“Oh! Oh! … Oh! Oh!” shrieked a man from the middle of whose back Nikitin, probing with his finger, was extracting a bullet. The candles flared, the ladies from Carmen wavered on the marble steps, the high cracked voice of the soldier continued its song. I stood there with Trenchard and Andrey Vassilievitch. Then we turned away.
“We’re not wanted tonight,” I said. “We’d better get out of the way and sleep somewhere. There’ll be plenty to do tomorrow!” Little Andrey Vassilievitch, whom during the retreat I had entirely forgotten, looked very pathetic. He was dusty and dirty and hated his discomfort. He did not know where to go and was in everybody’s way. Nikitin was immensely busy and had no time to waste on his friend. Poor Andrey was tired and terribly depressed.
“What I say is,” he confided to us in a voice that trembled a little, “that we are not to despair. We have to retreat today, but who knows what will happen tomorrow? Everyone is aware that Russia is a glorious country and has endless resources. Well then. … What I say is …”; an officer bundled into him, apologised but quite obviously cursed him for being in the way.
“Come along,” said Trenchard, putting his arm on Andrey Vassilievitch’s sleeve. “We’ll find somewhere to sleep. Of course we’re not in despair. Why should we be? You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
They departed, and as they went I wondered at this new side in Trenchard’s character. He seemed strong, practical, and almost cheerful. I, knowing his disaster, was puzzled. My lame leg was hurting me tonight. I found a corner to lie down in, rolled myself in my greatcoat and passed through a strange succession of fantastic dreams in which Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna, Nikitin, and Semyonov all figured. Behind them I seemed to hear some voice crying: “I’ve got you all! … I’ve got you all! … You’re caught! … You’re caught! … You’re caught!”
On the following day there happened to Trenchard the thing that he had dreaded. Writing of it now I cannot disentangle it from the circumstances and surroundings of his account of it to me. He was looking back then, when he spoke to me, to something that seemed almost fantastic in its ironical reality. Every word of that conversation he afterwards recalled to himself again and again. As to Marie Ivanovna I think that he never even began to understand her; that he should believe in her was a different matter from his understanding her. That he should worship her was a tribute both to his inexperience and to his sentiment. But his relation to her and to this whole adventure of his was confused and complicated by the fact that he was not, I believe, in himself a sentimental man. What one supposed to be sentiment was a quite honest and naked lack of knowledge of the world. As experience came to him sentiment fell away from him. But experience was never to come to him in regard to Marie Ivanovna; he was to know as little of her at the end as he had known at the beginning, and this whole conversation with her (of course, I have only his report of it) is clouded with his romantic conception of her. To that I might add also my own romantic conception; if Trenchard never saw her clearly because he loved her, I never saw her clearly because—because—why, I do not know. … She was, from first to last, a figure of romance, irritating, aggressive, enchanting, baffling, always blinding, to all of us.
During the morning after our arrival in M⸺ Trenchard worked in the theatre, bandaging and helping with the transport of the wounded up the high and difficult staircase. Then at midday, tired with the heat, the closeness of the place, he escaped into the little park that bordered the farther side of the road. It was a burning day in June—the sun came beating through the trees, and as soon as he had turned the corner of the path and had lost the line of ruined and blackened houses to his right he found himself in the wildest and most glittering of little orchards. The grass grew here to a great height—the apple-trees were of a fine age, and the sun in squares and circles and stars of light flashed like fire through the thick green. He stepped forward, blinded by the quivering gold, and walked into the arms of Marie Ivanovna. He, quite literally, ran against her and put his arms about her for a moment to steady her, not seeing who she was.
Then he gave a little cry.
She was also frightened. “It was the only time,” he told me, “that I had ever seen her show fear.”
They were silent, neither of them knowing the way to speak.
Then she said: “John, don’t r-run away. It is very good. I wanted to speak to you. Here, sit down here.”
She herself sat down and patted the grass, inviting him. He at once sat down beside her, but he could say nothing—nothing at all.
She waited for a time and then, seeing him, I suppose, at a loss and helpless, regained her own courage. “Are you still angry with me?”
“No,” he answered, not looking at her.
“You have a right to be; I behaved very badly.”
“I don’t understand,” he replied, “why you thought in Petrograd that you loved me and then—so soon—found that you did not—so soon.”
He looked at her and then lowered his eyes.
“What do you know or I know?” she suddenly asked him impetuously. “Are we not both always thinking that things will be so fine—seichass—and then they are not. How could we be happy together when we are both so ignorant? Ah, you know, John, you know that happy together we could never be.”
He looked at her clearly and without hesitation.
“I was very stupid,” he said. “I thought that because I had come
