The two Sisters had the seats by the windows; Nikitin curled up his great length in another corner and Andrey Vassilievitch settled himself with much grunting and many exclamations beside him. I and Trenchard sat stiffly on the other side.
I had, long ago, accustomed myself to sleep in any position on any occasion, however sudden it might be, and I fancied that I should now, in a moment, be asleep, although I had never, in my long travelling experience, known greater discomfort. I looked at the dim lamp, at the square patch beyond the windows, at Nikitin’s long body, which seemed nevertheless so perfectly comfortable, and at Andrey Vassilievitch’s short fat one, which was so obviously miserably uncomfortable; I smelt the cabbage, the dust, the sunflower seeds; first one bone then another ached, in the centre of my back there was an intolerable irritation; above all, there was in my brain some strange insistent compulsion, as though someone were forcing me to remember something that I had forgotten, or as though again someone were forewarning me of some peril or complication. I had, very distinctly, that impression, so familiar to all of us, of passing through some experience already known: I had seen already the dim lamp, the square patch of evening sky, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch. … I knew that in a moment Trenchard. … He did. … He touched my arm.
“Can you sleep?” he whispered.
“No,” I answered.
“It’s terribly hot, close—smell. … Are you going to sleep?”
“No,” I whispered back again.
“Let us move into the corridor. It will be cooler there.”
There seemed to me quite a new sound of determination and resolve in his voice. His nervousness had left him with the daylight. He led the way out of the carriage, turned down the little seats in the corridor, provided cigarettes.
“It isn’t much better here, but we’ll have the window open. It’ll get better. This is really war, isn’t it, being so uncomfortable as this? I feel as though things were really beginning.”
“Well, we shall be there tomorrow night,” I answered him. “I hope you’re not going to be disappointed.”
“Disappointed in what?” His voice was quite sharp as he spoke to me, “You don’t know what I want.”
“I suppose you’re like the rest of us. You want to see what war really is. You want to do some good if you can. You want to be seriously occupied in it to prevent your thinking too much about it. Then, because you’re English, you want to see what the Russians are really like. You’re curious and sympathetic, inquisitive and, perhaps, a little sentimental about it. … Am I right?”
“No, not quite—there are other things. I’d like to tell you. Do you mind,” he said suddenly looking up straight into my face with a confiding smile that was especially his own, “if I talk, if I tell you why I’ve come? I’ve no right, I don’t know you—but I’m so happy tonight that I must talk—I’m so happy that I feel as though I shall never get through the night alive.”
Of our conversation after this, or rather of his talk, excited, eager, intimate and shy, old and wise and very, very young, I remember now, I think, every word with especial vividness. After events were to fix it all in my brain with peculiar accuracy, but his narration had that night of itself its own individual quality. His was no ordinary personality, or, at any rate, the especial circumstances of the time drove it into no ordinary shape, and I believe that never before in all his days had he spoken freely and eagerly to anyone. It was simply tonight his exultation and happiness that impelled him, perhaps also some sense of high adventure that his romantic character would, most inevitably, extract from our expedition and its purposes.
At any rate, I listened, saying a word now and then, whilst the hour grew dark, lit only by the stars, then trembled into a pale dawn overladen with grey dense clouds, which again broke, rolled away, before another shining, glittering morning. I remember that it was broad daylight when we, at last, left the corridor.
“I’m thirty-three,” he said. “I don’t feel it, of course; I seem to be now only just beginning life. I’m a very unpractical person and in that way, perhaps, I’m younger than my age.”
I remember that I said something to him about his, most certainly, appearing younger.
“Most certainly I do. I’m just the same as when I went up to Cambridge and I was then as when I first went to Rugby. Nothing seems to have had any effect upon me—except, perhaps, these last two days. Do you know Glebeshire?” he asked me abruptly.
I said that I had spent one summer there with a reading party.
“Ah,” he answered, smiling, “I can tell, by the way you say that, that you don’t really know it at all. To us Glebeshire people it’s impossible to speak of it so easily. There are Trenchards all over Glebeshire, you know, lots
