We started for home at length. Our drive back was terrible. I find that I cannot linger any longer over this affair. Our carts drove over rough stones and ruts and we were four hours on the journey. Our wounded screamed all the way—one man died. … My candle is nearly out. I must find another. In one of its frantic leaps just now I fancied that I saw Marie standing near the door. She looked just as she always did, very kind though smiling. … Of course it was only the candle. I must be careful not to encourage these fancies. But God! how lonely I am tonight! I realise, I suppose, that there isn’t one single living soul in the world who cares whether I die tonight or not—not one. Durward will remember me, perhaps. No one else. And Marie would have cared. Yes, even married to Semyonov she would have cared—and remembered. And I could always have cared for her, been her friend, as she asked me. I’m pretty low tonight. If I could sleep. … Boof! … There goes the candle!
Wednesday, August 4th. … I am growing accustomed, I suppose, to Semyonov’s company. After all, his contempt for me is an old thing, dating from the very first moment that he ever saw me. It has become now a commonplace to both of us. He is very silent now compared with the old days. There has been much work yesterday and today, but still last night I could not sleep. I think that he also did not sleep and we both lay there in the dark, thinking, I suppose, of the same thing. I thought even of myself, my sense of humour has never been very strong, but I can at any rate see that I am no very fine figure in life, and that whether such a man as I live or die can be of no great importance to anyone or anything, but I do most truly desire not to make more of the matter than is just. A man may have felt himself the most insignificant and useless of human creatures all his days, but face him with death and he becomes, by very force of the contrast, something of a figure.
Here am I, deprived of the only thing in life that gave me joy or pride. I should, after that deprivation, have slipped back, I suppose, to my old life of hopeless uninterest and insignificance, but now here the death of Marie Ivanovna has been no check at all. I half believe now that one can do with life or death what one will. If I had known that from the beginning what things I might have found! As it is, I must simply make the best of it. Semyonov’s contempt would once have frightened the very life out of me, but after that night of his arrival here it has been nothing compared with the excitement of our relationship—the things that are keeping us together in spite of ourselves and the strange changes, I do believe, that this situation here is making in him. The loss of Marie Ivanovna would two months ago perhaps have finished me. What is it now beside the wonder as to whether I have lost her after all, the consciousness of pursuit, the longing to know? …
Durward and I have spoken sometimes of my dream of the Forest. It must seem to him now, as to myself, strangely fulfilled; but I believe that if I catch the beast it will only be to discover that there is a further quest beyond, and then another maybe beyond that. …
At the same time there’s the practical question of one’s nerve. If this strain of work continues, if the hot weather lasts, and if I don’t sleep, I shall have to take care. Three times during the last three days I have fancied that I have seen Marie Ivanovna, once in broad daylight in the Forest, once sitting on the sofa in our room, once at night near my bed. Of course this is the merest illusion, but I have hours now when I am not quite sure of things. Andrey Vassilievitch told me something of the same today—that he thought that he saw his wife and that Nikitin told him the same yesterday. The flies also are confusing and there’s a hot dry smell that’s disagreeable and prevents one from eating. I know that I must keep a clear head on these things. If only one could get away for an hour or two, right outside—but one is shut up in this Forest as though it were a green oven. … I ought to be sleeping now instead of writing all this. … I must say that I had a curious illusion ten minutes ago while I was writing this, that one of the wounded, in a bed near the door which is open, began to slip, bed and all, across the floor towards me. He did indeed come closer and closer to me, the bed moving in jerks as though it were pushed. This was, of course, simply because my eyes were tired. When I try to sleep they are hot and smarting. …
I interrupt Trenchard’s diary to give a very brief account of the impression that was made on me by my visit to the three of them with some wagons four days after the date of the above entry. It must be remembered that I had not, of course, at this time read any of Trenchard’s diary, nor had I seen anything of him since the moment of Semyonov’s arrival. My chief impression during the interval had been my memory of Trenchard as I had last
