Semyonov was standing in the room with exactly that same dead burning expression in his eyes. His mouth was set severely, his legs apart, his hands at his sides.
“A terrible misfortune,” I heard the stout doctor say.
Semyonov looked at him gravely.
“Thank you very much for your kindness,” he said courteously. Then, by a common instinct, without any spoken word between us, we all went from the room, leaving Semyonov alone there.
I remember very little of our return to Mittövo. We borrowed a cart upon which we laid the body. I sat in the trap with Semyonov. I was, I remember, afraid lest he should suddenly go off his head. It seemed quite a possible thing then, he was so quiet, so motionless, scarcely breathing. I concentrated all my thought upon this. I had my hand upon his arm and I remember that it relieved me in some way to feel it so thick and strong beneath his sleeve. He did not look at me once.
I do not know what my thoughts were, a confused incoherent medley of nonsense. I did not think of Marie Ivanovna at all. I repeated again and again to myself, in the silly, insane way that one does under the shock of some trouble, the words of the poem that I had read that afternoon:
Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam
(Je crois du moins qu’il y passa) en revenant
De l’île ombreuse et verte—ombreuse et verte—ombreuse et verte. …
It was dark, or at any rate, it seemed to me dark. The weather was still and close; every sound echoed abominably through the silence. When we arrived at Mittövo I suddenly thought of Trenchard. I had utterly forgotten him until that moment. I got out of the trap and when Semyonov climbed out he put his hand on my arm. I don’t know why but that touched me so deeply and sharply that I felt, suddenly, as though in another instant I should lose my self-control. It was so unlike him, so utterly unlike him, to do that. I trembled a little, then steadied myself, and we walked together into the house. They must all instantly have known what had occurred because I heard running steps and sharp anxious voices.
I felt desperately, as a man runs when he is afraid, that I must be alone. I slipped away into the passage that leads from the hall. This passage was quite dark and I was feeling my direction with my hands when someone, carrying a candle, turned the corner. It was Trenchard. He raised the candle high to look at me.
“Hallo, Durward,” he cried. “You’re back. What sort of a time? …”
I told him at once what had occurred. The candle dropped from his hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest Trenchard should do something to me, there, as we stood.
I felt his hand groping on my clothes. But he was only feeling his way. I heard his steps, creeping, stumbling down the passage. Once I thought that he had fallen.
Then there was silence, and at last I was alone.
III
The Forest
And now I am confronted with a very serious difficulty. There is nothing stranger in this whole business of the life and character of war than the fashion in which an atmosphere that has been of the intensest character can, by the mere advance or retreat of a pace or two, disappear, close in upon itself, present the blindest front to the soul that has, a moment before, penetrated it. It is as though one had visited a house for the first time. The interior is of the most absorbing and unique interest. There are revealed in it beauties, terrors, of so sharp a reality that one believes that one’s life is changed forever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only before one’s view a thick cold wall—the windows are dead, there is no sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors. … Ordinary life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance, one disbelieves in fantastic dreams.
I believe that everyone who has had experience of war will admit the truth of this. I had myself already known something of the kind and had wondered at the fashion in which the crossing of a mere verst or two can bring the old life about one. I had known it during the battle of S⸺, in the days that followed the battle, in moments of the Retreat, when for half an hour we would suddenly be laughing and careless as though we were in Petrograd.
And so when I look back to the weeks of whose history I wish now to give a truthful account, I am afraid of myself. I wish to give nothing more than the facts, and yet that something that is more than the facts is of the first, and indeed the only, importance. Moreover the last impression that I wish to convey is that war is a hysterical business. I believe that that succession of days in the forest of S⸺, the experience of Nikitin, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself—might have occurred to anyone, must have occurred to many other persons, but from the cool safe foundation on which now I stand it cannot but seem exceptional, even exaggerated. Exaggerated, in very truth, I know that it is not. And yet this life—so ordered, so disciplined, so rational, and that life—where do they join? … I penetrated but a little way; my friends penetrated
