“You can’t disturb me, Alexei Petrovitch,” Nikitin answered sleepily. “What a hot morning!”
“No,” said Semyonov. “I would be very wrong to disturb you. Believe me, I’ve never tried. It’s very agreeable to me to see you and Mr. so happy together and it must be pleasant for both of you to feel that you’ve got a nice God all of your own who sleeps a good deal but still, on the whole, gives you what you want. We may wonder a little what Mr. has done to be so favoured—never very much I fancy—but still I like the friendliness and comfort of it and I’m really lucky to have the good fortune of your acquaintance. So nice for Russia too to have plenty of people about who don’t do any work nor take any trouble about anything because they’ve got a nice fat God who’ll do it all for them if they’ll only be patient. Thats why we’re beating the Germans so handsomely—the poor Germans, who only, ignorant heathens as they are, believe in themselves.”
He looked at us all with a friendly patronising contempt.
“That’s your point of view, Alexei Petrovitch,” Nikitin answered rather hotly. “Think as you please of course. But there’s more in life than you can see—there is indeed.”
“Of course there is,” said Semyonov lazily, “much more. I’m an ignorant, rough man. I like things as they are and make the best of them, so, of course, I’m not clever. Mr.’s clever, aren’t you, Mr.? All the same he doesn’t know how to put his boots on properly. If he put his boots on better and knew less about God he might be of more use at the Front, perhaps. That’s only my idea, and I daresay I’m wrong. … All the same, for the sake of the comfort and the pockets of all of us I do hope you’ll really rouse your God and ask Him to do something sensible—something with method in it and a few more bullets in it and a little more efficiency in it. You might ask Him to do what He can. …”
He looked at us, laughing; then he said to Trenchard, “But don’t you fear, Mr. You’ll go to heaven all right. Even though it’s the wise men who succeed in this world, I don’t doubt it’s the fools who have their way in the next.”
He left us.
Semyonov was with every new day more baffled by Marie Ivanovna. In the first place she quietly refused to obey him. We were now much occupied with the feeding of the peasants in a village stricken with cholera on the other side of the river. A gloomy enough business it was and I shall have, very shortly, to speak of it in detail. For the moment it is enough to say that two of us went off every morning with a kitchen on wheels, distributed the food, and returned in the afternoon. Semyonov intensely disliked Marie Ivanovna’s share in this work, but he could not, of course, object to her taking, with the other Sisters, the risks and unpleasantness of it. He made, whenever it was possible, objections, found her work at the hospital where he himself was, occupied her in every possible way. But he did this against her will. She seemed to find a very especial pleasure and excitement in the cholera work; she wished often to take the place of some other Sister. Indeed everything on the other side of the river seemed to have a great fascination for her. She herself told me: “The moment I cross the bridge I feel as though I were on enchanted ground.” On the occasions when I accompanied her to the cholera village she was radiant, so happy that she seemed to have nothing further in the world to desire. She herself was puzzled. “What is it?” she said to me. “Is it the forest? It must be, I think, the forest. I would remain on this side forever if I had my way.”
When I saw Semyonov’s anxiety about her I could not but remember that little scene at the battle of S⸺ when he had taken her off with him, leaving Trenchard in so pitiful a condition. Certainly Time brings in his revenges! And Marie Ivanovna would listen to nothing that he said.
“I want you at the hospital this morning,” he would say.
“Do you really want me?” she would ask, looking up, laughing, in his face.
“Of course I do.”
“Well, you should have told me last night. This morning I go with Anna Petrovna to the cholera. All is arranged.”
“I’m afraid you must change your plans.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Goga may go. …”
“No, I wish to go.”
And she went. He had certainly never before in his life been thus defied. He simply did not know what to do about it. If he had thought that bullying would frighten her he would, I believe, have bullied her, but he knew quite well that it wouldn’t. And then, as I now began to perceive (I had at first thought otherwise), he was for the first time in his life experiencing something deeper and more confusing than his customary animal passions. He may at first have wanted Marie Ivanovna as he wanted his dinner or his supper … now he wanted her differently. New emotions, surprising confusing emotions stirred in him. At least that is how I interpret the uneasiness, the hesitation, which I now seemed to perceive in him. He was no longer sure of himself.
I witnessed just at this time a little scene that surprised me. I had been in the bandaging room alone one evening, cutting up bandages. I was going through the passage into the other part of the house when a sound stopped me. I could not avoid seeing beyond the open door a little scene that happened so swiftly that I could neither retire nor advance.
Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov were coming together towards the bandaging room. She was
