I said nothing. My silence urged her to a warmer defence.
“And then he makes such mistakes—always everything wrong that he’s asked to do. Doctor Semyonov laughs at him—but of course! He’s like a little boy, a man as old as he is. And Englishmen are always so practical, capable. Oh! speak to him, Mr. Durward; you can, please. If I say anything he’s at once so miserable. … I don’t understand, I don’t understand!” she cried, raising her hands with a little despairing gesture. “How can he have been like that in Petrograd, and now like this!”
“Give him time, Marie Ivanovna,” I answered her. “This is all new to him, confusing, alarming. He’s led a very quiet life. He’s very sensitive. He cares for you so deeply that the slightest thing wounds him. He would hide that if he could—it’s his tragedy that he can’t.”
She would have answered had not supper arrived and with it our whole company. Shall I ever know a more beautiful night? As we sat there the moon came up, red-gold and full; the stars were clustered so thickly between the trees that their light lay heavy like smoke upon the air. The little garden seemed to be never still as our candlelight blew in the breeze; so it hovered and trembled about us, the trees bending beneath their precious load of stars, shuddering in their happiness at so good an evening.
We sat there as though we had known that it was to be our last night of peace. … Many times the glasses of tea were filled, many times the little blue tin boxes of sweets were pushed up and down the table, many times the china teapot on the top of the samovar was fed with fresh tea, many times spoons were dipped into the strawberry jam and then plunged into the glasses of tea, such being the Russian pleasure.
There occurred then an unfortunate incident. Someone had said something about England: there had been a joke then about “sportsmen,” some allusion was made to some old story connected with myself, and I had laughingly taken up the challenge. Suddenly Semyonov leaned across the table and spoke to Trenchard. Trenchard, who had been silent throughout the meal, misunderstood the Russian, thought that Semyonov was trying to insult him, and sat there colouring, flaming at last, silent. We all of us felt the awkwardness of it. There was a general pause—Semyonov himself drew back with a little laugh.
Suddenly Marie Ivanovna, across the table, in English said softly but with a strange eager hostility:
“How absurd! … To let them all see … to let them know. …” Perhaps I, who was sitting next to her, alone heard her words.
The colour left Trenchard’s face; he looked at her once, then got up and left the table. I could see then that she was distressed, but she talked, laughed more eagerly, more enthusiastically than before. Sometimes I saw her look towards the schoolhouse.
When there came an opportunity I rose and went to find him. He was standing near his bed, his back to the door, his hands clenched.
“I say, come out again—just as though nothing had happened. No one noticed anything, only I. …”
He turned to me, his face working and with a passionate gesture, in a voice that choked over the words, he cried: “She should not have said it. She should not … everyone there. … She knew how it would wound me. … Semyonov. …”
He positively was silent over that name. The mild expression of his eyes, the clumsy kindness of his mouth gave a ludicrous expression to his rage.
“Wait! Wait!” I cried. “Be patient!”
As I spoke I could hear him in the railway carriage:
“I am mad with happiness. … God forgive me, my heart will break.”
Breaking from me, despair in his voice, he whispered to the empty room, the desolate row of white beds watching him: “I always knew that I was hopeless … hopeless … hopeless.”
“Look here,” I said. “You mustn’t take things so hard. You go up and down. … Your emotions. …”
But he only shook his head:
“She shouldn’t have said it—like that—before everyone,” he repeated.
I left him. Afterwards as I stood in the passage, white and ghostly in the moonlight, something suddenly told me that this night the prologue of our drama was concluded.
I waited on the steps of the house, heard the laughing voices in the distance, while over the rest of the world there was absolute silence; then abruptly, quite sharply, across the long low fields there came the rumble of cannon. Three times it sounded. Then hearing no more I returned into the house.
III
The Invisible Battle
On the evening of the following day Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and I were sent with sanitars and wagons to the little hamlet of M⸺, five versts only from the Position. It was night when we arrived there; no sound of cannon, only on the high hills (the first lines of the Carpathians) that faced us the scattered watchfires of our own Sixty-Fifth Division, and in the little village street a line of cavalry moving silently, without a spoken word, on to the high road beyond. After much difficulty (the village was filled with the officers of the Sixty-Fifth) we found a kitchen in which we might sleep. Upon the rough earth floor our mattresses were spread, my feet under the huge black oven, my head beneath a gilt picture of the Virgin and Child that in the candlelight bowed and smiled, in company with eight other pictures of Virgins and Children, to give us confidence and encouragement.
It was a terrible night. On a high pillared bed set into the
