We answered yes.
“Now which Sister will come with me? Marie Ivanovna, I think it would interest you. No danger, except a stray shrapnel or two. Will you come?”
There leapt upon us then, with an agitation that seemed to silence the very battery itself, Trenchard’s voice:
“No. … No … Marie. No, it’s dangerous. Semyonov says so. Your first day. …”
He spoke in English, his voice trembling. I turned to see his face white, his eyes wide open and at the same time blind; he passionately addressed himself to Marie Ivanovna and to her alone.
But she turned impatiently.
“Why, of course, Doctor. I’m ready at once.”
Trenchard put his hand on her arm.
“You are not to go—Marie, do you hear? I have a right … I tell you, you are not to go!”
“Don’t be so stupid, John,” she shook off his arm. “Please, Doctor, I’m ready.”
Semyonov turned to Trenchard with a smile: “Mr. (they all called him Mr. now), it will be quite well … I will look after her.”
“You … you (Trenchard could not control his voice), you can’t prevent shrapnel—bullets. You don’t care, you. …”
Semyonov’s voice was sharp: “I think it better that Sister Marie Ivanovna should come with me. You understand, the rest of you. … We shall meet at dusk.”
Trenchard only said “Marie …” then turned away from us. Anna Petrovna, who had said nothing during this scene and had, indeed, seemed to be oblivious of it, plunged with her heavy clumsy walk across the road to the Red Cross house. The Doctor and Marie Ivanovna disappeared behind the trench. I was, as was always my case with Trenchard, both sympathetic and irritated. It was difficult for him, of course, but what did he expect the girl to do? Could he have supposed for a single moment that she would remain? Could it be possible that he knew her so little as that? And why make a scene now before Semyonov when he obviously could do nothing? I knew, moreover, with a certainty that was almost ironic in its clarity, that Marie Ivanovna did not love, did not, perhaps, even care for him. By what moment in Petrograd, a moment flaming with their high purposes and the purple shadows of a Russian “white night,” had she been entranced into some glorious vision of him? On the very day that followed, she had known, I was convinced, her mistake. At the station she had known it, and instead of the fine Sir Galahad “without reproach” of the previous night she saw some figure that, had she been English born, would have appeared to her as Alice’s White Knight perchance, or at best the warmhearted Uncle Toby, or that most Christian of English heroes—Parson Adams. I could imagine that life had been so impulsive, so straightforward, so simple a thing to her that this sudden implication in an affair complicated and even dishonest caused her bitter disquiet. Looking back now I could trace again and again the sudden flashes, through her happiness, of this distress.
He perhaps should have perceived it, but I could understand that he could not believe that his treasure had at last after all these years been given to him for so brief a moment. He could not, he would not, believe it. Well, I knew that his eyes must very soon be opened to the truth. …
As I turned to see him sitting on the stretcher with his back to me, his head hanging a little as though it were too heavy for his neck, his back bent, his long arms fallen loose at his sides, I thought that Alice’s White Knight he, in solemn truth, presented.
He had a talent for doing things to his uniform. His cap, instead of being raised in front, was flat, his jacket bulged out above his belt, and the straps on his boot had broken from their holdings. He filled the pockets of his trousers, in moments of absentminded absorption, with articles that he fancied that he would need—sometimes food, black bread and sausage, sometimes a large pocketknife, a folding drinking glass, a ball of string, a notebook. These things protruded, or gave his clothes a strange bulky look, fat in some places, thin in others. As I saw him his shoulder-blades seemed to pierce his coat: I could fancy with what agitation his hands were clenched.
We sat down, the three of us together, and again the battery leapt upon us. Now the sun was hot above the trees and the effect of the noise behind us was that we ourselves, every two or three minutes, were caught up, flung to the ground, recovered, breathless, exhausted, only to be hurled again!
How miserable we were, how lost, how desolate, Trenchard hearing in every sound the death of his lady, Andrey Vassilievitch dreaming, I fancy, that he had been caught in some cage out of which he would never again escape. I, sick, almost blind with headache, and yet exasperated, irritated by the emptiness of it all. If only we might run down that hill! There surely we should find. …
At the very moment when the battery had finished as it seemed to me its work of smashing my head into pulp the wagon arrived.
Now,
I thought to myself as I climbed on to the straw, I shall begin to be excited!
We, all three of us, kneeling on the cart, peered forward into the dim blue afternoon. We were very silent—only once Trenchard said to me, “Perhaps we shall find her down here: where we’re going. What do you think, Durward?”
“I’m afraid not!” I answered. “But still she’ll be all right. Semyonov will look after her!”
“Oh! Semyonov!” he answered.
How joyful we were to leave our battery behind us. As the trees closed around it we could fancy its baffled rage. Other batteries now seemed to draw nearer to us and the whole forest was filled with childish quarrelling giants; but as we began to bump down the hill out of the forest stranger sounds attacked
