The faint saffron that lingered below the crests and peaks of rosy cloud showed between the stems of the silver birches like the friendly smile of a happy day. The only human beings to be seen were the peasants driving home their cows; far on the horizon the Carpathian mountains were purple in the dusk, the snow on their highest ridges faintly silver. There was not a sound in the world except the ring of our horses’ hoofs upon the road. And yet this sinister excitement hammered, from somewhere, at me as I had never felt it before. It was as though the lovely evening were a painted scene lowered to hide some atrocity.
“This is scarcely what you expected a conquered country to look like, is it?” I said to Trenchard.
He looked about him, then said, hesitating: “No … that is … I don’t know what I expected.”
A curved moon, dull gold like buried treasure, rose slowly above the hill; one white star flickered and the scents of the little gardens that lined the road grew thicker in the air as the day faded.
I was conscious of some restraint with Trenchard: He’s probably wishing,
I thought, that he’d not been so expansive last night. He doesn’t trust me.
Once he said abruptly:
“They’ll give me … won’t they … work to do? It would be terrible if there wasn’t work. I’m not so … so stupid at bandaging. I learnt a lot in the hospital and although I’m clumsy with my hands generally I’m not so clumsy about that—”
“Why of course,” I answered. “When there’s work they’ll be only too delighted. But there won’t always be work. You must be prepared for that. Sometimes our Division is in reserve and then we’re in reserve too. Sometimes for so much as a fortnight. When I was out here before I was in one place for more than two months. You must just take everything as it comes.”
“I want to work,” he said. “I must.”
Once again only he spoke:
“That little fat man who travelled with us. …”
“Andrey Vassilievitch,” I said.
“Yes. … He interests me. You knew him before?”
“Yes. I’ve known him slightly for some years.”
“What has he come for? He’s frightened out of his life.”
“Frightened?”
“Yes, he himself told me. He says that he’s very nervous but that he must do everything that everyone else does—for a certain reason. He got very excited when he talked to me and asked me whether I thought it would all be very terrible.”
“He is a nervous fussy little man. Russians are not cowards, but Andrey Vassilievitch lost his wife last year. He was very devoted to her—very. He is miserable without her, they say. Perhaps he has come to the war to forget her.”
I was surprised at Trenchard’s interest; I had thought him so wrapt in his own especial affair that nothing outside it could occupy him. But he continued:
“He knew the tall doctor—Nikitin—before, didn’t he?”
“Yes. … Nikitin knew his wife.”
“Oh, I see. … Nikitin seems to despise him—I think he despises all of us.”
“Oh no. That’s only his manner. Many Russians look as though they were despising their neighbours when, as a matter of fact, they’re really despising themselves. They’re very fond of despising themselves: their contempt allows them to do what they want to.”
“I don’t think Nikitin despises himself. He looks too happy—at least, happy is not the word. Perhaps triumphant is what I mean.”
“Ah, if you begin speculating about Russian expression you’re lost. They express so much in their faces that you think you know all their deepest feelings. But they’re not their deep feelings that you see. Only their quick transient emotions that change every moment.” I fancied, just at that time, that I had studied the Russian character very intently and it was perhaps agreeable to me to air my knowledge before an Englishman who had come to Russia for the first time so recently.
But Trenchard did not seem to be greatly impressed by my cleverness. He spoke no more. We drove then in silence whilst the moon, rising high, caught colour into its dim outline, like a scimitar unsheathed; the trees and hedges grew, with every moment, darker. We left the valley through which we had been driving, slowly climbing the hill, and here, on the top of the rising ground, we had our first glimpse of the outposts of the war. A cottage had been posted on the highest point of the hill; now all that remained of it was a sheet of iron, crumpled like paper, propped in the centre by a black and solitary post, trailing thence on the ground amongst tumbled bricks and refuse. This sheet of iron was silver in the moonlight and stood out with its solitary black support against the night sky, which was now breaking into a million stars. Behind it stretched a flat plain that reached to the horizon.
“There,” I said to Trenchard, “there’s your first glimpse of actual warfare. What do you say to every house in your village at home like that? It’s ghastly enough if you see it as I have done, still smoking, with the looking-glasses and flowerpots and pictures lying about.”
But Trenchard said nothing.
We started across the plain and at once, as with “Childe Roland”:
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O’er the safe road, ’twas gone! grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.
Our “safe road” was a rough and stony track; far in front of us on the rising hill that bounded the horizon a red light watched us like an angry eye. There were corn fields that stirred and whispered, but no hedges, no trees, and not a house to be seen.
Nikolai turned and said: “A very strong battle here, Your
