Then they acted Othello—The “Normal Students,” whoever they may be. Othello, E. F. Dunlavey. Iago—Douglas Giffard. Desdemona—Carrie Whitehill. Emilia—Gussie Rodgers. … Afterwards I see that Miss Gussie Rodgers gave a lecture on the Anglo-Saxon in Literature. She must have been a clever young woman. Then I see that they decorated one of their rooms with “a large number of carbon prints of celebrated paintings,” “the class picture being the most important and costing in the neighbourhood of $100—this is the hunting scene of Ruysdael. …” Also they added to their Museum “manufactured articles from abroad illustrative of the habits and customs of foreigners.”
Now isn’t that all incredible after the day that I’ve had? Where do the things join? What’s all that got to do with the horrors I’ve been through today, with the Forest, the cholera, Marie, Semyonov. … With all that’s happening in Europe? With this mad earthquake of a catastrophe? And yet one thinks of such silly things. I can see them doing Othello with their cheap ermine, bad jewellery and impossible wigs. I expect Othello’s black came off as he got hotter and hotter; and the Rev. I. R. Glass on “Fools”. … There’d be all the cheap morality—“It’s better, my young friends, to be good than to be bad. It pays better in the end”—and there’d be little stories, sentimental some of them and humorous some of them. There’d be a general titter of laughter at the humorous ones. … And the carbon prints, the “Ruysdael” always pointed out to visitors … and after the war it will all be going on again. At Polchester, too, they’ll be having cheap lectures in the Town-Hall and Shakespeare Readings and High-School Prize-givings. … Where’s the Connection between That and This? Where’s the permanent thing in us that goes on whatever life may do to us? Is life still beautiful and noble in spite of whatever man may do with it, or is Semyonov right and there is no meaning in my love for Marie, nothing real and true except the things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears? Is Semyonov right, or are Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch and I? … And now let me stick to facts. I left this morning about six with twenty wagons to fetch wounded. Such a wonderful summer morning—the Forest quite incredibly beautiful, birds singing in thousands, and that strange little stream that runs near our house and can look so abominable when it pleases, was trembling and lovely as though it didn’t know what evil was. We got to the first Red Cross place about eight. Here was Krylov. What a good fellow! Always cheerful, always kindhearted, nothing can dismay him. A Russian type that’s common enough in spite of all the “profound pessimism of the Russian heart” that we’re always hearing of. There he was anyway, working like a butcher before a feast-day. Dirty looking barn they were working in and it smelt like hell. Cannon pretty close too. They say the Austrians are fearfully strong just here and of course our ammunition is climbing down to less than nothing—looks as though we were going to have a hot time soon. I turned in and helped Krylov all the morning and somehow his fat, ugly face, his little exclamations, his explosive comical rages, his sudden rough kindnesses did one a world of good. We filled the wagons and sent them back, then about midday, under a blazing hot sun, we went on with the others. Is there any place in the globe hot and suffocating quite as this Forest is? Even in the open spaces one can’t breathe and there’s never any proper shade under the trees. At first we were at a loss. No one seemed quite to know where the Vengrovsky Polk were. I had to go on alone and reconnoitre. I was right out in the open then and more alone than one could believe. Cannon were blazing away and one battery seemed just behind me—and yet I couldn’t see it. I could see nothing—only great ridges of hills with the Forest like gigantic torrents of green water under the mist, and just at my feet cornfields thick with cornflowers. Then I saw rather a wonderful thing. I came to the edge of my hill and looked down into a cup of a valley, quite a little valley with the green waves towering on every side of it. Through the mist there shimmered below me a blue lake. I was puzzled—there was no water here that I knew, but by this time the Forest has so bewitched my senses that I’m ready to believe anything of it. There it was, anyway, a blue lake, shifting a little under gold haze. I climbed down the hill a yard or two and then you can believe that I jumped! My blue lake was Austrian prisoners, nothing more nor less! Has anyone quite seen them like that before, I wonder, and isn’t this Forest really the old witch’s forest, able to do what it pleases with anything? There they were, hundreds of them, covering the whole floor of the little valley. I walked down into the middle of them, found an officer, asked him about wounded, and got directed some two versts in front of me. Then I climbed up the hill back to my wagons and we started off. We went down the hill round by the road and came to the prisoners, crossed a stream and plunged into a shining dazzling nightmare. Where the cannon were I don’t know—all a considerable distance away, I suppose, because the only sign of shell were the little breaking puffs of smoke in the blue sky with just a pin-flash of
