Why, it was Trenchard's dream that I was seeing! I was merely repeating to myself his own imaginations—and with that I had suddenly, as though some one had hypnotised me, fallen back into a heavy dreamless sleep. It was already midday when I was wakened by little Andrey Vassilievitch, who, sitting on my bed and evidently in a state of the very greatest excitement, informed me that Dr. Semyonov and the Sisters Marie Ivanovna and Anna Petrovna had arrived from ——, and that we might be off at any moment. I was aware, as he spoke, of a great stir beyond the window and saw, passing up through the valley, a flood of soldiers, infantry, cavalry, kitchens with clumsy black funnels bobbing on their unsteady wheels, cannon, hundreds of carts; the soldiers came up through our own garden treading down the cabbages, stopping at the well near our door and filling their tin kettles, tramping up the road, spreading, like smoke, in the far distance, up the high road that led into the furthest forest.
"They say—to-night—for certain," said Andrey Vassilievitch, his fat hand trembling on my bed. He began to talk, his voice shaking with excitement. "Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I am continually surprised at myself: 'Here you are, Andrey Vassilievitch, here, at the war. What do you make of it?? I say to myself. Just consider.... No, but seriously, Ivan Andreievitch, of course I must seem to all of you something of a comic figure. When my wife was alive—how I wish that you could have known her! Such a remarkable woman; every one who met her was struck by her fine character—when my wife was alive I had my position to support. That I should have been a comic figure would have distressed her. But now, who cares? Nobody, you may very truly say.... Well, well. But the point is that this evening we shall really be in the thick of it. And—may I tell you something, Ivan Andreievitch? Only for yourself, because you are an Englishman and can be trusted: to speak quite truthfully I'm frightened. I say to myself that one is at the war and that one must be frightened at nothing, and still I remain frightened.... Frightened of what?... I really cannot tell you. Death, perhaps? But no, I should not be sorry to die—there are reasons....
"And yet although I should not be sorry to die, I remain frightened—all night I was awake—I do my utmost to control it, but there is something stronger than I—something. I feel as though if I once discovered what that something was I should not be frightened any longer. Something definite that you could meet and say to yourself: 'There, Andrey Vassilievitch, you're not frightened of that, are you? What is there to be frightened of?... Why then, you know, I don't believe I should be frightened any more!'"
I remember that he then explained to me that he wished Nikitin had been sent instead of Semyonov. Nikitin was much more sympathetic.
"You seem very fond of Nikitin," I said.
"We are friends ... we have been friends for many years. My wife was very fond of him. I am a lonely man, Ivan Andreievitch, since the death of my wife, and to be with any one who knew her is a great happiness ... yes, a great happiness."
"And Semyonov?" I asked.
"I have nothing to say against Alexei Petrovitch," he answered stiffly.
When later I joined the others at the cottage higher up the road taken by the doctors of the Division, I discovered Trenchard in an ecstasy of happiness. He did not speak to me but his shining eyes, the eagerness with which standing back from the group he watched us all, told me everything. 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. All of us, with our little private histories like bundles on our backs, are venturing out to try our fortune.... What are we going to find?