“What is it?” Trenchard said at last. There advanced towards him then from out of the empty house an old man in a wide straw hat with a broom.
“What is it?” Trenchard said again.
“It’s the Austrians,” said the old man in Polish, of which Trenchard understood very little. “First it’s the Russians. … Then it’s the Austrians. … Then it’s the Russians. … Then it’s the Austrians. And always between each of them I have to clean things up”—and some more which Trenchard did not understand. The old man then stood at his gate watching them with a gaze serious, sad, reflective. Meanwhile the sanitars had discovered one of our own soldiers: this man, who had been sitting under a hedge and listening to the Austrian cannon with very uncomfortable feelings, told them of the affair. At three o’clock that afternoon our Otriad had been informed that it must retreat “within half an hour.” Not only our own Sixty-Fifth Division, but the whole of the Ninth Army was retreating “within half an hour.” Moreover the Austrians were advancing “a verst a minute.” By four o’clock the whole of our Otriad had disappeared, leaving only this soldier to inform us that we must move on at once to T⸺ or S⸺, twenty or thirty versts distant.
“Retreating!” cried Trenchard. “But we were winning! We’d just won a battle!”
“Tak totchno!” said the soldier gravely, “Twenty versts! the horses won’t do it, your Honour!”
“They’ve got to do it!” said Trenchard sharply, and the echo of the Austrian cannon, again as it seemed quite close at hand, emphasised his words. Except for this the silence of the world around them was eerie; only far away they seemed to hear the persistent rumble of carts on the road.
“They’re gone! They’re all gone! We’re left last of all!” and “The Austrians advancing a verst a minute!”
He took a last look at the house which had seemed yesterday so absolutely to belong to them and now was already making preparations for its new guests. As he gazed he thought of his agony in that field below the house. Only last night and now what years ago it seemed! What years, what years ago!
He climbed wearily again upon his wagon. There had entered into his unhappiness now a new element. This was a sensation of cold despairing anger that ground should be yielded so helplessly. About every field, every hedge and lane and tree, as slowly they jogged along he felt this. Only today this corn, these stones, these flowers were Russian, and tomorrow Austrian! This, as it seemed, simply out of the air, dictated by some whispering devil crouching behind a hedge, afraid to appear! This, too, when only a few hours ago there had been that battle of S⸺ won by them after a struggle of many days; that position, soaked with Russian blood, to be surrendered now as a leaf blows in the wind.
When they arrived at T⸺ and found our Otriad he was, I believe, so deeply exhausted that he was not conscious of his actions. His account to me of what then occurred is fantastic and confused. He discovered apparently the house where we were; it was then one o’clock in the morning. Everyone was asleep. There seemed to be no place for him to be, he could find neither candles nor matches, and he wandered out into the road again. Then, it seems, he was standing beside a deep lake. “I can remember nothing clearly except that the lake was black and endless. I stood looking at it. I could see the bodies out of the forest, only now they were slipping along the water, their skulls white and gleaming. I had also a confused impression that Russia was beaten and the war over. And that for me too life was utterly at an end. … I remember that I deliberately thought of Marie because it hurt so abominably. I repeated to myself the incidents of the night before, all of them, talking aloud to myself. I decided then that I would drown myself in the lake. It seemed the only thing to do. I took my coat off. Then sat down in the mud and took off my boots. Why I did this I don’t know. I looked at the water, thought that it would be cold, but that it would soon be over because I couldn’t swim. I heard the frogs, looked back at the flickering fires amongst our wagons, then walked down the bank. …”
Nikitin must for some time have been watching him, because at that moment he stepped forward, took Trenchard’s arm, and drew him back. Nikitin has himself told me that he was walking up and down the road that night because he could not sleep. When he spoke to Trenchard the man seemed dazed and bewildered, said something about “life being all over for him and—death being horrible!”
Nikitin put his arm round him, took him back to his room, where he made him a bed on the floor, gave him a sleeping-draught and watched him until he slept.
That was the true beginning of the friendship between Nikitin and Trenchard.
VI
The Retreat
The retreat struck us as breathlessly as though we had been whirled by a windstorm into midair on the afternoon of a summer day. At five minutes to three we had been sitting round the table in the garden of the house at M⸺ drinking tea. We were, I remember, very gay. We had heard only the day before of the Russian surrender of Przemysl and that had for a moment depressed us; but as always we could see
