“I forget whether you’ve seen my children, Mr.” Anna Petrovna would reply. “I must show you their photograph.”
And she would produce the large and hideous picture.
He was the same as in those first days, and yet how immensely not the same. He bore himself now with a chivalrous tact towards Marie Ivanovna that was beyond all praise. He always cherished in his heart his memory of their little conversation in the orchard. “How I wish,” he told me, “that I had made that conversation longer. It was so very short and I might so easily have lengthened it. There were so many things afterwards that I might have said—and she never gave me another chance.”
She never did—she kept him from her. Kind to him, perhaps, but never allowing him another moment’s intimacy. He had almost the air, it seemed to me, of patiently waiting for the moment when she should need him, the air too of a man who was sure, in his heart, that that moment would come.
And the other thing that stiffened him was his hatred for Semyonov. Hatred may seem too fierce a word for the emotion of anyone as mild and gentle as Trenchard—and yet hatred at this time it was. He seemed no longer afraid of Semyonov and there was something about him now which surprised the other man. Through all those first days at Mittövo, when we seemed for a moment almost to have slipped out of the war and to be leading the smaller more quarrelsome life of earlier days, Trenchard was occupied with only one question—“What was he feeling about Semyonov?”—“I felt as though I could stand anything if only she didn’t love him. Since that awful night of the Retreat I had resigned myself to losing her; anyone should marry her who would make her happy—but he—never! But it was the indecision that I could not bear. I didn’t know—I couldn’t tell, what she felt.”
The indecision was not to last much longer. One evening, when we had been at Mittövo about a week, he was at the Cross watching the sun, like a crimson flower, sink behind the dim grey forest. The Nestor, in the evening mist, was a golden shadow under the hill. This beauty made him melancholy. He was wishing passionately, as he stood there, for work, hard, dangerous, gripping work. He did not know that that was to be the last idle minute of his life. Hearing a step on the path he turned round to find Semyonov at his side.
“Lovely view, isn’t it?” said Semyonov, watching him.
“Lovely,” answered Trenchard.
Semyonov sat down on the little stone seat beneath the Cross and looked up at his rival. Trenchard looked down at him, hating his square, stolid composure, his thick thighs, his fair beard, his ironical eyes. You’re a beastly man!
he thought.
“How long are you going to be with us, do you think?” asked Semyonov.
“Don’t know—depends on so many things.”
“Why don’t you go back to England? They want soldiers.”
“Wouldn’t pass my eyesight.”
“When are they going to begin doing something on the other Front, do you think?”
“When they’re ready, I suppose.”
“They’re very slow. Where’s all your army we heard so much about?”
“There’s a big army going to be ready soon.”
“Yes, but we were told things would begin in May. It’s only the Germans who’ve begun.”
“I don’t know; I’ve seen no English papers for some weeks.”
There was a pause. Semyonov smiled, stood up, looked into Trenchard’s eyes.
“I must go to England,” he said slowly, “after the war. Marie Ivanovna and I will go, I hope, together. She told me today that that is one of the things that she hopes we will do together—later on.”
Trenchard returned Semyonov’s gaze. After a moment he said:
“Yes—you would enjoy it.” He waited, then added: “I must be walking back now. I’m late!” And he turned away to the house.
VII
One Night
Marie Ivanovna herself spoke to me of Semyonov. She found me alone waiting for my morning tea. We were before the others, and could hear, in the next room, Molozov splashing water about the floor and crying to Michail, his servant, to pour “Yestsho! Yestsho!” “Yestsho! Yestsho!”—“Still more! Still more,” over his head.
She stood in the doorway looking as though she hated my presence.
“The others have not arrived,” I said. “It’s late today.”
“I can see,” she answered. “Everyone is idle now.”
Then her voice changed. She came across to me. We talked of unimportant things for a while. Then she said: “I’m very happy, Mr. Durward. … Be kind about it. Alexei Petrovitch and I. …” She hesitated.
I looked at her and saw that she was again the young and helpless girl whom I had not seen since that early morning before our first battle. I said, very lamely, “If you are happy, Marie Ivanovna, I am glad.”
“You think it terrible of me,” she said swiftly. “And why do you all talk of being happy? What does that matter? But I can trust him. He’s strong and afraid of nothing.”
I could say nothing.
“Of course you think me very bad—that I have treated—John—shamefully—yes? … I will not defend myself to you. What is there to defend? John and I could never have lived together, never. You yourself must see that.”
“It does not matter what I think,” I answered. “I am Trenchard’s friend, and he has no knowledge of life nor human nature. He has made a bad start. You must forgive me if I think more of him than of you, Marie Ivanovna.”
“Yes,” she said fiercely. “It is John—John—John, you all think of. But John would not have loved me if he knew me as I truly am. And now, at last, I can be myself. It does not matter to Alexei Petrovitch what I am.”
“But you have known
