“It’s a most lovely …” Trenchard said, smiling at me, “spring here … I find. …”
I was compelled by some unexpected sense of fatherly duty to be practical.
“You’ve got your things?” I said. “You’ve found your seat?”
“Well, I didn’t know …” he stammered.
“Where are they?” I asked him.
He was not quite sure where they were. He stood, waving his hands, whilst the golden sunlight rippled over his face. I was suddenly irritated.
“But please,” I said, “there isn’t much time. Four of us men have a compartment together. Just show me where your things are and then I’ll introduce you.” He seemed reluctant to move, as though the spot that he had chosen was the only safe one in the whole station; but I forced him forward, found his bags, had them placed in their carriage, then turned to introduce him to his companions.
Anna Mihailovna had said to me: “This detachment will be older than the last. Doctor Nikitin—he’ll take that other doctor’s place, the one who had typhus—and Andrey Vassilievitch—you’ve known him for years. He talks a great deal but he’s sympathetic and such a good business man. He’ll be useful. Then there’s an Englishman; I don’t know much about him, except that he’s been working for three months at the English Hospital. He’s not a correspondent, never written a line in his life. I only saw him for a moment, but he seemed sympathetic. …”
Anna Mihailovna, as is well known to all of us, finds everyone sympathetic simply because she has so much to do and so many people to see that she has no time to go deeply into things. If you have no time for judging character you must have some good common rule to go by. I had known little Andrey Vassilievitch for some years and had found him tiresome. Finally, I did not care about the possibility of an Englishman. Perhaps I had wished (through pride) to remain the only Englishman in our Otriad. I had made friends with them all, I was at home with them. Another Englishman might transplant me in their affections. Russians transfer, with the greatest ease, their emotions from one place to another; or he might be a failure and so damage my country’s reputation. Some such vain and stupid prejudice I had. I know that I looked upon our new additions with disfavour.
There, at any rate, Dr. Nikitin and little Andrey Vassilievitch were, and a strange contrast they made. Nikitin’s size would have compelled attention anywhere, even in Russia, which is, of course, a country of big men. It was not only that he was tall and broad; the carriage of his head, the deep blackness of his beard, his eyebrows, his eyes, the sure independence with which he held himself, as though he were indifferent to the whole world (and that I know that he was), must anywhere have made him remarked and remembered. He looked now immensely fine in his uniform, which admirably suited him. He stood, without his greatcoat, his hand on his sword, his eyes half-closed as though he were almost asleep, and a faint half-smile on his face as though he were amused at his thoughts. I remember that my first impression of him was that he was so completely beneath the domination of some idea or remembrance that, at that moment, no human being could touch him. When I took Trenchard up to him I was so conscious of his remoteness that I was embarrassed and apologetic.
And if I was aware of Nikitin’s remoteness I was equally conscious of Andrey Vassilievitch’s proximity. He was a little man of a round plump figure; he wore a little imperial and sharp, inquisitive moustaches; his hair was light brown and he was immensely proud of it. In Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends, a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his epaulettes glittered, his boots shone, his sword was magnificent, but he looked, in spite of all his efforts, exactly what he was, a rich successful merchant; never was there anyone less military. He had dressed up, one might suppose, for some fancy-dress ball.
I could see at once that he was ill at ease, anxious as ever to please everyone, to like everyone, to be liked in return, but unable, because of some thought that troubled him, to give his whole attention to this business of pleasing.
He greeted me with a warmth that was really genuine although he bestowed it upon his merest acquaintances. His great dream in life was a universal popularity—that everyone should love him. At any rate at that time I thought that to be his dream—I know now that there was something else.
“But Ivan Petrovitch! … This is delightful! Here we all are! What pleasure! Thank God, we’re all here, no delays, nothing unfortunate. An Englishman? … Indeed, I am
