She got up from the old sofa, walked a little about the room, looked at the remains of the meal, at the book, then turned round to me:
“Don’t ever tell anyone, Ivan Andreievitch, that I have been afraid. … I’m never to be afraid again. And I’m not going to die. I know now that life is wonderful—at last all that when I was young I expected it to be. … Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I feel today as though I would live forever! …”
Semyonov came in. He was in splendid spirits; I had never seen him so gay, so carelessly happy.
“Well,” he cried to me, “we’re to go now—at once … and the next time at eight. We’ll leave you this time. We’ll be back by half-past six. We’ll do the Third and Fourth Roti now. The Eighth and Ninth afterwards. Can you wait for tea until we return? Good. … Half-past six, then!”
They departed. As she went out of the door she turned and gave me a little happy smile as though to bind me to an intimate enduring confidence. I smiled back at her and she was gone.
After they had left me I felt very lonely. The house was still and desolate, and I took a book that I had brought with me—the Le Deuil des Primeveres of François Jammes. I had learnt the habit during my first visit to the war of always taking a book in my pocket when engaged upon any business; there were so many long weary hours of waiting when the nerves were stretched, and a book—quiet and real and something apart from all wars and all rumours of wars—was a most serious necessity. What Tristram Shandy was to me once under fire near Nijnieff, and Red-Gauntlet on an awful morning when our whole Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the evening—with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the garden with M. Jammes.
As I walked along the little paths through a tangle of wood and green that might very well have presented the garden of the Sleeping Beauty, I heard now and then a sound that resembled the swift flight of a bird or the sudden ting of a telegraph-wire. The Austrians were amusing themselves; sometimes a bullet would clip a tree in its passing or one would see a leaf, quite suddenly detached, hover for a moment idly in the air and then circle slowly to the ground. Except for this sound the garden was fast held in the warm peace of a summer afternoon. I found a most happy little neglected orchard with old gnarled apple-trees and thick waving grass. Here I lay on my back, watching the gold through the leaves, soaked in the apathy and somnolence of the day, sinking idly into sleep, rising, sinking again, as though rocked in a hammock. I was in England once more—at intervals there came a sharp click that exactly resembled the sound that one hears in an English village on a summer afternoon when they are playing cricket in the field near by—oneself at one’s ease in the garden, half sleeping, half building castles in the air, the crack of the ball on the bat, the cooing of some pigeons on the roof. … Once again that sharp pleasant sound, again the flight of the bird above one’s head, again the rustle of some leaves behind one’s head … soon there will be tea, strawberries and cream, a demand that one shall play tennis, that saunter through the cool dark house, up old stairs, along narrow passages to one’s room where one will slowly, happily change into flannels—hearing still through the open window the crack of the bat upon the ball from the distant field. …
But as I lay there I was unhappy, rebellious. The confidence and splendour of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov had driven me into exile. I hated myself that afternoon. That pursuit—the excitement of the penetration into the dark forest—the thrill of the chase—those things were for the strong men, the brave women—not for the halt and maimed … not love nor glory, neither hate nor fierce rebellion were for such men as I. … I cursed my fate, my life, because I loved, not for the first time, a woman who was glad that I did not love her and was so sure that I did not and could not, that she could proclaim her satisfaction openly to me!
I had an hour of bitterness—then, as I had so often done before, I laughed, drove the little devil into his cage, locked it, dropped the thick curtain in front of it.
I claimed the company of M. François Jammes.
He has a delightful poem about donkeys and as I read it I regained my tranquillity. It begins:
Lorsqu’il faudra aller vers Vous, ô mon Dieu, faites
Que ce soit par un jour ou la campagne en fête
Poudroiera. Je désire, ainsi que je fis ici-bas,
Choisir un chemin pour aller, comme il me plaira,
Au Paradis, où sont en plein jour les étoiles.
Je prendrai mon bâton et sur la grande route
J’irai et je dirai aux ânes, mes amis:
Je suis François Jammes et
