Hugh Walpole

“ Your English life is so cosy. You have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We don't know what comfort is in Russia."
A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on the far horizon.
"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I fancy that an English country-house...."
We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep. ”

“ But I was greatly struck by Trenchard's manner of taking these remarks. He behaved now as though he had secret reasons for knowing that he was in every way as good a man as Semyonov—a better one, maybe. He laughed, or sometimes simply looked at his companion, or he would reply in his bad halting Russian with some jest at Semyonov's expense.
Finally, to end this business, if ever a man were affected to the heart by the loss of a friend or a lover, Semyonov was that man. He was a man too strong in himself and too contemptuous of weakness to show to all the world his hurt. ”

“ We were together, Semyonov, Nikitin, Trenchard and I, after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, enjoying half an hour's idleness before setting about our various business. It was a blazing hot morning and the air quivered, like a silver curtain before our eyes, separating us from the dim blue forest of S—— beyond the river, the Nestor itself, the deep green slopes of our own hill. We had been silent, then Trenchard said a foolish thing: "War brings all the best out of people, I think," he said. ”

“ I felt bitterly, I remember, that I, because I was plain and a cripple, silent and uninteresting, would never win the love of such women. I remembered little Andrey Vassilievitch's words about his wife: "For me she cared as good women care for the poor." In that way for me too women would care—when they cared at all. And always, all my life, it would be like that. How unfair that everything should be given to the Semyonovs and the Nikitins of this world, everything denied to such men as Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and I!... ”

“ 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 for ever by the sight of them. ”

“ I answered. "I am Trenchard's friend, and he has no knowledge of life nor human nature. He has made a bad start. You must forgive me if I think more of him than of you, Marie Ivanovna."
"Yes," she said fiercely. "It is John—John—John, you all think of. But John would not have loved me if he knew me as I truly am. And now, at last, I can be myself. It does not matter to Alexei Petrovitch what I am."
"But you have known him so short a time—and you have been so quick. If you had waited...."
"Waited!" she caught me up. "Waited! How can one wait when one isn't allowed to wait? ”

“ We sat there listening to the cannon. Then Semyonov said very quietly and not at all ironically, "I wish to ask you—I have wished before—tell me. You blame me for her death?"
I thought for a moment, then I replied:
"I did so at first. Now I do not think that it had anything to do with you or with me or with any one—except herself."
"Except herself?" he said. "What do you mean?"
"She wished it, I think."
His irony returned. "You believe in the power of others, Mr., too much. You should believe more in your own."
"I believe in her power. She was stronger than you," I answered. ”

“ What I want is to be close to Marie again, to be there where Semyonov cannot reach us. I believe that she might always have cared for me if he had not been there. Whatever death may be, I must know.... If there is nothing more, no matter. If there is something more—then there is something for her as well as for me and I shall find her, and I must find her alone. There's nothing left in life now to me save that. As I sat there looking at the cards I knew all this, knew quite clearly that I must escape Semyonov. ”

“ Death too.... How clear now it was to me! During these weeks I had wondered, pursued the thought of Death. Was it this? Was it that? Was it pain? Was it terror? I had feared it, as for instance when I had seen the dead bodies in the Forest, or stood under the rain at Nijnieff. I had laughed at it as when I had gone with the sanitars. I had cursed it as when Marie Ivanovna had died. ”

“ One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers, still with that look of wonder and trust in their eyes.
And how glad we were when there was any work to do! The sun rose high in the sky, the morning advanced, Semyonov and Andrey Vassilievitch did not return. For the greater part of the time we did not speak, nor move. I was conscious of an increasing rage against the battery. ”

“ As we walked across the yard into the long low field, speaking in whispers, watching a shaft of light, perhaps some distant projector that trembled in pale white shadows on the horizon, we seemed to me to be, in actual truth, the hunters of Trenchard's dream.
Never, surely, before, had I known the world so silent. Under the hedges that lined the field there were soldiers like ghosts; our own wagons, with the sanitars walking beside them, moved across the ground without even the creak of a wheel. Semyonov was to meet us in an hour's time at a certain crossroad. ”

“ In England we have qualities of endurance, of reliability, of solidity, to which, often enough, I long to return—but that warmth of heart that I have known here for two long years, a warmth that means love for the neglected, for the defeated, for the helpless, a warmth that lights a fire on every hearth in every house in Russia—that is a greater thing than the possessors of it know.
Through all the little quarrels and disputes of our company there ran the thread of the affair of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. ”

“ Marie Ivanovna had been kind to him, and when I found her in the centre of them, her whole body alert with excitement, I forgot my anger at her earlier unkindness or, if I remembered it, laid it to the charge of my own imagination or Trenchard's sensitiveness.
Indeed we were all excited. How could we fail to be! There was some big business toward, and in it we were to have our share. We were, perhaps this very day, to penetrate into the reality of the thing that for nine months now we had been watching. ”

“ Germany was of no importance, and the ruin that Germany was wreaking was of no importance compared with the histories of the individual souls that were now in the making. Here were we: Nikitin, Trenchard, Sister K——, Molozov, myself and the others—engaged upon our great adventure. Across the surface of the world, at this same instant, out upon the same hunt, seeking the same answer to their mystery, were millions of our fellows. Somewhere in the heart of the deep forest the enemy was hiding. ”

“ Nikitin said. "He's a splendid man ... I have known him many years. He is merry and simple and it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh at the best people. You must like him, 'Mr.'... He likes you very much."
I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some way behind us, then said:
"Of course, I am his friend if he wishes."
Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow." ”

“ I saw suddenly here the connexion, for which I had been waiting, between the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard—Two Wise Men and Two Fools—surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality ... and yet God does not judge as men do. Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and who left? I recalled Semyonov's jesting words: "Even though it's the wise men succeed in this world I don't doubt it's the fools have their way in the next." ”

“ Life cannot be good. We ironically survey those who think that it can.... We give way always to life but when things are at their worst then we are relieved and even happy. Here at any rate we are on safe ground. We have much sentiment, but it may, at any moment, give way to some other emotion. We are therefore never to be relied upon, as friends, as enemies, as anything you please. Except this—that in the heart of every Russian there is a passionate love of goodness. We are tolerant to all evil, to all weakness because we ourselves are weak. ”

“ Under the sun up and down the road there are dead and dying, Russians [281] and Austrians together. The Forest is both above and below the road and from out of it there comes a continual screaming. There is every note in this babel of voices, mad notes, plaintive notes, angry notes, whimpering notes. One wounded man is very slowly trying to drag himself across the road, and his foot which is nearly severed from his leg waggles behind him. One path that leads from the road to the Forest is piled with bodies and is a stream of blood. ”

“ I know quite clearly that this present relationship to her cannot continue for long or I shall be off my head. I can see myself quite clearly as though I were outside myself, and I know that I'm madder now than I was a week ago. For instance in this business of Marie Ivanovna, I knew then that my seeing her was an illusion—now I am not quite sure. I knew a week ago that I saw her because she is so much in my thoughts, because of the intolerable heat, because of the Flies and the Forest, because of Semyonov. ”

“ We may not believe in God but we have an intense curiosity about Him—a curiosity that with many of us never leaves us alone, compels us to fill our lives, to fill our lives.... We love Russia.... But that is another thing.... Never forget too that behind every Russian's simplicity there is always his Ideal—his secret Ideal, perhaps, that he keeps like an ikon sacred in his heart. Yes, of every Russian, even of the worst of us, that is true. And it complicates our lives, delivers us to our enemies, defeats all our worldly aims, renders us helpless at the moment when we should be most strong. ”

“ Marie Ivanovna and I remained in one of the empty rooms, the only sound the buzzing flies. Every detail of that room will remain in my heart and brain until I die. Marie Ivanovna, looking very white and cool, with the happiness shining in her large clear eyes, sat on an old worn sofa near the window. In the glass of the window there were bullet holes, and beyond the window a piece of blazing golden garden. The room was very dirty, dust lay thick upon everything. Some one had eaten a meal there, and there was a plate, a knife, also egg-shells, an empty sardine-tin, and a hunk of black bread. ”

“ Marie Ivanovna herself spoke to me of Semyonov. She found me alone waiting for my morning tea. We were before the others, and could hear, in the next room, Molozov splashing water about the floor and crying to Michail, his servant, to pour "Yestsho! Yestsho!" "Yestsho! Yestsho!"—"Still more! Still more," over his head.
She stood in the doorway looking as though she hated my presence.
"The others have not arrived," I said. "It's late to-day."
"I can see," she answered. "Every one is idle now." ”

“ At times there would of course be tea, and then the two Sisters who were in a compartment close at hand joined us.
Marie Ivanovna, Trenchard's lady, was quieter than she had been before. Her face, which now seemed younger than ever, wore a look of important seriousness as though she were conscious of the indecency of her earlier excitement. She spoke very little, but no one could be in her presence without feeling the force of her vitality like some hammer, silent but of immense power, beating relentlessly upon the atmosphere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through all those first days at Mittövo, when we seemed for a moment almost to have slipped out of the war and to be leading the smaller more quarrelsome life of earlier days, Trenchard was occupied with only one question—"What was he feeling about Semyonov?"—"I felt as though I could stand anything if only she didn't love him. Since that awful night of the Retreat I had resigned myself to losing her; any one should marry her who would make her happy—but he—never! ”