The Dark Forest

of his new companions. It had seemed to him that he had understood nothing of their conversation, that he was in the way, that finally he was more lonely than he had ever been in his life before. Then, however strongly he might to himself deny it, he had arrived in Russia with what Nikitin called “his romantic notions.” He had read his Dostoevski and Turgenev; he had looked at those books of Russian impressions that deal in nothing but snow, icons, and the sublime simplicity of the Russian peasant. He was a man whose circumstances had led him to believe profoundly in his own incapacity, unpopularity, ignorance. For a moment his love had given him a new confidence but now how was that same love deserting him? He had foreseen a glorious campaign, his lady and himself side by side, death and terror flying before him. He found himself leading a country life of perfect quiet and comfort, even as he might have led it in England, with a crowd of people, strangely unfamiliar to him, driving him, as he had been driven in the old days, into a host of awkwardnesses, confusions and foolishnesses. I could not forgive Marie Ivanovna for her disappointment in him, and yet I could understand how different he must have appeared to her during those last days in Petrograd, when alone with her and on fire with love, he had shown his true and bravest self to her. She was impatient, she had hoped that the others would see him as she had seen him. She watched them as they expressed their surprise that he was not the practical, fearless and unimaginative Englishman who was their typical figure. Whilst he found them far from the Karamazovs, the Raskolnikovs, of his imagination, they in their turn could not create the “sportsman” and “man of affairs” whom they had expected.

To all of this Semyonov added, beyond question, his personal weight. He had from the first declared Trenchard “a ridiculous figure.” Whilst the others were unfailingly kind, hospitable and even indulgent to Trenchard, Semyonov was openly satirical, making no attempt to hide his sarcastic irony. I do not know how much Trenchard’s engagement to Marie Ivanovna had to do with this, but I know that “my Englishman” could not to his misfortune have had a more practical, more efficient figure against whom to be contrasted than Semyonov.

During these weeks I think that I hated Semyonov. There was, however, one silent observer of all this business upon whose personal interference I had not reckoned. This was Nikitin, who, at the end of our first week at the schoolhouse, broke his silence in a conversation with me.

Nikitin, although he spoke as little as possible to anyone, had already had his effect upon the Otriad. They felt behind his silence a personality that might indeed be equal to Semyonov’s own. By little Andrey Vassilievitch they were always being assured: “Nikitin! A most remarkable man! You may believe me. I have known him for many years. A great friend of my poor wife’s and mine.⁠ ⁠…”

They did not appear to be great friends. Nikitin quite obviously avoided the little man whenever it was possible. But then he avoided us all.

Upon a lovely afternoon Nikitin and I were alone in the wild little garden, he lying full length on the grass, I reading a very ancient English newspaper, with my back against a tree.

He looked up at me with a swift penetrating glance, as though he were seeing me for the first time and would wish at once to weigh my character and abilities.

“Your Englishman,” he said. “He’s not happy, I’m afraid.”

“No,” I said, feeling the surprise of his question⁠—it had become almost a tradition with me that he never spoke unless he were first spoken to. “He feels strange and a little lonely, perhaps⁠ ⁠… it’s natural enough!”

“Yes,” repeated Nikitin, “it’s natural enough. What did he come for?”

“Oh, he’ll be all right,” I said hastily, “in a day or two.”

Nikitin lay on his back looking at the green, layer upon layer, light and dark, with golden fragments of broken light leaping in the breeze from branch to branch. “Why did he come? What did he expect to see? I know what he expected to see⁠—romantic Russia, romantic war. He expected to find us, our hearts exploding with love, God’s smile on our simple faces, God’s simple faith in our souls.⁠ ⁠… He has been told by his cleverest writers that Russia is the last stronghold of God. And war? He thought that he would be plunged into a scene of smoke and flame, shrapnel, horror upon horror, danger upon danger. He finds instead a country house, meals long and large, no sounds of cannon, not even an aeroplane. Are we kind to him? Not at all.⁠ ⁠… We are not unkind but we simply have other things to think about, and because we are primitive people we do what we want to do, feel what we want to feel, and show quite frankly our feelings. He is not what we expected, so that we prefer to fill our minds with things that do not give us trouble. Later, like all Englishmen, he will dismiss us as savages, or, if he is of the intellectual kind, he will talk about our confusing subtleties and contradictions. But we are neither savages nor confusing. We have simply a skin less than you.⁠ ⁠… We are a very young people, a real and genuine Democracy, and we care for quite simple things, women, food, sleep, money, quite simply and without restraint. We show our eagerness, our disgust, our disappointment, our amusement simply as the mood moves us. In Moscow they eat all day and are not ashamed. Why should they be? In Kiev they think always about women and do not pretend otherwise⁠ ⁠… and so on. We have, of course, no sense of time, nor method, nor system. If we were to think of these things we would be