size and learned already in Latin and Greek, German and French; thoughtful, too, with indwelling grey eyes. 'A fine mind,' I concluded,
'though immature,' and we soon became friends. Through him I went to live in a pension where he and his brother boarded and where my living cost me less than a pound a week. The living was excellent because the pension was kept by a large motherly Englishwoman, widow of a German professor, who was a maitresse jemme of the wisest and kindliest.
There I met a Mr. Onions who had won all sorts of honours in Oxford and who soon became a sort of pal, for he, too, loved literature as I did and seemed to me inconceivably clever; for he wrote brilliant Latin and Greek verses and in three months had mastered German, though he didn't speak it well. Onions confessed that he studied German three of four hours every morning, so I did the same and gave three or four more hours to it every afternoon. One day he astonished and pleased me by saying that I must have a genius for languages, for my German was already better than his. At any rate I spoke it more fluently; for I talked it whenever I got the opportunity while he was rather silent.
