Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised love—they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin now. He had never disguised his love for Marie Ivanovna and now she was his "spoils"—won by his own strong piratical hand from the good but rather feeble bark Trenchard—he manifested his scorn of us more openly than ever.

He seemed to have grown rather stronger and stouter during these last months, and his square stolidity was a thing at which to marvel. Had he been taller, had his beard been pointed rather than square, he would have been graceful and even picturesque—but his figure, as he strode along, showed foursquare, as though it had been hewn out of wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-coloured woods would give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical contempt of some foolish victim. How he did despise us!

When one of our childish quarrels arose at meal-times he would say nothing, but would continue stolidly his serious business of eating. He was very fond of his food, which he ate in the greediest manner. When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue eyes, laugh and say: "Well, and now?... Who is it next?"—and every one would be clumsily embarrassed.

We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayeff in "The Cherry Orchard," suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would invade our table. "Oh, do look at Goga!" some one would say, and there we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until the tears ran down his face—simply at nothing at all!

The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed it, a "beastly" man. He certainly had no great opinion of myself. "You think yourself very clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you're watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose there'll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about poor Russians—and you'll flatter yourself that now at last one true picture has been given ... but let me tell you that you'll never know anything really about us so long as you're a sentimentalist!"

Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed with us when he, so openly, despised us all. Until the arrival of Marie Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions—after that the answer was obvious enough. Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling independence of character. We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances, severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down. We were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come down from his dreams and see things as they were.

But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position. He asked no man's help nor advice, minded no man's scorn, sought no man's love. During my experience of him I saw him moved only once by an overmastering emotion, and that was, of course, his love for Marie Ivanovna. That, I believe, did master him, but deep down, deep down, he kept his rebellions, his anxieties, his surmises; only as the light of a burning house is seen by men, pale and faint upon the sky many miles from the conflagration, did we catch signs of his trouble. If I had not had those talks with Trenchard and read his diary I should have known nothing. Even now I can offer no solution....

Meanwhile he showed fiercely and openly enough his love for Marie Ivanovna. He behaved to her with the vulgarest ostentation, as a rich merchant behaves when he has snatched some priceless picture from a defeated rival. As he laughed at us he seemed to say: "Now, I have really a thing of value here. You are, all of you, too stupid to realise this, but you must take my word for it. Show yourself off, my dear, and let them all see!"

Marie Ivanovna most certainly did not "show herself off." The beginning of his trouble was that he could not do with her as he pleased. She had fallen into his hands so easily that he thought, I suppose, that "she had been dying of love for him" from the first moment of seeing him. But this was I believe very far from the truth. My impression of her acceptance of him was that she had done it "with her eyes fixed upon something else." That she had not realised all the consequences of accepting him any more than she had realised the consequences of her accepting Trenchard was obvious from the first. She simply was ignorant of life, and at the same time wanted to cram into her hands the full sense of it (as one crushes rose-leaves) as quickly as possible. She admired Semyonov—it may be that she loved him; but she certainly had not surrendered herself to him, and in her lively ignorant way she was as strong as he.

During the first weeks of her engagement she was, as she had been at her first arrival amongst us, as happy and light-hearted as a child. She knew that we disapproved of her treatment of Trenchard, but she thought that we must see, as she did, that "she had behaved in the only possible way." Once again she was straight and honest to the world—and she could behave now like a real friend of her John. That strange irrational temper that she had shown during the Retreat had now entirely disappeared. She approved of us all and wished us to approve of her—which we, as we were Russians and could not possibly dislike pleasant agreeable people whatever there might be against them, speedily did. She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal of her ignorance and strength and credulity—ah! she won our hearts simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, but let her "come round" and round we came too.

Her treatment of Semyonov was strange. She was quite fearless, laughing at his temper, his sarcasm, rebuking his selfishness and bad manners, avoiding his coarse and unhesitating love-making, and above all, trusting him in the oddest way as though, in spite of his faults, she placed all her reliance on him and knew that he would not fail her. Nothing annoyed him more than her behaviour to Trenchard. It would, of course, be absurd to say that he was jealous of Trenchard; he despised the man too deeply and was, himself, too sure of his lady to know jealousy; but he was irritated by the attention paid to him, irritated even by the attention he himself paid to him.

"Wherever I go there's that man," he said once to me. "Why doesn't he go back to his own country?"

"I suppose," I would answer hotly, "he has other things to do than to consider your individual wishes, Alexei Petrovitch."

Then he would laugh: "Well, well, Ivan Andreievitch, you sentimentalists all hang together."

"Why can't you leave him alone?" I remember that I continued.

"Because he doesn't leave me alone," he answered shortly.

It was, of course, Marie Ivanovna who brought them together. She could not see, or rather she would not see, that friendship between two such men was an impossibility. For herself she liked Trenchard better than she had ever done. She had now no responsibility towards him; we were all fond of him, pleased ourselves by saying that "he was more Russian than English." The Sisters mended his clothes, cared for his stomach, and listened with pleased gravity to his innocent chatter. Marie Ivanovna was now really proud of him. There were great stories of the courage and enterprise he had shown during the night when he had been with Nikitin. Nikitin, in his lofty romantic fashion, spoke of him as though he had been the hero of the Russian army. Trenchard was, of course, quite unspoiled by this praise and popularity. He remained for me at least very much the same innocent, clumsy, pathetic, and frequently irritating figure that he had been at the beginning. I will honestly confess that I was often heartily tired of his Glebeshire stories, tired too of a certain childish obstinacy with which he clung to his generally crude and half-baked opinions.

But then I do not care to be contradicted by people of whom, intellectually, I have a low estimation; it is one of my most unfortunate weaknesses. I had no opinion of Trenchard's intellect at all, and in that I was quite wrong. Semyonov at this time flung Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself into one basket. We were all "crazy romantics" and there came an occasion, which I have reason most clearly to remember, when he told us what he thought of us. 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. God knows what private line of thought he had been pursuing, some sentimental reflections, I suppose, that were in him perfectly honest and sincere. But he did not look his best that morning, sitting back in his chair with his mouth open, his forehead damp with the heat, his tunic up about his neck and a rather dirty blue pocket-handkerchief in his hand.

I saw Semyonov's lip curl.

"Yes. That's very interesting, Mr.," he said. "I'm glad at any rate that we've had the honour of seeing the best of you. That's very pleasant to know."

"What I mean—" said Trenchard, blushing and stammering. "What ... that is—"

"I agree with Mr.," suddenly said Nikitin, who had been dreamily watching the blue forest. "War does bring out the best in the human character—always."

Semyonov turned smilingly to him. "Yes, Vladimir Stepanovitch, we know your illusions. Forgive me for insisting that they are illusions. I would not disturb your romantic happiness for the world."

"You can't disturb me, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered sleepily. "What a hot morning!"

"No," said Semyonov. "I would be very wrong to disturb you. Believe me, I've never tried. It's very agreeable to me to see you and Mr. so happy together and it must be pleasant for both of you to feel that you've got a nice God all of your own who sleeps a good deal but still, on the whole, gives you what you want. We may wonder a little what Mr. has done to be so favoured—never very much I fancy—but still I like the friendliness and comfort of it and I'm really lucky to have the good fortune of your acquaintance. So nice for Russia too to have plenty of people about who don't do any work nor take any trouble about anything because they've got a nice fat God who'll do it all for them if they'll only be patient. Thats why we're beating the Germans so handsomely—the poor Germans, who only, ignorant heathens as they are, believe in themselves."

He looked at us all with a friendly patronising contempt.

"That's your point of view, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered rather hotly. "Think as you please of course. But there's more in life than you can see—there is indeed."

"Of course there is," said Semyonov lazily, "much more. I'm an ignorant, rough man. I like things as they are and make the best of them, so, of course, I'm not clever. Mr.'s clever, aren't you, Mr.? All the same he doesn't know how to put his boots on properly. If he put his boots on better and knew less about God he might be of more use at the Front, perhaps. That's only my idea, and I daresay I'm wrong.... All the same, for the sake of the comfort and the pockets of all of us I do hope you'll really rouse your God and ask Him to do something sensible—something with method in it and a few more bullets in it and a little more efficiency in it. You might ask Him to do what He can...."

He looked at us, laughing; then he said to Trenchard, "But don't you fear, Mr. You'll go to heaven all right. Even though it's the wise men who succeed in this world, I don't doubt it's the fools who have their way in the next."

He left us.

Semyonov was with every new day more baffled by Marie Ivanovna. In the first place she quietly refused to obey him. We were now much occupied with the feeding of the peasants in a village stricken with cholera on the other side of the river. A gloomy enough business it was and I shall have, very shortly, to speak of it in detail. For the moment it is enough to say that two of us went off every morning with a kitchen on wheels, distributed the food, and returned in the afternoon. Semyonov intensely disliked Marie Ivanovna's share in this work, but he could not, of course, object to her taking, with the other Sisters, the risks and unpleasantness of it. He made, whenever it was possible, objections, found her work at the hospital where he himself was, occupied her in every possible way. But he did this against her will. She seemed to find a very especial pleasure and excitement in the cholera work; she wished often to take the place of some other Sister. Indeed everything on the other side of the river seemed to have a great fascination for her. She herself told me: "The moment I cross the bridge I feel as though I were on enchanted ground." On the occasions when I accompanied her to the cholera village she was radiant, so happy that she seemed to have nothing further in the world to desire. She herself was puzzled. "What is it?" she said to me. "Is it the forest? It must be, I think, the forest. I would remain on this side for ever if I had my way."

When I saw Semyonov's anxiety about her I could not but remember that little scene at the battle of S—— when he had taken her off with him, leaving Trenchard in so pitiful a condition. Certainly Time brings in his revenges! And Marie Ivanovna would listen to nothing that he said.

"I want you at the hospital this morning," he would say.

"Do you really want me?" she would ask, looking up, laughing, in his face.

"Of course I do."

"Well, you should have told me last night. This morning I go with Anna Petrovna to the cholera. All is arranged."

"I'm afraid you must change your plans."

"I'm afraid not."

"Goga may go...."

"No, I wish to go."

And she went. He had certainly never before in his life been thus defied. He simply did not know what to do about it. If he had thought that bullying would frighten her he would, I believe, have bullied her, but he knew quite well that it wouldn't. And then, as I now began to perceive (I had at first thought otherwise), he was for the first time in his life experiencing something deeper and more confusing than his customary animal passions. He may at first have wanted Marie Ivanovna as he wanted his dinner or his supper ... now he wanted her differently. New emotions, surprising confusing emotions stirred in him. At least that is how I interpret the uneasiness, the hesitation, which I now seemed to perceive in him. He was no longer sure of himself.

I witnessed just at this time a little scene that surprised me. I had been in the bandaging room alone one evening, cutting up bandages. I was going through the passage into the other part of the house when a sound stopped me. I could not avoid seeing beyond the open door a little scene that happened so swiftly that I could neither retire nor advance.

Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov were coming together towards the bandaging room. She was in front of him when he put his hand on her arm.

"Do you love me?" he said in a low voice.

She turned round to him, laughing.

"Yes," she said, looking at him.

"Then kiss me."

"No, not now."

"Why not now?"

"I don't want to."

"Why don't you want to?"

She shook her head, still laughing into his eyes.

"But if I command you?"

"Ah! command!... Then I certainly will not."

His hand tightened on her arm and she did not draw away.

"Kiss me."

"No."

"I say yes."

"I say no."

He suddenly caught her, held her to him as though he would kill her and kissed her furiously, on her eyes, her mouth, her hair. With his violence he pushed back her head-dress. I could see his back bent like a bow, and his thick short legs wide apart, every muscle taut. She lay quite motionless, as though asleep in his arms, giving him no response—then quite suddenly she flung her hands round his neck and kissed him as passionately as he had kissed her. At last they parted, both of them laughing.

He looked at her, and then with a gentleness and courtesy that I had never seen in him before nor dreamed that he possessed, very softly kissed her hand.

"I love you and—and you love me," he said.

"Yes ... I love you," she answered gravely. "At least, part of me does."

"It shall be all of you soon," he answered.

"If there's time enough," she replied.

"Time!... I'll follow you wherever you go—"

"I really believe you will," she answered, laughing again. They waited then, looking at one another. A bell rang. "Ah! I'm hungry.... Supper time...." To my relief they passed away from the bandaging room towards the other part of the house.

Meanwhile his irritation at Marie Ivanovna's kindness to Trenchard increased with every hour. His attitude to the man had changed since Trenchard's night at the Position; he was vexed, I think, to hear that the fellow had proved himself a man—and a practical man with common sense. Semyonov was honest about this. He did not doubt Nikitin's word, he even congratulated Trenchard, but he certainly disliked him more than ever. He thought, I suppose, as he had thought about Nikitin: "How can a man with his wits about him be at the same time such a fool?" And then he saw that Marie Ivanovna was delighted with Trenchard's little piece of good luck. She laughed at Semyonov about it. "We all know you're a very brave man," she cried. "But you're not so brave as Mr." And Semyonov, because he knew that Trenchard was a fool and that he himself was not, was vexed, as a bull is vexed by a red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he would satisfy himself why this gnat of a man worried him!

Then, finally, was Andrey Vassilievitch.... The little man had not given me much of his company during these last weeks. I fancy that since that night at the battle of S—— when he had revealed his terror he had been shy of me although, God knows, he had no need to be. He never forgot if any one had seen him in an unfortunate position, and, although he bore me no grudge, he was nervous and embarrassed with me. It happened, however, that during this same week of which I have been speaking I had a conversation with him. I was standing alone by the Cross watching a long trail of wagons cross the bridge far beneath me, watching too a high bank of black cloud that was passing away from the sky above the forest, blown by a wind that rolled the surface of the river into silver. He too had come to look at the view and was surprised and disturbed at finding me there. Of course he was exaggerated in expressions of pleasure: "Why, Ivan Andreievitch, this is delightful!" he cried. "If I only had known we might have walked here together!"

We sat down on the stone seat.

"You don't think it will rain?" he asked anxiously. "No, those clouds are going away, I see. Well ... this is delightful ..." and then sat there gloomily looking in front of him.

I could see that he was depressed.

"Well, Andrey Vassilievitch," I said to him. "You're depressed about something?"

"Yes," he said very gloomily indeed. "I have many unhappy hours, Ivan Andreievitch."

I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a desire to know the little man's side of that affair. In some curious fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin's account to explain to me his passion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes, to be present with us....

I waited.

"Tell me frankly," Audrey Vassilievitch said at last, "am I of any use here?"

"Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise.

"Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be better perhaps if another were here?"

"No, certainly not," I answered warmly. "Your business training is of the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me 'that he does not know what we should do without you.'"

(This was not strictly true.)

"Ah!" the little man was greatly pleased. "I am glad, very glad—to hear what you say. Semyonov made me feel—"

"You should not be influenced," I hurriedly interrupted him, "by what Semyonov thinks. It is of no importance."

"He has a bad character," Andrey Vassilievitch said suddenly with great excitement, "a bad character. And why cannot he leave me alone? Why should he laugh always? I do my best. I am quiet and not in his way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I do not rob men of their women."

He was shaking with anger, his head trembling and his hands quivering—it was difficult not to smile.

"You must not listen nor notice nor think of it," I said firmly. "We are grateful for your work—all of us. Semyonov laughs at us all."

"That poor Marie Ivanovna," he burst out. "She does not know. She is ignorant of life. At first I was angry with her but now I see that she is helpless. There will be terrible things afterwards, Ivan Andreievitch!" he cried.

"I think she understands him better than we do."

"I have never," he said vehemently, "hated a man in my life as I hate him." But in spite of his passionate declaration he was obviously reassured by my defence of him. He was quiet suddenly, looked at the view mildly and, in a moment, thought me the best friend he had in the world—in the Russian manner.

"You see, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, looking at me with the eyes of an unnaturally wise baby, "that I cannot help wishing that my wife were here to advise Marie Ivanovna. She would have loved my wife very much, as every one did, and would have confided in her. That would have helped a girl who, like Marie Ivanovna, is ignorant of the world and the loves of men."

"You miss your wife very much?" I asked.

"There is not a moment of the day but I do not think of her," he answered very solemnly, staring in front of him. "That must seem strange to you who did not know her, and even I sometimes think it is not good. But what to do? She was a woman so remarkable that no one who knew her can forget."

"I have often been told that every one who knew her loved her," I said.

"Ah! you have heard that.... They talk of her, of course. She will always be remembered." His eyes shone with pleasure. "Yes, every one loved her. I myself loved her with a passion that nothing can ever change. And why?... I cannot tell you—unless it were that she was the only person I have known who did not wish me another kind of man. I could be myself with her and know that she still cared for me.... I will not pretend to you, Ivan Andreievitch, that I think myself a fine man," he continued. "I have never thought myself so. When I was very young I envied tall men and handsome men and men who knew what was the best thing to do without thinking of it. I have always known that people would only come to me for what I have got to give and I have pretended that I do not care. And once I had an English merchant as my guest. He was very agreeable and pleasant to me—and then by chance I overheard him say: 'Ah, Andrey Vassilievitch! A vulgar little snob!' That is perhaps what I am—I do not know—we are all what God pleases. But I had mistresses, I had friends, acquaintances. They despised me. They left me always for some one finer. They say that we Russians care too much what others think of us—but when in your own house people—your friends—say such things of you...."

He broke off, then, smiling, continued:

"My wife came. There was something in me, just as I was, that she cared for. She did not passionately love me, but she loved me with her heart because she saw that I needed love. She always saw people just as they were.... And I understood. I understood from the beginning exactly what I was to her...."

He paused again, put his hand on my knee, then spoke, looking very serious with his comic little nose and mouth like the nose and mouth of a poodle. "I had a friend, Ivan Andreievitch. A fine man.... He loved my wife and my wife loved him. He was not vulgar. He had a fine taste, he was handsome and clever. What was I to do? I knew that my wife loved him, and she must be happy. I knew that I owed her everything because of all that she had done for me. I helped them in their love.... For five years I wished them well. Do you think it was easy for me? I suffered, Ivan Andreievitch, the tortures of hell. I was jealous, God forgive me! How jealous! Sometimes alone in my room I would cry all night—not a fine thing to do. But then how should I act? She gave him what she could never give to me. She loved him with passion—for me she cared as good women care for the poor. I was foolish perhaps. I tried to be as they were, with their taste and easy judgments ... I failed, of course. What could I do all at once? One is as God has pleased from the beginning. Ah! how I was unhappy those five years! I wished that he would die and then cursed myself for wishing it. And yet I knew that I had something that he had not. I needed her more than he, and she knew that. Her charm for him would fade perhaps as the years passed. He was a passionate man who had loved many women. For me, as she well knew, it would never pass.

"She died. For a time I was like a dead man. And she was not enough with me. I talked to her friends, but they had not known her—not as she was. Only one had known her and he was the friend whom she had loved.

"Of course he found me as he had always done—tiresome, irritating, of vulgar taste. But he, too, wanted to speak of her. And so we were drawn together.... Now ... is he my friend? I say always that he is. I say to myself: 'Andrey Vassilievitch, he is your best friend'—but I am jealous. Yes, Ivan Andreievitch, I am jealous of him. I think that perhaps he will die before me and that then—somewhere—together—they will laugh at me. And he has such memories of her! At the last she cried his name! He is so much a grander man than I! Fine in every way! Did I say that she would laugh? No, no ... that never. But she will say: 'Poor Andrey Vassilievitch!' She will pity me!... I think that I would be happier if I did not see my friend. But I cannot leave him.... We talk of her often. And yet he despises me and wonders that she can have loved me...."

I had a fear lest Andrey Vassilievitch should cry. He seemed so desolate there, giving strange little self-important coughs and sniffs, beating the ground with his smart little military boot.

Across the river the black wall of cloud had returned and now hung above the forest of S——, that lay sullenly, in its shadow, forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the Nestor like a snake.... I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were often strangely chill.

"Look," cried Andrey Vassilievitch, starting to his feet "There's Marie Ivanovna!"

I turned and saw her standing there, smiling at us, silently and without movement, like an apparition.